{"id":119779,"date":"2026-11-06T11:08:25","date_gmt":"2026-11-06T16:08:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/?p=119779"},"modified":"2026-11-06T11:08:25","modified_gmt":"2026-11-06T16:08:25","slug":"how-to-follow-jesus-on-your-own","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bgodinspired.com\/index.php\/what-jesus-teaches\/how-to-follow-jesus-on-your-own\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Follow Jesus on Your Own: Nobody Stayed to Help Him"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n \t<\/i> Read Time:<\/span>10 Minute, 57 Second <\/div>\n\n <\/div>

You said yes on an ordinary weeknight. Maybe in a car, maybe at a kitchen table, maybe watching something on a phone at one in the morning. Something settled, and you meant it.<\/p>\n

Then the advice arrived, and it was all one sentence long: find a church.<\/em> And here you are, weeks later, not in one. Maybe there isn’t a good one nearby. Maybe you left the last one and the thought of a lobby makes your chest tight. Maybe you work Sundays. Maybe you just cannot walk into a room full of strangers who all seem to know when to stand up.<\/p>\n

So the real question is not whether church is good. The question is what happens to you in the meantime, and whether the meantime counts.<\/p>\n\n

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

Someone in the Bible asked your exact question<\/h2>\n

In Acts 8 there is a man riding home in a chariot. He is an official from Ethiopia, in charge of a queen’s treasury, and he has just been to Jerusalem to worship. He is reading the prophet Isaiah out loud, and he does not understand a word of it.<\/p>\n

Philip catches up to the chariot and asks whether he understands what he is reading. And the man answers with the sentence you have probably said some version of this month:<\/p>\n

“How can I, except some man should guide me?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

That is the whole problem, stated by someone a very long way from home, with no church, no small group and no Christian friend. He is not lacking sincerity. He is not lacking the text \u2014 he has a scroll of Isaiah with him, and Luke says he ran a queen’s treasury, so he is a man with resources. What he lacks is one person to sit down and point.<\/p>\n\n

Then his guide was taken away, mid-journey<\/h2>\n

Here is the part almost nobody mentions. Philip gets in the chariot, explains the passage, preaches Jesus to him, and the man asks to be baptised on the spot. They stop at some water by the road and Philip baptises him.<\/p>\n

And then, in the same verse, Philip is gone:<\/p>\n

“And when they were come up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord caught away Philip, that the eunuch saw him no more: and he went on his way rejoicing.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read that sequence slowly, because the order of it is remarkable. The man says he cannot do this without a guide. God sends him a guide. The guide answers the question, baptises him \u2014 and is then removed before the water has dried. One lesson. No follow-up visit. No phone number. No congregation waiting at the other end of the road.<\/p>\n

Luke had every chance to write that ending as a loss. He wrote rejoicing<\/em> instead. Whatever had just happened to that man was not fragile enough to need Philip standing next to it.<\/p>\n\n

Paul’s first three years are nearly blank<\/h2>\n

There is a second case, and it belongs to the man who wrote most of the New Testament’s letters. Paul tells the Galatians what he did immediately after God got hold of him:<\/p>\n

“Immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood: Neither went I up to Jerusalem to them which were apostles before me; but I went into Arabia, and returned again unto Damascus. Then after three years I went up to Jerusalem to see Peter, and abode with him fifteen days.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Three years, then a fortnight with Peter. That is the entire account of his mentoring in the opening chapter of Galatians.<\/p>\n

Be careful with this one, because Paul is making a specific argument and it is worth stating honestly: he is defending where his message came from<\/em>, not writing a how-to on discipleship. Elsewhere, Acts 9 puts him among the disciples at Damascus, so “alone” overstates it. But the shape of what he says still stands, and he says it without a trace of apology \u2014 the years that formed him had no apostle in them, and he did not treat that as a defect in his start.<\/p>\n\n

The smallest number Jesus ever named was two or three<\/h2>\n

You have probably heard Matthew 18:20 quoted at a half-empty room: “For where two or three are gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them.”<\/p>\n

It is usually quoted as comfort about a low turnout, and in context it is not even about turnout \u2014 the verses just above it are instructions for sorting out a falling-out between two people. But the number is still the number, and it is worth noticing how small it is. Jesus attached His own presence to a figure that fits in a car.<\/p>\n

And it is not one. That is the honest reading, and it is actually the most useful thing on this page: the target you are aiming at is not a building, a service time or a membership form. It is one other person<\/em>. That is a dramatically smaller thing to go looking for, and it is the kind of thing you can find at work, in a family, in a text thread, or in a comment section before you ever find a congregation you trust.<\/p>\n\n

What this is not<\/h2>\n

This is not a case against church. Hebrews says plainly, “Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together, as the manner of some is” \u2014 a direct instruction not to drift out of gathering, written to people who were already doing exactly that. Gathering is not optional extra credit.<\/p>\n

But look at how the first believers actually lived, in Acts 2:46: “continuing daily with one accord in the temple, and breaking bread from house to house.” Both halves, every day. The temple half is the big gathering. The house-to-house half needs a kitchen and somebody to sit in it.<\/p>\n

Only one of those halves requires anyone else’s schedule. Start the half you can start. Keep looking for the other one.<\/p>\n\n

What to actually do this week<\/h2>\n

Here is the ordinary version, with no spiritual athleticism in it.<\/p>\n