Rise Up & Walk

We have spent the last two sessions in the amazing 2nd chapter of Acts. It tells the story of the day the church was born: the Day of Pentecost. That day, the Holy Spirit fell on the 120 believers gathered in Jerusalem, and the church was thrust into the world like a rocket off a launch pad. By the end of that extraordinary day, three thousand people had believed the gospel, been baptized, and been added to the church.

The newborn church was a community of believers devoted to the Word, to prayer, to breaking bread together, to radical generosity, to worship. They were a church held together by their holy awe of God and genuine love for one another. And now, just days later, we turn the page to Acts 3 – and we move from what the church looked like on the inside to what the church did on the outside.

Because here is a truth that runs through the entire book of Acts: a healthy church does not stay in the building. It cannot. The mission Jesus gave in Acts 1:8 (Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the ends of the earth) propels the church into the world, into the mess, into the places where lost and broken people are sitting and waiting and hoping that someone will stop and actually see them.

Please find Acts 3:1-10.