What Now? (Acts) | Wait and Witness - Week 1

After everything changes, what do you do next? We begin a new series through the Book of Acts with a question the disciples were asking after the resurrection: what now? In Acts 1, Jesus tells his followers to wait. Not passively, but with a posture of expectant, persistent prayer. He calls them witnesses, promises the Holy Spirit, and then ascends. Then 120 people go back to an upper room in Jerusalem and pray. Together. Constantly. This week we explore what that kind of waiting looks like in ordinary life on Nantucket.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

It's great to see all of you post-Easter. Glad that you're here today. I want to ask you a question this morning. And the question is sort of rooted in our celebration of Easter in some ways, but which I think you'll see as we we keep we continue today. But the question I want to ask you this morning is what do you do after everything changes? What do you do after everything changes? I don't mean like a small change in your life, like you went to get your hair done and the person cut it way too short, although for some of you, I guess that's probably a big thing, and you've experienced that and it can be quite traumatic. But what I'm really talking about is a kind of change that happens in your life when the ground of your life has been shaken. I'm talking about a Kairos moment. The word kairos is a Greek word, and it appears really throughout the New Testament scriptures. It has to do with time, but not ordinary time in the way that we understand time as a clock ticking forward. I've talked about this before from up here, like sort of Tuesday becoming Wednesday. It's not that kind of time. Kairos means an interruption in time or in ordinary time. It's a moment that happens in our life that is loaded with significance. A moment that divides your life kind of into before and after. And so I want you to think about your own life. For example, you know, maybe a graduation or a wedding or the birth of a child. These are Kairos moments, a clear before and clear after. But I also want you to think about maybe surprise diagnosis, something you weren't expecting to hear about you or someone you love. Maybe the loss of a job or income. Maybe the loss of a loved one. Again, maybe unexpected. There's a clear before and after. There's been an interruption, a moment, a kairos moment in your life that's interrupted, the Kronos moment, the ongoing ordinary time of your life. I mean, we know that when things happen in our lives, that life will go on, but it will not be the same as it was before. And the thing that I want you to see this morning as we launch into a brand new teaching series, the thing I want you to see this morning is that a Kairos moment is not just a disruption to your life. A Kairos moment is an invitation to you and to me. It's an invitation to reorient our life. And so the question that we should be asking when our world falls apart or even when something really, really amazing happens that changes the trajectory or the orientation of our life. What just happened? How did that happen? Why did that happen? But the question that we should be asking is who am I becoming in response to what just happened? Not just what is the event that's taken place in my life that's changed everything, but who am I becoming as a result or in response to what happened? And for a person of faith, that question has a real shape. It has a direction. Because Kairos moment, Kairos moment is always sort of underneath everything else, an invitation for us to turn toward God with a fresh dependence. So I don't know if you were able to fill in the blank of a Kairos moment that's happened in your life, but I want you to think of it in those terms: an invitation to turn to God right now with fresh dependence upon God. You know, after these interruptions to our lives, the most natural question that we can ask is what now? What now? What do I do now? What do I do now that this person left? What do I do now that I lost my job? What do I do now that I have this baby I'm taking care of? What do I do now? X, Y, and Z, right? And this is exactly where the disciples of Jesus are at, where we find them, at the beginning of the book of Acts, a book of the Bible also called the Acts of the Apostles. I want to invite you to turn in your Bibles or on your Bible apps to the book of Acts, chapter one. We're starting a new teaching series today. And I like short teaching series. I like, you know, four weeks, six weeks, something like that. I like change. I like to keep things moving. You know what I mean? This is a 28-week teaching series through the book of Acts. We're going to take a glimpse into each chapter. We're not going to cover every single verse of the book, but we're going to take a look at a glimpse at each chapter per week of the series. And so it's actually going to take us through the end of October because we have a couple of Sundays, Mother's Day, and then we have our baptism service in August, where we'll take a little break from the series. But for the most part, this is where we're going to really anchor our conversation as a church family for the foreseeable future. Our teaching text for today is Acts chapter 1, verses 1 through 14. And before I read, I wonder what God might want