The Book Of Acts | Growing Pains (August 30th, 2020) - Mike Armstrong

Alright, well, good morning, church.

If you would uh turn in your Bibles to Acts chapter six.

Now, as you're getting yourself turned there, uh earlier this week, Angie and I uh we were up one morning when we heard our son Wyatt uh coming down the stairs.

You know how you can hear, you can tell which one of it is of your kids that it is, or someone in your family based on their cadence and how loudly they stomp and that type of thing.

Well, uh, we knew that it was Wyatt, but he was coming down the stairs differently than he normally would, in the sense that it was much more slow and it was labored, and he was pausing it at a number of stairs on the way down.

So when he got to the bottom and he came around the corner, we were asking him, hey man, like what's up?

Are you all right?

And he said, Um, yeah, my foot is is killing me.

And immediately I'm thinking through, well, did you you know twist your ankle, kicking a ball, or riding your bike, or doing something like that?

And he said, No, it's it's growing pains.

Now, maybe you remember uh growing pains from when you were that age.

It got me thinking about uh when I was in grade six, and uh I experienced severe growing pains in my feet as well.

I was this, I mean, just picture you know, little four and a half foot mic with uh the same size head that I have now and the same size feet that I had now.

It was a miracle of physics that I was even able to stand uh upright.

Uh but I remember it got so bad that that I actually had to withdraw from a track and field race at one point because I was in so much pain and and I couldn't even, I could hardly even walk, let alone run.

Now, growing pains, right?

They are certainly uncomfortable, they are painful, they are uh very restrictive on us when we go through that, but at the same time, uh they're also a good sign that growth is happening.

As frustrating as it might be for a kid to not be able to do all the things that he would want to do as a kid running around, uh it's also kind of exciting to know that you're growing, right?

That you're getting bigger and that you are getting stronger.

I mean, that is just a good thing.

That's a healthy thing, even.

Now, I say all of that because uh growing pains are a natural part of life for any healthy church body as well.

And I think it's just so important that you and I learn to view growing pains as an opportunity for greater health and greater effectiveness as the body of Christ.

Again, I think it's just so important that we that we understand that and say that because it can be so easy to think of growing pains in the life of a church uh in purely negative terms.

As though it's a bad sign only, as though growing pains are what you would see in an healthy church, an unhealthy church, but not in a healthy church.

You would never see it there.

And I think we can be tempted to think that way sometimes, uh especially when you hear comments about a church, or maybe you've said them or or thought them yourself, things like, hey, we're we're just not as effective as we should be in this or that area, you know, or or this important aspect of ministry is being neglected or overlooked, or or why aren't people here better at fill in the blank?

And I think it'd be very easy for us to get down on and get negative and even be sinfully critical at times about what's happening in a local church.

Okay, but what I find so encouraging for us to see here today, it's encouraged me this week, is that even the very first church ever, okay, and in the book of Acts, the one that we've been looking at all this time, okay, which we know was healthy and strong in a bunch of areas, in leadership and in caring for people, uh in faithfulness.

They were faithful in the gospel and standing firm in the face of persecution, right?

As strong as they were, it's I think helpful for us to see that they still had a ways to go in a few other areas.

They messed some things up.

They bothered people and people got upset and not everything was done super well.

Okay, but those moments where their imperfections became extremely obvious, they sought to learn.

They sought to grow from it and and and work through the pain of that and get to a better place.

And I just think there's some really great things here in this text that can be really helpful for us as a church for sure.

And so I want to read this, follow along with me, the first seven verses of Acts chapter six.

It says, Now in these days, when the disciples were increasing in number, a complaint by the Hellenists arose against the Hebrews because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

And the twelve summoned the full number of the disciples and said, It is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit, and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and the ministry of the Word.

And what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose Stephen, a man full of faith, and of the Holy Spirit, and Philip and Prochorus, and Nicanor, and Tim Timon, and Parmenus, and Nicholas, a proselyte of Antioch.

These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

And the word of God continued to increase, and the number of the disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

Lord, as we come before you, and we're aware of our own brokenness, we're aware of our own weakness.

We recognize that growing pains are a part of a church.

We see it here in Acts.

We see it in us.

God, be gracious, be merciful, we pray.

Give us a willingness to work through these things, give us the Spirit of God to give us the power to work through these things.

Encourage your church, edify your church today through the preaching of your word.

Glorify Jesus, we pray.

In your name.

Amen.

Alright, here's the first thing today: three points.

There will be growing pains in any healthy church.

