We will be in Acts Chapter 2 this morning.
Acts 2. If you are using one of our
Bibles there in front of you, it is found on page 909.
So we started this two week series 2 weeks ago, interrupted
it last week for Father's Day. But in that first message, we
looked at the very beginnings of the early church.
It was the day of Pentecost, and followers of Christ from all
over the world had gathered in Jerusalem to celebrate Shavuot,
which is the Feast of weeks. And at this moment there were
120 Christ followers of all different backgrounds gathered
together. The day of Pentecost was special
to them and in this moment God brought even more significance
to this special day as the Holy Spirit fell upon Christ's
followers and tongues of fire sat over each person as they
spoke languages that they've not previously been able to speak
before God's presence had come and they were now to take His
presence everywhere that they would go.
So that was the indwelling of the Spirit, the the spirit
coming to permanently live inside someone who has placed
their trust in Jesus for their salvation.
Now the goal for each of us is to daily be filled with the
spirits and live each day, each moment in the Holy Spirit's
power. So after the Holy Spirit fell,
Peter got up, he delivered a sermon and and 3000 people
placed their faith in Jesus that day.
So that's the context of what we read here at the end of Acts
chapter 2. If you're able, would you please
stand with us as we read from the word Acts 2, verses 42
through 47. And they devoted themselves to
the apostles, teaching and the fellowship to the breaking of
bread, and the prayers in awe came upon every soul.
And many wonders and signs were being done through the apostles,
and all who believed were together and had all things in
common. They were selling their
possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all
as any had need. 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.
And the Lord added to their number day by day.
Those who are being saved, thank you, you may be seated.
So verse 42 is kind of the conclusion to the whole
Pentecost narrative, and it mentioned 4 specific practices
that the early church had devoted themselves to.
Now, we typically understand a devotion as having an affinity
or or commitment to something. However, the Greek word that's
used here actually refers to to persisting in something, being
steadfast in that activity or belief.
Now, when you do this, you are you're, you're making an
intentional effort to believe in something, participate in
something, no matter how difficult it may be to engage.
That life for members of the early church was it was
difficult. They were seen as outcast by the
rest of the Jewish community, but they didn't allow this to to
turn them away from the faith. They were persistent in this
newfound faith of theirs, and they were wholly committed and
completely committed to the four practices mentioned here in Acts
2. By the way, I think I forgot to
mention there's children's church.
So yeah, feel free to any children who have not already
left. Thank you angels for that
reminder. So yeah, something more geared
for them downstairs. So there there are 4 practices
the early church was devoted to. And the first thing that the
early church was being diligent to persist in was the apostles
teaching. The apostles teaching we can we
can deduce that a few things as to what the apostles teaching
may have consisted of. First of all, in the Great
Commission, Jesus was speaking about all the new disciples who
would be created as as his followers went and told the
world about Jesus, there would be all these new disciples and
he instructed them to observe or to to keep all these things that
he had commanded. He's he had poured himself into
them for three years and he says go and tell them all these
things that I have commanded you.
So there's that. And some of the apostles
teaching also would have included for sure the Hebrew
Scriptures is what we call the Old Testament.
Even Peter's message here on the day of Pentecost was was that
Jesus was foretold by the Old Testament.
They knew that Jesus was going to be coming.
Their scriptures had told them about this day.
And then thinking ahead down the road to Paul's missionary
journeys, when Paul would arrive somewhere, where did he go?
Paul would immediately go to the synagogue.
It he where, whether he was in in the Middle East, whether he
was in Europe or in Asia, he would go to the synagogue, the
place where where the Jews were were gathered together because
he wanted to utilize their knowledge of who the Messiah was
to teach them about Jesus and tell them that Jesus is the one
that you've been waiting for. Then Jesus life his works and
care would no doubt have played a principal role in the apostles
teaching as well as the nature of our salvation by grace
through faith. So the early church was consumed
by the teachings of the apostles and the natural thing for us to
do is to examine our own context.
We don't have apostles here with us today right So what does it
mean for us to apply this to our own lives?
Well, let's, let's make it practical.
I have lots of things written down on the note sheet for you
because I figured that'd make it easier for you to bring
something away from this message.
So first of all, regularly attend worship services.
Regularly attend worship services, not just once a month.