to say to us today about what it looks like to reorient our lives toward Him, to reorient our lives in greater dependence upon Him. Okay. So Acts 1, 1 through 14. In my former book, Theophilus, I wrote about all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day he was taken up to heaven. After giving instructions through the Holy Spirit to the apostles he had chosen, after his suffering, he presented himself to them and gave many convincing proofs that he was alive. He appeared to them over a period of forty days and spoke about the kingdom of God. On one occasion, while he was eating with them, he gave them he gave them this command Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift my father promised, which you have heard me speak about. For John baptized with water, but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Then they gathered around him, and they asked him, Lord, are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel? And he said to them, It is not for you to know the times or dates that the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you, and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. After he said this, he was taken up before their very eyes, and a cloud hid him from their sight. They were looking intently up into the sky as he was going, when suddenly two men dressed in white stood beside them. Men of Galilee, they said, Why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way that you have seen him go into heaven. And then the apostles returned to Jerusalem from the hill called the Mount of Olives, about a Sabbath day's walk from the city. And when they arrived, they went upstairs to the room where they were staying. Those present were Peter, John, James and Andrew, Philip and Thomas, Bartholomew, and Matthew, James, son of Alphaeus, and Simon the zealot, and Judas, son of James. They all joined together constantly in prayer, along with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. These are the words of the Lord. Thanks be to God. At this point in the narrative, 40 days have passed since the resurrection of Jesus. For us, it's just been seven since our celebration of the resurrection of Jesus. But for them it was 40 days, and Jesus is very much alive. They've seen him, but it's not just visions they're having because they've touched him and they've eaten with him. Jesus is alive, and they're standing there trying to process something now that has no category in human history. Their friend and their teacher, who they saw die on the cross, is no longer dead. What do you make of that? What do you do with that? The tomb is empty. And there's the question again: what now? What now? After everything has changed, there's a clear before and after. We're not going back the way things were before. So what now? The author of the Gospel of Luke has also written this book, the book of Acts, and he opens this second volume by, in essence, sort of picking up where he left off in his gospel. And he's writing to this person named Theophilus. What a great name. Great name for a dog, don't you think? Theophilus. Yeah. And a person, I guess. No offense if your name is Theophilus, I guess. But Theophilus is one of Luke's patrons, one of his supporters. And he says these words, in my first book, I told you everything that Jesus began to do and teach. That word began is really key here. It's doing a lot of heavy lifting for us because what it tells us is the beginning of the book of Acts is not the beginning of the story. There's a lot that Jesus has already done. A lot that he's already said, a lot that he's already accomplished. The Gospel of Luke, though, isn't the whole story, it's part of the story. So Acts is what Jesus continues to do now through his people by his spirit. What I want us to understand, because again, we're going to be in this book for a long time, then the next however many months, this book is not about what the church did after Jesus left. Sometimes we approach the book of Acts that way. This book is about what Jesus kept doing after he was raised from the dead and returned to the Father where he came from. And I want you to sit with that for a moment because that little shift really changes everything. Everything about how we think about the Christian life. Right? We're like, I don't know. You know, raising from the dead is like kind of a, I don't know that I can do better than that, you know, than what Jesus has done. Well, that's not what the Christian life is about. That's what the author is telling us. What he's telling us is that our role is to participate in something that God is already doing. We're not the initiators of the Christian life. We are people who've been invited into a project that was already underway long before we arrived. And so this reframes, I hope, some of the pressure that I hear in conversations, maybe not weekly, but quite frequently. A lot of the pressure that some of us feel, pressure to produce or to perform as a Christian or to grow something or to make something happen. And that pressure we feel in living out the Christian life is misplaced because we are not the primary actor in the story. Jesus is the primary actor in the story. And so the question for us is not, okay, now what are you gonna go do for God? The question is, what is God already doing and how can I be