“And He called the twelve together, and gave them power and authority over all the demons and to heal diseases. And He sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to perform healing.” (Luke 9:1-2)
I really love the idea of doing things that seem small but have massive impact. When I think about this idea, I’m reminded of the scientific principle of a lever. In our modern world, we see the idea of a lever when we use a car jack to raise a car so we can change the tire. Or a shovel can be another example of a lever. In ancient history, levers were used to build the pyramids in Egypt along with catapults in warfare to launch fireballs and boulders. At the most basic definition, a lever is a force multiplier.
I suggest that Jesus employed this idea when He called twelve men to follow Him and be His disciples. Jesus was one Man, limited to a human body and constrained by time and physical boundaries. But He leveraged His miraculous power and His teaching on the kingdom of God by training, equipping and dispersing His disciples. He didn’t only do this in the book of Acts, after His resurrection and ascension into heaven; Jesus cultivated and trained His disciples throughout their time with Him, recalibrating their values, adjusting their perspective, empowering them and giving them ample opportunities to practice.
When we read the first two verses from Luke 9 which are written at the top of this blog, we see an example of the disciples getting to practice what they saw Jesus doing. If you think about it, He had trained twelve men in kingdom principles, and in these verses, He is giving them power and a wide-open door to practice their learning. Jesus took time and was purposeful to live with and train twelve men who would massively multiply His investment in them.
In Luke 9:10, the disciples returned to Jesus and told Him all about their experiences—healing and talking about the kingdom of God. But this wasn’t the end of the exercise. In the next verse we read, “But the crowds were aware of this and followed Him; and welcoming them, He began speaking to them about the kingdom of God and curing those who had need of healing.”
Jesus trained His disciples to speak and do what He was doing. In addition to the training Jesus gave them, He continued to demonstrate and personify His methods, and ultimately, I think that Jesus was contagious with His disciples. The more they were around Him, the more they acted like Him and saw the world around them through His lens. Having fully infused the disciples with kingdom values and power, Jesus released them to perpetuate and multiply His life. Jesus’ followers became force multipliers, or levers to drastically spread and increase His presence.
So if we are followers of Jesus today, what could this look like for us? In the most basic expression, Jesus tells us that the defining characteristic of being His follower is expressing genuine love (John 13:35). To this end, let’s actively choose to remain rooted in Jesus’ love for us so He can be multiplied through us. Let’s consider ourselves to be Jesus multipliers!
