Ankerberg Show

Narrator: Welcome to the John Ankerberg Show discipleship segment. Whether you've recently discovered your faith in Christ or have been a long-time follower, we aim to provide you with the tools and encouragement to strengthen your relationship with him. We are dedicated to equipping you to confidently share the hope that resides within you, as instructed in 1 Peter 3:15. Join us now for the John Ankerberg Show discipleship segment as we embark on this journey of spiritual growth and learning together.

John Ankerberg: When you say yes to following Jesus, he takes you on an incredible journey and uses you in ways you never imagined. He gives you a purpose for living and also empowers you through his spirit. Today we will discuss the task Jesus has given to each of his followers, what the Bible calls the Great Commission. Learn how God has a special role for you to play in it. Join us for this session of the John Ankerberg Show.

Alright, welcome to our program. We’re talking with Sunder and Shamala Krishnan, and they're from India. That's where they grew up, and we're talking about topics that are for Christians all around the world, and so we’re glad that you joined us today. Our topic is this: if you are a Christian and you are part of a fellowship of believers, it might be two, three, it might be 12, it might be 100, it may be a thousand or more, did our Lord Jesus give a job to all of us to do?

Let me start off this way. There was a man that came to the founder of the Salvation Army, General Booth. And the young man said, "General Booth, I’ve got to admit as a Christian, I’ve never felt a call from God on my life. I’ve never felt God calling me to do something." And he says, "You’ve really never heard God call you to do anything?" He says, "Yes, I’ve never heard God’s call." He said, "Young man, let me tell you this: you just haven’t read God’s call to you and your life."

And he says, "What do you mean?" And he said, "Let me read this verse." And he read from Matthew 28:18-20: "Jesus came and said to them, to the disciples, all authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I’ve commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the earth." And he said the other in Mark, Jesus said, "Go into all the world and preach the gospel."

Now, he said, isn’t that a call that applies to you? And the job that God has given, Jesus our Lord Jesus has given to the entire church is to go into all the nations and make disciples. And Sunder, that's what we want to talk about today is that people in our churches do not think that these words, this command of Jesus to go into all the world and preach the gospel or make disciples of all nations applies to them. Talk about that. You’ve had experience with this.

Sunder Krishnan: The biggest problem, I think, is they hear those words "going into all the world" and there’s a picture that comes into the average person’s mind, which is, "Oh, I’ve got to now go to Bible college, get a seminary degree, jump on a plane, travel to some remote jungle somewhere that I’ve never been, learn a language that I don’t know." And I’ve got to because they’ve heard stories like that. And so there’s this understanding, a very narrow understanding of what the call is. So that's one problem.

And then the second problem is that they say, "Well, even if I want to do that, how am I ever going to get there from where I am?" And so I want to remind them that there’s another call, a much simpler call from Jesus who said, "Follow me." And that first call to follow me and he said, "I will make you."

So I would say first of all, don’t worry about the end point of this journey. Think of the call as a journey and you start that journey by doing what Jesus wants you to do today now where you are. That's why in another place when he told the disciples, he said in Acts 1:8, "Power will come upon you and you will be my witnesses starting in Jerusalem." Jerusalem was where they were and then it ended up in the uttermost corners of the earth.

And so I think those are two major obstacles that get in the way. So number one I would say start where you are. Who is it that you can serve? And this is where we talked about the gifts of the Spirit and the fellowship. Along with the calling there’s equipping. Jesus doesn’t just call, he gives us gifts. My gift is that of a teacher. Somebody else’s maybe the gift of explaining the good news of Jesus to someone else. Somebody else may have a gift of administration. So whatever your gift is, start serving Jesus where you are right now and follow him every step of the way, and he will take you to the ends of the earth.

John Ankerberg: When I was a young Christian, after I just accepted the Lord and I was coming into high school, one of the things that the Lord laid on my heart was I was supposed to be a witness to my friends. And I knew that if I did that, I’d lose some of them because they’d say, "Oh, he's a Christian." And it was a hard decision for me to say, "Okay, Lord, I will do that regardless of the consequences."