a part of that? What is God already doing in my life and how can I be a part of that? What is God already doing on this island and in the lives of my friends and in my family's lives, uh, family's life? And how can I be a part of that? Because this reframes everything that matters and everything that we're going to be talking about on Sundays for the foreseeable future. Jesus has been with them for 40 days since the resurrection. He's been speaking to them about things like the kingdom of God. And then he gathers them together and he tells them to wait. A lot's happened, and they must be sort of ready to go. But Jesus is now telling them to wait. He says, Don't leave. There's a lot of fear and a lot of confusion, a lot of excitement. There's a lot going on here. And Jesus says, just don't leave, whatever you do. Stay here, stay in Jerusalem, wait for what the prom the Father has promised, wait for the Holy Spirit. And then he says, in a few days you'll be baptized with the Holy Spirit. Now, here's the question that they ask in response Lord, is this the time when you are going to restore the kingdom to Israel? Okay. Is this the time? I relate to this question so much. Maybe not the specifics of it, but sort of the nature of the question. Here they are, they're standing at the most critical point in human history, and they want to know is it over yet? Are you done? Is this it? Have you accomplished everything that you were going to accomplish? Is it safe to go outside now? Is the kingdom restored? Is everything cool? What now? And it's interesting how Jesus responds to them. It's the wrong question, but he doesn't reprimand them. He just simply reorients them. He says, it's not for you to know the time. I mean, that's the Father's business. Notice what Jesus does here. They ask a when question. Is it time now? Is this the time? When is this gonna happen? They ask a when question, but when they do, Jesus refuses to ask answer their their question, and instead he introduces a what question. He answers a question they don't actually ask. It's the what question. When is this gonna happen? Is this the time? Is everything cool? And Jesus says, Here's what you will know. You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you. Number one. And number two, when that happens, you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth. That's Acts 1, verse 8. That verse is an interesting verse because, well, there's a lot in it, but not only that, but it's the mission statement and essence of everything that's going to follow now in the book of Acts. Everything that we're going to look up look at over the next few weeks is sort of organized by this verse. So if you're going to mark a verse in the series, mark this one. It's sort of the table of contents. Acts chapters 1 through 7 focus on Jerusalem. Jesus says, Holy Spirit will come upon you, and you'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem. And then the author takes seven chapters to talk about what that looked like in Jerusalem. Chapters 8 through 12 talk about Judea and Samaria, the surrounding area, the area surrounding Jerusalem, a larger area. And then finally, chapters 13 through 28 talk about the gospel as it goes out to the ends of the earth. This is sort of the content, table of content for the for the entire book. But I want to stay in this verse just for a moment because Jesus gives a specific word about what they are to be now that the resurrection has happened. What are they to be? What role are they going to play? You know, what you do comes out of what you are or who you are. You know, you might, you know, put shingles on a roof. Well, you're a roofer, right? That's what roofers do. And so, in order for us to understand what we are to do as Christians, we need to understand how Jesus sees who we are. And this is what he says to them. He he gives them a specific word for what they're going to be, not missionaries. He doesn't say you're going to be my missionaries, not evangelists, you're going to be my evangelists, not church planters. He doesn't say any of that. He says, You will be my what? Witnesses. Witnesses. That's a very specific word. And witnesses have very specific things that they they do. A witness is a very particular kind of person. A witness is not an expert unless they're labeled an expert witness, right? But but eyewitnesses are just, you know, they're not spokespersons or experts or or any of that stuff. They're just simply the person, a person who saw something happened and then tells people what they saw. That's what a witness is. So Jesus is saying to the disciples, that's what you are going to be in this new era. You are going to be witnesses. You're going to be people who tell other people what you have seen and what you are seeing. You're just going to be my witnesses. We'll get into what that looks like for us in just a little bit, but it should be encouraging to know that you don't need a theology degree to be a witness. You don't need to be a Bible scholar to be a witness. You don't need the to know the right words or the right arguments, or you don't have to have the right personality to be a witness for Jesus. You simply need an experience and the willingness to name that experience. That's all you need. But here's where I want to sort of push us a little bit further this