You know, today regular attenders at church attend about
one to two times a month. Now is is basically how it's
seen that if you're a regular tender, if you can, if you
attend one to two times a month. Unfortunately, I think God
desires more of us. Unfortunately, that's the wrong
thing. God desires more of us.
Unfortunately, that's not what God wants from from us.
God wants more and parents with children, you are discipling
your children whether you're being intentional about it or
not. So if you're in church once a
month, that's how you're discipling them.
That OK, Hey, going to going to church once a month is enough.
We don't need to be there every week.
But if you're making it a priority to be in God's house
week in and week out, then we're teaching our children this is a
priority. We spend Sundays in God's house.
No, of course we're not talking about legalism here.
You know, things happen. But we want to make it a
priority to be in God's house because we can't make we can't
just model a once a month behavior and then wonder, why
did our kids walk away from the faith when they went off to
college? We need to do everything that we
can as parents to help our children to grow in their faith
and understand what God would desire of them.
And I would remind you that should you be gone.
I love when I hear this. I just heard it again this
morning. Hey, we just watched last week's
message yesterday. Go online.
If you're gone, go online, go to Facebook, go to our YouTube
page, go to our website and catch up with the message.
Catch up with where we are, what we've been studying each week.
It is awesome that we have these resources and that you don't
have to wait for those old school cassette tapes to be
duplicated and sent to you, right?
Who you guys know what I'm talking about, right?
We used to have the duplicators back in the day, I know.
But now we have these awesome resources online.
Some of you are like, what's a cassette tape, right?
So another way to be exposed to biblical teaching is to follow
podcasts or YouTube channels that help deepen your faith,
that help grow your faith again, my, my dad used to have these
tapes that we would, that we would listen to wherever we
went. There was always a John Maxwell
tape that he was playing in the car.
We don't have to do that anymore.
We can just pull, pull up something on our phones or on
our computers. One of my favorites is the Bible
Project. Many of you are probably
familiar with Bible Project. I love to look into their
content both through their YouTube channel as well as
through their podcast. How you are probably most
familiar with Bible Project is their introductory videos to
every book of the Bible They made this kind of it's not
really animated, but it but it's a drawing that that they created
and then they walk through this drawing in a kind of animated
way to introduce you to that particular book of the Bible.
So it is an awesome way to get to know what is the purpose of
this book? What are the themes I'm going to
encounter? What are maybe perhaps some of
the difficulties in interpreting this particular book of the
Bible. So that's the Bible project.
That's one of my favorites. There's so many awesome
resources out there online for us to avail ourselves of.
So find something that you love, that something that deepens your
faith and and you derive so much joy from and listen to that.
Watch that. So that was the apostles
teaching. Second is the fellowship.
We're devoting themselves to fellowship.
Allow me to share with you a lesson I learned in 2012, when I
was much younger and apparently immature.
You see, we were going through a season of transition at
Cornerstone. We were growing in our our
Sunday morning format was changing.
So I proposed a an opportunity to save a bit of money and get
rid of our coffee and doughnuts. I don't.
It's almost as though I don't even need to finish the
illustration. Like you see, we would spend a
significant amount of money on on these things.
And I don't drink the coffee. That's not my thing.
And Donuts, I can take them or leave them.
Hertz Donuts last week was awesome.
That was great. But otherwise, I don't really
care about coffee and Donuts. They're not.
They're not my thing. So when I floated this idea,
we've got some people here who probably may well remember this
moment. When I floated this idea, people
obviously there was a lot of kickback against this idea.
Like, what are you doing? We need to have fellowship.
Well, yeah, we can have fellowship, right?
You still can have fellowship. They could have just said we
really like the doughnuts and coffee and we would just like to
keep the doughnuts and coffee. They didn't say that.
But in their minds, fellowship equals doughnuts and coffee,
right? And well, here we are a Baptist
Church as well. So I am, I'm sure, especially
from your reactions that fellowship can be equated with
food, right? Yes, but by the way, we did not
get rid of the Donuts and coffee.
So So don't worry, that's not coming in our future here.
