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I want to welcome you to Day 4 of our look together through Mark, Chapter 3 in
Daily Drive Time Devotions. We began yesterday a look together at Jesus' calling
of His first apostles, the Twelve, and we looked at why He set them aside.
Because of the quality of His ministry they would know Him, and because of the
quantity, the multiplication of His ministry through these Twelve.

We also looked together at exactly why He called them to be with Him and to be
sent out from Him. There is more though that we can learn from these first
Twelve about following Jesus Christ in daily life. Let me just remind you again
of these verses that we looked at yesterday.

Jesus went up in verse 13 on a mountainside and He called to Him those He
wanted, and they came to Him. He 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. These are the Twelve He appointed, Simon, to
whom He gave the name Peter, James, son of Zebedee, and his brother John to
them.

He gave the name Bargenes, which means sons of thunder, Andrew, Philip,
Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James, son of Alphaeus, Thaddeus, Simon the
Zealot, and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed Him. Today we're going to focus on who
were these disciples, these first Twelve, and what resources were they given,
because when you understand something about them and the resources that God gave
them, you understand something about you and me and the resources that God has
given us and the direction He's given us to follow Him. Who were these
disciples?

Well, they were a group of Twelve. That's the place you start, is they were a
group of Twelve, Twelve men. Christian disciples always function as a group.

He did not call one, He called Twelve. There is nowhere in the New Testament
that you can get any idea that you are to follow Jesus Christ on your own. If
you happen to be listening to drive time devotions and you're the only Christian
you know and you're trying to follow Him all on your own, of course you're
frustrated in trying to do that.

You're not meant to live that way. He made us to live in a body, in the church.
I know the church isn't perfect, that's because it's filled with imperfect
people like you and like me.

But I also know that the church is Christ's body and I know that we follow Him
together in a group. You might be in a church but you're in a large church and
you come to church all by yourself, you leave church all by yourself, you're not
in a small group like this group of Twelve where you can interact with others
and enjoy the life of Christ, be challenged in the life of Christ, and live out
the life of Christ with others. Christian discipleship is lived out in groups,
not as individuals.

There's no such thing as a Lone Ranger Christian. Even the Lone Ranger had
Tonto. You can't do this alone.

He's made you to live out this life with other people. That's what you learn
from these first Twelve. They were Twelve men.

They were also common men. You and I can learn something from that. They were
fishermen, they were tax collectors, they were on the fringe of society
political radicals, very common men.

You know what God loves to do? God loves to use the least likely person to do
the greatest things for his kingdom's sake. And if you've ever looked at
yourself and thought God could never use me, guess what?

You may be exactly the person he wants to use in that circumstance. Do not let
your feelings about you being the least likely, don't let that keep you from
being available for whatever God wants you to do. He's going to surprise you.

He used common men in these first Twelve disciples. Twelve men, common men. They
were also very diverse men.

They came from very different backgrounds. I guess that's nowhere as clear as
with Matthew and Simon the Zealot. Remember that Zealots in that day were a
fringe political party whose stated desire was to destroy in terrorist actions
the oppressive Roman government.

And they would sometimes carry swords under their tunics so that if they were
walking by a Roman soldier and got a chance, they would immediately kill that
soldier. They hated the Romans. And then here's Matthew, one of the followers of
Jesus Christ, who's a tax collector for the Romans, one of the most hated people
by Simon.

If he hated the Romans, he hated the Jews who allowed themselves to be used by
the Romans even more. And they're both called by Jesus to be disciples. Very
diverse, diverse backgrounds and diverse gifts, diverse abilities.

We learn from these first Twelve that we find our strength as followers of
Christ in our diversity, the diversity of our backgrounds and the diversity of
our gifts. If you ever find someone who's trying to make us all the same, cookie
cutter disciples, you find someone who doesn't understand how Jesus worked in
his body. First Corinthians chapter 12 says it is like a body and some people
are hands and some people are eyes and some people are toes in the body and God
needs them all.

If you're ever tempted to try to become like somebody else in order to be a
disciple, you need to follow people in terms of living out their character and
their passion for God. But God has given you a particular giftedness, a
particular character and personality that can only be used by God through your
life to make a difference. We're supposed to be diverse.

Unity and diversity go together in the body of Christ. We have unity of purpose
and love for Jesus Christ. We have diversity of gifts and backgrounds and that's
how he uses us.

These first disciples, twelve men, common men, diverse men, they were also
fallible men. In fact in this list of twelve we just read there are some who
overcame their fallibility and others who didn't. We read about Peter who denied
Jesus just before he was crucified three times and yet he went to Jesus after
that denial and received forgiveness and out of that forgiveness he became a
leader in the early church.

We also read about Judas Iscariot who betrayed Jesus just before his
crucifixion. But instead of going to Christ and asking for forgiveness, instead
of opening his heart he selfishly threw away his life and he did not find the
forgiveness that Jesus Christ was offering and because of that his fallibility
ended up destroying his life. Peter's fallibility ended up causing a new kind of
humility in his life that made him used of God in greater ways.

