devoting ourselves

The Believers Form a Community:

“All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer.” Acts 2:42 ( The Message)

I’ve often wondered what makes for a great, growing Church. The answer was under my nose. I had read Acts 2 many times but had failed to see V42 in the right light. All believers, that is you and I DEVOTED THEMSELVES.

No need for some hyper talk: motivating the troops at the local Church from the top down. No, the zeal for God’s house come from the grass roots, up. It comes from everyday believers… They had a solid, God centered devotion. They gave, served, loved, listened to sermons, enjoyed all types of worship, cared for all people, brought friends to Jesus Christ, simply out of personal devotion.

The Church across the centuries, has ensured a sickening version of spiritual codependency, whereby the saints and the leadership are utterly dependent upon themselves for self-worth, self-esteem and approval.

As long as “ I get my follow-up” I am happy. The problem with this is that no where in the bible will you see directly or indirectly implied that we must follow up people. Rather Jesus said, follow me…

If we point people to become more and more DEVOTED to God and centered around Him for all our needs, we will see :

1.    Stronger and mature worshippers

2.    less dependency of leaders for meeting our needs

3.    greater desire to serve the local Church

4.    greater love for others

5.    greater joy, satisfaction and happiness as a result of being “other-focused”

Let us learn from the first Church the art of DEVOTING OURSELVES once again as they did.

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