SEP 17 2023 | Fellowship S1E1 | Devotion and Miracles

Sea Change Church · Fellowship S1E1 · "Devotion and Miracles" · September 17, 2023
Automated transcript. Not reviewed for accuracy.

Acts 2 42 through 47. They devoted themselves to the apostles teaching and to fellowship, and to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone was filled with awe, the many wonders and science 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. The word of the Lord Really stoked to be here. If you have your Bibles open up to Acts 2 42 through 47, I'm excited to get into this word with you.

I believe it's a, it's a now word for our church. It's a word of direction that God is giving for this community of, uh, kind of going back to some of our roots of when I got here. But God creating, uh, a church that wants to go deeper and we go deeper in relationships. We gotta go deeper with one another in our lives together. And I've just been, um, experiencing that myself as so many of you have poured into me, and I've been trying to pour back into you guys and to have this relationship.

What we see in Acts chapter two through 42, we find a powerful blueprint for the church today. This is a blueprint. Um, some people would ask, is this, uh, scripture prescriptive, meaning it's a prescription for all of us. We all need to do it this way. Or is it descriptive? Is it just a description of some believers, early believers who got together and just did it one way? Well, because there's freedom in Christ. Uh, there's lots of different ways you can do church, but I would say that in regard to being a prescription, if you decide to follow this prescription and be devoted to the things that these people are devoted to, I think you're gonna have similar results.

And so one of the things that God is speaking to me is we've kind of gotten wider as a church since I've been here. It's about almost 10 years. March 5th will be 10 years that I've been here. We've gotten a lot wider. The question is, um, are we continuing to get deeper? And I was so impressed, uh, when I was in Israel. Uh, there's a few pictures, Al if you wanna show those pictures behind me as we go.

As I was walking around in Israel and went to all these different places, this was my second time that I had gone. And when we were there and I was walking in the old city, which is just amazing. There's a lot of questions you can ask. You know, did Jesus really, uh, was he crucified here or was it in this spot that he was crucified?

There's some different arguments on where he could have been crucified or where he was born. And there's so many questions you can ask. I think the primary question that that fascinated me when I was there was, how are these people still here? I mean, how are, how is this group of people, a nation still here after everything that's Galilee right there, there beautiful Galilee from the mountain of Beatitudes.

You can take those off Al. How is this nation still here? Think about it. They were under oppression of the Egyptians for 400 years. Imagine taking this nation that you live in right now and having it swept away. Invaders come in, they take everybody away, and they, you know, um, that actually didn't happen at that time. They had actually gone there, but they were there and they were un in captivity as slaves to the Egyptians.

There actually were two other captivities, the Assyrian captivity where everyone was taken away. And then they came back and the nation was reformed. Then there was a Babylonian captivity. Another nation came and they were taken away. And then they were brought back. You could even say that in 19, in the 1940s, there was another captivity when Jews were during the Holocaust, were put in captivity. And we went to the Holocaust Museum, which was really powerful while we were there, because of those events, you would think that 2000 years later, how do they still have a nation?

How do they still know who they are? I was talking to a Jewish man and I, and he said, well, I don't believe in religion, Jews, anything else. I said, well, don't you think it's, so, it's interesting that after 2000 years, a nation can reform. I said, try to do that with the Babylonians. Do it with the Incas. Incas. Try to do it with any other nation that has ever been disbanded, where you can come back. They know who they're related to.

They actually have a lineage that's that's attached that they can follow. They have a creed of which they live by. How did they do that? The way that they did it is because of the things that they were devoted to. And not only was it the things that they were devoted to, but it was that they were devoted to not only God, but to one another, where the community is as important as the individual. Let me, let me just say that again.

Where the community that they're a part of is as important. Some might even say more important, but just to balance it where the community was as important as the individual. And that sounds a little bit different than the place that we live. And so when we come to Acts two right here, we see these Jewish believers who have become Christians now, and they start the first church and they would meet the day after Sabbath.

So Sabbath in, in Jerusalem is amazing. I mean, everything shuts down. It's like it is hustling. It is bustling on Friday. I mean, everybody's moving. There's taxis, there's everything. You walk out Saturday morning of your hotel, you walk out into the street. It's like, I mean, it is quiet. Like you go up to like Julian in the, in the, you know, in the hills, quiet like Julian quiet.

