Okay, turn to Acts chapter 2 and we'll begin reading in verse 42. Acts 2, 42 through 47. Okay, please turn to Acts 2, 42 through 47. They were continually devoting themselves to the Apostles' teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer. Everyone kept feeling a sense of awe, and Many wonders and signs were taking place through the apostles, and all those who had believed were together and had all things in common.

And they began selling their property and possessions and were sharing them with all as anyone might have need. Day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart, praising God and having favor with all the people. And the Lord was adding to their number day by day those who were being saved. This passage of Scripture this morning is very exciting and beautiful passage of Scripture that casts a very compelling and absolutely unmatched vision of local church life. I've entitled this unpacking gladness and sincerity of heart in the Jerusalem church.

The last time I preached this text of Scripture in a church, I had two people walk out on me in protest of the message, and particularly at the question that I asked at the end of the message. And not only did they leave the church service quite visibly in protest to the message, but they never came back to the church again. And they had been part of this church for many, many years as well. At that time, I was a 28-year-old senior pastor of a church. I can't remember if I was married yet.

Deborah will remember if we were married at that time. But one of the young men who left was a young family man in his early 30s, and the other was an elderly man. But they were both completely unwilling to accept the interpretations and the conclusions that I was present making in this passage. And so now 25 years later, I hope that the same thing does not happen here because neither my interpretations nor my conclusions or appeals or applications have changed really at all since that happened 25 years ago. And what I said that day was that here in Acts chapter 2 verses 42 to 47 is a beautiful expression of the Church of Jesus Christ.

And my question that day 25 years ago went like this. Acts 2.47 describes the Church of Jesus Christ as it was intended to be. And my question was, do you want Jesus kind of church or do you want your own kind of church and and if you don't want this kind of church then you don't want Jesus kind of church. And these two men said, no, they did not want this type of church. And of course, it is the easiest thing for us to try to create the church in our own image to make it market-driven and compatible, moldable to the things that we like.

This is what we typically do. We look for churches that we like for different reasons. The modern church-goer has laundry lists of things that they like about a particular church. But Acts 2 exposes what I'm going to call the altered lifestyles of those who had come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. He had called them to Himself.

He did not call them to more of themselves, and he called them to his church, not the church made in their own image. And this passage is so marvelous for a number of reasons, but one thing it does is it just illuminates the transforming power of the gospel in a person's life and how it transforms every area of their life. It transforms their relationships, It transforms their view of time and how they use it. It transforms their pocketbooks, which we see so vividly. And it transforms their hearts disposition.

And it becomes, it comes to be characterized by gladness and sincerity of heart. And this is the way that Christianity has changed the world in so many different ways, through the expressions of churches like this. There are three things that you see here that the church is magnetized toward. First of all, we're going to call it orthodoxy, doctrine, right thinking about God. Secondly, orthopraxy, practice, obedience toward God, right practices toward God.

And thirdly, what I'm going to call orthopathy, feeling, affection toward God, beautiful, compelling, undeniable, true feeling, love toward God, expressed in a number of ways in this passage. So what I'd like to do this morning is give you six marks of exemplary church life that we see here, and you have an outline here. You can follow these six marks that we'll cover today. And the first mark of this exemplary church is continual devotion. In verse 42, it says, and they continually devoted themselves.

And then it gives a list of the things that they devoted themselves to. And notice that there was a continuous rhythmic devotion to these things that are listed here. There was a fidelity to practices. And these people apparently were not taking breaks from the church as we often see people do in our day. The ardor, the consistency, The constancy, the intensity of their desire toward these practices that are listed that we're going to mention in just a moment, indicated that they were very fond of the activity.

And you know, no one continually devotes themselves to anything unless they love it. That's just the way it is. You have to love it or you won't do it. And this is one thing we learned about this group of people that they did so cherish this kind of activity. And we're very fond.

There is no indifference, there is no irregularity or disloyalty to these things that are mentioned and particularly the gatherings, the relationships and the activities that are mentioned here. It completely, their use of time was completely transformed. They loved it so much. And it was a devotion to particular things here. And it was an investment of time in these things.