So let's identify the weaknesses so they can be resolved.

Okay, so from last week we know that the apostles had basically shut down the advice and the threats of the council and said, no, we're gonna continue to preach Christ.

And so they were going into the temple to do that.

They were going from home to home, they were teaching and preaching that Christ is the Savior, which is exactly the message that our church is built on.

Jesus Christ came to save sinners.

That's you, that's me.

That's all of us.

Our sin is against God.

Our sin offends a holy God, which means we are deserving of God's wrath to be poured out on us, which is a terrifying and awful thing to think about.

And and to make it worse, there's nothing that we can do about it according to the scriptures.

None of our morality, none of our behavior is good enough.

It's all thoroughly and fully tainted.

And so God knew this, and in his grace and his mercy, he sent his son Jesus to pay the price that our sins deserve.

And if you and I, if we would trust that Jesus did that for us, he did it in our place, and we would confess our sin to him and believe that he is our Savior, we could be a Christ follower, we could be forgiven, we could be invited into the family of God.

And we would be, I would encourage and urge each one of you, if you have not yet done that, whether you're watching online or you're here in the room, to do that.

Turn your life over to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

This is the message that this church proclaimed, and the Lord used it and grew them and did all kinds of amazing things, as we're gonna see here, which really brings us to verse one.

Take a look.

It says, Now in these days when the disciples were increasing in number, okay, so what's that?

Well, you got you got a church that's that that's growing in size, which is an amazing thing.

People are getting saved, people are attending, they're they are getting plugged into the life of the church.

They're attending the temple, they're going into each other's homes, and they're enjoying meals and sharing belongings and all of that, meaning what?

Well, that good things are happening.

The Lord is at work.

But then notice here that at this very same time that great things are happening, there was, it says, a complaint, okay, a complaint by the Hellenists.

Now, who are the Hellenists?

Who are these people?

Well, Hellenists are Greek-speaking Jews, okay, Greek-speaking Jews who who lived outside of Palestine, meaning outside of Jerusalem and that immediate surrounding area.

They lived in the in the greater uh outskirts.

Okay, so these were were Jews who had gotten saved as the gospel began to spread out through the Holy Spirit and through the apostles.

And really all of this started back in Acts chapter 2.

Acts 2 · chapter mention

The Holy Spirit comes in power and and and and and rests on the apostles, and they go out and they speak in other languages in other tongues, and they spill out into the street to do that.

They're sharing about the mighty works of God, they're proclaiming the gospel.

Well, who happened to be there?

Well, it was people from all over who had who had traveled, who had journeyed into Jerusalem at Pentecost.

And so you've got these Greek-speaking Jews who were there, who heard this, who received the gospel, got saved, brought it out to where they lived.

The Lord kept multiplying, kept doing a great work.

More people were getting saved.

There was quite the collection of believers uh out there.

Okay, so it says there that a complaint by these Hellenists arose against the Hebrews.

Okay, who are the Hebrews?

Well, the Hebrews were were Jews who lived within Palestine, inside Jerusalem and the immediate surrounding area.

And they didn't speak Greek primarily, they spoke Aramaic mostly.

Okay, so so you've got the Greek-speaking Hellenists, you've got the the Aramaic-speaking Hebrews.

Okay, and and and these Hellenists, obviously, they've taken issue now with the Hebrews.

Okay, it says there that because their widows were being neglected in the daily distribution.

Okay, what's that all about?

Well, we looked at this just back in chapter four.

And you remember there were wealthier Christians among the church who had sold some of their properties, their fields, their houses, that type of thing, and they brought the funds, the resources from that, and laid it at the apostles' feet so that they could be distributed out among the believers and care for those who were in need.

Okay, so it appears that this church in Jerusalem had overlooked some of these Hellenist widows in their caring for the body of Christ.

Okay, now you might be thinking, well, like why?

Why would they do that?

Or how was this allowed to happen?

Okay, well, realize that it was likely a very unintentional thing.

We can gather that just based on the apostles' response to all of this, that we'll get to uh in a little bit here.

Okay, but it was likely unintentional.

It's probably, if you think about some of the possible reasons, um, due to the just the practical challenges of these groups of people speaking different languages.

You've got some who spoke Greek, some who spoke uh Aramaic.

There might have been things lost in translation as they were trying to care for the body.

You can imagine the difficulties with all of that.

On top of that, you've got the the challenge, the reality that the Hellenists they live further away.

And they were outside the uh the immediate view of these apostles and where the church was first started.

