by Tammy Phillips
February 4, 2021
“And He said to them, Go into all the world and preach and publish openly the good news (the Gospel) to every creature [of the whole human race].” (Mark 16:15 AMPC)
Once, a few years ago, I read this verse. I became a bit overwhelmed with the magnitude of the commission, “GO…to all the world…preach the good news to everybody!” I had not worked a regular job outside the home in a few years. I did not have a lot of social contacts to deliver the good news to, or so I thought. I had a husband and two teenage boys. It was not like I could pick up and move to Bora Bora. I did not have spare time to visit my home state of Georgia, much less the whole world. I spent most of my extra time at the ball field.
I heard the hearty, gentle laugh of God and then Holy Spirit imparted a little wisdom into this mom’s spirit.
He showed me that “go” in Greek means to pursue the journey on which one has entered; to order one’s life; travel; traverse; to step; to walk. Although go infers motion, it does not mean you have to travel from zero to a hundred miles per hour in seconds. I learned that it was fine to go slow and steady. It also did not mean that we do not have to cross the Pacific to go on mission.
Holy Spirit then taught me what “all the world” meant in this verse. The Greek word for world is from the Greek word kosmos. It denotes order; circle of earth; the circle of human family, general collection of particulars: circle of friends; circle of coworkers; circle of political affiliations; circle of baseball family. I learned that our world, our cosmos, is our sphere of influence.
God shrunk the whole world down to a comprehensible size. I understood that we are to go to every creature in our sphere. Our mission field was to the red, yellow, black and white, to the young, to the old, to the mom and to the baseball player. We are to share Jesus with Bridgenetta, the cashier at Kroger. We are to share the good news with the hopeless wife and mother whose husband asked for a divorce after 30 years of marriage. We are to share the good news to friends with brain cancer, to the friends with breast cancer, to friends who lost a child or grandchild too soon.
We are girls and guys on assignment. Our assignment is to our sphere.
I enCOURAGE you to go, to love, to preach the good news of Jesus to your world. Alongside you, I will go to mine! We have much to say!
(PS… the more you share, the bigger your sphere of influence grows…even to the whole world.)
Complete in Him 