Christian Fellowship

(upbeat music)

- We do have amazing dads at Springhouse.

That is for certain.

Well, guys, hello, good morning.

Boy, it's a good day to be here.

It's been a good day.

It's been a real rich morning so far,

and I echo Pastor Allen, if you're joining us on livestream.

We wish you were here,

but I'm glad that we have livestreamed

as a way for you to join us today.

Guys, we're gonna continue in our series,

His Church, this morning.

One of the greatest gifts that we have here at Springhouse

is we have a plethora of really anointed,

great speakers here,

just people that the Lord has really given a gift

of speaking, and all of our pastoral team

really carry that gift,

and you're gonna hear from all of our pastors

at some point this year.

I know that traditionally you're used to hearing

either myself or Justin or Barbie or Ronnie,

but all of our pastoral team carry a gift of teaching,

and all of them will be speaking throughout the year,

and today we're in for a special treat.

I am super excited.

I've gotten to sit through the Word once,

and I cannot wait to glean and receive from it again today,

this morning, with you guys.

Would you guys welcome our worship pastor,

Pastor Jonathan Grisham.

(congregation applauding)

- Oh, I thought you were gonna go first.

- I was about to say,

I hope you're not carrying your own table out here.

He carries the table out faithfully for me every week.

- Well, I thought about this.

I thought I could do that and just kinda look around,

but I didn't wanna be struggling for breath

while I was in my opening bit here, so.

Happy Father's Day.

How about this?

Let's stand together and read the Word.

They devoted themselves to the apostles' teaching

and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread, and to prayer.

Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders

and signs performed by the apostles.

All the believers were together

and had everything in common.

They sold property and possessions

to give to anyone who had need.

Every day they continued to meet together

in the temple courts.

They broke bread in their homes

and ate together with glad and sincere hearts,

praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people,

and the Lord added to their number daily

those who were being saved.

Father God, I thank you that you are a God of fellowship,

Lord, and I thank you that through the obedience

of your Son, Jesus Christ,

we have been reconciled into fellowship with you.

Holy Spirit, we pray for a deeper understanding

of your Word today, and Father, by your grace,

we pray for deeper devotion into fellowship

because you say it's worth devoting our lives to.

In Jesus' name, you may be seated.

Okay, so I gotta ask,

who went on the whitewater rafting trip?

Yeah, okay, and you're all still here.

This is really good.

Last year there were some close calls I heard,

and I thought, that's gonna be a tough one to explain

if I'm talking on fellowship

and a portion of our fellowship doesn't make it

because of extreme fellowshipping.

I don't know how I'm gonna do that.

So I'm glad that you're all here.

So these verses right here I first started handling

back in October of last year.

I was asked to preside over communion,

and I used it in my fourth week of teaching there

because when I came across it,

I was just really moved by the early church devotion

to what they call the breaking of bread,

and I don't think that that's simply

just coming together over a meal.

It has all that symbolism of what Christ did at the table.

So when I refer to that,

I'm gonna say that that's a devotion to communion,

his body and blood and reflecting on that.

And I felt very strongly at that time

that the Holy Spirit told me, hang on to these verses,

pay attention to them and apply them,

and it's really gonna change your life going forward.

So that's something I've been intentional to do,

and it's just very simple.

You hold your life up side by side with these scriptures,

and we should do this often, and say,

does my life reflect one that is devoted

to these four simple things?

And in some ways it was like, I'm doing okay,

but specifically around fellowship,

I was like, I don't know there.

And I intentionally say it's an everyday thing

because the word devotion in Greek

is to give constant attention to a thing.

The literal translation is they continually

devoted themselves, so every morning when they wake up,

somehow they've got it at the priority thought

when they wake up, and they're carrying it with them

through their day.

And sometime at the beginning of this year

as the Lord was revealing these things to me,

giving me revelation, I went to Pastor Kevin

and I shared what God was doing,

specifically around fellowship, and I was just like,

ah, you know, I've gotta restructure all these things,

and I had no idea we were gonna be teaching on it

later in the year, and he said, well,

you should teach on it.

