One of the comment I hear a lot among believers who have been in the church for a little while is, “I want to go deeper.” This is the very issue that drives people from church to church until they find someone who is consistently “deep” enough for them. What bugs the heck out of me is that it doesn’t matter how deep many of them get, they aren’t do the very thing Jesus came to do – Seek and save the lost. Even in student ministry, I’ve had students tell me that they were going to a different student ministry because they want to “go deeper”. Most of the time these are the students that we reached out to when they weren’t going to church anywhere. Many of them accepted Christ while in our ministry and were once outreach machines because of their initial excitement. Somewhere along the way their vision for seeing people the way Jesus did got blocked by a mirror and all they could see is their own wants and thought needs. They got disconnected because they stopped being missional in the way they lived and became “me-centered”.
I’ve been thinking about this a couple days now. One thing I thought about was that Jesus’ initial call to his followers was to “follow me.” One of the last things he told his disciples was, “do as I have done.” Through out his ministry he was focused on teaching his disciples how to go out and reach the lost. The “religious” people who knew scripture the best were the people he got most mad at. This is not to say that we don’t need to study scripture. If you know me, you know I love scripture. One thing I think is interesting though is that in Deuteronomy where we first see, “You must love the LORD your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength”, it is immediately followed by and pay attention to his command. Then after that in Deut. alone, when it says love the Lord, it gives an action step of doing what it says.
Here is what I have an issue with when it comes to the idea of “going deep.” Last night I sat in the midst of several hundred students that no one is reaching with the gospel because no one is reaching out to them the way Jesus would. All along we have students who want to “go deeper?” How much deeper does a person have to go before they start loving on the people God called us to love? Reaching the people Jesus came to reach? It doesn’t matter how much you understand of God’s word if you aren’t doing the basics of what it says?
Remember the two main things that Jesus gave us when asked what the most important command was? Love God and love people. Very basic. When Jesus called his disciples, he didn’t say come grow deep with me so that one day you can make an impact. He said to come follow me and do what I do.
Ok… so I started this blog thinking it would be a short one just to throw out some thoughts I’ve had on my mind, but it got a little long, so I will shut it down here. Let me encourage you that regardless of how much you know about God’s word, you can and are called to make an impact in the world we live in by love people the way God loves them.