I read a lot of bedtime stories these days, and one of our favorites is the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. You remember that one: two sleazy tailors agree to make the emperor a new suit (payment in advance). Of course, on delivery day, they show up with nothing – but they make a big show of it. They set up mirrors, they Ooooo and Ahhhh and really talk up this new “suit.” And they tell the emperor that only someone who is unfit for their position, stupid, or incompetent will be unable to see the suit. Nobody wants to be stupid, incompetent, or unfit for their position, so everyone agrees the suit is the most amazing thing they’ve ever seen.
I don’t know about you, but when I read Acts and the stories of thousands of lives powerfully changed, of wounds healed, of the world turned upside down, I’m inspired! I want to experience that. Heck, I’d be happy to just talk to someone else who’s experienced that! But here in America, church doesn’t (often) look like Acts – and it feels like the emperor is wearing no clothes, and I don’t want to admit I’m not experiencing it in case it’s just me.
Why is our “worship experience” so different? Is Acts all just propaganda? Or is there something lacking in how we “do church” that wasn’t missing for them?
I think it’s the second one. I think that first church saw the Spirit move in incredible ways that we don’t see, mostly because they were prepared and we’re not. Look at the things that characterized that first church:
And they devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching and the fellowship, to the breaking of bread and the prayers.
– Acts 2:42
We see the results in Acts 4:32-33
Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
They had supernatural unity, their preaching had supernatural power, and their testimony had credibility.
These first believers had grown up saturated in the Old Testament. Every one of them likely had heard enough to connect the dots between what Jesus did and what the prophecies said the Messiah would do. The men who wrote the New Testament – who experienced first-hand the power of God in those first years of the Church – used hundreds of Old Testament quotes in their books. We don’t know our Bibles as well, which is one reason we can’t be used like they were. One guy described it this way in an article called, “Why You and I Couldn’t Write the Book of Revelation“:
The book of revelation has about 400 verses, and scholars say those verses contain around 550 allusions to Old Testament passages.
But here’s the thing, John doesn’t include a single quotation of the Old Testament. He only uses allusions. This means that his writing, his thoughts, his spirituality literally bleeds with an deep, abiding knowledge of the Scriptures.
John didn’t just look up passages that supported his point. And he didn’t memorize a few powerful proof texts to argue and impress. He knew the Scriptures. He lived the Scriptures. The words of God were a part of him that couldn’t help but flow from his pen. The Spirit of God used that embedded knowledge and wisdom to enable John to write a book that contains more allusions than verses.
Does Scripture – the teachings of the Prophets and the Apostles – literally saturate your life? Some of you post a verse or passage on Facebook every day. Maybe that’s a good way to start. But until we – as a church – put daily time to really study and KNOW God’s Word, we can’t expect to experience church like the Apostle’s did.
Second, they devoted themselves to prayer. They prayed all the time. Conversation with God was like breathing – it was just natural. When you’re alone (or just trying to find a “happy place” to escape the screaming kids in the back seat), do you pray? Or are you so busy with life that you get to the end of the day and realize you haven’t once talked to God? If we want to see God move, we must be people who pray unceasingly.
Finally, we need to live out community in such a way that it gives credibility to our message. We have to love others MORE than ourselves (Phil 2:3). Look back at Acts 4:32-33:
Now the full number of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had everything in common. And with great power the apostles were giving their testimony to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all.
Verse 32 gives credibility to verse 33. It’s not that we’re lacking the power that the Apostles had – we just don’t have their credibility. If all we do is preach the verses on loving our neighbor and never actually do it, our message is robbed of any credibility. Good intentions aren’t enough.
God wants to use us in this community, and I think He wants to do it in ways just as big and earth-shaking as He did with the church in Acts. But we can’t outsource our praying, our Bible-learning, and our service to the legal entity that is Pin Oaks, to the staff. We have to do church differently if we want to experience God moving in uncommon ways. We need to pray constantly, to know His Word deeply, and we need to love each other more sacrificially. We have to do it because God is going to move in our community – and we need to be ready if we want to be a part of that.
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