Something that is becoming more apparent through the enlightening of the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures is that matters of Christianity, the church, faith, theology, God's will, and family are simple. It is issues of sin, pride, and the flesh that complicates these simpler ideas. God's commands are uncomplicated. Take the passage that we commonly refer to as the great commission at the closing of Matthew's gospel account. "And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, "^aAll authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth."^1aGo therefore and ^bmake disciples of ^call the nations, ^dbaptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, ^aI am with you ¹always, even to ^bthe end of the age."

First we have in this passage Jesus, the Christ. We read another description of this Man in Paul's letter to the Ephesians, "And He ^aput all things in subjection under His feet, and gave Him as ^bhead over all things to the church, which is His ^abody, the ^bfullness of Him who ^cfills ^dall in all." This Man, God in the flesh, the One given as the Head of the body in which would contain all that God has to offer to this world is giving directions. These directions are concise yet lengthy, comparable yet distinct, and challenging yet….. simple. These people and this body are to be going and making disciples. (We will unpack these thoughts in a later post.) Going where and making disciples of who? Going to all nations and making disciples of all nations. Nations is defined not only geographically but also ethnically. The thought is that as you are actively going you are "making" disciples every step of the way as you walk with God.

The commands of Christ do not end there, there is to be a baptizing of these believers that are in this journey of being shaped into the image of God through discipleship. So, what do you do in discipleship? What do we teach? Where do we go from here? Teach them to observe everything that He commanded us to do. The application is that as we are "going" we are "making disciples" and that we are doing in not as much in what we say but in how we live. We cannot expect to lead another down a road that we are not willing to travel down ourselves. This is where the complications begin to corrupt the simplistic mission of the gospel. When one begins to take another down a path that they themselves do not find their own feet on our message loses its authority and it also loses its compelling nature. It loses its compelling nature because the relationship has been severed. One is a picture of relationship and the other of religion. Religion would say here is how you do this but I'm not going to practice the same while relationship in contrast is a connection. The act and process of being bound to another rather than observing from a distance.

The "relationship" is simple and "religion" complicates things. Religion allows for programs and procedures to be more important than person. Relationships focus on the person and remove programs along with their traditions. So, as you go through today ask the question, "What matters the most?" Once you answer this question, don't easily push it aside for the day but allow God to reveal to you the numerous ways in which people complicate things that God intended to be so easy.