Jesus appointed twelve - designating them apostles - that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach and to have authority to drive out demons. Mark 3:14

Jesus couldn’t be everywhere physically during his three years of public ministry. If His message is to spread further abroad, He needs help, so after a night of prayer (Luke 6:12), He chooses twelve apostles from the disciples who’ve been following Him. They will need to be so acquainted, so intimate with Jesus that He can entrust the very Words of Life to them and, in turn, see the Good News exponentially spread. 

But first, they must respond to Jesus’s call. This calling will require sacrifice because as apostles, they are more than students who study; they will follow Jesus wherever He goes. The Twelve will now live and breathe Jesus. They will hear His messages, learn truths of God, grow in their faith, see - and more than that - experience how He lives His life. As they develop such intimacy, they should start to reflect more of Jesus and less of themselves. This is crucial to their being able to carry on what Jesus has started.

Everything in our lives in Christ depends on our responding to Him and being with Him. Our usefulness to Jesus, to spreading His gospel, depends on our closeness to Him. We’re effective only to the extent we are “with Jesus” (3:14). I see this playing out two ways. Jesus sends the Twelve “out to preach” (3:14b). If they’ve not absorbed His teaching and modeled His way of living, however, they can preach, but I can’t imagine it would have much power or eternal worth. 

On the other hand, we can sit at Jesus’s feet, absorbing the Word through the Bible, devotionals, books, and sermons. We can spend intimate hours in prayer. But unless we do something with that knowledge and that fellowship, the time Jesus invests in us is almost worthless since it stays bottled up. “He appointed twelve that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach” (3:14, emphasis mine). 

This past Advent, I especially cherished my devotional time. I rose earlier, while the living room was still dark, and turned on all the Christmas lights. I sat in front of the tree with my devotional readings and lit the Advent candle(s). My time in His Word those four weeks was particularly precious, meditating on what Jesus’s incarnation meant and still means and what it foreshadows: a cross but also a resurrection and a triumphant return. But just as that apostle who might try to preach without immersing himself first in Jesus has missed the point, I immersed myself in my Savior but neglected the going and telling. I treasured that time for myself alone. Where’s the usefulness for the Kingdom in that? 

Lord, I know you call and send. I don’t want to be worshiping and learning but never going. I know You have called me to move outside my warm devotional cocoon. I don’t want to waste the time You invest in me, so please show me a specific way to move outside myself as 2024 begins.