Final Preparations Series

2. Spend time with other disciples

Another aspect of this 40 day period that really stands out to me is that in almost every case, Jesus appeared to the disciples as they were gathered together. There were only a very few times when He appeared individually to one of His disciples and for most of those occasions, we actually have little or no detail of what occurred then.

I think Jesus did that because He knew that these disciples were going to face great opposition and persecution as they carried out the mission He had given to them. And when that happened, they were going to need each other.

The author of Hebrews had that same idea in mind when he wrote these familiar words:

And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.

(Hebrews 10:24–25 ESV)

Our worship and our witness are strengthened when we gather together as a body because we can encourage each other and stir each other up to love and good works. And in a world where persecution of Christians is rapidly increasing, that is something we are going to need more and more.

And just an hour together on Sunday morning, is not nearly enough. We all need to be making time to be with each other throughout the week. That could take a lot of different forms – everything from a small group Bible study to getting together for coffee to helping someone with a project to doing something you enjoy doing with other disciples of Jesus.

3. Don’t make it too complicated

Up to this point, I’ve avoided using the word “evangelism”. For one thing, it’s not found anywhere in these passages. But even more importantly, I think that word tends to stir up fear for many of us and the reason it does that is because we’ve made it much more complex and complicated than it should be.

The idea of being a witness is actually pretty simple. It just means to observe something personally and then share what we’ve observed with others. We’re probably most familiar with how that works in a courtroom. But in our culture, we’ve even made that much more complicated, haven’t we?

Before the days of high priced lawyers, being a witness in a courtroom was pretty simple. The witness just testified to what he or she had observed. But today, it seems that, especially in high profile cases, attorneys often go to great lengths to “prep” their witnesses so they will be ready to answer the questions the other side will use to try and make people doubt that testimony.

In the early church, none of the disciples, with the exception Paul, who was a Pharisee, had any formal training, other than what Jesus had shared with them from the Scriptures. They merely told other people what they had seem with their own eyes and heard with their own ears.

And that is all that Jesus expects from us as His disciples today. We merely need to share our own personal experience with Jesus. Now I’m not saying that we can’t benefit from some training, or that we shouldn’t know the Bible well enough to share the gospel, or that we don’t need to make any kind of preparation at all. I’m just pointing out that being a witness is not dependent on those things.