You think about travel in those days, it wasn't very easy, and getting supplies and stuff like that would have been more challenging.

It's not like today, where you and I can jump in a car and just in a few minutes we can be outside of York region and into Simcoe County, for example.

It would have been a lot different there.

Perhaps there was just this oversight of the apostles, you know, overwhelmed by the growing church happening within Jerusalem, that they had just lost sight of what was happening outside and they didn't even realize it was kind of an out of sight, out-of-mind thing.

But the reality is this this church is is growing, which is really exciting, but but proper care of these people was proving to be far too much of a challenge for the church to do effectively, and it's obvious that there were some people falling between the cracks here.

Now there's no re- uh no question here that the weakness of this church was brought to their attention and it was identified by way of a complaint, it says.

You see that word there in your text?

That word complaint means exactly what you would think it means.

It means to grumble, it means murmuring.

So obviously there were a number of people, the Hellenists, we're very happy about some things, and so they started to talk and whisper and kind of get upset about some things that were happening uh in you know uh among these believers.

Now, this passage, let's let's uh let's understand this here.

This passage doesn't condone that type of behavior.

Okay, it doesn't condone complaining.

Okay, you have to understand that this is a descriptive text, okay?

It's it's just simply describing what took place.

It's not saying, like, hey, if you want to see some things get done in the church, just complain about it.

It's not saying that uh at all.

And I can I can just say as a pastor, I mean I can't say that I I love hearing about a weakness in our church uh through complaining.

That's not something that I'm particularly excited about hearing, or whether it's complaining or grumbling or gossip or or slander, I think some of those things really can work to divide relationships and and they erode trust that needs to exist in order for community to grow and for us to love each other uh really well.

So again, I don't really love hearing all of that, but but all of that being said, okay, the the nugget here in this text, or even when I hear of a complaint, is that even if it kind of comes out wrongly or from from the wrong with the wrong attitude and the wrong spirit, okay, it can and often does reveal that something's not right in the church.

Something that needs to be addressed.

There's an issue there.

There's a weakness.

And that weakness is one that needs to be identified and resolved in some way so that the church can move ahead in greater health and in greater effectiveness and in more glory to God.

Now, I I know that I have spoken at length, I mean, even recently in sermons about the dangers of gossip and complaining and critical spirit and slander and the division and the disunity that happens about you know when a church gives in to those things.

I mean, the Lord speaks so passionately about unity, and we need to be a picture of that to a very divided world.

Okay, and so he's strong on that.

We should be strong on that uh as as well.

Okay, but what I've I've probably spoken much less about, and I think it's really good for you guys to hear this, are the times when I or our leadership, whatever, has been approached by somebody in the church in a really good way about about a perceived or maybe very real weakness uh in our body.

And where the heart of the person who's bringing this concern to us is it's coming from a good place.

It's coming from a genuine love for the people, a genuine love for our leadership and a desire to see this entire operation become more healthy and it's brought with a real concern for the glory of God, and that's what's at stake here, which is you think about that, that's amazing.

It's awesome that people would have that heart.

Now, I well, I kind of brace myself and even kind of laugh a little bit at the thought of all of this coming across as me giving you just the green light to just start pumping my inbox full of frustrations and complaints and weaknesses and all of that.

Listen, I I will say that learning my weaknesses as a pastor, as a person, or the weaknesses of our church, while certainly painful to have identified, it's like, oh man, yeah.

It's ultimately such a good thing to realize.

Right?

Why?

Well, so that these things can get resolved together.

One of my favorite phrases I use and I think about it quite often is feedback is the breakfast of champions.

We need to be willing to hear feedback.

That goes for all of us.

Why?

Well, so that our church can grow.

So that our church can work through these weaknesses and through these growing pains and get to a place where we're far more fruitful.

Where we become even healthier and stronger as a church.

Okay, so just a couple of encouragements and or maybe even instruction uh from me as your pastor to you, as you think about these things, and as maybe you have wrestled through some of your frustration even about some of the weaknesses that you see here in our church.

First of all, I would just really encourage you to start with prayer.

Have you prayed about this?

Have you brought this before the Lord?

I remember a guy that I went to church with years and years ago told me that he would, you know, he would walk around, he'd mingle with people in the church after the service, and from time to time you'd get into a conversation where somebody starts complaining, somebody starts criticizing a person or a situation or whatever in a church, and his move was to just be like, hold on a second, time out.

He would just put a stop to it right there and ask the question, hey, when was the last time you prayed about this?

