Daily Devotionals

X Factor of Friendship Week 3: Saturday

And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved. Acts 2:47

Many people come to church with the expectation that the church should serve them. They come to church looking for ways that the church can serve them. If we are not careful, we can adopt this mindset. We forget that the purpose of the church is not to help and serve us. The purpose of the church is infinitely greater than that. The purpose of the church is to make Christ known. When we adopt this mindset, the church multiplies. 

This week, we have been looking at the start of the early church in the book of Acts. The church began with a small group of Jesus' disciples, and it exploded through the work of the Holy Spirit. After Peter's passionate preaching one day, the church grew by about 3,000 in one day. The new believers joined together, helped each other, and continued spreading the good news about Jesus. As the church made steps to know Christ and make Him known, it continued to grow. Acts 2 says that as the people in the early church took care of each other and took steps to grow in their relationships with God, it grew. Luke writes verse 47, "And each day the Lord added to their fellowship those who were being saved." God grew His church as members faithfully followed Him. The same is true today.

When we make it our mission to make Christ known, God works. As we spread His message of hope, He works in the lives of the people we are sharing with. He reveals Himself to them. He works in their lives and draws them to Himself. As we are faithful to love and serve, He is faithful to work. This is the purpose of the church: to worship God in everything we do and make Him known to everyone around us. The church is not about us. It is about our great God who showed great love and how we can worship Him and tell the world about Him. When we join in His mission, we find purpose and peace. May we spend our lives serving Him and His church, and may He receive all the praise through it all!

Moving toward action

Make plans to worship God at church this weekend, remembering the Scripture you have studied this week about the first church. Invite someone to join you for services this weekend. As you invite others to join you at church, we grow! As God to work in their lives and to give them the courage to say "yes" to your invitation and to grow His church.

Going Deeper

Going Deeper - 1 Corinthians 13:1-13

"If I could speak all the languages of earth and of angels, but didn't love others, I would only be a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. 2 If I had the gift of prophecy, and if I understood all of God's secret plans and possessed all knowledge, and if I had such faith that I could move mountains, but didn't love others, I would be nothing. 3 If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body, I could boast about it; but if I didn't love others, I would have gained nothing.

4 Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud 5 or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. 6 It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. 7 Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance.

8 Prophecy and speaking in unknown languages and special knowledge will become useless. But love will last forever! 9 Now our knowledge is partial and incomplete, and even the gift of prophecy reveals only part of the whole picture! 10 But when the time of perfection comes, these partial things will become useless.

11 When I was a child, I spoke and thought and reasoned as a child. But when I grew up, I put away childish things. 12 Now we see things imperfectly, like puzzling reflections in a mirror, but then we will see everything with perfect clarity. All that I know now is partial and incomplete, but then I will know everything completely, just as God now knows me completely.

13 Three things will last forever-faith, hope, and love-and the greatest of these is love."