It is so quiet that an entire city shuts down because you have a group of people that are committed and devoted to certain things. This is how this nation can come back together. And this is how a nation stays together. And this is how a people stay together. So when the Jews that were become Christians, they would go to synagogue and then after synagogue, they would have church on Sunday. 'cause synagogue was on Saturday.

That's the Sabbath, right? So this passage right here is talking about a group of believers that said it's important enough for us to meet on a separate day and to meet in homes to initiate the first church of what was happening. Now, one thing to just give a little context, a lot of people see this text and they think, well, this is something the first Christians created.

This pattern is not something Christians created this pattern of living together in community. And the things that they were devoted to. It mentions four things in particular that they were devoted to, was just an addendum to what they were already doing in synagogue. This was just being Jews and then being Christians and Jews.

They set it up based on what they had been doing for thousands of years. And the things that they were devoted to were the same things. And if you look at the Jews, what they devoted to, well, they're devoted to God. They're devoted to community. They're devoted to regularly eating together. They're devoted to prayer. I went to the western wall and people were there praying and they, you know, there's a men's section and a women's section.

They put their hands on the wall and they pray. And I stood and prayed by this guy as he was just weeping. He had his prayer covering on, he was just weeping. And what are they weeping for? For the return of the temple is what they're waiting for. And they're praying all the things that you see in this first church. Uh, let's not prescribe or let's not, um, give credit to that, to early Christians making that up.

It's just early Christians doing what they were raised doing, but now in a Christian context, in the context of the Messiah. So they were, so, the reason I would say if those people are still in Israel, the reason they're there is because they were devoted people. And if you want to have longevity in marriage, in relationships, in business, in church, it's really gonna come down to what you're devoted to.

And the more devoted you are and the more things that you have of devotion within a primary devotion, 'cause they were devoted to God, right? And then they had these other things that they unified on. The things that we're devoted to as a community together are the things that make us strong. We are living in a society that is becoming de fragmented.

It's becoming fractured, and we cannot agree on anything anymore. A couple years ago, we couldn't even agree on football, right? I mean, some of the things, they're the most core basic things that make us understand who we are can no longer be devoted to. And so I really believe as Christians and as followers of Christ, one of the things we have to do is remember what we're devoted to, to get back to that and decide is our community as important as what I want for myself?

What is interesting about this passage as we look at it, is it does mention the apostles. The apostles did some teaching, and the apostles were miracles were happening through the apostles. But everything else that's happening in this passage was happening through you. It was, this is actually a passage of the laity. This is not a passage of the ccle of the clergy.

This is a passage of the laity that has super powerful results. Go to verse 42. They devoted circle the word devoted themselves to the apostles teaching. That's the first one. You put a one by that. It's also later in your notes. And to fellowship, that's a Greek word coin inea. We're gonna break it down in a minute. To the breaking of bread and to prayer.

And everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostle. We're gonna be in this for three weeks in this passage. We're just gonna knock out verse 42 and 43 today. As we look at creating a culture that has a long history within our church, but something we want to get back to. We wanna get back to our roots as a church. When I got here, there was a weekly meal that they would have.

Maybe some of you remember that everyone would eat here, the entire church. It was like nine of us. So it wasn't that hard. But no, but we would go over there, we'd have, you know, a hundred or more people over there, and we would eat for the first couple years. We continued to do that, um, till just kind of weren't able to do it by size.

And one of the things we wanna do is recreate that in the home fellowship setting in our small groups. But we see that, um, one of the things that we saw is that people were committed and they were devoted to certain things. And so these are the things that they were devoted to. Here's my main point for today. Main point for today is this.

A devoted church is a powerful church. And one of the things I realized where I've been in era recently is keeping, um, kind of feeling the responsibility to make sure every good thing that happens is because everyone on staff is doing really cool stuff that you want to come to this passage. Let me see that this is not just about apostles or preachers or worship leaders or missions leaders, but it's about the congregation deciding that they want to be devoted to the community. That they don't want to church hop and shop.

Eventually they find a spot might be here, might not be here, where they say, we want to grow roots there. We want to be deeply devoted, devoted in relationships. We want to give of our lives. We want to sacrifice because it's impossible to be devoted to something greater than yourself without having to give of yourself, without having to give and to sacrifice.

So if we are going to be a powerful church, it's gonna be because the majority of people who sit in the pews, that's you, are devoted to the certain things of the early church. And I think this is a prescription for us to be, uh, a part of. Let's look at that word, devoted circle. You circle the word devotion. Uh, pros, cartia is a, is a word, uh, proscar, excuse me, uh, means to adhere to one, to be an adhere, to be devoted to our constant. And then it gave a few words.

