SPEAKER_00: He is risen indeed.
SPEAKER_00: Well, good morning, church.
SPEAKER_00: For those who I haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Andrew.
SPEAKER_00: I'm one of the pastors here at CBC.
SPEAKER_00: If you were here with us last week, Pastor John shared about the heart of the gospel and how the gospel transforms us, but it also urges us to go out and share the good news with the world.
SPEAKER_00: This week we're going to continue in that same vein by talking about if that was the heart of the gospel, then this is the heart of the church.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to follow this up in May with a series on the book of Ephesians where Paul is encouraging the church.
SPEAKER_00: This is how you respond to the gospel as a church, as a family, as an individual.
SPEAKER_00: And we'll spend May and June going through that.
SPEAKER_00: But today, we're going to look in Acts chapter two.
SPEAKER_00: So if you got your Bible, you can start heading that way.
SPEAKER_00: But while you make your way there, let me share a story that might help you kind of understand where we're coming today.
SPEAKER_00: When I was in high school, I invited my friend Corey to church one Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: And he came all dressed up.
SPEAKER_00: He seemed pretty confused when the pastor came down from the pulpit and wanted to talk to him that afternoon.
SPEAKER_00: And he was a little bit confused when all of us stuck around the church for a long time, wanted to have conversations and talk a bit.
SPEAKER_00: But then right after church was done, he kind of had to split really quickly.
SPEAKER_00: And so we get back to the lunch table on Monday, and all of my friends start asking him, Hey, Corey, how was it going to Andrew's church?
SPEAKER_00: And I was very curious because I couldn't tell by his facial expressions, I couldn't tell by any conversations we had had what his thoughts about my church was.
SPEAKER_00: And he turns to the guys and goes, Hey, Andrew goes to one of those happy clappy churches.
SPEAKER_00: To which I paused and I said, Brother, do elaborate.
SPEAKER_00: What do you mean by a happy clappy church?
SPEAKER_00: And he said, You know, everybody is singing and clapping and hugging each other.
SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize his only point of reference for church before that was a Catholic church.
SPEAKER_00: So I get how you would consider us really happy, clappy people, if that's what you're looking at in any response in comparison.
SPEAKER_00: But it quickly became apparent that my friend came to the table that morning with an idea of what church was and what would go on in that place.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know if he watched Sister Act with Whoopi Goldberg, I don't know if he was on YouTube all night.
SPEAKER_00: But he came to the table with the definition of church, and it uh it affected how he interacted with the church that day.
SPEAKER_00: I say all that to say our definition of church is critically important for how we relate to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: You see, a broken definition of church will cause you great harm because you'll be living in a world of mixed expectations.
SPEAKER_00: If you come to church with a broken concept of what we're supposed to be doing here, then someone or something is always going to let you down.
SPEAKER_00: But an accurate definition of church can help you grow in your soul.
SPEAKER_00: It can lead to beautiful relationships, it can lead to Jesus getting the glory he deserves.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're here today and it is your first time coming to church, or it is your thousandth time coming to church, I hope in our time together to help us develop a more true definition of what church is.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe a truer definition, the one that you've been handed down by your culture, or maybe a truer definition than the one you saw on TikTok last night.
SPEAKER_00: And maybe by by taking a look at what was the earliest church, what were their priorities, we can look at how we're doing things right now in CBC, and we can participate in the life of this church well, and enjoy it well and serve it well.
SPEAKER_00: Because there's a statement that we say in the church planting world, and it's this is that when it comes to the rescue of the world, the church is God's plan A, and there is no plan B.
SPEAKER_00: So we have to get this right and we have to do it well.
SPEAKER_00: Would you join me in prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, we thank you for your church.
SPEAKER_00: God, that we get to be a part of this body, that that is in fact your body, that we're your hands and feet stretched out to this world around us.
SPEAKER_00: And Lord, as we dwell in unity, as we behave in the ways in which you taught us to, God, we we come to life in the way we're supposed to.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, help us not to look down on your church.