When was the last time that you sought God's word about this thing?

And he said 99 times out of a hundred, the person's response would be like deer in the headlights, like, uh, like I don't have an answer for this.

Because they haven't prayed about it.

And they haven't sought God's word over these things.

And he would challenge them, go back and pray and really think about these things.

And if there's still a an issue and you really think that the Lord is in this, then come talk to me or go talk to the person that you have an issue with.

I think it's so important that we start with prayer because sometimes some of the things that we perceive as weaknesses or we're concerned about, or sometimes it's just more of a personal preference thing.

I wish it was more like this, but it's like that.

And like at the end of the day, it's not a right and wrong thing, it's more of a preference thing.

Is that something that we we need to get really fired up about and really have all kinds of negative conversations with about people?

Maybe not.

Perhaps it's that your attitude has gotten more sour uh than it should be.

And you really shouldn't be as upset, and it's really getting to you in a way that's just not healthy and not helpful to you and ultimately to anybody else.

Perhaps it's just become more of a consumerism thing for you.

You know, we've attended other churches, and you know, you've you've heard other preachers, and you've seen how churches do things, and and and we're so consumeristic in North America about all kinds of things, and it's crept into the church.

And, you know, my other church is more like this, or the other church I went to is more like that, and I wish that we were more like this, or I like that we're better than that church, and you just it's comparing and it's wanting, it's picking and choosing and trying to find something that just suits all of your desires and needs.

So the challenge there really is if you think there's a weakness and and there's a concern or a complaint is starting to brew in your heart and your mind, really start with prayer.

Second thing I would say, if you sense that you do need to come talk to one of us, first of all, we're gonna be open to that.

We want to talk to you and have the conversation, but I would say this come at it with grace and truth.

Can I encourage you to do that?

Grace and truth.

We're all we all kind of fall one way or the other in that.

Some people are are truth people and they're they're blunt and they just you know drop truth bombs, and and that's how they're gifted.

Other people are are much more gracious and they don't really want the conflict, and and and and so we we need both.

We need you to understand that that growth in a church, whether it's in an individual or the church as a whole, it takes time, so be patient, be gracious.

Understand that we're all in the middle of our own sanctification, we're all working that stuff through.

Let's come at this with kindness, understand that the Lord is in it.

But at the same time, I would say, be truthful, be direct.

Let us know what's happening.

Don't soften the corners and the edges of your of your complaint so much that we don't even really know what the issue is.

Let us know.

Come at it with truth and grace.

And then the last thing here I would say is just seek to be part of resolving the issue.

Resolving the issue.

Sometimes people just they want to lob criticisms because they want other people to fix it, but they just want to step back, they don't want to be a part of it.

I've seen that happen uh as well.

They don't just demand that other people figure it out and get with the program.

Maybe there's a part that you can play in it.

And I think that really.

Leads us here to the next thing, second thing.

There'll be growing pains in any healthy church.

So let's identify the weaknesses so they can be resolved.

Okay, we covered that.

By, number two, spreading out the responsibilities among us.

Okay, so this now really gets to the how.

How do we resolve the weaknesses or the issues, right?

The practical action steps that you and I can take.

What's the game plan?

Let's come up with one, let's execute.

Okay, and I think again, this is so helpful for us here in the text as we see this.

Verse 2, take a look.

It says, and the twelve, okay, that's the apostles now, they summoned the full number of disciples.

Okay, what does that mean?

The full number of disciples?

Is that literally every single person who got saved?

There's thousands of them.

How would they organize that?

Well, no.

That's not what it's saying.

Not saying literally every Christian.

Okay, the full number there, it's limited by the context.

It's talking about the Hellenist disciples, the full number of them, the ones who had brought up the issue of these widows being neglected.

The twelve gathered those guys, okay, the full number of those disciples were summoned, and the apostles said, keep going, it is not right that we should give up preaching the word of God to serve tables.

Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the spirits and of wisdom.

Okay, so ultimately, godly men, pick seven godly men, whom we will appoint to this duty.

But we will devote ourselves to prayer and to the ministry of the word.

Okay, that's what they had been specifically commissioned to do.

Okay, now verse 5.

It says, And when they and what they said pleased the whole gathering, and they chose now seven guys.

You've got Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit.

Hey, Stephen will play a very central role in next week's passage and the rest of chapter seven as well.

So you got Stephen and Philip.

Again, he plays a prominent role going forward in later chapters.

So you've got Philip and, or you got Stephen and Philip, uh Prochorus, it says, and Nicanor.

