Fellowship of Believers

Today I was reading from Acts 2: 42-47 as part of a 30 day prayer journey with our missionary friends in Slovenia. Our friend Jim had some very insightful comments in his blog (please be sure and check them out @ http://www.pray4slovenia.blogspot.com/). In Acts chapter 2, the apostles had just received the Holy Spirit and are in the early stages of their ministry to seek believers for God's kingdom. I have personally been touched by God's word, to see the value the early apostles placed on their fellowship and discipleship of eachother. We recently left a church that became more preoccupied with activities designed to build their numbers and church size, rather than focusing on discipleship and grounding God’s people in the faith (2 Tim. 3:16-17). Christians should be equipped to invite the lost to know Christ by explaining the Bible, communicating to the unsaved our fallen nature and the necessity of the cross (2 Cor: 10:4-5). In these verses from Acts, we see the apostles actively engaged in sharing the gospel and building the church body among the communities, but not at the expense of sacrificing the joy they shared with each other as believers. They also did not rest on their own merits, but on God’s provisions. I think it is all too easy for us to give credit to ourselves for the work we do in God’s kingdom. The reality is, it is God doing the work through us as noted in Acts 2:46, when… “ the Lord added to their number daily". Let us pray as believers, to reject pride...to reflect upon our own unworthiness and to constantly be in debt to God for who we might be if not for God's divine grace. Let us also not abandon the need for fellowship and discipleship with other believers, at the expense of seeking the lost.