SPEAKER_00: God, help us to be thankful for it today, to realize what a blessing it is that we get to dwell in this community.
SPEAKER_00: So, God, help us understand it well so we can serve you well.
SPEAKER_00: We love you and we praise you in Jesus' name.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: So, a little bit of context about the book of Acts that might be helpful for you to understand this stuff today.
SPEAKER_00: The book of Acts is the recorded history of the earliest church.
SPEAKER_00: It's important to note before we dive in, the disciples that we're reading about didn't get a chance to go to seminary.
SPEAKER_00: They didn't have the gospels or the recordings of the New Testaments.
SPEAKER_00: They had the memories of Jesus' teachings, the good news of his resurrection, and the comfort that the Holy Spirit would help them through this season.
SPEAKER_00: And so here's the cool thing when we're observing the disciples, and as they're doing the ministry in the book of Acts, we're seeing the impulses and the instincts of the earliest followers of Jesus at work.
SPEAKER_00: It's critically important because sometimes we tend to look back at the scripture with 2026 glasses on and fail to see, holy smokes, these guys were doing something special in that moment, and whatever their instincts and impulses were are worth paying attention to.
SPEAKER_00: Sometimes we come to the table with a definition of church that we got from our family.
SPEAKER_00: We come to a church like this, and we've got favorite preachers and pastors and ministries in mind, and it's worth, in all that constellation of data, to take some time and say, How did the first church do it?
SPEAKER_00: What was important to them?
SPEAKER_00: What did they value?
SPEAKER_00: So again, if you're in Acts two, just go back a little bit to Acts chapter one, and here's the kind of what the lead up to our conversation today.
SPEAKER_00: In Acts chapter 1, the disciples see Jesus ascend into heaven.
SPEAKER_00: They're down one disciple because of Judas, so they replace him.
SPEAKER_00: In Acts chapter 2, we get the day of Pentecost, is where we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit.
SPEAKER_00: And then Peter speaks one of the most baller sermons you've ever read in your entire Bible.
SPEAKER_00: The first Christian sermon, Peter comes and he preaches it, and it begins to transform the hearts of the people.
SPEAKER_00: And out of the few thousand people that are there and hear the sermon that day, we look to Acts 242, and this tells us the beginning of the church that responded to these events.
SPEAKER_00: Listen what it says.
SPEAKER_00: And awe came upon every soul.
SPEAKER_00: And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles, and all who believed were together and had all things in common, and they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all as any had need.
SPEAKER_00: And day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all the people.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord added to their number day by day those who were being saved.
SPEAKER_00: First, what does it mean to be devoted?
SPEAKER_00: And second, what were they devoted to?
SPEAKER_00: So the first one there it says, and they devoted themselves.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I don't think we really understand this idea of devotion really well in 2026.
SPEAKER_00: Right?
SPEAKER_00: Because as a culture, we're a little bit less committed to people and institutions than folks in the first century were.
SPEAKER_00: This is how I know this is true.
SPEAKER_00: If I have a bad cup of coffee at the Dunkin' Donuts near my house, you know what I do?
SPEAKER_00: I go to one of the other 836 Dunkin' Donuts we have in Cranston.
SPEAKER_00: But think about it, in the first century, there was one Dunkin' Donuts in all of Jerusalem.
SPEAKER_00: And so if you had a bad cup of coffee there, you had no choice but to go back and face your fears and hope that maybe these people or this institution will get it right the second time.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe on a deeper level, when it comes to our learning, we're also less devoted as well.
unknown: Right?
SPEAKER_00: We don't necessarily learn new information right now in 2026.
SPEAKER_00: We search new information.
SPEAKER_00: We don't really integrate data into our lives.
SPEAKER_00: We just pop a search into YouTube or Chat GPT, settle for whatever video has the most views or the most likes, find what we need, and then we forget about the information.
SPEAKER_00: I say all this to say we live in a world where things have become so convenient that we don't need to exercise our muscle of devotion that much anymore.
SPEAKER_00: And if that's the case, you might get to Acts 2.42 and read, hey, they devoted themselves, and you can quickly gloss over the fact that being a part of a church means being devoted.