It seemed like it was a massive investment of time. This should teach us as well about how we should get on our way in the church of Jesus Christ in modern times. We should have this same kind of constancy and devotion to these things that are mentioned here. These things take us out of our comfort zone, they take us out of our effectiveness zone. It was about 10 years ago that Bill Gates was being interviewed on one of the major news channels and he understood the point of this passage of Scripture and he made an amazingly candid statement about what he believed about Christianity said it was not time efficient and he said quote just in terms of allocation of Resources and time religion is not very efficient There's a lot more I could be doing on a Sunday morning.

This is January 13th 1996 He was being interviewed by Time Magazine reporter. But he was just speaking about use of time. Hey, the things that are mentioned here, he says, are just completely inefficient, unseasonable ways to use your time. So the three areas of continued devotion that are mentioned here, beginning in verse 42, are first of all the apostles' teaching. And this was devotion to the Word of God.

They were a studying church. They were not an airheaded church. It just flitted from one emotional stimulation to another. But They were a studying church, and they were studying something specific, the Apostles' teaching, and they devoted themselves this way. They were...

And we do the same thing today by devoting ourselves to the teaching of the apostles, the things that they wrote, the authoritative testimony in the New Testament. We also devote ourselves to the same thing they were devoting themselves to, and that is the Old Testament testimony of God. And to be this kind of church would be longing for the pure milk of the Word to devote tremendous resources of time to the study of Scripture. This is what this church is doing. We should do the same thing.

Everything in the world is going to scream at you not to do this, but we as a body of people should be patterning after this church and devoting tremendous resources. Of course I don't know what kind of resources you and your households are devoting to the teaching of Scripture. And of course this also is informative to Jason and myself as elders of this church. How are we doing in actually encouraging an arduous study of Scripture, a continued devotion to it. This is something that should help us think about our own church life and our encouragements toward you, the questions that we ask one another in the churches we meet together regarding how we're doing, because this is just a tremendous focus that is patterned for us in the early church, the Apostles' teaching.

Secondly, They were continually devoting themselves to fellowship. And that has to do with devotion to one another. The term that's used here is the term koinonia. And it has to do with a deep and abiding relationship with one another. It is fellowship that is true, it's real, it's genuine.

You know, I've heard a number of people say in the last year, you know, I don't want to be part of a fake surface church, but I want to be a part of a church where people are real. They're real prayers, real relationships, real problems. And that's the kind of relationship that this is speaking of. Now, the church today isn't really, at least in terms of the larger general context of the church, is not really wired for relationship. It's wired for mass communication, it's wired for entertainment, it's wired for meetings that people really don't have to relate with one another.

In fact, there are actually millions of believers in churches today all around our land, whose one of their major propositions is, when you come to our church, you don't have to say anything, sing anything, give anything, or talk to anybody. Just come and hear the gospel. And this is just not the kind of church life that's spoken of here. This is relational, relational life. This word koinonia used here in 42 is also used in its root form in verse 44 where it says that they had all things in common.

It's that same life of fellowship that is spoken of in verse 44 as is spoken of in verse 42 as you're looking at it. So there is this tremendous devotion to one another. I had an interesting experience a few weeks ago. I was, it was actually, we were in St. Louis, Deborah and I were in the in the hotel there and there was, flipped on the television and saw the broadcast from the Crystal Cathedral, and they were talking about membership in their church.

They were talking about their global membership. And you can become a full member regardless of your location. And I went to their website, and they had two very interesting things. One they had a ticket to heaven that they would send to you. It was a little credit card, ticket to heaven.

And the criteria for getting the ticket to heaven was really pretty much pretty lightweight kind of stuff, honestly. Secondly, you could join, you could become a global member by filling out this little form that was shorter than almost anything else you fill out when you're on the internet. And you could become a global member by filling out this little form that was that was shorter than You know almost anything else you fill out when you're on the internet and you can become a global member of the church Just like that. Hey, that's not the kind of relational vibrancy that you see here in this passage of Scripture. It's a completely different kind of church life.

So they devoted themselves continually to the Apostles' teaching or the Apostles' doctrine, and then fellowship, which has to do with the one another kind of fulfillment of Scripture. And then thirdly, worship, the breaking of bread and a prayer. Now it seems to me that the way this sentence is written to the breaking of bread and prayers, that it is a worship kind of experience. It's the communion supper, and it is prayer together. It's a time of worship.

There are other interpretations of this that it's something different than that. But I'm just going to take the track this morning that this is a worship time. It's like our time now, where we gather together to celebrate the Lord's Supper, to teach the Word. We sing. We pray.

