RECENTER

Daily Scripture Readings

Monday          Acts 1:1-11

Tuesday         Acts 1:12-26

Wednesday   Acts 2:1-13

Thursday       Acts 2:14-36

Friday             Acts 2:37-41

Saturday        Ephesians 3:16-21

Opening Prayer

Gracious God, help us to be an inviting congregation, following the example of Jesus who invites us to, “Come, follow me.”  In Jesus’ name, AMEN.

Reading:

One of the things the young church devoted themselves to was fellowship. Fellowship means holding all things in common — in other words, sharing together. They began to know and to love one another. Here are 3,000 people suddenly added to a little band of twenty. Most of them probably were strangers before this time. Many of them had come from other parts of the world into Jerusalem for that occasion. They did not know each other. But now they are one in Christ, and they begin to love each other and start to talk to each other, to find out what each other has been thinking and how each has been reacting, and to share their problems and burdens and needs, to talk about these together and pray together about them. There was a wonderful sense of community, of commonality, of belonging to each other. That is the fellowship which is the intended life for the body of Christ.

God intends that Christians should have fellowship, should share one another's lives and thoughts and problems — bear one another's burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ. It is not an option; it is an essential. This is why, when the Holy Spirit of God begins to move in any congregation, or in any assembly of Christians, he starts at this point. He begins to heal the brokenness of their lives and their relationships one with another, to get them to admit to each other their malice and their anger and their frustration and their grudges, and to forgive one another. This is when life begins to flow once again through the body of the Lord Jesus Christ.   Ray Stedman