SPEAKER_00: That word that we translate as devoted themselves, it's a really beautiful word in the Greek.
SPEAKER_00: Maybe with a little bit more fullness talks about this.
SPEAKER_00: To be devoted is to continue to do something with intense effort despite difficulty.
SPEAKER_00: To be devoted means be consistently diligent.
SPEAKER_00: It means other translations say to continue steadfastly, which tells us something.
SPEAKER_00: Yet when we respond to the gospel, when we see Jesus' kingdom at hurt and at work, when we believe in our hearts that this is true, there should be this hunger and desire within us to participate in the life of the church.
SPEAKER_00: Which means if you believe in Jesus, at some point there should be this passion within you to say, I also want to be a part of his church, to serve it and to love it well, and to see my faith grow within that institution.
SPEAKER_00: Which means you have to value it above worldly things.
SPEAKER_00: Which means you've got to fight to make time for it.
SPEAKER_00: You've got to hang in there despite potential discomfort that may happen in your church.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I think one of the hardest things for me being a pastor in 2026 is that sometimes people come to church like they come to a grocery store.
SPEAKER_00: They expect to receive the fruit without having to cultivate it.
SPEAKER_00: They want the products of devotion without having to devote themselves.
SPEAKER_00: And as a result, people get frustrated with me and they say, How come one hour and 15 minutes on a Sunday isn't fixing all of it?
SPEAKER_00: It seems in Acts chapter 2 that the church begins with recognizing that Jesus is worth my devotion, and if the church is his plan A, it's worth my devotion as well.
SPEAKER_00: That's why one of the core values in our life groups is devote daily.
SPEAKER_00: That we must understand that part of the Christian life is devoting to Jesus both privately and communally as his church.
SPEAKER_00: Folks, I'm coming to the table today expecting that Christians want to love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: I'm coming to the table trusting that people don't just want this to end on a Sunday, but to want to grow with their love of Jesus tomorrow through Saturday.
SPEAKER_00: That devotion is actually the bedrock of our gathering here.
SPEAKER_00: That everyone going home and devoting in their home actually makes what we do on a Sunday extra special.
SPEAKER_00: So I encourage us, if the disciples, the earliest followers of Jesus, found themselves naturally devoting to him, then we should be the people who are devoted as well.
SPEAKER_00: We should begin asking ourselves, Lord, am I devoted to you to the way that I think I should be?
SPEAKER_00: So we learn first, hey, they were a devoted people, but let's take a look at what they were devoting themselves to.
SPEAKER_00: The first is this, they devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching.
SPEAKER_00: It's pretty wild when you think about it.
SPEAKER_00: The earliest church was a learning community.
SPEAKER_00: Put yourself in their shoes for a second.
SPEAKER_00: The beginning of Acts 2, they witnessed the wild miracle of the Holy Spirit coming, empowering people to speak in languages they never even learned.
SPEAKER_00: They heard how Peter explained Jesus as King of the universe, the one who was prophesied about centuries ago and sacrificially gave his life, and they respond with curiosity and wonder.
SPEAKER_00: They were hungry to know more about him.
SPEAKER_00: They dedicated time and space in their lives to know more about Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Man, I want to challenge us today that being a good follower of Jesus might actually mean being a good student of Jesus as well.
SPEAKER_00: Learning about faith can't be this passive experience you consume on a Sunday.
SPEAKER_00: It has to be something we engage with and actually devote ourselves to.
SPEAKER_00: Here's what I think how they did that in that time.
SPEAKER_00: How does devoting yourself to the apostles' teaching look like today?
SPEAKER_00: Number one, learn in community.
SPEAKER_00: In this passage, we learn the earliest church learned from people they ate dinners with and prayed with.
SPEAKER_00: One of the most exciting things about seminary, we would have the class periods where we would go for three-hour lectures.
SPEAKER_00: You wonder how nerdy I am today.
SPEAKER_00: Boy, I was nurdier back then.
SPEAKER_00: Watch out.