And these are words I really like. Give the word loyalty. Loyalty, faithfulness, fidelity. Great word. Romans, like that word in the Latin a lot. True and steadfastness, when you think about the church you attend, and I know this is true for me. I had one year, two years where I got to go to church in the last 25 years. We, we were missionaries in Australia and I actually got to go to a church.

And I remember when I was at a church, I was all about it. I just, I loved my church. We had a great church in Australia. I just went back to Australia this summer and we gathered all the people, many of 'em still go to the same church. And we just got together and hung out. And I remembered what it was like to be part of the setup worship team.

We were in a pub upstairs and it just smelled like stinky beer. It was where we had our church 'cause they couldn't afford anything more. And I would carry, I would get there early in the morning, it'd be hot and humid in Australia, and I'd carry the drums up the stairs, you know, and go behind the bar and up to the stage. And we were, you know, five, eight hours earlier, there'd been some band. You know what I mean?

That had been playing people dancing. But there we were trying to redeem that space. And I remember that was all about it. We were so committed to what God was doing in that place. And I remember this, I felt loyalty to my church. I felt really loyal to it. I wanted it to succeed. I wanted it to win. I wanted it to have favor.

I wanted my pastor to preach well, I want, I just wanted it to, to be known in the community. I loved my church. It's called Beachside Christian Fellowship. It's still there today. Another word with this, this devotion and this, this Greek word, it's faithfulness. There's a faithfulness when you look at the word that they're using to describe what the early believers felt towards the community. Not the church.

It's not La Jolla Christian Fellowship. That's just a name. It's not a building. We've been blessed with an amazing building. It's, if you were to look around, it's you that you spiel a sense of loyalty to one another. We have got to get back to that. We have got to get back to loyalty, to faithfulness, to fidelity, to being true, to being steadfast.

Steadfast means you have roots when the wind starts to blow in a community and the wind's always blow in a community, right? There comes a moment where you're thinking, well, there's this reason or that reason why I might, you know, you know, try somewhere else or wherever. One of the things you'll see with steadfastness is being willing to say, but I have roots in this place.

And they go beyond whatever the possible issue might be. There's a steadfastness, a loyalty, a devotion. And this is a word I really wanted to share with, with you as a congregation. Hopefully it's here. Hopefully you love it and you want to be devoted here. But if it's not here, find somewhere where you can have these things.

You don't want to be at a church where you can't experience these things. This is what makes you feel alive in a community. This is what makes you feel alive in a church. As the church comes together. And I think for me and for the staff, we want to do a better job at allowing this community to flourish. I would say in our community today, not in our church community, but devotion is in decline. People aren't devoted to much anymore.

We're not devoted to one another. We're just devoted to our opinion. We're very devoted to our opinions, right? We're very devoted to our pleasure, the things that we want. But when I grew up as a kid and I, I grew up in the, I was the last free range generation of children with no phones. I was 13 by the time Atari started. So I had a bike. Um, I dunno if he, anybody younger than me had a bike.

It was say he had two wheels and we would get on it and drive. Um, but I remember that group of people just felt a fierce devotion. My dad had a lot of military friends and people that were colonels and things. I remember there was a devotion, there was a devotion to family. There was a devotion to country. There was a devotion to our schools, our public school systems.

There was just devotion felt rampant in the seventies. At least it felt rampant compared to what we're living in today. I wanna say as, as a, as a community, one of the best things that we can do as a people is to find a place like this. Or even if it's you're devoted to the missions organization. Like Joe, I was really proud that you go to our church today.

I was really proud that you go to our church and your heart and just bless you and what you're doing. That was powerful today. But that people feel devoted to something like that. This is what the early believers felt in this passage. It said that they were devoted devotions in decline. And I would say devotion is as devotion does.

Devotion is as devotion does. You will know what you're devoted to because you'll do it. If you're devoted to your spin class, how will we know you're devoted to your spin class? 'cause you will be there with the stupid music on the little bike and be doing this until you sweat. And it's beautiful outside and it's dark in that little room with disco music at noon. I don't know why you're in there. But nonetheless, devotion is, as devotion does find a, a church community that you love, that you wanna be loyal to, that you want to devote to that you know, you would take a bullet for. That's, I i I don't want to be in a church that's anything less than that. Personally.

