My French professor sent out a message via the internet bulletin board to the entire class about two weeks ago, which was therefore two weeks before the infamous week of final exams. My professor is originally from France and her English is not the best ever, but this message was certainly clear and could not be misunderstood. It read "Do not cram, be proactive!" Well, I did not listen and I may have spent an hour the night before the final glossing over my French textbook. This is a good example of how not to be proactive. When the test was placed on my desk, the best I could do was react to it by answering the questions to the best of my ability. It was the longer hour I have spent in a long time and it was all due to my lack of preparation. I had not proacted but merely reacted and therefore my ability was nowhere near as good as it could have been. As the definitions clearly state above, proaction is doing something to prepare for future problems whereas reaction is doing something in response to a problem that already exists. God has placed a message on my heart that says this: "Do not react, proact!"

    So, you might be wondering what in the world this has to do with the above Scripture. These verses are easily recognizeable by the title "The Great Commission." In this statement, Jesus gives a charge to his disciples on how to be proactive: Go, Teach, and Baptize.

GO: I am sure we have all been guilty of waiting for people to come to us inquiring about the gospel of Jesus Christ, but honestly, how many times has this actually happened? Certainly not as much as we would like for it to. Yet the command that the Lord gave to his disciples was to "go." It seems like modern day Christians don't like verbs very much. Have you noticed that as well? I have heard people before that try to hide behind the Holy Ghost concerning this issue. What I mean by that is they will say "Well, I won't actually go to anybody with the gospel of Christ until I feel led to do so." Would you like a translation for that? "Well, I am scared to share the gospel with people because of what they might think of me." There are some things that we do not have to wait to do because we have already been commanded to do them! The Lord says "Go" and that is very proactive. Don't let the problem come to you, you go to the problem.

TEACH: A reactive person will learn about the solution to a problem after the problem arises. A proactive person will teach the solution before the problem comes or before it gets out of control. Since the Lord left this Earth, there have been people on the Earth that walk around craving something that they do not have. They are missing the most important element of their entire life and they need to be taught what it is. This, of course, is the relationship with God that we can have only through Christ Jesus and Jesus Himself tells us to Go, and when we get to where we are going, to Teach everybody what the Lord has taught us. It is also very important to note that Christ never said to teach our opinions, our theories, or what so-and-so said, but what the Word of God says. By the way, this command is a progression in that we are to go, then teach, and then baptize. There is no use to go if you have no anticipation of teaching the Word of God when you get there. Otherwise, you are merely taking a trip. I also will add that teaching can be both reactive and proactive. You can teach about a subject in reaction to an event, such as the hazards of smoking to your teenager after you find a pack of cigarettes in their backpack. Yet, it is a whole lot more effective to teach ahead of problems instead of behind of them.

BAPTIZE: When someone would accept Christ after the disciples had went and taught, they were then commanded to baptize them in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. This can be implied because it would make no sense for the disciples to go around dunking people in water for baptism of itself does not bring salvation. It is the outward symbol commanded by Christ that represented the inward change, in that the person was identified in the death, burial, and resurrection of Christ. So, you might think that this is purely reactive. But this is not entirely true. Notice that the command by Christ to the disciples is given to them before they ever go anywhere or teach anything. I believe this is because they were to EXPECT people to be saved and that is proactive. How many times do we go anywhere and expect people to be saved? Have you packed along an extra change of clothes because you thought that there would be a baptizing? Trust me, I am preaching to myself as well as anybody else! It is almost as if we are shocked to hear of anyone getting saved and that is how we react, but to proact is to say that there will be people who are going to need to be baptized!!

    I have always loved the book of Acts of the Apostles. One of the many reasons this is true is because people are actually doing something! And they feed us examples of how to obey the command of Christ to Go, Teach, and Baptize. The disciples faced many things in those days that we never even worry about. When they were to GO, they did not hop into their Toyota or Honda...when they were to TEACH, they did so to people who were so mad that they wanted to kill them...and when they were to BAPTIZE, they did so on a couple of occasions by the thousands. In closing, how were they able to do all of this and how are we expected to obey the same commandment today? Easy, because Jesus said "I am with you always, even unto the end of the world" and that same Jesus also said in Matt. 28, verse 18, that all power was given unto Him in heaven and in earth. Jesus will never ask you to do anything that He cannot do through you. So, with that, GO, TEACH, and BAPTIZE!

Additional reading for this week:

    Last week, I gave a bunch of individual scriptures for follow-up reading and this week will kind of be different. What I challenge you to do is to read the entire book of Acts within the next 2 weeks, and cut it up into these three sections to see how the apostles responded to the "Great Commission":