“What are you doing… and why?”

“Digging Deeper”
An opportunity for you to continue your study of God’s Word throughout the week…

MONDAY
“What are you doing… and why?”

Acts 2:42
And they DEVOTED themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.

A lot happens in the book of Acts. Just before today’s verse, Luke described the coming of the Holy Spirit and Peter’s sermon that resulted in 3000 people being added to the early church. The book of Acts is full of first time events:

• The first coming of the Spirit and Christian preaching (chap. 2)
• The first Christian Church (chap. 2)
• The first resistance to Christianity (chap. 4)
• The first persecution (chap. 4)
• The first prayer meeting (chap. 4) and sin in the Church (chap. 5)
• The first Church problem (chap. 6) and first martyr (chap. 7)
• The first Church extension (chap. 8)
• The first Gentile Church and Church Council (chap. 11).
• The first missionary and missionary methods (chaps. 13, 14)
• The first Church disagreement (chap. 15)
• The first Church in Europe (chap. 16)
• The first address to Christian ministers (chap. 20)

We think our lives today are busy but the early church was surrounded with constant activity and change. Luke wants his readers to know that these 3000 plus new Christians were “DEVOTED” to four landmark activities. It is unlikely that they did these things because they felt like they had to out of obligation. Rather, they probably saw these activities as new opportunities to do things they never could before.

Devotion to these spiritual activities is what uniquely defines both the early church in the book of Acts and the church today. Consider this… the church today should DEVOTE itself to these activities both individually and corporately. We should guard against ever replacing them with other activities in the hope of drawing a larger crowd.

As we look at each of these four activities over the next week, remember that devotion is a matter of conviction and passion… not obligation and guilt. We should find this four-fold passion in our lives. This passion should be driven by an attitude of “I GET TO” not “I HAVE TO”. What are you passionate about?

CONSIDER THIS: Our devotion to God is a “GET TO” not a “HAVE TO”.