So I started in a brand new high school. My parents moved out to a place where I didn’t even know anybody there. So I was all alone and I told the Lord, "Okay, I’m going to be a witness for you to the best of my ability." Okay, a long story short, when people used to ask me, "Why are you a Christian?" I’d start to answer questions. One of my stock answers was, "I don’t know, but I’ll tell you what. I’ll go home tonight and I’ll look it up and I’ll come and talk to you tomorrow."

And that led to me learning some of the answers that I give even on the program now. And then four years later, in my senior year, we had a club of over 400 people, young people in our school, coming to that club and we led 120 of our friends to the Lord in that school. Now, I never saw that, never dreamed that would happen, like I never dreamed I’d ever be doing television. That was the furthest thing from my mind. So that's what you’re saying. Start with where you’re at, and everybody knows a friend that doesn’t know the Lord. Maybe pray for them and engage them somehow, some way in talking about the Lord.

Sunder Krishnan: And you know, it's interesting. Let me talk to you about prayer, for example. Because sometimes when people say, "Well, and you know like you, your first step was to proclaim the gospel to someone." Mine was to teach. That's one of the ways in which I have been fulfilling that commission of Jesus is to teach in various ways and mobilize people through the teaching.

But you mentioned prayer, and I really want to talk about that. For when it comes to fulfilling the great commission of Jesus, here's something else that most people don’t realize. If you go through the Bible, you will find that from the beginning, and I literally mean from the story of Abraham all the way to the end, prayer is the foundational means by which we accomplish anything. Whatever else we do, whether it's giving or declaring or organizing or strategizing, prayer is foundational.

It's very interesting. The very first prayer in the Bible was by a man named Abraham. His name had just changed from Abram, which means exalted father, to Abraham, which means father of many nations. And what's the first thing he does? He doesn’t strategize. He doesn’t organize an army of people to go. He prays. He prays for another nation named Sodom. And the very first prayer in the Bible is an intercessory prayer for another nation.

And it's so interesting that Abraham’s first expression of his destiny to bless the nations was prayer. Then Jesus said, "Pray that the Lord of the harvest would send forth laborers." The Apostle Paul said, "Pray for me that boldness may be given to me when I preach the gospel." Paul also said in Colossians 4, "Pray for me that there’ll be open doors." In 2 Thessalonians 3, he says, "Pray that the word of the Lord would spread rapidly and be honored." Every single dimension of this mission is tied to prayer. So whatever else we can or cannot do, that is one thing every single one of us needs to do is to begin to pray for the fulfillment of Christ’s great mission.

John Ankerberg: Alright, and I want to backtrack. On the screen, we’ve got Jesus’ words: "Follow me." Now, tie that to the Great commission. And let's go back and answer something that we’ve already answered. What is a disciple of Jesus? What is a follower of Jesus? What does it mean for a person to say, "I am following Jesus"?

Sunder Krishnan: Well, in the Gospels, that's a good place to start. For a person to follow Jesus was literal. Today we don’t follow him literally. They got up and they went wherever he went. But it implies a principle, and that is you spend time with Jesus. You have to be with him. And they talked to him, they dialogued with him, they argued with him, and then they did things he told them to. They came back, sometimes succeeding, sometimes failing.

So what that says to me today when Jesus says follow me is, most of all, I’m calling you even before I’m calling you to a mission, I’m calling you to a relationship. I’m the head of the mission. He said, "I will build my church, not you." I am doing the work. So we join a God who is at work. Jesus is at work. And so through the things we’ve talked about, prayer in a couple of sessions ago, in the scriptures, we talked about that where the mind of Christ is revealed to us.

So as we maintain this relationship with him. What did he say? "I am the vine, you are the branches. Unless the branches abide in the vine, they cannot bear any fruit. Apart from me you can do nothing." And so the call to follow is a call to abide, is a call to fuel that relationship with prayer and with God’s word. And then he amazingly puts us into specific situations. You were told to start talking to someone. I found a commentary in the Bible that hooked me and I started teaching. Somebody else ministers to a poor person, and off we go.

