Each day this week we're going to break down one of the verses from Sunday's Scripture Acts 2:42-47.  Here's today's verses:   ⁴²All the believers devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching, and to fellowship, and to sharing in meals (including the Lord’s Supper), and to prayer. The two key words are ALL and DEVOTED. 

I've been thinking about those words for the past several weeks, since I started working on the message for yesterday.  ALL--every, single one.  DEVOTED--committed, gave themselves fully.  When a group of people--any group of people--ALL DEVOTE THEMSELVES to anything, incredible results ensue.  We need only go back to Genesis 11 and the tower of Babel episode to recognize that when human beings put our minds and energy to something we can accomplish great things.  The key, though is to devote ourselves to God's purposes, because getting great results at something not worth doing, from God's perspective can end up getting us in trouble.  (Just read the end of the tower of Babel account in Genesis 11.)

So, we can be sure that what the early church  did was worth doing from God's perspective, because the end result was explosive growth in His Church.  Their activities included: Bible study, fellowship, eating meals together including the Lord's Supper and prayer.  All those activities seem "normal" for Christian growth, but one:  eating meals together including the Lord's Supper.  I focused on that in Sunday's message, because that activity is one that takes added effort to do--TOGETHER.  It takes intentionality.  It's easier to do things by ourselves, but what's easy seldom builds our faith, and usually doesn't build community.  At the same time, we all eat every day, so taking a little extra time to plan to include another family or couple of families in that activity isn't all that hard--except for everyone scheduling to be at the same place at the same time. 

Is it worth it to invest our time in doing what the early church did?  Since they transformed the known world of their day, it definitely is!  As I said in worship on Sunday the key is to do ONE thing differently that will increase our living together in loving community as God intends.  What one thing have you done so far this week, or are you going to do before the week is over?  Remember information-application=information.  Information+application=transformation!

Let's pray:  Heavenly Father, Thank You for calling us together as Your Church.  Fill us with Your Holy Spirit that we will have the wisdom and power to DO what You call us to do to grow in our faith and in community.  This we pray in Jesus' name. Amen.