By the way, whoever created whoever made those bars out
there this morning, thank you. I don't know who does that, but
I took 1 and I have it saved for after the service so I can enjoy
it. So, but thank you too, whoever
did that. But Luke is not talking only
about food here. I'm sure food is kind of in view
with some of the other things that he mentions later, but he
is talking about actual Koinonia, people sharing in
something together. Koinonia is what happens when
when we have a mutual interest with with somebody in the same
thing. It's two parties who share in
something. True fellowship is sharing life
with others. The word was used to indicate
the unique type and depth of relationships that the early
church had. These relationships served as as
basically as a discipleship mechanism in the body of Christ.
It was It was me learning from you and you learning from me.
Sharing our Christian walk with others is mutually beneficial
and encouraging, whether or not there are doughnuts and coffee
at that moment. Unfortunately, there there are a
number of people then and even today who want to be Lone Ranger
Christians, but this was never part of God's intent.
Hebrews 10 verses 24 through 25 read on the screen, right?
And let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good
works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of
some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you
see the day drawing near. Now, the writer of Hebrews
mentions a number of things here that if you're by yourself, if
you're alone, you can't engage in in these activities.
You can't encourage people to love.
By the way, I love the KJV of this.
I would have just quoted it, but what comes out of my mouth on
this one is just KJV and nothing else is ever going to come out.
But the KJV says provoke others to love, provoke them to love.
I love that. I love that idea so.
But you can't provoke people to love if you're by yourself, if
you're not part of the body of Christ.
So God wants us to be together in fellowship as the body of
Christ. Now I should come clean on
something here for a second. There's this joke about they
were, I think it was called the Four CS at Cornerstone.
Some illustrations that I would use in all of my sermons and
people would take counts of how many of the 4C's I would use.
I'm going to unveil one of them this morning, but just in case
they pop up at other times. The 4C's are CrossFit, cycling,
Chipotle, and cats. I have, I have had other people
mention, oh, you should throw a fifth one of the Kansas City
Chiefs in there. But depending on the week, you
know, in February, you know, I wasn't too keen on them.
So so we leave them off the list.
We leave the list at 4 CrossFit cycling, Chipotle and Cats.
All right, You may hear about those things from time to time.
So this morning I'm going to tell you about CrossFit.
Louvia and I have been engaged in CrossFit for 11 years now.
When I first got involved in it, I was looking for something that
would give me the conditioning that I would receive from my
time in the martial arts and then all my time cycling, as
well as bring in some of the weightlifting that I'd
participated in as a teenager. So I wanted something something
like that, and CrossFit seemed like it might be the right
thing. So in January of 2014, Luvian
and I stepped into our first CrossFit class.
We enjoy how challenging CrossFit is and that it pushes
us to do things that frankly, we didn't know we were capable of
doing. Keeps us young, I like to say.
Now, when we joined CrossFit, though, we weren't aware of how
significant the community aspect of it is.
CrossFit actually is all about environment.
It's not like other gyms where, you know, you go into the gym,
you tunnel vision, you go do your thing, don't talk to
people. You get out of there as quickly
as you can. CrossFit, it's expected that you
know the names of each of the people that you're working out
with and you engage with them and you talk with them.
And encouragement is of the utmost importance in CrossFit.
I am often the last one still working out for various reasons
and it's cool because all these people who have already finished
their workout, we're all doing essentially the same thing.
Other people will just been faster and finished it before
me. And what they then do is just
give you all this encouragement to keep going.
Sometimes you just want to say be quiet, like I'm going as fast
as I can here, but they are encouraging you.
The the last person to finish is always cheered on and encouraged
far more than the first person to finish.
And there's something about it's easier to do something difficult
when you have other people that you're sharing in that thing
with. So for the early church, it was
difficult to be to be a Christ follower, but they were sharing
in that following of Christ together.
So it was easier for them to endure that.
So how do we make this practical for us today?
First of all, participate with the Body in church life.
Participate with the body and church life Join us at regular
weekly worship services and other special events that we
have attend connect groups that we have each Sunday morning.
Connect group isn't just a Bible study.
Bible studies are great like obviously Bible studies are
great, but a connect group is more than just Bible study.
Connect group is is a is a time to sit around in a circle face
to face with others and have discussions about the word and
have discussions about how the word applies to your life and
get to know other people. So connect groups are great
entry way to getting to know other people in the body better
Then when we have things like fire and fellowship or
fellowship lunches, maybe an ice cream social that I'm throwing
around in my mind for later in the summer when we have these
events. Come be here if the doors are
open and you're and if at all possible, come join us and be
parts of the body of Christ. Another way to engage in
fellowship is to find a ministry to share in and serve.