morning because I think we often reduce the idea of being a witness to something that might happen or a conversation that might happen someday, maybe when we're more ready for it. You know, a moment when we finally get the courage to say something to a coworker or to a neighbor. And not that that's wrong, but I think that's sort of a smaller view of what Jesus is actually saying here. If you've been not living so much as a witness, here's where being a witness begins. Being a witness begins with a certain kind of posture. Not with certain words, but with a certain posture. It begins with a question that you carry into your ordinary week. And the question that you and I should be carrying into this next week and every week is the question, what now? What now? Not just, you know, God help me with this meeting because I don't know what I'm going to say, but you can get specific in asking the what now question. God, where are you already working in and around me right now? Not God, just help me with this thing, but God, where is your love already active in my neighborhood, in my workplace, in my family, in this person? God, how can I be a participant in the thing that you're already doing? What now? Where's the opportunity to join in the thing that you're already doing? This is a different posture entirely. It's the posture of someone who believes that Jesus is in the room before they get there. Jesus is already in the room. Whatever room you enter into this week, whatever meeting, whatever job site, whatever classroom, whatever you enter into this week, Jesus is already there. The spirit is already present in the conversation that you're about to walk into. The spirit is already there. Your job and my job is not to manufacture moments this week for God, but it's simply to notice the moment that God is already in. As a parent of older children, you really start to see where you messed up along the ways. Along the way. And there have been some gaps in our parenting, I think Emily and I have begun to notice over the last few years. One of the gaps I we've begun to notice, especially now that our kids are kind of away, and then, you know, when they all come back and gather around for holidays or whatever, we really started to see that maybe we may have missed the teaching moment where our kids learn to not enter a room where other people are and just start talking. And I know that you think, oh, I have little ones, and one day that's going to change. Not if you don't change it. I just want you to know that. A lot of times our kids will just walk in, just start talking something that's been on their mind, something that's they're passionate about could be something really beautiful or really great or whatever, but they have really no clue about what's already happening in the room. And so what ends up happening, no matter how great it is, whatever it is that they have to share, and they always think it's the greatest thing ever, of course, no matter what it is, it will always be an interruption because they haven't first noticed what's happening in the room. And I think a lot of us as Christians, you know, we go through these seasons and we might be like really excited and like we had Easter and like God's doing something in our life. We really want to do something for God. You know, remember that language? And so we get out there and we're living and we're working, we're just and we're just like sharing the gospel. I don't know. I mean, there have been people who do this sort of thing. But we we're out there and we're just sort of like speaking, but we're but we're not really noticing first. And so oftentimes, even you know, from a really good solid place, we may be entering conversations where God is already at, not noticing where we're at in the conversation to even know how to join in. And so it's important that we notice this week and begin to cultivate sort of a practice, an ability to notice the moment that God is already in. And in order to do that, we've got to slow down a little bit. We're moving too quickly. It requires paying attention. It requires a prayerful kind of awareness. It requires a kind of watching where Jesus is moving throughout the day, not just moving through our to-do list. Jesus says, You'll be my witnesses in Jerusalem. You know, we all have a Jerusalem. We all have a Judea. We all have a Samaria. We all have an ends of the earth. But your Jerusalem is not necessarily a city. It's just kind of the place where you live your normal, ordinary life. So your Jerusalem could be your home, your workplace. It could be your neighborhood. It could be, you know, sort of community groups that you belong to or boards that you're on. It could be a coffee shop that you frequent on a regular basis and you know the names of the baristas and they know your name. That's your Jerusalem. And Jesus saying, you're going to be my witnesses there, someone that sees and says what you see. That's your job there. For us to see what Jesus is doing and to talk about it. But we need to remember that Jesus is already there. Jesus is already in line at the coffee shop. Jesus is already there. The question is: will we be witnesses to what Jesus is doing? Will we pay attention? Will we look for where God's love is needed in our lives this week and around our lives? And will we recognize