The point is God uses very fallible people. The interesting thing to me here is
that as we read through Mark we're reading the recollections of Peter and Peter
puts it out for everyone to know all of his failings, all the wrong things that
he did. There are no perfect disciples.

If you're waiting to feel like you're a disciple of Jesus Christ until you've
attained some level of perfection, there are no perfect disciples. Who were
these disciples? The interesting thing to me is we know a lot about some of
these men.

We know a lot about Peter. You can read many stories about Peter in the New
Testament, about John, about Matthew. We know very little about others.

Thaddeus, you might have thought as I read through this, who's Thaddeus? Or I
read about another Judas. Did you know there were two Judases in the group of
disciples?

You thought well who was that? There's some that we know hardly anything about.
The point isn't what I know about him or what you know about him.

The point is they served him, and you're a disciple of Jesus Christ. The point
isn't what other people know about you or say about you. The point is this, you
get the privilege of serving him.

That's what discipleship is all about. I want you to notice one more thing about
these disciples. Jesus took Simon and he gave him the name Peter.

Peter means rock, little rock. He knew that the foundation of Peter's faith
would be very important, and so he gave him a new name. He took James and John
and he gave them new names too, sons of thunder.

They were very belligerent kind of men, but he knew that he was going to change
them and become John eventually became known as the apostle of love, and Jesus
was looking forward to that. What that says to me is this, the moment Jesus
calls you as his disciple, as his follower, the moment he calls you, he sees, he
looks forward to the changes that he's going to work in your life. God is
working in your life, in my life.

To be a disciple means you do things for him, but it also means your life is
transformed by him. Now, those first disciples, they couldn't see it the first
day, and he may not be able to see right now the changes that he wants to work,
but he's working them. He's at work in your life for his changes.

That's what it means to be a disciple, a learner from Jesus Christ. That's just
a very brief look at who these men were. What about the resources they were
given?

The Bible says that they were given two resources, and you and I are given the
same two resources as disciples today. They were given a message, and they were
given a power. The Bible says that he sent them out to preach.

They were given a message, and as believers in Christ, our greatest commission
is to communicate about Christ. As Christians, our greatest commission is to
communicate about Christ. Our primary task is the task of telling the truth.

We get the privilege of letting other people know the good news that has
happened to us. Now, you don't do it in a judgmental way. This has happened to
me.

It could never happen to you. You do it in a way that lets people know, "I am so
grateful that God's done this in my life," and he's promised that he could do it
in anybody's life. The simple message of John 3:16, "God so loved the world.

" That is the message that you and I have the privilege to share, that we're
here to tell through our words, through our actions, through our lifestyle,
through our decisions, through our ministry. We get to share this message that
God has given us. That is one of the resources that God has put into your life
as a follower of Jesus Christ.

He's given you a message to share, and he's shared it in all those different
kinds of ways. It's the message of good news. Who's heard the good news?

Who's seen the good news through your life recently? He's not only given us a
message, he's given us a power. In these verses, in verse 15, it says, "To have
authority to drive out demons.

" Now, you may think, "Well, I'm not going to have to drive out many demons. "
Well, they did in that day, and so Jesus gave them exactly the power that they
needed to do exactly what he was calling them to do. Here's the question.

Will you be able to do what God has called you to do? The answer is yes. God has
given you the resource of a power which defeats even Satan's demons, so he's
given you the resource of a power to do what he has called you to do.

But here's the key. It is not your power. He's given you the resource of his
power.

And the mistake that I make, that I see many believers make, is we see God's
call, we see God's message, and then we go out to do it on our own power, and we
fall flat on our face every time. Everyone has to go through this, I think,
multiple times in life to be reminded it is not my power. It is his power.

Oh, he's gifted me. Oh, he's given me resources. Oh, he's given me a message.

But in the end, it's only through his power, his spirit working through my life,
and me leaning back on that power, that powerful things happen through my life.
We have a message, and we have all the power that we need to proclaim it, but
we've got to depend on him for that power. So let's depend on him together right
now.

Jesus Christ, it's easy to depend on myself. I pray today that you remind me to
depend on you. In my heart, I would know that you can give me the power to say
the right thing at the right time, and then you can empower that thing that was
said to work in somebody's heart in a way that I could never imagine.

Lord, my words are just my words. But me speaking your message and then you
empowering that message, that has the power to change lives. I realize that
because you've changed my life through your message, and I thank you for that.

And I pray, God, that you'd use me in some way today to let someone else know
that there's good news of your love for their life. Empower my life for that
purpose, I pray. In Jesus' name, amen.

Join us tomorrow. We're going to be looking together at encouraging truth from
two of the most difficult passages to understand, not only in the book of Mark,
but also in the entire Bible. We're going to see God's truth through those two
difficult passages.

Join us tomorrow.