Find a ministry to share in and serve.
There are many options available for ministry here at Pleasant
View. And this may sound a little
weird being that I just said that we had 55 workers for VBS
this past week. So I know a lot of you are
engaged, which is absolutely awesome.
But there's all sorts of ways to be engaged here.
There's nursery ushers, greeters, Sunday school and
children's church teachers, WANA leaders.
I'm told that we are always in need of a wanna leaders, more
people to listen to memory verses and such.
Worship team, media booth person, that media booth
personnel. I know people often look at the
worship team and at the booth. They say, oh, there's people
there, they don't have a need. Guess what, we would love to
have you on board in these areas, whether it's worship team
on stage, whether it's in the booth, behind the scenes, doing
stuff like that. If you think you have a gift, a
musical gift that you'd like to share with the body, hey, let's
talk and see if we can get you connected with the team.
If you've always wanted to be part of the team but you're not
musical, then sometimes the booth is the place for you.
Whether it's running the lyrics software or running sound or the
live stream, there are all sorts of options available for you in
serving. Oh, I forgot cameras too.
I, I make their jobs hard. I do apologize, but I'm not
going to stand still. That's just how how how it's
always been pretty much so I try to stand still.
I just can't, so we need more help there too.
It'd be great to have more camera operators.
So find a place to serve. If you're not sure what that is,
pick something, jump in. If it doesn't work, it's OK, you
can jump into something else. So find a place to share in and
serve. My last suggestion for
increasing your fellowship is to participate in a discipleship
relationship. A discipleship relationship
could be an accountability partner, a mentoring
relationship, or even something like a discipleship group, which
is in which is a different type of small group or Bible study.
Now the goal of a discipleship relationship is to spur you on
in your Christian walk. You can study the word together.
You can read a book and examine how that book, God Taking God's
Word, applies to your life. You can talk about life and what
God is doing, God is doing in your life, and the challenges
that you're facing. They're all sorts of options
available to us when it comes to discipleship relationships.
But having a discipleship relationship is so important.
Next, we have the breaking of bread.
It's likely that when you hear this phrase, of course we think
of enjoying a meal together. However, that's not the only
thing. That's not the primary thing
that's in view here when when Luke writes about the breaking
of bread. See, each week the church would
gather together for what were called love feasts.
At a love feast, they would enjoy a meal together, but they
would also take communion. It's difficult for us to
understand the full significance for them of partaking of the
Lord's Table and its impact on their spiritual growth.
Jesus first instituted communion on the night when he was
arrested. He and his disciples had
convened in the upper room for what has come to be called the
Last Supper, and on that night they were commemorating the
Passover. This wasn't a this was an
important night. The Passover was a celebration
of how God had freed his people from slavery, slavery in Egypt.
And as they sat there for dinner, Jesus identified himself
with the Passover lamb. When he said this bread is my
body and this cup is my blood, he was identifying himself with
that Passover lamb. So sitting at the Lord's table
reminded the early Church of Christ's sacrifice.
And the same goes for us. When we partake of the Lord's
table, we're remembering Jesus, and this causes us to draw near
to him with grateful hearts and offer our lives back to Him in
worship. So how do we apply this idea of
breaking the bread to our lives? Well, of course.
First of all, attend worship services on the 1st Sunday of
the month. I think most of you know this,
but if you didn't want to wear on the 1st Sunday of the month,
we set aside time in our services for remembering our
Lord's sacrifice through communion.
So try to be here on the 1st Sunday of the month.
Next, invite someone over for a meal in your home.
Invite someone over for a meal. Having a meal in your home is
one of the best ways to develop relationships.
So much life can can happen around the table and it's a
great place to to strengthen a relationship and it's also a
great place to begin a relationship and then to start
to get to know someone around the table.
So that's the breaking of bread. So far we've seen how the early
church devoted themselves to the apostles teaching to fellowship
to the breaking of bread. And last thing they were devoted
to was the prayers is what it says the prayers in Scripture.
There seems to be an emphasis at on prayer at the times of the
morning and evening sacrifices and and these sacrifices would
happen at the 3rd and the 9th hours of the day.
So basically at 9:00 AM and 3:00 PM is basically when these
sacrifices would happen. But then there's also evidence
of 1/3 daily prayer time happening around noon.
