The Lord Jesus had 12 original disciples, but those men were just the first of many more followers of Christ.

They are an example for us to learn from and a reminder that God works in ordinary people.

Are you a true follower of Jesus Christ?

Let's study The 12 with Scott Pauli today

and find truth that will help us all

to follow more closely to Christ.

Have you ever noticed that God seems to do his deepest work in us in the crisis hours of life?

I mean, honestly, it's in the hard circumstances that God does the heart work.

We've been studying in the gospel according to, about our Lord's dealings with this

inner circle, Peter, James, and John.

We were first introduced to them in Mark chapter number three.

But you remember, in each of these chapters, the Lord has been working.

And did you observe that in each chapter, it was like a crisis moment.

In Mark 5, it was the death of a young lady. In Mark 9, it was that moment on the mountain where

Elijah and Moses show up. They never seen anything like that before. In Mark chapter 14,

it was at the depths of despair and spiritual warfare in the garden of

Githemone.

It is the crisis hours where God is bringing us near to himself and he's teaching us something.

Cleland McAfee had two infant nieces die of diphtheria in 1903, and the town where they lived was just devastated.

And out of that crisis, he wrote, there is a place of quiet rest near to the heart of God,

a place where sin cannot molest near to the heart of God.

He taught it to the choir, and they went on a Saturday night and stood outside the darkened quarantine home where those girls had died and

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