QUARTER 4 INTRODUCTION

The Fourth Quarter

Bravery

You are now nearing the end of your year with Jesus. At this point, you would do well to reflect on how far you’ve come. What have you learned about Jesus? What has he been showing you? How have you changed? What is the next step in your journey? Being near the end of the journey is not the time to coast. If you want to get the most out of this year-long study, it’s time to step up your reflection and application. This is the stage in which culture change and personal transformation can really sink in. But only if you let it.

Three Questions

In this fourth quarter, you’ll address three final questions that Jesus asked his disciples:

10.  Will you remain with me?

11.  Will you suffer with me?

12.  Do you love me?

As you examine these three questions, you’ll find Jesus preparing his followers for his death, asking them to stay with him even when things get hard, and challenging them to keep the mission moving forward once he’s gone. It’s a crucial and difficult time in the lives of the disciples, and the lessons they learned here were vital to their continued journey with Jesus. These final questions focus on the concept of bravery. While few people today equate Christianity with the need for bravery, following Jesus absolutely requires courage. Christians over the centuries have had to stand before literal torture and death and have the bravery to still follow Jesus. Though this is far from the situation in the West right now, bravery is still required. Will we follow Jesus when it’s difficult? When it requires us to give up some of our comfort? Will we follow if Jesus asks us to give up some of our own safety as we reach out to others? Ending Twelve by focusing on bravery is more important than we might guess.

By this point in your year-long study, you should be exhibiting a lot of ownership over the material and the group dynamics. Your group leader(s) is really here only to support you at this point. You should be taking turns leading the sessions and managing the groups. Along these lines, this is also the time to be looking ahead to next year. Now that you’re wrapping up this year-long journey, what will it look like for you to lead your own group next year? Who would you like to invite into that?

Challenge

Your challenge for this final quarter of Twelve is (1) to lead your own group next year and (2) to recruit the people who will be in that group with you. When Jesus called his first disciples at the very beginning of the Gospels, he said he was going to make them fishers of men. When Jesus passed on the mission to his disciples at the very end of the Gospels, he told them to go into all the world and make disciples. This all means that the bookends of Jesus’ relationship with his disciples was calling them to find and make other disciples. In this sense, this challenge is the perfect way to wrap up this year-long study.

Who would you like to lead through Twelve next year? Think of people you would enjoy being with, people who could use a spiritual challenge, and anyone else that God is putting on your heart. This should be a prayerful decision. In the church, we tend to sit back and wait for church leaders to promote events and generate sign ups for our groups and events. But that’s not how discipleship works, nor is that an effective method. Discipleship is so much more effective and relational when we take the initiative to invite people into the things we’re doing.

So use the next few months to pray through who you’d like to have join you, to talk to them about what Twelve entails, and to challenge them to join you for this coming year. This could be exactly the step of faith you need to cement what you’ve learned and continue on your journey of faith.