We do all those things together as a local church. And it's a time where we take communion as we will, which means it's a time of self-examination, and it's a time of joy and just giving Thanks for the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ for His tremendous mercy toward us. And so these are the things that they were continually devoting themselves to. So there were, the first mark of this exemplary church is continual devotion to these three things. And then secondly, the second mark of this exemplary church was fear and awe.

Look at verse 43. And everyone kept feeling a sense of awe or a sense of fear. The term phobos is the term used. It's the word we get phobia, fear. It's a strong word and we should be careful what we inject into the context of this word, of course, it wouldn't be a phobic kind of fear, but it's definitely a sense of awesomeness, respect, and even solemnity toward God, realizing our place in the world that we are creatures we are sinners each one of us we are not proud in any way as we come together we don't stand above anyone particularly before God because of his holy his holiness and because of his holiness and his righteousness.

It just so overwhelmingly divorces, it dwarfs any righteousness that we might have. But they kept, they had in their hearts a natural respect, expectation, which was the opposite of kind of a casual taking the moment lightly when they came together. But there was a sense of awesomeness toward it. This same word, fear or awe, was used in Acts chapter 5 when Ananias and Sapphira were judged on pain of death for their lie in the church. They died and the text says that there was a sense of fear in the church.

The same thing happened in Acts chapter 19 with the citizens of Ephesus. There was great fear in the city because the sons, there were some Jewish exorcists who were going from place to place. And the seven sons of Sceva were involved in this and this evil spirit was speaking and this became known that that God had dealt with these with these seven sons of Sceva in a pretty harsh way, and it became known to all in Ephesus, and fear fell upon them all, and the name of the Lord Jesus is being magnified. So there was fear in the town As a result of what God was doing in Ephesus, there was fear also in this town, Jerusalem. There was also fear in the town of Ananias and Sapphira as a result.

And it's interesting. This term is used all over the Bible. It was used in Luke 7-16 to portray the reaction of the Lord's raising the widow's son. And you know, Fear in the heart is not something that we can just command that you have. It has to be something that God rises up in our hearts out of reverence, a form that God would raise up great reverence.

And perhaps we should pray for this, that God would give us a heightened sense of reverence and awe toward God in all of our gatherings, in all of our doings, all of our going about in the community, our work, and everything that we do. So the second mark of this church was fear and awe. First of all, a continual devotion to a number of very important things. Second, fear and awe. And then thirdly, care for one another.

And this is a an exemplary care for one another that you look at in verses 44 and 45. It says that all those who had believed were together and had all things in common. This language here, they were together and they had all things in common. Now, this is really a theme in Acts 2. The chapter begins with them being together, and there's a unity, and there's a love, and a devotion to one of this implied right from the very beginning in the first couple verses and then on down here to where we are now in Acts chapter 2.

But they are together and they have all things in common. And one expression of their love for one another and their care for one another is that they began to help one another in an unusual way. What God was doing in this church is that he was breaking the chains of materialism in their hearts. And he was motivating them deep within their own hearts, with gladness and sincerity of heart, to sell some of their possessions and to sell even their property, because there were people who had need. We don't know if perhaps there was some kind of a famine, people were starving, food and clothing had become a problem with some of the people in the church.

And so, people had compassion on them. And what they did is they placed their possessions at the disposal of the Lord. And they had become a kind of people who believed that everything that they had belonged to God. That's what was happening here. Now, was this communism?

Was this a, you know, did everybody in the church sell everything and it went into a common fund, it was distributed equally the way the communists say that it should happen. Well, there's absolutely no evidence that that's what this was at all. The language completely argues against it. People were doing this not because they were forced to, not because it was a program and there was not an equal distribution. Obviously, if you just read the book of Acts, you'll see there's not an equal distribution.

Some people have houses, some people don't have houses. Some are wealthy and some are not. But what it was, was the gripping of the heart through the work of the Holy Spirit to place one's resources at the disposal of others. There's some really interesting things you can read when you read the commentators. You'll have some commentators spending long amounts of time just demonstrating you know Examples all over scripture like for instance, you know Abraham Why why did Abraham not sell absolutely everything and give everything away?