And I thought, well, that's the last time I trust him

with any revelation that the Lord has given me.

'Cause look now, here I am.

(congregation laughing)

And when I was asked to teach on fellowship,

he asked me to answer two questions

specifically this morning.

What does a thriving Christian fellowship really look like,

and who is at the center of it all?

So I'm gonna start with the second one

'cause I think it's easy and I think we all know it.

Who's at the center of it?

That's good, okay.

It's the Children's Church answer.

Okay, we can go, we're good, we're early,

we can go to lunch.

No.

(congregation laughing)

Okay, so when I first started looking at these scriptures,

I told you I was just blown away

by this early church model here of devotion

to what is just, it's so simple.

The apostles teaching, I'll call it the word of God,

fellowship, communion, and prayer.

And out of that devotion flows signs and wonders.

Everything had every, everyone had everything in common.

That wouldn't have worked.

Meaning they were selling personal belongings

every need within the body was filled.

They enjoyed favor, and most importantly,

salvations were happening and the church was growing.

I think we all carry this desire inside of us

for people to know Christ the way we know Christ.

So I kinda just thought, well, that sounds pretty simple.

If we can just all come together as the body of Christ

and just devote our time, devote our resources, our thoughts

and prioritize those four things,

then we'll see more salvations.

Unfortunately, that kinda puts us

in the driver's seat of it all.

And Pastor Kevin had mentioned

regarding something several weeks ago,

we don't wanna get to the end of anything

and look back and go, look what we have built.

Because that thing's probably gonna fall away.

It is gonna fall away, that's the truth.

We wanna look back and go, look what God has built

and look how he used us through it.

And that's the testimony.

And that's confirmed in scripture

at the end of Acts 2, 47,

or at the end of Acts 2 in verse 47.

Yes, there was this devotion.

Yes, all these things flowed out.

There was need fulfilled.

There was favor in the community.

But at the end of it, the Lord added to their number daily

those who were being saved.

The expansion of God's kingdom

is a sovereign act of God's grace.

So the believers here in Acts, the early church,

they were not operating using methods or models or metrics.

This was just a natural response that was coming out of them

because their debt had been paid by Christ.

And they were operating as what I'll call

the Jubilee people of God,

and they were forgiving debts

because their debt had been paid.

So it's this natural response out of us

for what God has done.

It's a natural response to represent

the kingdom of God on earth.

So since ultimately he is the one

that draws all people to himself,

we will say that God is the beginning of our fellowship,

the center of our fellowship,

and the purpose of our fellowship.

With the expansion of his kingdom

being a sovereign act of grace,

it's by the same grace that he chooses to use

the unity of his believers in fellowship

to actually reveal himself as the son of God to the world.

There's a great passage of scripture in John 17,

17 through 21, I'm gonna read it over you.

Pastor Justin mentioned several weeks ago

or maybe a month ago,

that it's actually a prayer that Jesus prays

that's incredible because he prays it

on behalf of the disciples and every single one of us

sitting in this room and every single person

who would come to believe in him through their word.

Sanctify them in the truth, your word is truth.

As you sent me into the world,

so have I sent them into the world.

And for their sake, I consecrate myself

that they also may be sanctified in truth.

I do not ask for these only, meaning the disciples,

but also for those who will believe in me through their word

and they may all be one just as you, Father in me,

I in you and they also may be in us.

So you have that shared fellowship, that share in Christ,

so that the world may believe that you have sent me.

When I was 21 years old,

I was probably walking through

the darkest period of my life.

I was struggling with sin, struggling with alcohol,

lots of friction with friendships and family relationships

and everything like that.

And during that time, I actually had a friend get saved

and invite me to a Bible study and it was on music row,

it was only for musicians.

It was led by this guy named Brian Simpson,

but this friend of mine is actually somebody

I kind of got crossways with during this time.

So I really didn't want anything to do with him.

And I certainly didn't want anything to do with God.

I wanted to go about living my life how I wanted to live it.

So I just continued on that path, that trajectory.