SPEAKER_00: But one of the fun things we would do after is every three hours you had in seminar, you had to have one hour of discussion with your classmates.
SPEAKER_00: So we'd be taught at, we'd be taught to, we'd be reading.
SPEAKER_00: But there was another element of learning that they found important that could only happen when we were discussing in groups.
SPEAKER_00: There's something about learning with people that helps you grow in your faith as well.
SPEAKER_00: Man, this is critically important for us who live in a YouTube world where we can learn from people we don't really know much about.
SPEAKER_00: And we can learn from people who don't know anything about us.
SPEAKER_00: The beauty of what the apostles brought to the table wasn't just the expertise, it was the fact that they were doing life with these people and therefore they could apply knowledge more appropriately.
SPEAKER_00: Here's the crazy in our internet world right now, you could go in and listen to the same exact professors that taught me.
SPEAKER_00: You could bypass me for the information and go hear how they taught me, what I learned about the scriptures, but they don't have knowledge about your life that your pastors and your community do.
SPEAKER_00: They might not see the blind spots or know the stories about your life that we do.
SPEAKER_00: And so, together, when we come here as the family of Christ, as we're devoting ourselves together to the apostles' teaching, you learn a different type of applied learning that you can't learn if it's just you and your Bible and YouTube by yourself at night.
SPEAKER_00: That you need the community of saints around you to learn in a more efficient way.
SPEAKER_00: And so, if that's the case, would you would you prioritize learning in community with your church?
SPEAKER_00: Join a 10 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: Bible study where you can learn from people here at CBC.
SPEAKER_00: We're going to be kicking off a new one in May called the Gospel Way.
SPEAKER_00: Folks, call PJ or myself or one of your life group leaders or your class leaders.
SPEAKER_00: Ask them your questions.
SPEAKER_00: Let them walk with you as you learn.
SPEAKER_00: Man, if you ask me, that's one of my favorite parts of my job.
SPEAKER_00: Asking weird theological questions.
SPEAKER_00: I get them from text messages and airplanes, random things.
SPEAKER_00: It's one of my favorite things.
SPEAKER_00: Don't think it's an inconvenience to come and bring your theological questions to the church.
SPEAKER_00: This is the place you wrestle with it, not being by yourself with a YouTube video at night.
SPEAKER_00: I'd much rather you call and we have the conversation over a cup of coffee than you go and talk about it with an AI chatbot who doesn't know the details of your life.
SPEAKER_00: That's what the church does when we gather together.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing they prioritize scripture, if you scroll back to Luke 24, that's Luke's volume one of the Christian faith, one of the first things that the risen Jesus does on the road to Emmaus is he opens up the scriptures with the disciples that were walking down the road and he helps them see Jesus in them.
SPEAKER_00: Which tells us one of the most important things that Jesus did in his 40 days of being here was to open up the scriptures and help us see how they pointed all the way to him and his ministry.
SPEAKER_00: Which tells us one of the most important things we can do as a church is devote ourselves to Scripture.
SPEAKER_00: In reading the Bible, we get to know more about who God is and what God's like and what God invites us to.
SPEAKER_00: The Bible is God's love story of how he's reached out to us in our brokenness, and the Bible tells us about our God, the creator of the universe, who continually chases after us to bring us towards heaven.
SPEAKER_00: And so, if that's the case, the earliest teachers of the Bible did something that makes perfect sense.
SPEAKER_00: They decide to look back at the scriptures and say, wow, this God has been pointing towards Jesus all along.
SPEAKER_00: It's like rereading the Chronicles of Narni and realizing, man, C.S.
SPEAKER_00: Lewis was teasing the ending all the way in the beginning.
SPEAKER_00: Folks, in our church, we are going to devote ourselves to growing in relationship with Jesus by studying the scripture.
SPEAKER_00: That is what we're going to do.
SPEAKER_00: We can't get around it.
SPEAKER_00: That's one of the primary things that we're tasked to do here at CBC, in our Bible studies, at our dinner tables, is to spend time looking at the word and saying, this is how it points us towards following Jesus today.
