Just how many slashes can one blog title have?? This week in class we talked about the friends that Jesus spent much of his time with during his years of ministry. There's a lot of info about some of them and very little info about others. The inner circle, the guys that really spent a lot of time with Jesus, were his twelve disciples. A disciple is a learner. They were also called his apostles. An apostle is someone who is sent to do something. Jesus' twelve disciples/apostles spent time learning from Jesus, and they also were sent out to preach about the kingdom of God and cast out demons. |
Then he appointed twelve of them and called them his apostles. They were to accompany him, and he would send them out to preach, giving them authority to cast out demons. These are the twelve he chose:Simon (whom he named Peter), James and John (the sons of Zebedee, but Jesus nicknamed them “Sons of Thunder”), Andrew, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Thomas, James (son of Alphaeus),
Thaddaeus, Simon (the zealot), Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him).
(Mark 3:14-19)
Soon afterward Jesus began a tour of the nearby towns and villages, preaching and announcing the Good News about the Kingdom of God. He took his twelve disciples with him, along with some women who had been cured of evil spirits and diseases. Among them were Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons; Joanna, the wife of Chuza, Herod’s business manager; Susanna; and many others who were contributing from their own resources to support Jesus and his disciples.
(Luke 8:1-3)
Random sidenote: | We had a brief discussion about the shortest verse in the Bible. I had always heard that John 11:35 was the shortest - "Jesus wept" (Jesus was weeping because his friend Lazarus had died!). But Rex informed me that in Greek, the shortest verse is actually 1 Thessalonians 5:16, "pray continually"! 1 Thessalonians 5:16 (Πάντοτε χαίρετε) is 14 Greek letters, while John 11:35 (ἐδάκρυσεν ὁ Ἰησοῦς) is 16 Greek letters! |
Anyway...
Still possible today? I think so.
So, how exactly do you become a Christian? Well, there are a lot of ways to answer that. Some of the responses in class included "believe in Jesus," "ask Jesus into your heart," "worship and love Jesus." Another way to put it is our next building block:
WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE A CHRISTIAN?
A person becomes a Christian by trusting in what God has done through Christ's death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. This is God's gift received through repentance of sin and faith in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord.
"But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or the will of man, but of God." (John 1:12-13, NRSV)