where God's love is already at work around us? Will we be willing to do that? There is a power that gives a witness its effectiveness, its strength. There's a power behind you and I living our lives as witnesses. And the power to living as a witness is not some sort of strategy that we follow, that someone somewhere along the way has devised for us to live as witnesses. The power is not some sort of script that somewhere, somewhere along the line has has written that you're supposed to memorize and sort of like repeat this script out there in the world. The power that makes this work, us living as witnesses in this new era, this kingdom era post-resurrection, the power that makes it work is the Holy Spirit. But you will receive power, Jesus says, when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. So Jesus calls them as witnesses, his disciples. He tells them that the Holy Spirit will empower them. And then before they know it, Jesus is just like vanishing before their eyes. And a cloud hides them from their sight. And they're a little dazed and confused, as you can imagine, as they stand there staring at the sky. And I think about this image a lot. I think about the men and the women who have followed Jesus through death and through resurrection, standing there, sort of craning their necks, looking upward, watching the sky where Jesus used to be. Where did he go? And then all of a sudden, there are these two men that suddenly appear and they're wearing white robes. And they say, you know, what might be the gentlest redirection of all time. Hey, why are you guys looking up there? What are you looking at? What's up there? What are you looking at? Which is just sort of a kind way of saying, hey, there's a place you're supposed to be. There's a place that you've been sent. Turn around. Go back to Jerusalem. Jesus just told you, wait, don't leave Jerusalem. Wait there. What now? Stop staring at the sky. Start paying attention to what's happening again here on the ground. And so that's what they do. They turn around. I mean, a lot of Christians they love staring at the sky. And they're absolutely no use on the ground. I mean, they, you know, use all the right jargon and all the right language, and they're super holy and they're really great and they're cool and all that. But I just like, what are you? But but we have a we have a something to do here. This is great living up here, sort of. But like, let's come back down here. And I think this is what those two men dressed in white angels are saying to these people. And so they do go back, the disciples and all and and all of those who are gathered, they do go back. They go back to the upper room. And this is the part of the text that I want to just kind of like really draw our attention to is verse 17. This is what it says. It says they all join constantly, uh sorry, they all join together constantly in prayer, along with the women and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with his brothers. Okay, so who all is there? The eleven, the eleven disciples that are left. Some of the women followers of Jesus are there. Mary, the mother of Jesus, is there, and his brothers are there. And there's some other followers as well. About 120 people are there. And they get to the upper room, and what do they do? They pray. You know, they're sitting there in this kind of what now moment and they pray. That's it. That's what they did. They didn't organize a task force. They didn't launch a strategy to spread the gospel. They didn't divide into working groups to figure out how to grow the movement now that Jesus was gone. They didn't do any of that. They just prayed. And the Bible says that they prayed constantly and that they prayed together and that they prayed in expectation. And I want us to sort of name something this morning that I think many of us feel but might feel weird saying it out loud. Waiting doesn't feel like work to us. In the same way that praying does not feel like progress to us. And in a culture that measures effectiveness or faithfulness by output and by certain metrics and by visible momentum, the discipline of waiting in prayer can feel like we're falling behind. God, while I'm over here praying in this room, my job situation is not getting any better. God, while I'm over here praying in this room, I don't see more money going into my bank account. Lord, while I'm over here praying in this room, I don't know. I I mean, I still have this issue with this person. And I feel this personally. I feel like I'm typically a person who likes to, who is on the move, like in the sense that I like building things and planning things. I like pushing things forward. And there's a version of that which is really good. This is partly the way that God has made me. And some of you can relate to that. But there's another version, a version that wakes up where I'm already mentally three steps ahead of where I actually am in my little world. I'm already problem solving before I have prayed. I'm already managing the thing before I've waited on God about the thing. And that version is not faithfulness. That version is control dressed up like diligence. And in this country, as long as you work hard, you can get away with that sort of thing. Even in the church, people think you're a really spiritual person if you're doing a