SPEAKER_00: But here's a cool thing.
SPEAKER_00: I think as you devote yourself to learning the scriptures, you begin to create this mental database of who God is and what he's like so that when we preach on a Sunday, when you hear in a class, when your friend gives you scriptural encouragement, you're operating with this constellation of data that you can pull from and say, Wow, I didn't know God was like that just because I heard it here, but because I heard it here and here and here.
SPEAKER_00: So I encourage you, take the time, learn the scriptures.
SPEAKER_00: It was important to the early church, it must be important to us now.
SPEAKER_00: If you haven't had an opportunity to read the scriptures yet, I'm going to give you a cheat code right now.
SPEAKER_00: Go to Amazon.com.
SPEAKER_00: There's a kid's Bible called the Jesus Storybook Bible by uh Sally Lloyd Jones.
SPEAKER_00: And buy that.
SPEAKER_00: And start with that and get the idea of what's actually happening in the Bible so that when you go back with the big thousand-page version, you can fill in the details of a story you're already familiar with.
SPEAKER_00: So if you're first trying to read the Bible the first time, Sally Lloyd Jones Jesus Storybook Bible.
SPEAKER_00: That's free.
SPEAKER_00: She's not paying me for that, but if she did, it'd be great.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing they devoted themselves to was the fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: The second thing we learned that the early church devoted themselves to fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: Every year, my life group goes to a gaming convention in Boston with a bunch of other nerds.
SPEAKER_00: And it's a special experience.
SPEAKER_00: Folks, you get a couple of thousand gamer nerds in one room.
SPEAKER_00: Not only does it smell pretty weird, but also there's things that we laugh about because it's inside our culture that no one else is gonna laugh about.
SPEAKER_00: We'll be Did you see the Mario movie and they tease that one character that only three people know about?
SPEAKER_00: Oh, that's so cool.
SPEAKER_00: The common interests makes bonding easier, and I promise, if some random person rolled up to the convention and started messing with one of the nerds, we're all gonna fight them all by ourselves.
SPEAKER_00: It'll take a hundred of us to take on one man, but it's gonna be great.
SPEAKER_00: Our nerd convention is a form of fellowship, but it is shallow compared to what Christian fellowship actually is.
SPEAKER_00: In the Greek, they use this word koinonia to describe the fellowship, and it's richer than this idea of a community that just hangs out together.
SPEAKER_00: This fellowship implies intentional community rooted in the common ground of Christ.
SPEAKER_00: It's a partnership based on interest, it's participatory, not consumed.
SPEAKER_00: Meaning, fellowship is a discipline that requires us to bring our full and authentic selves to the table as that self is being transformed by Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is why another one of our core values for the community is live authentically.
SPEAKER_00: Practically, this means you cannot be in fellowship and have fellowship unless you're willing to take time and make time being a spiritual friend.
SPEAKER_00: Man, which which challenged me to ask the hard question.
SPEAKER_00: Have I been willing to sacrifice things in my life in order to create fellowship?
SPEAKER_00: Or maybe another way to say it, am I the one who's willing to initiate fellowship, or am I always waiting for somebody else to set up the hangout?
SPEAKER_00: Do I care about fellowship enough to want to be the one to initiate the invite, or am I always waiting for somebody else to do it for me?
SPEAKER_00: See, the the earliest church was dedicated to cultivating rich and true fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: Man, as an introvert, it often requires a lot of energy for me to fellowship.
SPEAKER_00: I'd much rather sit up sit by myself with my books and a coffee in a locked-up place where no one else will see me for years.
SPEAKER_00: But I choose to be around my brothers and sisters, eating meals, playing board games, because something special happens to me and to those people when we're together in a room.
SPEAKER_00: When we're equally convinced that Jesus is king of the universe, that Jesus deserves worship, and that he actually uses us to usher in his kingdom, there's a special love within that kind of group of people.
SPEAKER_00: That won't be visible anywhere else.
SPEAKER_00: That there's an intimate, pure love and care in that group that the rest of the world looks on and says, What is that?
