Spirit-Transformed Lives: Part 2

We will be in Acts Chapter 2 this morning.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

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

Acts 2 · chapter mention

chapter 2. If you're able, would you please

stand with us as we read from the word Acts 2, verses 42

Acts 2:42–47

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?

Hebrews 10:24–25

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.

Deuteronomy 6 · chapter mention

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.