You've got Timon and Pumba.

Okay, just making sure that you're still tracking with me here.

Okay, that's Parmenus, I think that's how you say that.

Nicholas, it says, and proselyte of Antioch.

Last verse, verse 6, it says, These they set before the apostles, and they prayed and laid their hands on them.

Okay, that laying on of hands is to commission them to go do the task with the Lord be with you.

Okay, so so what's happened here is the apostles, they decide that it wouldn't be right, that's the word that it's used there, if they stopped preaching the word of God to go and serve table, serve these widows, to spend their energy and their time to change it and go do all of these things, taking care of these practical needs that had arisen.

They knew that they had been called, they'd been specifically gifted by the Spirit, you know, for the task of preaching and teaching and the ministry of prayer.

So think about it, if they were to give that up to go and do something else, to plug the holes that needed to be plugged, right?

Something that was extremely important and necessary, they wanted to care for these Hellenistic widows, certainly.

But if they had done that, all of it would do is weaken the church further.

So they realized, hey, listen, let's let's spread out the responsibility here and get other gifted, get other mature and godly people to take ownership over a weakness here and care for those widows so that no one's falling through the cracks anymore.

And how do the Hellenists respond to that?

Well, they love it.

They love the plan, and they choose some good men to lead the operation and carry it forward.

Understand that this is the exact philosophy that we seek to apply here in our church.

It's why we why we push, and you've heard me so many times, push uh everybody to serve in our church according to their gifts.

We need you all.

Uh I have a role here to be the primary teaching, preaching pastor, and that's according to the gifts that God has given me.

I mean, we really need and desire for you to serve Christ and to serve each other according to your gifts, according to your passions.

They're gonna be different than mine.

To have any other different philosophy or any other kind of plan or any other expectation on the church would, if you think about it, would be unbiblical.

It would certainly be uneffective, ineffective.

So just a couple of verses here that you can jot down.

I'm gonna read them, but you can jot these down and study them on your own time, and this is really just to build out what we're talking about here.

But Ephesians 4.

Ephesians 4, verses 11 and 12, here's what it says, and it says, and he, this is the Lord, and he gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the shepherds and teachers, okay, so just think about the leaders of the church, okay?

Ephesians 4:11

He gave them, all right, to equip the saints, saints being just everybody else in the church, for the work of ministry, for building up the body of Christ.

And so what you see here is that it is actually God's plan, the way he structured a church to operate, that the leaders are to equip the rest of the church to actually go and care for the body of Christ.

That's how the church is built up.

That's an amazing couple of verses.

How about this one?

Write down Exodus 18.

Exodus 18 in the Old Testament, in what has become known as the Jethro principle.

Perhaps you've heard of it.

And this is where Moses had been wearing himself out, caring for the needs of all the people.

He was doing it alone.

He was doing it by himself.

This is after they left Egypt, okay?

And so his father-in-law, Jethro, just tells him straight up, he's like, what you were doing is not good.

That's actually what it says in verse 17 of Exodus chapter 18.

Exodus 18 · chapter mention

What you were doing is not good.

You need to look for men who fear God, he says, and divvy up the task of care to those guys, spread out the responsibility so that you can be far more effective in caring for this massive group of people.

I remember uh it was like my first or second weekend ever at Harvest Berry that I'd been hired there as the uh youth director, and I remember right after the service, um they were you know set up teardown team and a bunch of chairs needed to be stacked, and so I just kind of looked around, I jumped in and I was, you know, kind of buzzing and just like love doing it, helping uh tear down this church.

And I remember Pastor Todd, you you know, some of you would know of him.

He's been in our church to preach a number of times.

I remember he just kind of pulled me aside there and he said, Hey man, I just appreciate the heart and the willingness to serve in this way, but it's actually not what we need you to do.

It's not what you've been hired for.

We need you to go out throughout the church and get to know students and connect with them and connect with their parents and start building this community and these relationships as you work to disciple them.

He's like, we've got we've got other people who have who have signed up to serve in in stacking chairs.

Love that you want to do it, but we actually need you to go do something else.

And it's just it's a moment that I'll never forget.

It stuck out.

I was like, boom, I get it now, I totally understand.

Now, let me say this too.

It's not to say that that pastors and leaders like never lift a finger or get involved in practical tasks and care.

Yeah, that definitely still happens, but it is to say that it's biblical.

We've looked at the the Old Testament and the New Testament, it's biblical to organize serving and care in such a way that everyone carrying out a task and playing a role and is owning their responsibility.

