“They devoted themselves… to the fellowship and the breaking of bread… Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts.” – Acts 2:42, 46
This is a compelling community. We live in such a profoundly lonely and isolated moment in history. Technology, which promised to bring us together, has in many ways atomized us and driven us asunder. There is a longing for community, but uncertainty as to where to find it. We have tribes and tribalism, but we do not have real community.
But in seasons of revival, one of the hallmarks of the move of the Holy Spirit is a truly compelling community, made up of people of different ages and backgrounds, races and ethnicities, who find in Jesus a new kind of family. It is not only attractive to a lonely world…it is magnetic.
Revival leads men and women and children to link their lives, eating together, fellowshiping, even sharing resources. It is the movement of that Holy Spirit that empowers us to obey the 2nd Greatest Commandment to love our neighbor, and thus creates compelling community. We cannot create this kind of community on our own, by our own will, efforts, or desires. As Bonhoeffer writes: “The person who loves their dream of community will destroy community, but the person who loves those around them will create community.”
We need community. We long for community. But we can’t create it on our own. It is the fruit of the Holy Spirit, who enables us to love our brothers and sisters. And around this brotherly/sisterly love, community is formed.
In the Church in Acts 2, the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in revival resulted in a compelling community. Let’s pray for God to do it again.
Response:
- Who are the people God is calling you to love and do life with? Ask God to increase your love for them and show you a next step to do life with them.
- Pray for Home Churches in Sanctuary to experience the kind of outpouring of the Holy Spirit that leads them into deep, rich, compelling community. The kind that is not motivated merely by affinity or like life stages or personalities, but by the love of God.
- Pray for newcomers to Sanctuary and in other churches to find smaller communities to do life with in Christ this fall.
- Pray for God to anoint and equip home church leaders and hosts and for God to activate the gifts of home church members in building up the body of Christ
- Pray for God to activate and call new home church leaders and hosts.
In Our Time 