In Psalm 5517 King David said evening and morning and at noon
I utter my complaints and moan and he hears my voice.
Then in Daniel we see the prophet choosing to disobey
Darius ordinance against praying to anyone else except himself.
And, and, the writer says in Daniel 610, when Daniel knew
that the document had been signed, he went to his house
where he had windows in his upper chamber open toward
Jerusalem. He got down on his knees three
times a day and prayed and gave thanks before his God, as he had
done previously. Now, Jewish culture involved not
only the set temple prayer times, so the morning and and
evening, but also specific passages to be incorporated into
their prayers. We know one of those passages.
Some, some of them we don't know exactly for sure, but we know
for sure one of them was the Shema.
The Shema is found in Deuteronomy chapter 6.
I want something different for this moment.
We're going to read it out loud together.
These next three slides are the Shema.
So would you read this out loud with me?
Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is 1 You shall
love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your
soul, and with all your might. And these words that I command
you today shall be on your hearts.
You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk
of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the
way, and when you lie down and when you rise.
You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as
frontlets between your eyes. You shall write them on the
doorposts of your house and on your gates.
So this was one of the prayers that they would say every single
day, literally every day they would recite the Shema.
And they also use numerous other scripture passages in their
daily prayer times. So by the way, I will add on the
back of the note sheet, I always put things to help you consider
further thoughts and reflection and application points.
And one of them is to memorize the Shema.
For some of us, I'm sure we have like a few lines memorized, but
we would probably have to put in a little work to memorize the
rest of it, something I want to do myself.
So I would encourage you to memorize it and commit, commit
that to your memory and incorporate it into your prayer
time. So what does this look like for
us? And again, remember, this isn't,
listen, we're not, we're not trying to be legalistic.
We're not going back to the law. But these are all just
suggestions. Help us grow and deepen our
faith and be stretched a bit. So memorize the Shema.
I didn't realize I put it on the front of the note sheet.
So memorize the Shema. This is one of the least
practiced spiritual disciplines in our time, especially as we,
as we now have an age where we can just with a, with a few
finger strokes, pull something up.
You don't have to have it memorized anymore, right?
But memorizing God's word has so much value.
When we memorize God's word in a moment, the Holy Spirit will
bring that word to our minds and we'll be able to use that and
apply that to the situation that we find ourselves in, whether it
is a situation of temptation or whether it's God wanting to
speak through us by the Holy Spirit's.
So memorize the Shema and other scriptures.
Next, read scripture back to God.
Oh, I think I, I put this on the back of the note sheet.
I decided I didn't like the order.
I put it on the note sheet on the back of the note sheet there
at the top. Read scripture back to God.
There's always the option of reading scripture back to God as
prayer. One of the best place places to
do this is of course, the Psalms.
The Psalms cover the whole gamut of of our daily life and
experiences from the highs to the lows so we can read
scripture back to Him. God loves to hear us reading His
word to Him. Next, back on the first side of
the note sheet, you know, sometimes you're doing these
things and things don't get finalized until yesterday was
when I finalized my sermon and I had to have the note sheet in
earlier. So yeah, but develop a prayer
habit, develop a prayer habit consistent times where where you
are committed to being in prayer.
Then there may also be some various tools that you want to
use in your in your prayer. Some people like to write out
their prayers. Some people would not want to
write their prayers out but instead just express their
prayers verbally. We can use resources or tools
like axe or cats depending on on your preference.
Some people have a preference for one or the other.
I had personally have a preference for the acrostic axe
which is A is for adoration for confession, T is for
Thanksgiving and S is for supplication.
With adoration we are starting our prayer time with simply
worshipping God is what adoration is just worshipping
God. Confession is self-explanatory.
Confessing sin in my life, making sure that if there is
nothing in my life that is impeding my intimacy with God.
Thanksgiving, obviously giving thanks for what God is providing
in your lives, the way you've seen him work in your life and
in the lives of those around you.
And then S the supplication is I think this is at the S is the
default probably for for so many of us.
It's so easy to just go straight to God.
Here's my needs. Here's what I need you to do.
Here's how I need you to work in my life.
Let's save that for the end. When we start with the adoration
and the confession and the Thanksgiving, oh, it drastically
shapes and impacts how we even present our needs to God when we
present our supplication to Him. So there's acts, some people
like cats, just changing the order, starting with confession,
then going to adoration, Thanksgiving and supplication
doesn't matter, but pick something, incorporate that into
your prayer life and watch God work.