And it was doing this the whole time, six or seven months,

spiraling down till I hit my lowest point.

And I had some friends post online that they had this cabin,

they wanted to do a weekend trip,

so they needed somebody to watch it.

And I thought, that sounds really nice.

I'm gonna offer to do that.

Maybe I'll, you know, there'll be some peace there.

I can kind of collect my thoughts

and get back on with my life.

So I reached out to them and said,

"Hey, I love to do this."

And they said, "Great, there's just one catch."

And they told me they recently acquired some chickens

so that they could start harvesting their own eggs.

I'm not making this up.

And I said, so they told me,

"But one of the chickens was absolutely deathly ill

"and was actually living in a cage in the cabin

"and had to be given medicine three times a day."

And I was like, okay, you know,

like that kind of takes away the peace of it all.

But I think I can get behind this

if I can just give them some medicine

a couple of times a day, put them in the cage.

So I agree to do it.

And I go there and I give this sick chicken medicine

for 24 hours.

And I told you going into this, I was at my lowest point.

It turns out there is a lower point than that.

And what it looks like is me all alone in isolation

in a cabin with this sick chicken.

That's what it looks like.

Now,

(congregation laughing)

I did not pray in this moment.

I did not have like a spiritual awakening

or anything like that.

I simply thought, God help, that was it.

And that night I went to sleep

and I had a vivid dream of the peace of God

just touching all of those broken places in my life.

And I got a phone call in the dream

and on the caller ID it said, Brian Simpson,

which is a name that I had not heard

for six or seven months that amount of time.

I don't dream often.

I don't remember dreams often, but I remember this one.

And I woke up and I knew that God was telling me,

if you want to feel that peace in your real life

and really touch those places, you will find Brian Simpson.

So I contact my friend.

I say, hey, what's the information?

I need to go to this Bible study.

And I go and I get there and I wanna blend in.

I don't want them to know that I'm not saved or anything.

So I'm just, they're doing this worship thing

and they sit down and they go over the word.

And Brian Simpson said,

I guess it was the start of a new series.

And he said, I feel like the Lord is leading me

to do a study on prayer, just this simple thing.

And everybody in there, 15, 20 men

had been following the Lord for like over a year.

I don't think anybody needed to hear a Bible study on prayer

except for me during that time.

And it's like, okay, I think we need to come to a place

in our maturity where we realize that the kingdom of God

doesn't revolve around us as individuals.

They could have gone up to him and said,

well, I'm not getting anything out of that sermon

or whatever, but instead they were submitted to it.

And I really think that the Lord was using that for me.

I applied it in my life every day when I went home,

I read the scriptures.

And as it says in Acts 2, after Peter gives his sermon,

it says that they were cut to the heart.

And that's what was happening to me.

So I get maybe two or three Bible study sessions in

and I get there and Brian opens the floor for testimony

and prayer requests or whatever.

And I'm immediately on his left

and he starts one guy after me

and it goes around this whole room.

So I'm the last and everybody that knows me

knows that I love talking in front of people.

But so I just begin to share

and I get maybe two or three words out

before I just explode in this puddle of tears and snot

and whatever else was in there.

And those guys led me to the Lord right there

in that Bible study that day.

And looking back on it,

really all I see are some people that came together

in devotion to those four simple things.

They came together to read the word of God,

to be in fellowship with one another,

to celebrate the body and blood of Christ

and to pray together.

And what it was doing,

it was actually revealing the kingdom of God to me.

They were carrying the peace

that I experienced in the dream.

And I knew, well, whatever, however they've got that,

that's what I want.

And I began to pursue that.

So quite simply, they just existed

to reveal the kingdom of God.

And you see that in there.

The word fellowship used in Acts two

comes from the Greek word koinonia.

It refers to the intimate bond of fellowship,

which unites Christians.

And the ESV translation says,

they devoted themselves to the fellowship.

So they're not devoted to the idea of fellowship,

but they're actually devoted to the people

who have a share in Christ with them.

So you cannot be in biblical fellowship

with people who have no share in Christ.

You can be in friendship with them, no problem.

