Everything you see in the book of Acts is a testimony of all Jesus accomplished in the personal, Christian part of the disciple’s lives.

Jesus properly prepared them before He was interested in setting up a ministerial goal, a dynamic strategy, a worldwide Christian organization, a church or anything else we might use to start our ministry. Jesus knew that the person in the ministry was more important than the ministry itself.

You need to be careful not to confuse knowledge with Christian life. We are all aware of the fact that those who know “about” God are not the same as those who “know” God. The same is true of those who have a “knowledge” of God’s Word, but, don’t live it. A lot of the time, a person is prepared for the ministry by teaching them a lot of things. Are they living what they learn? Who knows?

Most instructors assume that it isn’t their job to find out. If the student passed their tests, if they know all the right answers, then it is up to them to live the life. Most of us didn’t do well under that training program. We assumed that we were living it just because we had the information in our heads.

There were times in my life when I knew I was presenting information I wasn’t living. Sometimes I would tell the congregation: “When I point my index finger toward you, there are three fingers pointing back at me.” That sounded good and humble; but, it didn’t change me.

Jesus, on the other hand, had a disciple training system that revealed that issue. He knew who was becoming what. The first thing that is going to be challenged by Jesus, as you take a look at His training system, is going to be your personal growth and training system. In most cases, Jesus trained His disciples different than we are being trained and are training ours. He could have used any system for training that He wanted to. And, He chose the one presented in the Gospels.

I have heard all of the old arguments against doing it Jesus’ way. We all have. A lot of us have bought into them and are suffering big time. We all have tried to become more relevant to the current generation. We have coupled new procedures with Biblical ones. Many have decided to pick and choose which things to use.

We wait to see who “succeeds” in the ministry. Then we use what they picked as being relevant for us today. We want to see if they “succeed.” If they get unusual “success,” we go with the ones they picked and leave out the ones they didn’t pick. We figure that those they left out must not be applicable for today. They don’t seem to be all that important or they wouldn’t be having all that “success.” Right? The question is, would Jesus consider these ministers and their ministries successful; or, did He present a plan that is so much better it is capable of turning things around on a worldwide scale?