John chapter 20 verse 25 informs us that Jesus taught a lot more than what was captured and recorded in our bibles. Nevertheless, there are enough of his words recorded that the depth and breadth cannot be exhausted in a lifetime of study. For the next few weeks I would like to write about some of the major things Jesus taught and how they apply to us as disciple-makers.

Willy, (not his real name) was an addict who lived in Thailand when we pastored there. A man in our church befriended Willy and over the course of more than one year of sharing the Gospel with Willy he decided to become a Jesus follower. The man who befriended Willy was not available to baptize him so I had the pleasure of being called in to perform the baptism. Willy was a bit shy but he sincerely wanted to follow Jesus. He asked that we not do the baptism at the church but rather in the Andaman Sea and that we not invite a lot of people. While church people were not invited it was impossible to avoid the attention of the sun bathers especially on the day we chose for the event.

Jesus has been crucified. The resurrection has taken place. The risen Jesus with a glorified body, unhindered by physical barriers like walls, occasionally shows up to meet with the disciples. One one of those occasions he instructs them to meet him in Galilee. When the disciples met up with Jesus their number had been reduced to 11. Judas is no longer alive because he succumbed to the temptation to earn money for himself and betrayed Jesus. This ultimately left him with such shame and remorse that he killed himself. At no time in history has any group of people experienced so many emotional highs and lows in such a short period of time. The disciples could rightly have wondered: what next?”

One of our national directors recently reported about a group of people who broke away from another church in their country. This group decided they would be Christians who consumed as much alcohol as they wanted and the men would allow themselves to have multiple wives. Fortunately, our director was able to step in and point out the difference between being Christians who make up their own rules and Jesus followers who are disciples.