ARE YOU READY?

 Thanks to Allison Sylvester-Conliffe

for another powerful article

Many of us who have been born again can testify of the excitement at the onset.  We go through what we term the “mountain top” experience.  Everything looks new and fresh to us.  We are happy beings at that time, and nothing and no-one can interfere with that joy that we feel.  We are excited to go to the House of God to worship Him, to learn of Him and of His Kingdom, and come into true relationship with God.  Is all this learning and experience to be kept to ourselves?  Are we to bask in this knowledge of God and in the relationship that stems from it all by ourselves?

The great call on our lives after Salvation and as we follow Christ, is to share the Good News of the Gospel with others in our sphere of influence.  We are disciples as we follow Christ and we are called to make disciples.  Jesus told that to His first disciples.

But...I'm not ready!

And Jesus said unto them, Come ye after me, and I will make you to become fishers of men. Mark 1:17

However, there is something in us, which causes us to believe that we are not ready!  We get convinced that this call is for the elders of the church and for the Pastors themselves to pursue – that’s not for me!  What qualifies a believer as being “ready” to share the Gospel with another?  When Jesus sent out the first Twelve, were they “ready”?  As I examine the Word of God, I see those disciples as “green”, afraid and faithless men, but interestingly Jesus called them to go out.  Even in their apparent disabilities, Jesus used them to heal the sick and deliver the oppressed. 

Then he called his twelve disciples together, and gave them power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases. And he sent them to preach the kingdom of God, and to heal the sick. And he said unto them, Take nothing for your journey, neither staves, nor scrip, neither bread, neither money; neither have two coats apiece. And whatsoever house ye enter into, there abide, and thence depart. And whosoever will not receive you, when ye go out of that city, shake off the very dust from your feet for a testimony against them. And they departed, and went through the towns, preaching the gospel, and healing every where. Luke 9:1-6

When we look at Luke 9:12-17 we see Jesus teaching his first disciples, and us by extension, a great lesson.

 

And when the day began to wear away, then came the twelve, and said unto him, Send the multitude away, that they may go into the towns and country round about, and lodge, and get victuals: for we are here in a desert place. But he said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they said, We have no more but five loaves and two fishes; except we should go and buy meat for all this people. For they were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, Make them sit down by fifties in a company. And they did so, and made them all sit down. Then he took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them, and brake, and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude. And they did eat, and were all filled: and there was taken up of fragments that remained to them twelve baskets.

He taught that the very thing that we possess, when shared, has the ability to multiply itself to reach great proportions more than our minds have the capacity to understand.  If we look at the five loaves and the two fishes that were available, against the multitude who were waiting to be fed, it would seem impossible in the natural scheme of things to feed so many with so little.  Jesus, however, did it and had twelve basketsful in excess. 

Similarly, as our spirits connect with the Holy Spirit of God as He downloads into us, truths and revelation of His Word even as shared from the pulpit, we are expected to share, one on one with others in our sphere of influence.  The sharing of that Word may be to a small audience, but with the Spirit of God in it, if each one tells one, that Word has the capacity to feed many by just our one sharing!

In Luke chapter nine, we see the disciples admonishing Jesus to send the multitude away so that they could get some food since they were all in a desert place.  No food!  Yet Jesus told the disciples to feed them.  But Jesus, there is no food here!  Jesus was obviously talking to the disciples from a spiritual standpoint, but the disciples were listening to Him with the natural ear so they sought out the loaves and the fish.  “Feed them” in this instance may have meant – “teach them”! 

Let us not look at the things of God with the natural eye – nor listen to Him with the natural ear.  We are called to share the Gospel of Jesus Christ with those who are lost.  We are also called to love them into the Kingdom of God. Let us therefore go forth in the boldness of the Holy Ghost and make disciples with the resources that we have already attained.  The Word is in you!