Well, it's because that's not the biblical pattern. But what you do see with Abraham is he puts his resources in play for his family and for his community. He even raises up an army at one point. Thank God that Abraham had enough resources to raise up an army, that he didn't just give everything away so that he could go and rescue his nephew Lot. So this was not a communistic pooling of resources that's based on confiscation of resources or theft, which is what I believe our modern tax system is all about.

It's the theft of resources from the heads of households. And of course, we are commanded by God to obey the tax laws and to pay our taxes faithfully and to obey the government. That doesn't mean that we shouldn't find every way to encourage the reduction of this theft and this confiscation. But this picture here is not a picture of a formalized confiscation of resources from the church. Absolutely not.

And Honestly, I couldn't find any commentator that took this position. So there must be a few oddballs in history that take this and use this. Of course, Karl Marx was one of them. And by their fruits you shall know them. But this was a cheerful, giving spirit that was based on the acknowledgement of the ownership of God of all resources.

And you'll see this example of giving more on, more as we go on in the book of Acts. Later on, we'll learn about some of the temptations of this practice, the temptations that Ananias and Sapphira had to become perhaps well-known in their giving, but yet actually lying about it. And the dangerous consequences of a wrong heart in giving. We'll see that. They sold a possession and then they lied about it.

You know, everybody wants to overestimate their generosity. This is just the way our evil hearts work. We want to be seen when we give. We want people to know it. This is just a way that sin has infiltrated our personalities and our thinking and our hearts.

So this third mark of this church was that they had a care for one another. It was such a deep care for one another that they were willing to part with their possessions to help others who had a genuine need. And then the fourth mark of this exemplary church was that they were with one mind in gladness of heart. I like the way this is juxtaposed in verses 46 and 47. Day by day, continuing with one mind in the temple, breaking bread from house to house, they were taking their meals together with gladness and sincerity of heart.

It starts with the mind, you know how they're deeply connected with one another, and then it talks about the things that they did, and then it qualifies the way that they did it, and that is with gladness and sincerity of heart. It's a beautiful picture of working together, living together, they were in the temple, they were in one another's houses, breaking bread, having meals, and the whole atmosphere of it was a joy. What a place. What a great place the Jerusalem Church must have been. You can always tell a church that has the ministry of the Holy Spirit operating and that is it's a happy church, it's a joyful place.

The people are treating one another like the Lord Jesus Christ treats all of his sheep And they had acquired the heart of the Lord Jesus in their fellowship. And now, also, what's interesting about this set of verses from verses 46 and 47 is that They're doing they're doing all these things together, but what is the focus? Well the focus isn't one another at all They I don't believe they were focused on one another. Like for instance, I don't think that they were enjoying one another too much. I think that they were enjoying God greatly and because of that it says here they were praising God.

This was the foundation of their fellowship, their foundation of their conversation as they were in the temple, as they were breaking bread from house to house, was this gladness and sincerity of heart that came from their praising of God. And the gladness was because of their fixation upon God. And what we find in anything in life, You find it in a home, you find it in a church, and that is when there's too much emphasis on one another and not enough on God that then the gladness goes. Because God is one who makes all of the things of life beautiful in the way that we see it demonstrated here. So the fourth mark of this church was that they were in one mind with gladness and in sincerity of heart.

And the fifth mark of this church is they were having favor with all the people. These were not angry, hard-bitten, reclusive people. They were people who were expressing love in the community. They weren't pulling away from the community in an ungodly way. There's a way of being holy and being separate, but at the same time one can have separation and still express the blessing of the Lord Jesus in the community.

And they were appropriately mixing themselves in the community. There's their inappropriate ways and there are appropriate ways. And the appropriate way is to mix it in the community, but with one thing in mind. The Word of God, the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, that this would be the atmosphere of our times in mixing with the community in the way that they did. And it gave them favor.

That doesn't mean that every person loved everything that they did. They did have conflict and difficulty in the community. But this is just a statement of general favor. They were living a beautiful lifestyle and it caused favor to be toward them. I've seen this in operation in our own community.

I've seen unbelievers look at the lives of people in the church and just be very thankful and be kind of evangelistic, honestly, about some of the strange things that they've seen in the church. And then there are, at the same time, there are God haters who are deeply offended by all these things, but we can't decide who those will be. Only God can do that. So they're having favor with all the people. Now just something I think is so important for us as a church and that is that we we really are gearing our lives for blessing in the community.