But that kind of brings us to this conclusion

that fellowship is something more than friendship.

Like many words in our language,

it doesn't carry the full weight and purpose

that it used to either from misuse or overuse

or whatever it is.

So it's more than a meeting hall.

It's more than a hangout.

It's more than a potluck.

And as I said, it's even more than friendship.

All of those things simply exist as vehicles

to get us into deeper fellowship with each other.

And for the early church believers here,

their context was persecution.

That's the world they were living in.

So for them, it worked out more as family

than it did friends.

It worked out as a means to persevere

towards this unified goal

of establishing the kingdom of God on earth.

And this idea of fellowship as family

tends to push against our culture of individualism.

We're all about me and Jesus, my walk with Jesus,

our personal family units, all that kind of stuff.

We have sayings on shirts, please don't be offended,

that says all I need is coffee and Jesus.

Who has that shirt?

No, I'm just kidding.

(congregation laughing)

It's okay.

We have to add more.

All we need is Jesus, right?

Okay, but still we need to add more to that list

'cause Jesus actually, the scripture tells us

that he has designed us for each other,

to need each other, to work in a group, to work as a flock.

We see it in scripture when God says,

in some of his earliest words,

it's not good for man to be alone.

And I thought about this a couple of days ago

that the story of the man or the shepherd

going after the one and leaving the 99,

I often thought of that like, okay, he's going after the one

and he's bringing the one back to himself.

But no, he's not abandoning the 99.

He's bringing the one back to himself and the 99

because we're sheep, we're a flock,

that's how we are designed to function.

So there's certainly an individual devotion

to the word of God and to all of these things

that we should celebrate.

But we really see in Acts more often than not

in the book of the Bible, in the whole Bible

that the corporate example of family

works those things out together.

When I see the early church devoted to the word of God

and communion, I see a people that are Christ-centered.

And when they're devoted to fellowship,

which is a share, others who have a share in Christ,

and prayer, and the way prayer,

you see that work out in the book of Acts,

is they go out and preach the word, the gospel boldly,

they come back to their fellowship,

they pray that they'll be filled with the Holy Spirit

so they can go back out with boldness.

So they're actually praying for each other.

So when they're devoted to fellowship and prayer,

I see a people that are others-focused.

So a thriving Christian fellowship will be Christ-centered

and others-focused.

If the 12 disciples or the 120 or the first 3,000 believers

only cared about their personal relationship with Christ

and getting into heaven,

I don't think any of us would be here today.

Here are some, if you just, I encourage you,

when you're sitting down with your Bible app

or you go online for the Bible,

just Google search fellowship or share in Christ,

and you'll just have all these cross-references

of how this plays out in Scripture.

But here's some Scripture I just wanna read for you.

Hebrews 10, 24 through 25.

Let us consider how we may spur one another on

toward love and good deeds,

not giving up meeting together

as some are in the habit of doing,

but encouraging one another

all the more as you see the day approaching.

So our fellowship actually exists to encourage each other

and spur each other on towards love and good deeds.

Hebrews 3, 12 through 14.

See to it, brothers and sisters,

that none of you has a sinful heart,

unbelieving heart that turns away from the living God.

Encourage one another daily,

as long as it's called the day,

so that none of you may be hardened

by sin's deceitfulness.

We have come to share in Christ

if indeed we hold our conviction firmly to the end.

So our fellowship exists to help each other persevere

and keep our conviction and faith to the very end.

In Acts 2, 45, they sold property and possessions

to give to anyone who had need.

So our fellowship exists to help others who have need.

When I was planning my day a couple months ago,

I like to use a checklist app.

Every morning I put in my to-do list

and I kind of go through it during the day.

And I knew after work, I wanted to go to the gym

and walk a couple miles.

I wanted to go to the library, drop some books off

and get home and grill some burgers for my family.

So go through my workday and I head to the gym.

And my goal on the checklist, don't laugh at me,

for all of you really fit people was to walk two miles.

So I get on there and I just press go and I start going.

And after 25 minutes, this machine goes into cool down mode

and it slows way down.