I'd say everything else, if you look at the book of Acts, and there's a lot that happens in the book of Acts here after these passages. Everything else in that the early church did in the Book of Acts, they did as a result in an addendum to the fierce devotion to the fellowship of believers. Lemme say that again. Every other thing, this is early in the text, right? This passage is early. This is Acts chapter two. Everything that happens, the salvation of Europe, as Paul goes into Europe and all these things that are happening, all the miracles that have happened, the people being raised from the dead after Paul kills somebody by his preaching and puts 'em to sleep and they fall out a window.

All the things that happened happened as a result, as an addendum to them meeting together. You see that it is the power, the influence happened after the people in the community decided to be devoted to one another and to these certain things. I wanna just look quickly now at the foundation, they're devoted to four things.

And if there's, there's a lot we can be devoted, and this is not an all inclusive list, but I think it's a powerful list. And these are four things that we want to call you that I personally wanna call you to be devoted to within this community. The first one we see is the apostles teachings. The second is fellowship. The third is the breaking of bread, and the fourth is prayer.

There's a lot of other things we can be devoted to. We wanna help the poor. There's so many other things, but this is a big four. This is a big four. And when it mentions it, it could have been a, a list of 20 things, but it mentions four. And for me, I wanna try to get back to simplifying. One of the words the Lord has given me for our church is just simplify.

Let's get back to the basics. Just super simple. Give people, you know, very simple things that we can do that are, that are basic. And here we see the first one, we see those four. The first one is, that's the apostles teaching. I wanna see when they talk about the apostles teaching, I like that it's plural. It's not just one person's teaching.

There was a lot of teaching that was going on with the apostles. These apostles were called apostles because they were disciples who had walked with Jesus. When you look at Apostle in the New Testament, and it's a capital A meaning, these guys were actually disciples of Jesus. They walked with him and then they, they led the church.

There are apostles today, people that have apostleship means having like a, um, God has given you authority, uh, over a territory like pastor. Like, um, Billy Graham would've been an apostle for America, but it wouldn't have been capital A. He wasn't one of those, um, ones that walked with Jesus in the early days, but he would've still had that calling.

So we believe that that is still available today. But what does that say to us? They were devoted to the word of God as a way of life. The apostles teaching. What were the apostles teaching? They, they didn't have a New Testament yet, right? There was no New Testament at this point. They were teaching the Old Testament. They were teaching the scriptures and they were teaching doctrine of how to live their life.

That there was people that they could respect that were teaching the word of God, and that they took that word of God onboard as a, as a rule for living. When we were at the Benedictine Monk, a monastery, um, that was, uh, excuse me, I think it was Traps Monastery. It was a Traps monastery that was on the road to a Emmaus. Uh, there's that picture that I, I don't know if you can see that picture of the church with the sun over it when we were there. D as you go to these different monasteries, they have a rule for living. And then they have the traps. Uh, monks, you have Cistercian monks, Franciscan, and they all have this rule for living.

We're gonna live a certain way in order to produce holiness in order to pro produce results in their life. You can take that down. The reason that they follow the word of God as a rule for life is because they want the results that the word of God produces. The word of God produces results. The word of God produces power. Two words I talked about over the summer outta the Book of Acts was that Greek word cratos, which means a territorial influence, meaning more people in La Jolla know God and want to serve him or more people.

In San Diego, there's a territorial power, the word of God, the cratos became the, you know, this territorial power, the word of God also as is preach gives dunamis power. Dunamis means like raising people from the dead, seeing people be healed. This is the kind of power that they're talking about. And one of the things you see is that power was a result of them getting the first four things correct. That they were following the word of God.

I guess the question is, do you, do you want to know the word of God? Devotion does devotion. Devotion is as devotion does. If you want to know the word of God, you will be in the word of God. You'll be wanting to memorize the word of God. I was, um, I wanna just tell this story quickly. I was, uh, walking, um, to get a coffee and somebody on our tour bus who was a Christian, said, Hey, I, I, uh, hey Pastor Adam, come over here. I want, I want to ask you a question.

And I walked over to the table and I was, you know, we had a break. And they said, this is Israel. He's a Jewish man and he has questions about Jesus. Sit down and, uh, tell us about Jesus. I'm like, okay, let's sit down and do it. And so the first thing the man asked the people who had invited me over from our tour bus, they were great people from Tennessee, Christians. And the man says, Hey, um, uh, how do you know Jesus is real? And he said, well, I, the guy had an accent and he's from Tennessee. He said, well, I had a heart attack and God, I just wanted to do the accent. He said, I had a heart attack. It might not even be Texas. This might be a Texas accent.

