{"id":107682,"date":"2026-09-11T11:11:58","date_gmt":"2026-09-11T15:11:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=107682"},"modified":"2026-09-11T11:11:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-11T15:11:58","slug":"30-days-with-jesus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-jesus-teaches\/30-days-with-jesus\/","title":{"rendered":"30 Days With Jesus: What He Wanted First Was Your Company"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>8 Minute, 17 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

Before Jesus sent his first followers anywhere, someone wrote down what he chose them for. It is one sentence in Mark’s Gospel, and the first thing on it is not preaching, or healing, or knowing the Bible well. It is company.<\/p>\n\n

If you searched “30 days with Jesus,” you probably have a plan half-formed already. Thirty mornings. A Bible. Maybe a notebook. And right behind the plan sits a quieter worry: that you don’t know enough to do this properly. That other people open the Bible and understand it, and you will open it and feel lost by page two.<\/p>\n\n

That worry deserves a real answer, because the first twelve were in exactly your position. They were chosen before they knew anything. And years later, when the most educated men in Jerusalem finally noticed something different about two of them, it was not their knowledge that gave them away.<\/p>\n\n

Show Me Day 1<\/a><\/div><\/div>\n\n

The Job Description Put Company First<\/h2>\n\n

Mark sets the scene on a mountain. Jesus calls the people he wants, they come to him, and then Mark tells us what they were for:<\/p>\n\n

“And he ordained twelve, that they should be with him, and that he might send them forth to preach” — Mark 3:14<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Read the order slowly. The first purpose is “that they should be with him.” The preaching comes second. The healing, in the next verse, comes after that. Before Jesus handed anyone a task, he handed them a seat beside him.<\/p>\n\n

And look at who got the seats. When Jesus first found Simon and his brother Andrew, they were “casting a net into the sea: for they were fishers” (Mark 1:16). Levi was sitting at a tax booth (Mark 2:14). Nobody sat an entrance exam. Nobody was asked what they already knew. The only qualification was coming when he called.<\/p>\n\n

What People Noticed Afterward<\/h2>\n\n

Now skip forward to the book of Acts. Peter and John have just helped a man who had never been able to walk, at the gate of the temple, and they are hauled in front of the city’s religious leaders to explain themselves. Acts 4:6 lists who was in the room, and Caiaphas is on the list — the same high priest Jesus had been brought before on the night of his arrest.<\/p>\n\n

Peter answers them plainly. And then Luke records the council’s reaction:<\/p>\n\n

“Now when they saw the boldness of Peter and John, and perceived that they were unlearned and ignorant men, they marvelled; and they took knowledge of them, that they had been with Jesus.” — Acts 4:13<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Two words in that verse are worth slowing down for, because the English makes them sound harsher than they are.<\/p>\n\n

“Unlearned”<\/strong> translates the Greek word agrammatos<\/em>, literally “without letters.” In that setting it meant these men had never been through the formal schools where teachers of the law were trained. “Ignorant”<\/strong> translates idi\u014dt\u0113s<\/em>, which first meant a private person — someone with no office, no title, no public standing. Our word “idiot” descends from it, but in Greek it was not an insult about intelligence. It simply meant an ordinary person.<\/p>\n\n

So here is the scene. The most credentialed room in Jerusalem looks at two men with no training and no title, hears them speak with a boldness it cannot account for, and reaches for the only explanation that fits. Not these men have studied<\/em>. Not these men are gifted<\/em>. These men had been with Jesus.<\/em><\/p>\n\n

The first line of the job description in Mark 3:14 is the thing people could see in Acts 4:13. Being with him came first, and it was what showed.<\/p>\n\n

Why That Changes How You Start<\/h2>\n\n

Most of us walk into thirty days with Jesus as if it were a course. We expect a test at the end. So we read to get the facts right, and when the facts don’t stick, we decide it isn’t working and quietly stop.<\/p>\n\n

Mark 3:14 points somewhere else. The first aim is not to master material. It is to spend time with a person — the same way you get to know anyone, by being around them long enough that the way they talk starts to sound familiar. Here is what that looks like in an ordinary month:<\/p>\n\n