Editorial by Leona Bange
“Then Jesus said to them, ‘Follow Me, and I will make you become fishers of men’” (Mark 1:17, NKJV).
Jesus invited Peter and Andrew to follow Him. For the next three years, He taught them about God, to pray and to share the gospel. After Jesus’ death and resurrection, these apostles shared the good news of Christ and “turned the world upside down” (Acts 17:6, NKJV). Those watching noted that their lives were transformed because they had been with Jesus (Acts 4:13).
Editorial by Jerry Lutz
It is remarkable to see how God can use the least likely people to do amazing things. For example, take the apostles Peter and John. The New Testament reveals enough about their personal lives from before they knew Jesus to all but guarantee they’d be overlooked as candidates for discipleship, let alone commissioned for key leadership in His church. While these Galilean fishermen were indeed colorful individuals with as coarse and unrefined characters as they come, Jesus sdaw in them what others did not: Potential. And what potential there was!
Editorial by Stephen Lee
“I Will Go: Making Disciples” is the overarching theme that we pray will motivate every member in the New Jersey Conference. One may ask, “How am I to accomplish or even attempt such a feat?” or “What’s in it for me?”
In order to find the answers, we need to explore what Jesus meant when He gave us this command. How did He accomplish it? He not only taught through His words, but through His life of servitude. What was in it for Him? That is more difficult to answer, if not impossible to understand with our finite estimation. He allowed the ungrateful human race to ultimately reject Him by piercing His hands and feet and nailing them to the cross.
Editorial by Emmanuel Asiedu
When I arrived to the United States as an international student in 2004, I was faced with a financial challenge. How would I pursue my education with so little money in my pocket? In God’s infinite wisdom, He had already provided the answer for me, found in Ephesians 3:20: “Now to Him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to His power that is at work within us” (NIV). Claiming this promise, God provided immeasurably more money than I ever thought was possible, and I graduated debt-free thanks to the generosity and prayers from my friends who helped me along the way.
In Philippians 3:14, the apostle Paul writes, “Forgetting those things which are behind” (NKJV), a concept that can be applied to us spiritually and also by looking at the occurrences of the past year.