He says, I had a heart attack and I knew Jesus was there every moment I had a heart attack. So I know Jesus is real. And the guy said, Buddhist have heart attacks. Does that mean the Buddhist, Buddhist real? Because they believed in Buddha the whole time. And I was like, oh, okay. This guy, this guy's rocking and rolling. I began to share scriptures with him.

God began dealing scriptures to me. I had five or eight scriptures. I began dealing scriptures to him. At the end he's like, you know, I've had enough. Um, maybe we can talk again some time. On the final day of the trip, I come around in a corner, an hour before I leave, I walk around a corner in Jerusalem and this Jewish man walks up and I run into him face to face. He goes, I can't believe I saw you.

I'm in the middle of Jerusalem. I can't believe I saw you. He goes, I have some more questions about Jesus. And he said, I last night in my room, I was, I was talking about that scripture you gave me about a virgin conceiving. I was asking God, how can a virgin conceive? And he said, I felt like God said to me, a virgin can conceive because if I can make Adam out of the dust, then a virgin can conceive. He said, my wife is sick with stomach pain.

This is true. Will you pray for my wife in Jesus' name, that she would be healed? I put my hand on his shoulder and then he looked around like this and he goes, it's Israel. And I said, okay, I won't touch you. I said, you know, because so everybody's looking, everybody's watching in Israel. We prayed. I wanna tell you what opened up his eyes.

It wasn't my story about all my friends and how Jesus met me on a playground when I was a kid. And it wasn't that, you know what changed his, you know what convinced him? The word of God. The word of God. Knowing the word of God. We have to be devoted to the word of God. We're, my job is to make sure, to give you opportunity where you can be devoted to the word of God.

I'm gonna be leading a three week class coming up soon, that you're gonna learn 30 scriptures. You were gonna memorize 30 scriptures that you can share your faith. We want to know the word of God. The word of God will set you free. They're devoted to the apostles teaching. They were teaching the word of God. They were the fellowship. Excuse me, that word there is koinonia Circle fellowship. Koinonia means a deep, physical, spiritual and emotional sharing of life together.

Koinonia means a deep physical means you're caring for each other's physical needs. Spiritual and Evo emotional sharing of life together. Koinonia is deep, is deeper than just, Hey, how, how are you doing? Koinonia is sharing your very life together. It is knowing what is going on in other people's lives. It is being connected with 'em in a deeper way. It is praying with them.

It is koinonia fellowship. And it costs koinonia cost. It's gonna cost your time. It's gonna cost hurt feelings. 'cause people are people and they're gonna say things, they're gonna hurt your feelings. It's gonna cost. But it is so rich because the church is people they were voted to, the apostles teaching to Koinonia and an unwillingness to live fragmented and scattered lives.

They had an unwillingness to live fragmented and scattered lives. If you were part of a community like this, or a small group or a group of believers that travel together, or a men's group or some group that you travel with Christ together like Jesus did in a small group, it will defragment your life and give it integrity. What is integrity? It means it's not all broken apart in the different pieces.

It'll bring your life together as we walk together as a whole. I gotta tell you, it's gonna cost. We're not gonna be able to continue to live the way our western world is living. And to have that type of cornea fellowship they had. Number three, the breaking of bread. This is twofold, right? This is communion. They would take communion together. And as part of our small groups, we wanna encourage you to take communion once a month. As a small group, we're gonna be sending that out to all the leaders just once a month.

Take communion together, but also eating together. They would share meals together. There's a bunch of scriptures in Acts one 14. It says, they all joined together constantly in prayer along with the women, the mother of Jesus and with his brothers. Oh, that's the prayer one. Excuse me, that's for the next one. I apologize. Um, it was communion.

And they were taking communion. They were doing meals together. There's an entire chapter not too far in acts from this where it talks about where they would have these community meals and they actually had to get people to volunteer to serve the meals. Because eating together, there's something about eating together that has an intimacy.

You don't eat with your enemies, right? You sit with your enemies. Some you're really ticked about, you know, off with. And just sit there and hear, would you like some bread here? Dip it in the balsamic. It's amazing. I got it from Trader Joe's. You know, there is something about coming together over a meal and eating. This is one thing that they did. They would regularly sit down.

Meals can be glorious, right? God instituted three times a day where we have to eat, where we sit together with people. And so this is, I mean, it's easy to pass over this. Oh, they broke some bread together and they ate for some reason. This idea of sitting together and eating together is important enough that it got added into the four things that the early church was devoted to.