And I had forgotten that if you don't tell it,

I wanna walk two miles or 40 minutes or whatever,

goes into cool down mode after 25 minutes

and it shuts off completely after 30 minutes.

So I bring the speed back up.

I had only walked like a mile and a half,

bring the speed up and after five minutes, it shuts down.

I still had like a quarter mile to go.

And a normal person would get back on the treadmill,

start it back up, finish that quarter mile

and just know in your heart that you did it.

But the way I'm wired, it's like,

if it doesn't say two miles, I just feel incomplete.

I feel weird about it and just I was frustrated

and I was like, whatever,

I'll go ahead and head to the library.

So I go to the library and as I'm walking in,

Pastor Wayne is walking out and he's a little sad.

And he says, I'm so happy to see you, I just need a hug.

So I give him a hug and I'm like, what's wrong?

Did you read all the books already or what?

(congregation laughing)

And he was like, no.

He told me when he was leaving for the day,

he put a book on top of his car and he forgot about it

and drove off and it flew off.

But more importantly, there was a bookmark inside of it

that was sentimental.

Somebody very dear to him had made it maybe 15 years ago

out of these materials from India.

And I was like, oh, I'm sorry, gave him a hug.

He went on his way and I dropped my books off,

got in my car and I thought,

I have two ways that I can go home from the library.

I can go down Enon Springs or I can go down Hazelwood.

Enon Springs is about 10 minutes faster for me to get home,

to get home to my family.

But I'm in fellowship with Pastor Wayne.

He's been to my house multiple times,

I've been to his house multiple times.

And I know that the fastest point

between his house and the library is probably Hazelwood.

So I decide I'm gonna go down Hazelwood

just to see if I could be like a hero or something

and find this thing.

So I go down Hazelwood, it's like no luck at first.

And then all of a sudden I pass this book

on the side of the road

and I see stuff on the side of the road all the time.

So I'm not certain it's his, but as I'm driving by,

I see the most colorful bookmark I think I've ever seen.

And if you know Pastor Wayne, he is a colorful individual.

And I know that that's his immediately.

So I pull in there and it's real awkward

'cause a family's actually trying to get out

of the driveway that I pull into.

And I run, I kind of run into the road and grab the book

and I'm sorry, I've repented for this.

I didn't know what to say.

I was so excited.

I said, "Drop my book."

And I got in the car, drove away.

And I get to Pastor Wayne's house

and we just spend maybe 10 minutes rejoicing

at what the Lord just did.

He's like, "I didn't have to pray for this.

"God's favor and providence and blah, blah, blah, blah."

And I'm just like, "I know."

And then I was on the treadmill and it didn't work.

And turns out God had a better plan all along.

This is real stuff.

(congregation applauding)

And the dynamics of fellowship I see in that, very simple.

Pastor Wayne was honest about a need that he had.

And I know him and he was not gonna be wrecked by this.

His life versus be content with any and all circumstances.

He's not gonna be wrecked by that.

But then there's me and I actually want to help him.

I want to put aside my stuff for a while

and go, "I'm gonna go down that road with you.

"I'm gonna put a different set of eyes

"on that situation with you maybe because I want to help."

And what I see in the book of Acts is much more than that.

So the question is, are we willing to be faithful

in helping others if God asks us to sell our property?

Sell possessions?

That doesn't sound like there's,

that's kind of no limit to what we'll do for others.

Father Ray Cash came and spoke several weeks ago

and as he shared, he said something that stuck with me.

Probably he didn't even intend it this way.

He said, "If you wanna learn how to pray,

"then start praying."

And that's been something that I've kind of applied

for several months incidentally through fellowship.

So as you begin to define what being devoted

to the word of God and being devoted to the fellowship

and communion and prayer looks like in your life,

you will also start to refine what it looks like

based on what you see in scripture.

So my wife, Brittany and I,

we invited people over to our house and they would leave

and I would just kind of go, okay, I failed to ask them

if they needed prayer for anything.

I failed to encourage anybody.