lot. But doing a lot doesn't mean anything. And Jesus is saying something to those disciples that I think he's saying to us. He's saying, you cannot do this on your own. You are, you are not, not because you are not capable, but because this is not yours to accomplish on your own. The power that you need to live as a witness in your school and in your neighborhood and on your job and with your clients, the power you need is not a power that you can generate. It is a power you must receive. So let me say clearly what I mean when I say waiting, because I don't mean being passive. I don't mean sitting still and hoping that something happens. I don't think that's what's happening in this room. I don't think the disciples were passive there. They were praying. Luke says they devoted themselves to this. Proskeratero, that's the Greek word. It means to persist in and to hold fast to, to attend constantly to something. That's not an occasional sort of, you know, throw one up to the big man upstairs and hope he answers kind of thing. This is not not sort of like when we get around to it kind of prayer. It's the same word that Luke will use later for the church's devotion to the apostles' teaching and to fellowship and to breaking of bread. This is a discipline, active, intentional posture, expectant waiting in the absence of action. It is the right action at the right time. Here in the Gospel of Luke, Jesus tells his, or back in the Gospel of Luke, I should say, Jesus tells his listeners about the farmer. He says, listen, the farmer prepares the soil, he plants the seed, but then ultimately what does he do? He trusts the rain to come. He waits for it. The farmer doesn't stand in the field and knows he can't make it rain. But the farmer also does not do nothing. The farmer does the work that is theirs to do and entrusts the work that is God's to do to God. That's what expectant waiting looks like. For many of us, we're doing the work that God is intending to do while neglecting the work that God has given us to do. God makes it rain, he brings about the change, he achieves the outcome. We don't. We're called to be faithful in expectant waiting, and that begins with a posture of prayer, releasing the outcome to God, who is sovereign over all of the outcomes. It's not an easy thing to do, but this is how the world works. It's how the kingdom of heaven works. So let me give you some sort of personal application to this. What does a week of expectant waiting actually look like? Let me say this. I think it begins before when you wake up, before you open your phone. I think it has to begin in that little sliver of time, a little window of time between when you wake up and when you get on your phone. Not because your phone is evil, but because the phone will immediately hand you a list of things to think about, to manage, and then you will spend the whole rest of your day thinking about those things and managing them. Expectant Waiting says, before I receive anybody else's agenda for my day, I'm going to bring my day to God. I'm going to say, Lord, what do you have in store? And it looks like praying specifically, not generally, not Lord, bless my work, but Lord, I've got a conversation today that I don't know how to have and I need wisdom that I don't have. Would you give that to me? Engaging specifically with the Lord. And it looks like this question that I want to invite you to carry with you this week, not just God help me get through this, but God, where are you already at work before I walk into this? What are you already doing before I walk into the room? Who around me is being drawn to you right now? And how might be, how might I be a part of that? This is the posture of a witness. Not someone with all the answers, not a know-it-all, a spiritual or biblical know-it-all at all. It's someone who's just simply paying attention. The disciples waited, but they also waited together. And I want to say to us as a church, I think this is important because this is not an incidental kind of thing. Luke names who's in the room, the eleven, the women, Mary, the brothers of Jesus. It's not a homogenous group. These are men, these are women. There are people who were with Jesus from the very beginning. And in that room, there are people who doubted him for most of his ministry. How do we know that? Well, his brothers, we know from John's gospel, did not believe in him during his earthly life. It was only at the resurrection that they finally got it. Big bro was telling the truth kind of thing. And now they're in that room and they're praying. The resurrection of Jesus has a way of reorganizing our relationships, of bringing people into a room that would have no reason to be in that same room together. They're unified. Not because they've resolved all their differences, but because they're all waiting on the same thing. That's, I think, what it looks like to be a unified church. Not that we're going to agree on every matter, but a shared orientation toward Jesus and a shared posture of dependence on him. You know, on a small island, we sort of know each other. And that means we also sort of carry certain things around about other people on this island. We carry around, carry around a history, we carry around disappointments. We a lot of us carry around, if the longer we're here, and those of you who've