And so it's something that we want to get better at. It continue to do. This is one of the reasons tomorrow night, man, we wanna invite you to do that as we sit together and do that. And then the final thing is this prayer. They were devoted to prayer. Say, your life is only as power, as powerful as your prayers. Your life is only going to be as powerful kingdom powerful as your prayers.

Here's that verse, acts one 14. They all join together constantly in prayer, along with the women and with Mary, the mother of Jesus and with his brother. It says they join together constantly. I don't know what that means. Constantly, every once a week, three times a week. Um, I don't know what that means, but constantly doesn't mean not very much. I know that.

Who are you praying with? Who, who are you connected with in prayer? I want to say breakthrough happens when we commune together in these four ways. And especially with prayer. If you have your notes, write breakthrough. 'cause what we're gonna see here in a second is the result of these four things happened in breakthrough. Maybe you need breakthrough, maybe you need breakthrough in relationships.

I was praying with a friend of mine overseas about a particular issue. We've been praying for a month, two months together and just hitting one wall after another. One wall, discouragement. And then this, I called yesterday. How's it going? Breakthrough said, I'm walking. I said, I'm walking on clouds today. Breakthrough. I can't believe the breakthrough I had breakthrough. So, you know, the, I've, I'm, I'm, I'm a little bummed sometimes that it feels like my Christian life is like struggle, struggle, struggle, breakthrough. I just wanna keep a consistent pace.

You know what I'm saying? Can we just keep a pace and keep it mellow? But it's like, you know, if you want big breakthrough, it actually takes some effort. And one of the fuel, the fuel to bring breakthrough in your life is to have a devoted group of people that are devoted to pray for you, who care enough for you to pray for you.

That you care enough for them to pray for them. And you'll know when it starts shifting in your life. Because you'll be driving when you in your car and you normally thinking, Hey, I wanna listen to this podcast or something in your own mind. And you'll get a different thought. Hey, I wonder how you know Joe is doing with this issue with the fundraising issue.

Or I wonder how that person is doing. Who got that cancer report? All of a sudden? And you'll start to pray and you'll start to fuel it upon you and you'll start to bind together with people to pray. When that thing happened, breakthrough happened. There's one more verse that says, uh, James five 16, therefore confess your sins to one another.

Pray for one another that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person has great power as it is working, has great power. We want to be a praying church. And one of the things we're gonna equip you to do as small groups, if you were in a small group, you are going to be surrounded by a group of people that are gonna be commissioned to pray for one another, to pray for you, to pray for your children, to pray for your life, to pray for your health, to pray for La Jolla, to pray for breakthrough. That's what we want.

We want a society that sees breakthrough. And then closing is this application for us today. There's two, two applications I wanna give you one, prioritize, devotion to the fellowship you attend. If this is it, I want to challenge you. Check, you know, check in your own heart. God, am I devoted in the places that you want me to be devoted in God?

How do you want me to be devoted to this and devote yourself to this community? Because we want to see breakthrough, we want to see breakthrough and, and we have gotten to the place in America where it's all about what happens on stage. What the Lord is showing me here, it's not about what happens on stage, it's about what happens in the pews. You see, the power of the church is in the laity.

The power of the church is in the devotion of the laity. At least we see that here. Rick Warren says this about small groups in a small group, you don't just attend church, you become the church. It's where relationships deepen. Accountability thrives and support over flows. What does it mean? The cost? It means you have to sacrifice autonomy.

It means you have to sacrifice it all being about you. You have to sacrifice and say, I wanna be part of the group. I wanna run with the herd. I want to be part of a fellowship. I wanna be part of something greater than myself. And then the final one, we'll look at this a little bit. Next year, expect breakthrough. Verse 43.

Everyone was filled with awe at the many wonders and signs performed by the apostles breakthrough. I want to challenge you to experiment with community this fall, to find a group of people within your community to vote yourself to that group of people and to begin to ask God for breakthrough in your lives. We need breakthrough. I need breakthrough. And as a church, I gotta tell you what, I feel like we've gotten to a glass ceiling.

And I feel like the Lord said, if you want to go to the next level, we gotta have breakthrough. And so for me, I feel like this is where we're leading as a staff and as an elder board. This is where we wanna leave. We wanna take the ball, we wanna serve it back into your court and say, guys, go after it. Let's change the world together. Amen.