SPEAKER_00: If Jesus prioritizes love, that when Christians gather, that special kind of love becomes highly concentrated.
SPEAKER_00: That the fellowship we create when we do it right is a special image of God's grace.
SPEAKER_00: And so just as much as we prepare for sermons and prepare for Bible studies, folks, we also got to prepare for fellowship in community.
SPEAKER_00: Which means here at CBC, we're always going to create opportunities for koinanya fellowship to happen.
SPEAKER_00: And my hope is that it won't just be on a Sunday that all of us will make it the culture that it happens in all the aspects of our life.
SPEAKER_00: If you're an older guy, we're starting a life group, see Tom Morris for more information.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a mom who's aged out a summit, or maybe a young lady who's aged out a summit, talk to Brandy.
SPEAKER_00: We're having more groups and conversations for that.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a younger lady, there's a Bible study at Vic's house on Tuesdays.
SPEAKER_00: If you're a dude who's aged out of the summit on April 25th, we're playing pickleball at the park right there at 9 a.m.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to see you there.
SPEAKER_00: I'd love to see you try and take my crown.
SPEAKER_00: Right now, Justin and I are reigning champions.
SPEAKER_00: But I hope you see this, where we're trying to create places where real fellowship can happen, both here at 499 Hope Road and elsewhere.
SPEAKER_00: That way when people look in on the community of our church, they see the risen Jesus in a great way.
SPEAKER_00: The third thing they dedicated themselves to was the breaking of bread.
SPEAKER_00: I don't know about you, I am incredibly thankful that church and food go hand in hand.
SPEAKER_00: I know it might not look like it, but I love food.
SPEAKER_00: And to think about this idea of food being a part of my spiritual walk really excites me.
SPEAKER_00: I thank you, Lord.
SPEAKER_00: Of all the ways you could have made it, food is part of the story.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: But all throughout the Bible, you find these incidents all the way back to Genesis where eating together was an act of spiritual significance.
SPEAKER_00: Think of Abraham breaking bread with Melchizedek in Genesis.
SPEAKER_00: Think of the Passover meal in Exodus.
SPEAKER_00: So it's pretty amazing that early on in the church's life they decided, hey, it's important that we eat together and that somewhere within the gathering we stop and re-recognize Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: Which means that they didn't just eat to have a good time.
SPEAKER_00: They ate together because they believed Jesus' words that we see in Luke 22, that when they broke bread, it was an invitation to remember Jesus' sacrifice.
SPEAKER_00: A few decades later, Paul would describe it this way in 1 Corinthians 11 26.
SPEAKER_00: As often as you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
SPEAKER_00: That there was a spiritual nature to their gatherings that was designed to honor Jesus in their eating that was different than a sweet 16 or a banquet.
SPEAKER_00: That gathering together to eat wasn't some boring ritual to them.
SPEAKER_00: It was a declaration.
SPEAKER_00: Hey, this is what is true.
SPEAKER_00: We are going to be known as a people of the bread and the cup because we love Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: This is what makes us different than the world around us.
SPEAKER_00: Can I get nerdy for one second?
SPEAKER_00: In the secular time, there was a Roman ruler who was describing Christians he was interrogating in the first century.
SPEAKER_00: So he has no interest in Christianity.
SPEAKER_00: He really just wants to stamp them out and keep quiet.
SPEAKER_00: But listen to how he describes the early church.
SPEAKER_00: After interrogating him, he says, they asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as God, and bind themselves by oath and not to commit some crime, but not uh not to commit, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not to falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so.
SPEAKER_00: When this was over, it was their custom to depart and assemble again to partake of food, but not ordinary and innocent food.
SPEAKER_00: This was Pliny the Younger in 96 AD.
SPEAKER_00: Think about it.
SPEAKER_00: This is a non-Christian looking in onto these people we we read about here in Acts chapter 2 and saying, hey, uh they're committing to being holy, they're not trying to cause incident, and for some reason they decide to eat together.
SPEAKER_00: Which means that the earliest Christians of all the things that made their gathering special, food together made the list.
