You’ve Heard It Said

Most of us grew up saying “I’m going to church,” as if church were an address. A woman at a well once asked Jesus which mountain was the right place to worship. He told her the place wasn’t the point.

The first church lived it. They met every day in the temple courts and broke bread from house to house (Acts 2:46). If you sit at a kitchen table with two other believers and an open Bible, you are doing what the first church did. The church is people.

Here’s the best case for it. Jesus did say, “Give, and it will be given to you” (Luke 6:38). Read the two verses before it, though. He’s talking about mercy and forgiveness, and He never put a price on a blessing.

In the first church the money went from people who had to people who needed, until nobody lacked (Acts 2:44-45; 4:34). If you gave to get something back and it never came, you weren’t foolish. You were trusting God. Keep giving, and give straight to a person who needs it this week.

If you prayed a prayer like that, hear me first. You were reaching for God, and He saw it.

When a crowd asked Peter, “What shall we do?”, he didn’t hand them a prayer. He said, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins; and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38). If nobody ever showed you that, it isn’t too late. Water and one believer is all it takes.

Nobody says it out loud like that. But most of us learned to measure faith by attendance. Did you go this week?

Jesus measured something else. In Matthew 7:21 He says the one who enters the kingdom is “he who does the will of My Father in heaven.” Here’s a small step: read one chapter of Matthew this week, and do one thing Jesus says in it.

Nobody says this in those words either. The system says it for us. A few people up front do the ministry, and everyone else watches. A lot of pastors dislike that as much as you do.

The religious leaders looked at Peter and John and saw “uneducated and untrained men,” and “they realized that they had been with Jesus” (Acts 4:13). If you’ve been with Jesus, you’re ready. Start with one person.

Maybe nobody said it. Maybe the looks said it, or the way people stopped calling.

In the story Jesus told about the son who wasted everything, the father saw him “a great way off” and ran to him (Luke 15:20). If you’ve been gone a long time, He isn’t waiting to lecture you. Come home.