I Am With You Always

I am not sure this is the best scripture to use for where I want to go with it, but it was the best I could come up with. I am completely open to suggestions. This idea was birthed by a conversation Dawn and I had a couple of days ago.

"Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you.

And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." -Matthew 28:19-20

I want to focus primarily on the last line of this. There could be something particularly significant about the fact that the very last thing Jesus says in Matthew is that he will be with the disciples as they go. Jesus' final promise, the one that will be left hanging in the air after you read the book, is that he will always be with them. That is something right?

"I am with you always."

Who exactly is he with? Who are the men standing there with him on the mountain? Who is he committing to never leave? Since we don't know a whole lot about the disciples, we might only want to mention a few.

Peter: The perpetually foot-in-mouthed racist who after nearly killing a man to protect Jesus, denies him three times on the night Jesus needs friends the most. Peter is the king of public mistakes and inconsistency.

James and John: Brothers who seem a bit too power-hungry to make me think they would be good fits for leading a church. They also feel fine going behind the backs of their friends to achieve what they want.

We don't know much about the other disciples, but we do know that collectively they bumbled around doubting Jesus, questioning his actions and his choice of company, completely missing the point of what he was doing for years, and they all ditched him on the night he was arrested.

This is the group that Jesus promises to always be with. He will never leave them. Jesus is fully committed and invested in these men and will see them through to the bitter end.


I find this to be simultaneously extremely comforting and troubling. Because when I look at my own life, I know that I am a lot like them and it is amazing to me that Jesus promises to stick with me through it all. He will be there when I get it right and he will be there when I fail in spectacular public ways. He will never stop reaching out his hand to heal and invite me into what he is doing.

It is troubling because I do not know how to do this for people. Might Jesus, when he calls the disciples to make more disciples, be inviting them into the same commitment he showed his own twelve? What would it look like for us to say to those we lead and those we know "I will never leave you?"

When they fail.
When they choose poorly.
When they make bad decisions.
When they make mistakes.
When they stop coming to Bible Study.
When they start sleeping around.
When they begin to doubt everything they believe.
When they reject Jesus.

Jesus promises to stick with us. And I wonder if he calls us to stick with others. Who have we left that we should return to? Who needs to know that we still care? Who out there expects us to leave?

What will that do to us? I don't know. We will probably make a lot of mistakes and get a lot of things wrong, but that doesn't make it not worth doing. It will be hard, but Jesus will be with us won't he?

"I am with you always."