SPEAKER_00: Which means that folks, we have to prioritize having opportunity to gather together in an intimate way in which we enjoy food.
SPEAKER_00: This is a shameless plug for prayer night.
SPEAKER_00: We often have communion on those Sunday nights that we gather here for prayer.
SPEAKER_00: It's an intimate and special time.
SPEAKER_00: We have an extended time of praying and preparing our hearts so that we can enjoy communion together.
SPEAKER_00: It's not something we want to rush, it's not something we want to take half-heartedly, it's something we want to devote ourselves to.
SPEAKER_00: Saying we're going to be people of the bread and the cup and we're going to enjoy it together.
SPEAKER_00: All across the world for the last 2,000 years, Christians have practiced this as a way of enjoying Jesus' grace.
SPEAKER_00: Would you make it a part of your walk today?
SPEAKER_00: The last thing is this that the disciples they devoted themselves to prayer.
SPEAKER_00: The earliest members devoted themselves not just to praying individually, but to praying together.
SPEAKER_00: Man, there's something different about praying with people as you know the details of their life.
SPEAKER_00: One of the most important things that has sustained my marriage with Brandy is praying together every single night before we go to bed.
SPEAKER_00: It's crazy.
SPEAKER_00: One of the best places that I gather data about what's going on in my wife's world is when she's lifting up things to Jesus in prayer at night.
SPEAKER_00: Because I love her, I want to know the things that she's lifting up to Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: There's times where we're praying at night and I learn, wow, this is actually a bigger deal than I thought it was, because of the way that you're bringing it before Jesus.
SPEAKER_00: If someone asks me to pray, I mean, so you begin to see that there's something powerful that if we know the content of someone's life, then when we pray with them, it becomes a different story than praying generally.
SPEAKER_00: If someone shares me, hey, Pastor, can you pray for me and I don't know the story?
SPEAKER_00: Okay, I'll pray generally, but it's a little bit different when I know the details of someone's life.
SPEAKER_00: If someone asks me to pray for them and I know they're going through a hard moment, there's a chance I might weep with you.
SPEAKER_00: And so you see, this is there's something to pray individually, but when we're commute uh committing ourselves to praying together, God does something different there.
SPEAKER_00: And so it's special at the early church of all the things they could have given time to, decide that prayer together is desperately important.
SPEAKER_00: I mean, imagine the power of God's people gathering together to pray the way Jesus taught them.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, let your kingdom come here.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, let your will be done here.
SPEAKER_00: And hearing that not just from your voice, but from your brothers and sisters as well, saying, God, we want this thing to happen here now.
SPEAKER_00: And so to be a part of God's church means you'll devote yourself to prayer both individually and with your brothers and sisters.
SPEAKER_00: To be a part of God's church means you'll expect prayer to be a part of the process in your healing and God walking through your life.
SPEAKER_00: If you come to my office for pastoral counsel, I am not just going to try and give you advice.
SPEAKER_00: I'm gonna lead you to scripture and I'm gonna pray with you and for you that God will do his work.
SPEAKER_00: When we commit to prayer together as a family, we're reinforcing the idea that we all expect God to be involved in making things work in this world.
SPEAKER_00: So would you consider, hey, can I become a person of prayer this year?
SPEAKER_00: Would you realize that your willingness to be a person of prayer doesn't just affect your soul, it affects the souls of the brothers and sisters around you?
SPEAKER_00: If it's new to you, would you ask some saints that have been in the faith a little bit longer than you?
SPEAKER_00: Hey, help me know how to pray.
SPEAKER_00: If it's new to you, would you go back to the book of Psalms and read some of those prayers that David wrote thousands of years ago and say, Wow, this is the kind of things that people prayed about and how they prayed, and would you practice modeling your prayer after those?
SPEAKER_00: As we get ready to close, maybe a few important questions to consider on the way home.
SPEAKER_00: First is this Am I devoted?
SPEAKER_00: If it was the instinct of the early church to make time and effort to learn about the apostles' teaching, to break bread, to pray together, man, the hard question today is is that my instinct as well?
