Page 11 - In His Image

ment. While she wept at His feet, she heard every word again, this time not with
her ears alone, but somehow they were being eternally written in her heart. Every
word was true, every promise, if not already fulfilled, would be fulfilled, for He was
dead and is now alive! He IS who He said He was! He is the Son of God! The
Messiah, God's very own Christ!

"Then Jesus said to them,
'Do not be afraid, go and tell my brethren to go to Galilee,
and there they will see me.
Matt 28:10

And He wants to see His Apostles! All but John had abandoned Him, fled in terror
for their lives. Afraid that if they were connected to Him, they too might suffer His
fate. Yet He wants to see them.

"And Jesus came and spoke to them saying. . .
'All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.
Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of
the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all things that I have commanded you;
and 10, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.
Matthew 28:18-20

With these words, Jesus sets in motion the final chapter of His eternal plan. He
commissions His Apostles to go and multiply, reproduce that which had been given
freely to them, in others. What our Lord was clearly saying was to go and prepare
My bride for the coming of her Bridegroom. This great move of preparation
required that they share with others the very nature of the Christ they had come
to know. To give themselves over completely to the task of allowing that which had
been invested in them, to shine forth as a river of life, a flood of God's presence.
For it is only that presence, the very nature and character of God moving through
a tried and purified vessel, that can bring about the type and quality of change
that ushers in eternity. They were being commissioned to do nothing less than
carry God and His eternal, loving nature to the world. To lay down their lives, that
others may come to know the joy of meeting and abiding in the Christ of God.

In His Image 3