Like the rest of us, Jesus sometimes got tired (see John 4:6). But He was never stressed out by the job He had to do. He was led, but never driven. He knew what needed to be done and the amount of time needed to do it, and He picked a team to help accomplish it. Three of them – Peter, James, and John – were in His inner circle. It wasn’t that He showed favouritism; He just recognised the particular gifts of the people He worked with and what He needed from each of them to get the job done. An important step towards accomplishing something big is knowing the kinds of people we’ll need around us. In other words, we need to know who should be on our team.

Jesus spent three-and-a-half years training His disciples before delegating responsibility to them. Was He afraid they would make mistakes, outshine Him, or make Him look bad? No; He told them, ‘He who believes in Me, the works that I do he will do also; and greater works than these he will do, because I go to My Father’ (John 14:12 NKJV). Jesus was a team player who got things done through others. But even when we break a task down, strategically plan it, and recruit brilliant people, we need one more component to succeed: teamwork! Teamwork is the glue that brings people together – and keeps them together.

There are more than a billion Christians in the world today. And it all started two thousand years ago with one man who had a vision, a man who recruited and trained a team to fulfil that vision. Let’s approach our work according to His work philosophy and see the difference it can make.

What Now?

Think about any teams that you’re in – obvious ones like a sports team or the people you work with, plus other groups that you might not have thought of as ‘team’, like your family or a Bible study group. Pray that each team would grow stronger and closer, and be a place of real support and love.