SPEAKER_00: Maybe even worse question.
SPEAKER_00: Have I made church more about what I want and less about what God wants for me?
SPEAKER_00: Am I coming to church because of the outcome that I'm expecting, or am I devoted to the gathering, expecting God to show up in some way for me or for my brother or my sister?
SPEAKER_00: Am I willing to acknowledge that the church is going to outlive me?
SPEAKER_00: That the church will outlive my government, that the church will outlive all the things, that this is the means by which God is using to grow our community and to make his kingdom known.
SPEAKER_00: The second question, am I a learner?
SPEAKER_00: Have I stopped growing in curiosity and desire to know Jesus more?
SPEAKER_00: And if so, would you begin stirring those opportunities to learn more about him?
SPEAKER_00: The third question, do I fellowship?
SPEAKER_00: Is the only place people see me in the church on a Sunday morning and that's it?
SPEAKER_00: Or are there places that God could use to create more opportunities for conversation?
SPEAKER_00: Can I be the one to initiate?
SPEAKER_00: Can I be the one to lean in and create a new space for God to be known and to know?
SPEAKER_00: The third, the fourth, do I hunger for communion and breaking the bread?
SPEAKER_00: Do I want to join in that ritual that God has been using for the last 2,000 years to help grow us?
SPEAKER_00: Am I seeking opportunities to break bread with brothers and sisters?
SPEAKER_00: And last is this do I pray?
SPEAKER_00: Is there this genuine interest and desire within me to communicate to God and to do it with my friends?
SPEAKER_00: Is there opportunity today to grow in those practices?
SPEAKER_00: I'm going to close by reading the end of the verse, the end of the passage again, just to remind us when we devote ourselves to this degree to these particular things, this is how God seems to respond.
SPEAKER_00: It says, and day by day attending the temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they receive their food with glad and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all people.
SPEAKER_00: And the Lord added to their number day by day those who are being saved.
SPEAKER_00: Folks, and when we devote ourselves to the King in this way, there's a chance that we'll get to enjoy favor.
SPEAKER_00: It's a chance that we'll get to witness day by day those being saved day by day and entering into God's kingdom.
SPEAKER_00: As you see the stakes, as you see that the reality of what's before us, folks, would you continue to pursue God?
SPEAKER_00: Would you devote yourselves to Him?
SPEAKER_00: Would you be a part of this church and see His kingdom at work?
SPEAKER_00: Would you join me in prayer?
SPEAKER_00: Jesus, we thank you.
SPEAKER_00: God, that you're allowing us to be a part of your church.
SPEAKER_00: God, that you created such a beautiful and wonderful institution for us to join in.
SPEAKER_00: God, that this is the means by which you work with the body.
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, help us.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, if we've become lax in our participation in church, would you help us to come with full hearts again?
SPEAKER_00: God, if there's been wounds and situations that are causing us to keep the church at arm's distance, would you give us the courage to have those conversations so we can fully dive back into relationship once again?
SPEAKER_00: God, I thank you.
SPEAKER_00: Lord, uh, in these opportunities, there's so many chances for our souls to grow in strength.
SPEAKER_00: God, there's so many opportunities for us to become more like you as we dive into the life of your church.
SPEAKER_00: And so, God, would you help us?
SPEAKER_00: God, would you make us more like you?
SPEAKER_00: Would you give us that urgency once again to be with you in this way?
SPEAKER_00: So, Lord, would you bless my friends as we leave this place?
SPEAKER_00: God, would you keep these thoughts in their mind this afternoon and tomorrow as we go and make more plans?
SPEAKER_00: Would there be this desire to see your church at work?
SPEAKER_00: God, we love you.
SPEAKER_00: We praise you and we thank you.
SPEAKER_00: In Jesus' powerful name we pray.
SPEAKER_00: Amen.
SPEAKER_00: Amen, folks.
SPEAKER_00: 425, we'll see you for pickleball.
SPEAKER_00: If you have any conversations, we'll see you after.
SPEAKER_00: God bless.
SPEAKER_00: Have a good week.