Mark 6:8-13 “These were his instructions: "Take nothing for the journey except a staff-no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. 9 Wear sandals but not an extra tunic. 10 Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. 11 And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, shake the dust off your feet when you leave, as a testimony against them." 12 They went out and preached that people should repent. 13 They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.” NIV
How much do you pack when you are going on vacation? Imagine these instructions from your employer before you leave on your next business trip. Jesus calls His disciples into a new measure of faith and function! He is sending them forth into all of the towns and villages in preparation for the time when He Himself will pass through so that the atmosphere will be prepared in each place for maximum impact!
As these disciples went forth into the regions it must have been like a tsunami sweeping across the land in the spirit realms. Imagine this little army of men going from town to town in the power of the Holy Spirit doing the works of God everywhere that they went. Now it was not one Jesus and the power of God moving wherever He was. The regions were being touched by multiple teams of empowered messengers who were declaring the kingdom of God, demonstrating the power of the Holy Spirit and living a lifestyle of faith and dependence upon God’s provision.
Jesus prepares His servants to speak the message of the kingdom of God before sending them out into the region, but He doesn’t stop with training them in a message. Jesus also imparts power to demonstrate the legitimacy of the message and instructs them in a lifestyle that supports the message! So often people who go forth to do the work of God have one or two parts of the “package” that is necessary to fulfill God’s purpose, but have not developed all of the facets of a prepared life. But in this case Jesus is very thorough in taking these willing laborers and grooming them for effective ministry.
In Mark 6:8-13 Jesus is focusing heavily on the lifestyle that He wants His messengers to demonstrate in this season. It is clear from the life of Paul and others in the book of Acts that this was only for a season and a context, but it is still powerful for its demonstration of God’s wisdom and still relevant for many times and seasons in our generation. Jesus sends forth His disciples with no earthly possessions. They are to depend completely on God’s provision through the generosity of those who will receive them and their message. They are instructed to stay with whatever family welcomes them until their mission is completed in a particular city and then to move on.
Consider the wisdom of leaning on a specific family where God gives you relationship and then enlarging your work through the roots of that family network as you gain momentum in a town or region. This strategy was not just about securing provision. It was about gaining access into the heart of a community. By deeply connecting to one specific family where they would find favor they were able to enter the life of the community in a more natural way. Each family that would receive them would become a form of endorsement to the rest of the community. The quality of the life that these disciples lived in front of each of these families, and the demonstration of the Holy Spirit that would come forth in this setting, would create a testimony that would cause their hosts to become their “messengers” in a sense as the testimony of the family spread to their friends and neighbors. Imagine opening your home to two strangers with a message of the kingdom of God and then beginning to see miracles take place in your home. You would certainly be compelled by these events to tell someone of the great things that are happening in both your home and your life!
The second dynamic of Christ’s preparation of the disciples is how He taught them to leave a region if rejected there. In each place where the disciples were rejected they were instructed to shake the dust off of their feet as they left that town as a witness against it. This act sent a message that essentially said, “you have rejected us, therefore the Lord rejects you!” This identifies one of the purposes that the disciples were fulfilling when they went forth. They were going forth ahead of the Lord as almost a pre-screening ministry to see which towns were ready to receive the Lord. If a town accepted the call to repentance then most likely this would be a town where the Lord went. For those towns that did not prepare their hearts when the disciples came with the message of the kingdom then Jesus would pass by and go to another town. This principle would greatly increase the impact of Jesus’ works as He went primarily into places where the soil was greatly prepared. We can learn a valuable principle in this process to aid us in recognizing where God is moving. When we see a region ripe with responsiveness or a facet of ministry beginning to become fruitful invest heavily!
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