In the last instalment of our series on post resurrection appearances by Jesus, Lesley talked about the great commission.

18 Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. 19 Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20 and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

This made me reflect on some events at work.

We are called to make disciples of all nations. Often people think about mission abroad when reading this passage. Sometimes our mission field is much closer to home, sometimes opportunities to witness arise when we least expect it.

At work I don’t hide that I am a Christian, but I am not actively seeking opportunities for discussion either. When, well over a year ago, my boss started joking about my faith I laughed it off.

He then started to have a rough time, first our order intake started to fall and as a result he had to make some people redundant. He fell ill with Covid and was subsequently diagnosed with long Covid. During that time his tone started to change, his requests for prayer became more serious.

4 months ago his long Covid, or what he thought was long Covid, started to get worse, he developed a serious cough and he started to loose weight. To cut a long story short after a battery of tests he was diagnosed with an aggressive stage 3 kidney tumour. He definitely meant it now when he asked me to keep praying. I was able to have brief discussions about faith and prayer and I encouraged him to pray himself, which he said he was doing. The news from the doctors did not improve, they were concerned that the tumour had spread and in preparation for surgery he drafted a will.

I told him that I would ask some more people to pray for him– and we started to pray for him in our home group. The news started to get better, the bone scan was negative and his kidney was removed. His pathology results also confirmed that the tumour had not spread.

He recently sent me a text message, telling me how grateful he was for the prayers and most importantly – to keep praying for him.

I thought I share this, to show, no matter how inadequate we may feel and act, God can still use us.

We have a great commission, not only in the sense of a big commission, but a fantastic commission. God is reaching other people through us, he is making disciples and he wants to do it with us – truly a great and fantastic commission. And God promises us to be with us until the end of the age, or as other translations put it “… even until the end of the world”.

We can read in Romans 8:38-39:

38 For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, 39 neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So let us go into our neighbourhoods and workplaces and make disciples.