Lo, I am with you alway[s], even unto the end of the world.
—Matthew 28:20
When the Lord chose His twelve disciples, it was so “that they should be with Him, and that He might send them forth to preach” (Mark 3:14). A life in fellowship with Him was to be their preparation for the work of preaching.
The disciples were so deeply conscious of having this great privilege that when Christ spoke of leaving them, their hearts were filled with great sorrow. The presence of Christ had become indispensable to them; they could not think of living without Him. To comfort them, Christ gave them the promise of the Holy Spirit, with the assurance that they then would have Himself in His heavenly presence in a far deeper and more intimate sense than they ever had known on earth. Their first calling remained unchanged; to be with Him, to live in unbroken fellowship with Him, would be the secret of power to preach and to testify of Him.
When Christ gave them the Great Commission to “go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19–20), He added the words, “Lo, I am with you alway[s], even unto the end of the world.”
This principle holds good for all Christ’s servants for all time, as it did for the twelve disciples: without the experience of His presence always abiding with them, their preaching would have no power. The secret of their strength would be the living testimony that Jesus Christ was with them every moment, inspiring, directing, and strengthening them. It was this reality that made them so bold in preaching Him as the Crucified One in the midst of His enemies. They never for a moment regretted His bodily absence; they had Him with them and in them, in the divine power of the Holy Spirit.
In all the work of the minister and the missionary, everything depends on an awareness, through a living faith, of the abiding presence of the Lord with His servant. The living experience of the presence of Jesus is an essential element in preaching the gospel. If this is clouded, our work becomes a human effort, without the freshness and the power of the heavenly life. And nothing can bring back the power and the blessing besides a return to the Master’s feet, so that He may breathe into the heart, in divine power, His blessed words: “Lo, I am with you alway[s].”