We had a great time, but I didn't spur them on towards love

or any of that stuff.

So I'm gonna get better at that.

So you start to refine what it looks like.

Many of you in this congregation have been my test subjects

without knowing it.

I found this out.

If you really wanna freak somebody out

and you come to church on Sunday, you say,

"Hey, how are you doing?"

And they say, "Fine or great."

You just look them dead in their face and you say,

"How are you really doing?"

And they'll, I've been in some conversations

where somebody told me they were doing fine.

Turns out they were not doing fine.

And they needed prayer right then and there.

But it's that first question is almost a bit of a throwaway.

So my challenge is let's go deeper.

Let's actually mean it when we ask those things.

Let's be forthcoming with what we're actually walking

through so we can rejoice in the Lord together

when he answers that.

Acts 2 46 says, "Every day they continued to meet together

in the temple courts.

They broke bread in their homes and ate together

with glad and sincere hearts."

And I believe that there's this literal kind of pattern

of them going to the temple and going to their homes

and inviting people into their homes.

But there's also symbolism in that.

In your homes is, your home is a sacred place

that not a lot of people get access to.

So it's really inviting people into your life.

When you invite somebody into your home,

they will automatically know more about you

than when they got there.

Like if you come over to me and my wife's house,

you will know that we are not alone

just by the sheer volume of noise

that two little toddlers can create

or the chaos of toys that we tried our best to hide.

You will know more about us.

So start inviting each other into your homes,

into your lives.

Let each other know your needs, your prayer requests.

And inevitably as you walk that out,

if you haven't already noticed,

if you haven't already found this out,

we are a fellowship of imperfect people

serving a perfect God.

In this fellowship or any fellowship

you've been called to at some point,

somebody's gonna say something you don't agree with.

Somebody might do something you don't agree with

or you get crossways with them.

And I'm here to tell you that doesn't have to affect

our unity around what actually matters.

In Acts 6, flowing out of this,

they're selling everything and no one has a need.

Flowing out of that in Acts 6,

there's a daily distribution of food

that's going out to widows.

But it turns out it's not going out equally.

So some men bring a complaint to the apostles

and say, hey, this is happening.

And they say, okay, this is what we're gonna do.

We're gonna appoint seven men full of the Spirit

and full of wisdom and they're gonna oversee this

so that we can get to the main thing,

which is prayer and the ministry of the word of God.

They weren't dismissive of the issues.

They simply course corrected and moved forward

towards the main thing, towards the main cause

that they've been entrusted with.

When I was attending Springhouse, I was maybe,

it was right when I first started attending,

they used to do this thing here where after the first song,

they would ask people to go and greet somebody

that they didn't know.

And as an introvert, this is the most horrifying moment

of the entire service.

For me, it was a good opportunity to go to the restroom

or best case scenario, I'm grabbing the hand of somebody

I very much know and I'm holding on.

And I'm like, I don't wanna deal with anybody else.

But you hear these stories of first time visitors come in

and nobody says hi to them and they get disheartened

and they don't come back.

And I was like, God, I don't wanna be the reason

that that happened.

So I'll never forget one morning I woke up

and I was passionate that I was gonna come to church

and be not myself, I was gonna be an extrovert

and I was gonna be the reason that somebody stayed

at Springhouse because I said hi to them

during this moment.

I was gonna make sure of it, I was all fired up.

The first song was happening and this sounds bad

for the worship pastor to say,

but I was not worshiping at that time.

I was looking for my target in the room.

Who's it gonna be?

And I remember because it was traumatic,

he was sitting right over here in this section in the middle

and they released us to go greet somebody

and I beelined it to him.

I said, hey, how you doing?

I'm Jonathan, so good to meet you.

Are you a first time visitor?

He said, no, I've been going here about nine years.

(congregation laughing)

He laughed, I died on the inside, went back to my seat.

But I'm not, but I'm gonna still pursue fellowship

because it's what God said is the right thing.

I'm not gonna let my mess up

affect how I walk out the word.

I'm just gonna course correct.

So I no longer say, are you a first time visitor?