What can we do to be a blessing in this town? That's one question we need to constantly be asking. When we get up in the morning, Lord, how can I be a blessing in this community? How can I spread the fame and the glory and the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ here in this community? How can I do it individually?

How can my family do it? How can we do it as a whole church? There are a lot of different ways that we can do that and I want us to challenge, I want to challenge us to really be praying about how we can even more be a blessing in this community in particular ways. I don't have the answer to that. I know that we've done a number of public events and things like that in the community, and our intent was to preach the gospel, to bring the freshness of the God that we serve.

But I would just challenge each of us to be praying that God would give us a clear vision together of how to do that. So then the sixth mark of this church was the Lord was adding to their number day by day. And with all with all the things that were happening in the Jerusalem Church, one of the most exciting things was the addition of new believers into the church. This is a pattern for the church. This is something we should be working and praying for constantly, we should let it flag.

Yes, God has called us to minister to our families, we should be extremely vigorous toward that without setting aside our ministry in the community as well and the evangelization of those around us. Now, I was reading some of the things that Jonathan Edwards had written about the revival that took place in Northampton and the colonies during his time. And he wrote a treatise called A Narrative of Surprising Conversions and the Distinguishing Marks of a work of the Holy Spirit. And he gives several characteristics of the revival, and I just want to read them to you. I wish I had my computer working right now because they'll be easier to acquire on the screen, but if you could just listen to them.

The first characteristic of the revival was this. The daily conversation of virtually everyone was the revival. Other discourse than the things of God would scarcely be tolerated in any company. Got that? Conversation about anything but God and His greatness and His glory would barely be tolerated.

Number two, a visual neglect of daily affairs. They seem to follow their worldly business more as a part of their duty than from disposition they had to it. The temptation now seemed to lie on that which was at hand, to neglect worldly affairs too much and to spend too much time in the immediate exercise of religion. The only thing their view was to get the kingdom of heaven. And everyone appeared pressing into it.

The engagedness of their hearts in this great concern could not be hid. It appeared in their very countenances. So there was this neglect. And of course, Edward says, you know, they neglected it a little bit too much. I think that's what he's saying.

But there was this neglect of worldly prosperity that was characterized by this awakening that was happening. And then thirdly, widespread impact. And he says, there was scarcely a single person in the town, young or old, left unconcerned about the great things of the eternal world. Number four, a transformation of worship. Our public praises were greatly enlivened.

People were evidently want to sing with unusual elevation of heart and voice which made the duty pleasant indeed. In other words, people were just passionate in their worship, and it made the worship just very pleasant to each one of them. Number five, there was a focus on Christ. Number six, the backslidden were restored. Number seven, there was a different reaction among people.

Some mocked and ridiculed it, and others were just amazed by it. Number eight, there were geographical dimensions. There were at least 30 cities and communities that were affected by it. Number nine, it affected people of all ages and in all social strata. Number ten, many were saved.

Number eleven, There was an acceleration and intensification of God's activity. And people were quick for God's activity. And then he talks about the nature of the conversions. Number one, they had a deep conviction of sin. Number two, they had a sense of God's love and mercy and saving grace in Christ.

This is the nature of an outpouring of the Holy Spirit for which we should pray for and be a part of. It begins with us. It begins with a God-centeredness in our own hearts. That we are like these people that we see in the book of Acts. What Edwards describes is really just another way of, it's kind of remixing the same old things and communicating them.

But it's a constancy of devotion to the things of God, a gladness and sincerity of heart toward them, and then not being able to contain yourself to speak about them. So that's what we see here in this passage. Now, let me get to some applications. Now, how do you get your arms around all that's here? Let me try by sorting this out into two different areas.

I think that Acts 2, 42 to 47 gives us two areas, really important areas of church life and personal life to pay attention to. First of all, it shows how the church lived together after they were added, and it explains the kind of relationship, the patterns, the time investments, the types of things that they did specifically. You know, they were devoted the Apostles teaching to worship and fellowship primarily. And so the first element of application has to do with the way, just the way we live together. And it's, you just immediately recognize that their church life was different than the normal church life that people experience in the 21st century where we have a platform-driven, program-rich, entertainment mentality model of church.