been here the longest, you carry around old versions of people that you just haven't updated in a long time. And I want to say, I think the upper room challenge is this is to think about people in this room or people on this island somewhere that you would not naturally sort of see yourself in a room praying with. Sort of imagining yourself in that room, someone whose presence might surprise you that they were there. Because the re the the resurrection reorganizes the entire island and network of relationships and how those work. It puts people in the same room who have no reason to be there except for Jesus, and it invites them to wait together. What decision are you making? What problem are you solving? What relationship are you navigating? Where the honest answer is, I have not actually prayed about this. I've thought about it, I've talked about it, I've worried about it, but I've not waited on God about it. Name that thing this week. Just name it. Write it down if you need to. And this week, before you make another move, bring it to God. Wait on God with that thing. Uh, second question: Where are you waiting alone that you were meant to wait together? Where are you waiting alone that you were meant to wait together? Because the upper room was not like a private devotional time where everyone was having their own moment. It was 120 people in the same room, leaning into the same promise, praying together. You know, I think one of the things that Summer Street exists to be is that kind of room, that kind of place where we're gathered together with people, like, oh, cool, they're in the room. I didn't, I don't know. I didn't, that's a surprise to me. And where we learn, though, to wait with one another, not alone. I want you to think about who you might call this week and just share with them, hey, I'm carrying something, and I just wanted to call and see if you would be willing to pray with me about this thing. Just try it. If you're like, oh, it's kind of weird. Try it with something small. It doesn't have to be anything huge, but reach out to somebody this week and say, hey, there's this thing, it's kind of small. I've been carrying it myself, but I want to invite you and ask you to pray with me on this thing. You know, this past Wednesday, we launched a brand new weekly gathering that we're calling the midweek table or just midweek. And we have, in essence, sort of put an anchor in our weekly calendar as a church family together in our rhythm to be able to come together around tables to share in more of our lives. What we do on Sunday mornings is great and it has its purpose, and it's accomplishing that purpose in our lives, I believe. It's a beautiful gathering. But for those of us who want to take further steps or a deeper step of connection, a deeper step toward devotion, then that's what midweek is is all about. And so I want to invite you to just come this. We've had a great turnout last week. I want to invite you to come this week, and all of the details are there in your bulletin. Here's the third question we're asking this week. How can I slow down enough to notice? How can I slow down this week enough to notice? To notice what? The things that you have to do by the end of the week? No. To notice what you need to produce or fix or manage or control. No. To notice the people around you. To notice where the love of God is already at work. To notice where in the normal sort of Jerusalem sort of rhythm of your life are you encountering the love of God at work in the lives of other people? God's love is, as we stated, already active before you ever arrive. You're not having to bring God's love to anybody. It's there. Your job is not to manufacture something. Your job this week is simply to notice. And then ask yourself, what would it look like to join what God is already doing here? Not what should I say or what should I add or what should I come up with, but maybe you just linger a little bit longer. Maybe you just ask another question. Maybe you just listen a little bit more. But begin asking, how can I join in what God is doing here? You know, the church has not been born yet when Acts 1 closes. The Spirit has not come yet. Pentecost is still days away. And Jesus, who we're told is now seated at the right hand of the Father, is not absent. What do we see Jesus doing in the scriptures? We see him interceding, praying. We see Jesus reigning. We see Jesus preparing the gift of the Holy Spirit, which is going to empower the entire mission of the church and the witness of every believer. What the disciples, I think, are doing in that upper room is not killing time, waiting for something to happen. They're positioning themselves. They're becoming the kind of people who can receive what God is about to do. And can I just say this? That's my heart for us as a church. Is that we just posture ourselves together as a community for what it is that God is about to do. We don't know what God's going to do over the coming weeks or months or years here. We have no idea. But we can continue to be a place to gather, to wait together, to pray together, to lean into the Holy Spirit and live our lives as witnesses in this little world around us. I think the question is not whether or not God is going to move. I think the question is whether or not we will be the people who waited.