John Ankerberg: Now Shamala, I want to talk with you because when I’ve traveled the world and I’ve gone to a lot of countries, I’ve noticed many of the people that are there that we call missionaries are ladies. I remember going into Ethiopia where Life Magazine said this is one of the ten spots where civilization hasn’t even touched yet. And I would say nine out of ten of the missionaries that were there were ladies. And I said, "You know, how do you become a missionary to Ethiopia?" They said, "When you come, it's so far, you stay because you know it's too far to go back."

It's a commitment of life to go there. Now, I’m impressed by women that have taken up the challenge of Jesus to go different places where the men said, "No, I’m not going." Can you encourage other ladies that are listening right now? Maybe we’re not saying go to Ethiopia or go to some of this place, but I’ve been impressed with a lot of the ladies in India that have gone down the back alleys, gone back to the poor people, the castaways in India, and they have knocked on their door and said, "Could I talk with you? Could I pray with you? Would you want to listen to the Bible today with me?" Talk to the ladies to encourage them that there’s a place for them here.

Shamala Krishnan: Absolutely, John, because it just took me back to the time when I was a teenager. And the people who first opened the gospel to me were actually two women. One was a lady from Canada and another one was a lady from New Delhi. And these two ladies came to the school I was studying at once a week to do a Bible study. And so they were the first people that God used in my life to set me on this journey of becoming a follower of Jesus Christ. So that was when I was growing up in India.

Then I also think of the women that I meet with every Tuesday at our church. And these are women who have a deep love for the nations, but they have not gone to the nations. But every Tuesday, we go to the nations by praying for some of our international workers from our church who send us their letters. We read them and we just pray for them and we feel very much a part of what they are doing.

So whether you’re in the place where you grew up, God has seen fit to place you, or whether in my case where I came here to Canada as a teenager, I’ve just been so blessed by the women God has put in my life right at the onset of my journey of becoming a follower of Christ and then also in Canada.

But you know, one of the things in India, many of the women sit outside and they peel their vegetables and they work together to prepare dinner. And it's a beautiful scene of just women sitting together talking with each other. And I think it's a wonderful opportunity to encourage one another. And if you happen to be a Christian in that group, to be able to just share with them what Jesus means to you and how he's impacting your life and your family. It doesn't have to be a professional evangelist, as it were, but just in the context of the community. And in India, that's a very common thing in the middle of the day for women to just get together, the neighbors get together and chat and tell stories and at the same time get their vegetables ready for dinner. So it's a very natural way of sharing your faith.

John Ankerberg: One other idea I might throw into that is that we almost all have cell phones or smartphones. There’s going to be 10 billion of them in the world in just a few years. There’s over seven billion right now. And almost everybody in India has a smartphone. And you can download the John Ankerberg Show app. It’s free. Just go to whatever app store you have and find the Bible. And there is over 1,000 different languages that are there. Just find your language and maybe while you’re peeling vegetables with the other ladies, just push the button where it’ll read a chapter of the Bible. And just say to the ladies, "I’d like you to listen to this," and when the chapter is done, you pick out the chapter, just say, "Tell me what you think about what was just said."

Shamala Krishnan: And you know, actually even women who are in the workplace. So these would be stay-at-home women. But women in the workplace, I know even in downtown Toronto, some of them during their lunch hour get together and do a Bible study together, or they do the kind of thing you’re suggesting, which is download somebody else’s teaching. And so they use their lunch hour to congregate and just get that spiritual nourishment in the middle of the day. So it's a wonderful way of using your lunch hour.

John Ankerberg: We’re going to take a break. When we come back, we’re going to talk about the Apostle Paul’s method of discipling other Christians. He laid it out. It’s very simple. It’s in 2 Timothy. And we’re going to talk about that next. Stick with us. We’ll be right back.

Narrator: Join us next time for part two of our discipleship series, "Follow Me: Experiencing the Joy of Walking with Jesus," as Sunder and Shamala pick up where we left off this week. Thank you for joining us on our journey of discipleship. To deepen your understanding and grow in your faith, explore our extensive discipleship resources at jashow.org and engage in transformative courses at jabible.org. ATRI is dedicated to encouraging believers, defending the faith, and challenging the skeptics. Join us in this mission by subscribing to our YouTube channel for more in-depth teachings and practical guidance to deepen your faith.