They're doing that because that's what's most efficient, that's what's most effective.

Okay, that's how we work through the growing pains in a church as we seek to care for each other.

But understand, it's not just pragmatism here.

It's actually how God designed the church to operate, remember that.

And it's one of the ways that actually brings him more glory.

If only it said that in the scriptures.

Oh, it does.

1 Peter chapter 4, verse 10 and 11, here's a verse for you.

1 Peter 4:10

It says, as each has received a gift, a spiritual gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God's very grace.

Whoever speaks, as one who speaks oracles of God.

Whoever serves as one who serves by the strength that God supplies.

And then listen to this.

In order that in everything God may be glorified through Jesus Christ.

Okay, so when there are weaknesses in our church and they're identified, that's how we're gonna try to resolve them.

By tasking people and seeing if we can get somebody who can who is particularly gifted to fill that role in and carry forth that responsibility for to turn a weakness in a church into a strength.

It's it's how God designed it, it's how God is glorified.

What an amazing thing.

Now, all of this, in order for it to happen effectively, it may require a bit of a mindset adjustment for some of you.

It might require that you change your expectations and your understanding of the role of a pastor or elder or staff member or person in church, maybe your own role in that, your own responsibilities.

Remember that we are, we're we're in this together and we all have a part to play, which I think really brings us here now to this last thing.

There will be growing pains in any healthy church.

So let's identify the weaknesses so they can be resolved by spreading out the responsibilities among us and really getting after multiplying the ministry of discipleship.

Now, multiplication is such a beautiful thing as it starts to happen in a local church.

Take a look at the last verse, verse 7 here.

It says, And the word of God continued to increase.

Why?

Why did it start uh continue to increase?

Well, because the the apostles didn't stop preaching and teaching in the ministry of prayer, right, in order to carry out a different task that somebody else should have been doing.

Okay, they didn't they didn't neglect what they were called to do.

It says there and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.

Why in Jerusalem?

Well, because they stayed there and they did what God had called them to do instead of leaving Palestine to go and to go and serve tables, to serve these other people.

Right?

All of that should be tasked out to somebody else.

If you continue, the last part says, and and a great many of the priests became obedient to the faith.

All right, so as the apostles stick to what God had called them to specifically, and as others did what they were called to do in the service of Christ and his church, disciples began to multiply greatly, it says.

What an exciting thing.

To the point where even a bunch of the priests who served in the temple became obedient to the faith.

They got saved.

Why is that so incredible?

Because these these priests were were were generally opposed to Christianity.

They served in the temple, they served Judaism.

But because they'd spread out the work of ministry to other people, they were the the apostles were able to double down on proclaiming the gospel was having a great and a massive effect on many people in Jerusalem.

Many people were getting saved, it was just multiplying and growing out.

So you think about all of this for us here, you know, and as we experience growing pains, I mean, we've had we've had many, and unfortunately, we're gonna continue to have more, you know, as our weaknesses and our failures become clear, let's really be gracious towards each other and patient towards each other.

I mean, that goes both ways.

I'm not just up here as the pastor saying, guys, you need to be more patient with me.

I need to be more patient with you too.

And that needs to go again back and forth to us.

And as we think about that, let's also commit to really stepping into the roles that God has or or or is calling each one of us to in our church.

So as we as we think rightly about these things, biblically about these things, and then act in these ways, we just can trust that the Lord is gonna use us to continue to multiply to discipleship here in our church.

This is gonna happen.

Where more people are are gonna come to Jesus, more people are gonna join our church, more people are gonna get engaged here and seek to use the gifts that God gives them so that this thing can continue to grow in depth uh and in breadth.

I don't know about you, but I'm so excited about this.

I'm thrilled about this.

I just love this this practical text here for us as we seek to be a church that is healthy, as we seek to be a church that is strong, as we seek to work through uh the weaknesses uh that are here by God's grace.

Would you join me as I pray for this for myself and for each of us?

Lord, we thank you for this time together and and for this amazing text that we can plug and play into the life of our church immediately.

Lord, thank you for how you have grown our church.

Thank you for how you've worked through the weaknesses and and failings on my part and specifically, Lord, and how you have um continued to draw people here and and work and save people.

And and God, I pray that more of us would would rally around this this biblical vision here and and seek to see you do greater things in us going forward.

Lord, we recognize we need your grace, we need your Holy Spirit's power.

So pour yourself out, Lord, in the glory of Christ.

We pray it in your name.

Amen.