That's just the way we do it. Here I am standing up in front of everybody with a microphone. I'm not saying this is wrong, but I'm just saying that we have to make sure that our pictures are right and we fulfill the right pictures of church life. And so we should all... So here's the application.

We should always be asking ourselves, have we slipped away from this type of church life and have accepted a worldly model of church life? That's one thing that I think we must do. And one thing that we have to recognize in our culture that makes it really hard for us is that the church is not wired for relationships, or at least the way that A lot of us have grown up in church. It's wired for gigantic events. It's wired for big movements of people hurting themselves or sitting like cabbages in rows.

That's what modern church life is wired for. But the early church pattern was wired for relationship. And what can we do to repair this breach that we see, this disconnect that we have? So here this Acts chapter 2 begins with them together and it ends with them together as well. And all the things that they're doing have tremendous import of love and connection toward one another.

And this connection has something to do with our resources and putting them in play for the people who need it. It's not communism, but it's definitely glad freedom with our resources that God has given. This is a Christianity that just thrills the heart, first of all. And it strikes fear into the consciousness, it transforms the soul, it affects the body, It changes the status of houses and possessions. And pocketbooks and properties.

It just changes everything about life. That's the kind of Christianity that was in play here. And would that God would cause church life to just spread like this. First of all, in us and with all the churches around us, we just should pray that God would give this kind of church life to every church that we know. Pray for every pastor you know.

Pray for all the people that you know in the other churches, that God would just grace them with this kind of life. Okay. So the first application has to do with the kind of church life that we have. The second application has to do with the reason they live this way. They live this way because of the fear of God and the praise of God.

This was the engine of all of these marvelous things that were happening. And, you know, What thrills the heart of the modern churchgoer? It's a superb motivational speaker. Beautiful music, accommodating facilities, attractive church programs that meets the needs of Every conceivable mix of toddler or preschooler or kindergartner or seventh grader or a junior high or young single or older single or married with children or senior citizens you just The kind of church that thrills the heart of the modern churchgoer has all these accoutrements, but not this church. This church was driven by its fear of God and its praise toward God.

This is the heart of the church of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is God who is the center of all things. It wasn't because they met together in families. How nice that is, isn't it? That is not the focus of the church.

The focus of the church is God himself. And if we like anything more than him and the church, we're going to have what I'm going to just call unbiblical church life. We might fall in love with certain particulars about church life that we might have affection for, but let's not have too much affection for them. Let's have affection properly placed that will give us the things that God would be pleased with in church life. And then lastly, Acts 2 shows us that the church was being added to.

That this is an important category and quality of the church. That there should be a mentality to adding to the church. Isn't it nice to be in a small fellowship now? It's a sweet thing. We like it.

We actually prefer it. And there are just so many wonderful things about it. And we should like it and prefer it, but we should not neglect the multiplication of the church. And we should not despise it at all. The church ought to grow under the work of the grace of God in that church.

And so we should promote it in as many ways as we can. But it's the promotion of the Lord Jesus Christ in praises toward him, it's the promotion of the fear of God to widen that out as much as we can, particularly among those who have never been saved. And this takes us really to the great work that God has called us to. The work of evangelism, the work of working in the community for the glory of God. That we would be taking the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ everywhere we go.

That we would be bold to speak up. I'm going to just make a confession here now. I was in a couple of situations, I was in two particular situations this week, in which I was with men who were absolute unbelievers, and I did not open my mouth. I spoke with them about the agenda that they brought to me, and I had tremendous opportunity to preach the gospel and ask them penetrating questions about their souls. And you know, I did not do it to my own condemnation.

I would just ask you to pray for me that this would not happen. But it happened this week on two different occasions. And I was aware that God was speaking to me that I should not keep my mouth closed in the way that I did. And I pray that God would give us a fear of Him in all these things that we would be faithful to speak of really, absolutely the most wonderful things that can ever happen in a person's life that God would actually come and thrill a soul with His presence and to take them to heaven, to cover all of their short-term liabilities, and take them to heaven, and to bless them for all of eternity. This is something that we just must have great hearts for.

Would you pray with me? Lord, I thank you for this vision of church life. Would you come and establish it among us? Oh Lord, the relationships, the fear, The love for one another, for you, the praising lifted up toward you. These things, Lord, are so appropriate in view of all that you've done.

Would you establish them among us in a mighty way? In Jesus' name, Amen.