So these are some of the ways that we can enhance our prayer
life. So the early church was
committed to performing these 4 practices in community together
as the body of Christ. Verses 44 through 46, Look
there, now read. 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. And day by day, attending the
temple together and breaking bread in their homes, they
receive their food with glad and generous hearts.
Now they say that if something matters to you, it'll be
reflected in two places. It'll be reflected in your
calendar and in your checkbook. Well, this was certainly the
case here in Acts 2. The early church was constantly
together and they were sharing their resources, sharing meals
and bread, their possessions, money, whatever it was.
They were helping each other out.
When I think about the early church sharing their resources,
I'm reminded of the earliest days of our marriage.
We were young, broke, living in a 500 square foot apartment on
campus at Golden Gate Baptist Theological Seminary.
I was working part time for our church and Louvian was working
for the preschool program that was there at the seminary, and
the engine on my car seized up, broke.
We didn't have the money to get it fixed to replace it.
One Sunday morning after rehearsal, the worship team, we
were gathered together to pray and the worship team pulls out a
check, presents a check to us completely out of nowhere.
We had never expected anything. A very substantial check which
more than covered the cost to purchase a new engine and then
they'd already work things out for my brother to install that
new engine free of charge. That is the body of Christ
sharing together, doing what what God intended.
If you have a need coming alongside helping others out,
that's what they that's the type of thing that they were doing
here in the early church in Acts 2.
So when we think about the fact that these early Christians were
continually meeting together at the temple and they were sharing
meals together in their homes, it's apparent that they were
committed to both public and private worship.
They were engaged in both public and private worship time at the
temple, of course, was their public worship, but that wasn't
the sum total of their life, Their Christian walk, right?
They weren't just Sunday morning Christians, as it can be so easy
for us to do. Oh, I go to church on Sunday.
I check that box and forget about God the rest of the week.
That's not God's desire. God's desire is to see not only
public worship, our corporate worship together, but also
private worship, our times with Him personally, in our personal
devotions, our times with the body of Christ, whether it's
gathered around a meal or serving in other places.
Whatever the case may be, making sure and being diligent to
engage in private worship. Our public worship cannot be the
sum total of our Christian walk in life.
No, our public worship needs to be fueled by our private
worship. I have great times of worship
publicly because I'm being diligence to spend time daily
with God in private worship. So that's what the early church
was engaged in, and that God had done an amazing work in their
hearts was evident as they received their food with glad
and generous hearts, praising God and having favor with all
the people. The late author and theologian
Brennan Manning said this. The greatest single cause of
atheism in the world today is Christians who acknowledge Jesus
with their lips and walk out the door and deny Him.
By their lifestyle. That is what an unbelieving
world simply finds unbelievable. When we don't live as the
church, then people will want nothing to do with the church.
But when we live as the church, when we live as the way that God
intended, it's compelling, it's contagious, and it draws the
attention of those around us. God was daily adding to their
number as people chose to follow Jesus and lived as the body of
Christ. How wonderful it was and is for
us to be part of a fellowship of believers and live in community
together. This is church.
We do community together. We do life together, all growing
as Christians on this journey of discipleship.
Let's bow our heads and close our eyes.
Here in this moment, let's let's have a minute to simply look
inwards for a second and to see what specific takeaways God
would have for you. Do not try to go out and apply
every single thing, But is there one specific thing that God has
laid on your heart this morning? Hey, I need to grow in this
area. Let's examine our hearts for a
moment. God, we thank you.
We thank you be that because of what happened on the Day of
Pentecost when the Holy Spirit came down to permanently indwell
Christ Followers, we thank you that now we have your presence
within us. May we always be diligent to
walk in the power of the Holy Spirit, moving and working in
US. Engaged with with your teaching.
Engaged with fellowship with the body, Engaged with breaking of
bread and remembering your sacrifice on the cross.
Engaged with prayer, strengthening our relationship
with you, Holy Spirit. Would you just continue to move
in each of us, grow us in our faith, and may we be diligence
because of your grace. May we be diligent to to walk
out this faith in a way that is compelling to the world.
So we surrender these things to you.
It's in Jesus name we pray. Amen.