The last thing Jesus said to His disciples before returning to heaven was this: ‘Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…I am with you always.’ When God gives you an instruction or an assignment, it will always require His involvement, His strength, His guidance, and His provision. Will He use your talents? Yes. Will He use others to assist and bless you? Yes. But He will never allow you to depend on anyone more than Him. Back at the point when Jesus sends His disciples off to change the world, there are two remarkable challenges. One, there are now only eleven disciples. Throughout the Gospels, the number twelve reminds readers that the disciples have been selected to be a representation of the redeemed, restarted twelve tribes of Israel. Twelve is the number of completeness, wholeness, and readiness. Now they don’t have sufficient players. But it’s not merely that they have the wrong number. Following Christ’s resurrection, we read: ‘The eleven disciples went away into Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had appointed for them. When they saw Him, they worshipped Him; but some doubted’ (vv. 16-17 NKJV). They already have a quantity dilemma; now they have a quality dilemma. They don’t have enough disciples, and even those don’t believe enough. Yet God used them mightily. Indeed, the accusation levelled against them by their enemies started with one of their greatest compliments: ‘These who have turned the world upside down have come here too’ (Acts 17:6 NKJV). So, the key to success is not in your ability but in God’s ability to work through you. That’s why you must live each day in dependence on God.