When I'm about to go talk to somebody, I practice

and I say, how long have you been coming to Springhouse?

How long have you been coming to Springhouse?

I really think about it.

(congregation laughing)

Worship team, can you come on out?

Let me go to my spot, no.

So if none of that stuff has to affect our unity,

a thriving Christian fellowship will be unified

in its mission.

In order to be unified in our mission,

we have to actually know what our mission is.

In Acts one, it says that after 40 days of Jesus

teaching the disciples about the kingdom of God,

that the first thing they asked him is,

are you gonna restore the kingdom to Israel now?

And he's, I just imagine the disappointment.

Like, have you heard anything that I've said for 40 days?

Kingdom of God, kingdom to Israel.

And I don't wanna kind of rush in

and say that they had it all wrong.

There's a great teaching.

I encourage you to get a book.

If you like a book, Acts for Everyone by N.T. Wright,

or you can YouTube search Acts N.T. Wright.

It's a 29 series video.

And it's kind of say, okay,

two thirds of our Bible is about this chosen people of God.

So maybe we don't wanna throw out

those promises or whatever.

So maybe the best way to say it is,

yes, he's gonna do that,

but he's also gonna do so much more than that.

Their view of it was just a little bit too narrow.

It's not gonna look how you thought it would look.

It won't happen the way you think it should.

It won't happen as quickly as you think it should.

And guess what?

You're gonna have to share in my persecution.

You're gonna have to share in my sufferings.

So what will it look like?

How will it happen?

Acts 1, eight, Jesus says,

"You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you,

"and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem

"and all of Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth."

So the mission of our fellowship is to establish

the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven

by the presence and the power of the Holy Spirit.

And when Jesus ascended to the right hand of God,

you gotta go read this in Acts 1,

when he ascends to the right hand through the clouds,

it says that the disciples just look intently

into the clouds.

And we don't know how long,

but it must have been pretty long

because two men dressed in white appeared out of nowhere

and said in Acts 1, 11,

"Men of Galilee, why do you stand here looking into the sky?

"This same Jesus who has been taken from you into heaven

"will come back the same way

"that you have seen him go into heaven."

And I connect with that.

We as the church, as believers,

have this same longing to see Jesus again.

We wanna be with him or we want him to come back.

We wanna be with him because we know there's no more tears,

there's no more pain.

I'll finally have abs.

Maybe, I don't know.

That was an inappropriate moment to say that.

I feel that now, but I can't go back.

(congregation laughing)

We want him to come again so he fixes this whole mess.

But we gotta do something with the next 24 hours,

six months, 10 years, 80 years,

1,000 years until that happens.

So what we see in Acts 1 is a couple guys going,

"Hey, wake up, let's focus.

"We've got a mission."

(gentle music)

I guess that's what I'm saying today.

Let's look forward to our purpose as a fellowship,

as the body of Christ,

to establish the kingdom of God on earth,

preach the gospel of his kingdom,

and fill the earth with his glory.

They were devoted to the word of God,

not because it's a guide to show us

how to live in heaven one day,

but because it shows us and teaches us

how to live on earth as it is in heaven.

And they were devoted to fellowship

because the mission is way too much

for us to carry by ourselves.

Church, will you stand with me?

Will those who are gonna pray please come forward?

The altar space is open, as always, for prayer,

but I just wanna say a couple encouragements

based on the teaching in the book of Acts.

I encourage you to come forward today in prayer.

If God has called you here

and you want to go into deeper fellowship with him,

any one of these people down here will lead you there.

I encourage you to come forward for prayer.

If you have a need in your life

that we can partner with you in or encourage you in

so that we can get on with our mission,

and I encourage you to come forward

if you would like to receive.

In Acts 2, there's a baptism of the Holy Spirit

that happens, but as you read through Acts,

they come together and then they pray for a filling

or a refilling of the Holy Spirit to happen

so that they can walk out their mission with boldness.

So if you want that today, if you want to come down

and pray for a filling or a refilling of the Holy Spirit,

please come as we lead you.

[MUSIC PLAYING]