March Leader's Letter-- Lynn Green, YWAM Chairman

Loving greetings in the name of Jesus to our wonderful global family! We are more than 17,000 staff and about that same number of students each year and are from over 200 nations. What a family!

God creates by speaking His Word and then working with us to make it happen. Nearly 50 years ago, He brought his Word to a young man by the name of Loren Cunningham in the form of a vision of waves of young people covering the whole earth with the Good News about Jesus Christ. Since that year, 1960, God has been working with Loren and then Darlene and all who joined their hearts to them and that vision to make it happen.

When I went to Lausanne, Switzerland to attend a School of Evangelism in the summer of 1969, I could never have imagined that our little group of young people scattered in a few nations around the world could become the great, global family that we are today. Our Heavenly Father is building this family for a purpose. That purpose is a very big one and it is defined in Matthew 28:18-20:

Then Jesus came to them and said, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me; therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

With such a huge calling, we need to work with the whole Body of Christ whereever we are. We also need to keep growing in numbers and in purity. As we have written before, we are now in a season when we can expect to grow like never before, and God is calling us to holiness in preparation for that.

Matthew 28 is the passage from which we get a term that we hear quite a lot these days—“discipling nations”. I notice that term is understood quite differently from one person to another and sometimes from one team or base to another. But note that Jesus commanded us to make disciples of all nations. Did He mean for us to win people to Him from every ethnic background, or did He mean that we could see whole nations become obedient to Him?

However we interpret that phrase, we know that our approach must be the same as His. We must win people to faith in Christ and to a life of learning to obey everything he commanded. That life of obedience is the path we have chosen and we are all meant to reproduce!

Just this morning, my wife, Marti, and I were expressing our deep desire to win more people to Jesus. I know that I am not “abiding in the vine” (John 15:4-8) to the depth that He wants me to until I am regularly “bearing fruit”. Though I can be encouraged when I bear the fruits of the Spirit, the primary purpose of fruit in God’s creation is reproduction. Let us all pray for more of that kind of fruit in our lives. We cannot begin to think we are “discipling nations” until we are making disciples.

We cannot “disciple nations” by only working through the positions and people of power in a nation. It is only when many people in a nation turn to active faith in Jesus and begin to obey His teaching that a process of transformation in that society can begin. That change can bring an entire nation into alignment with the ways of God, so that their government, their laws, their culture and every life-sphere reflects aspects of godly values. However, no nation will be entirely obedient to God. That is our calling as the Body of Christ whom Peter refers to as “a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God” in 1 Peter 2:9.

As we grow in obedience to all that He taught, (as in Matthew 28:19) we grow in His authority. As I look through the scriptures, the authority of Jesus stands out as one of the first things people noticed about Him. It is also a quality that He imparted to His disciples (Luke 9:1). But they did not exercise that authority with His grace until after the day of Pentecost. At one point, when they visited the city of Samaria, they wanted to call down fire from heaven on the people because they felt rejected by them!

God wants to give us authority to make disciples of all nations, but we must first learn to live a life of obedience, humility and grace. I believe He is eager to impart authority to us—and how we need it! But authority without Christ-like character is too dangerous.

That brings us back to our prophetic theme for this season, Joshua 5. Israel was allowed to cross the Jordan because all those who disobeyed had died in the wilderness and the nation consisted of a new generation of obedient and faith-filled people. The Lord was ready to give them the authority to take the land and rule it in righteousness. But first, they had to be circumcised or sanctified (see the January letter).

With the goal of “taking the land” in mind, we need to keep asking the Lord to sanctify us—to make us a holy people. So this month, the prayer day will continue with a focus on repentance.

We want the Holy Spirit to purge us of all disunity, unbelief, secret sins and appetite for the “things of this world” (1 John 2:15). Please spend some time before the Lord again, asking Him to convict you personally and as a team or community of anything that is preventing you from exercising the authority that is yours in Christ Jesus. Be sure, also, to read the teaching on repentance! It will help all of us to be thorough in our response to God.

When we begin to move in the authority that Jesus has for us, we will be a mighty force, working in unity with others, for the purpose of bringing the nations before the throne of God. Have a great prayer day!

In His Peace,

Lynn Green

International Chairman, YWAM