Healthy Church - Caring!!

COMMITMENT TO CARING - How do I know the first church cared about each other – they sold what they had and gave to each other to make sure the Gospel was spread.

A. Devotion 2:42

1. While doctrine was at the top of the list, it did not mean that these other items were LESS important, they were AS devoted to the rest of this list as doctrine!

a. Here the devotion is to CARING for one another.

b. Called here "fellowship."

c. It was devotion that moved them to act toward one another.

In Booker T. Washington's autobiography, Up from Slavery, Mr. Washington recalled a beautiful incident of an older brother's love. He said the shirts worn on his plantation by the slaves were made of a rough, bristly, inexpensive flax fiber. As a young boy, the garment was so abrasive to his tender, sensitive skin that it caused him a great deal of pain and discomfort. His older brother, moved by his brother's suffering, would wear Booker's new shirts, until they were broken in and smoother to the touch. Booker said it was one of the most striking acts of kindness he had experienced among his fellow slaves. What a beautiful illustration of "bearing one another's burdens," which we are admonished to do in . --James S. Hewett, Illustrations Unlimited (Wheaton: Tyndale House Publishers, Inc, 1988) p. 117.

2. Devotion finds a way to express itself! – I love the way that sounds….Devotion finds a way to express itself – it may come through we a simple gesture, a smile, a friendly hello, it may come through by offering something to someone else.

B. Decision -- When we care we find there is a decision we have to make…a fork in the road if you will….be with devotion – it almost seems the decision is effortless!!!

Ministry of a Healthy Church begins when we begin to look at the needs of others – instead of the temperature of the Sanctuary, the Songs we sing, the Bible Version we read from, or the snoodie lady sitting across the isle – we find what we really focus on is – what the Lord will have us do!!!

1. They did not just look at their own lives and their own needs, they cared deeply about one another, so much that under the difficult circumstances of the first century they even pooled their resources together and shared them so that they could all live in an environment of difficult persecution.

a. The Christian life is not just a set of doctrines, but is the WORD MADE FLESH just as it was in Christ, but now in us!

b. Even as Christ gave Himself for us, we are to give ourselves to one another.

2. It is the acts of love and fellowship that let others know that good doctrine is at work in our lives!

2. It is the acts of love and fellowship that let others know that good doctrine is at work in our lives! - This is where we find Hypocrites live – they read and know scripture, but they don’t practice a bit of it!!!

a. it is often the practical stuff that shows God's love and the power of the Word!

A man came to the pastor one time and said, "I don't know what's wrong with my life, but that first Christian joy I knew has passed by. I still live a moral life. I go to church. But how can I recover the lost radiance of my faith?" His pastor said, "this is what you should do: go to the store and buy a big basketful of groceries and go to an address of a poor family I will give you. Then when you have given your gift, you sit down with them to find out what they need. Let them know that you are interested in them and that you are their friend. Then lead them in the Lord's Prayer before you leave, and the radiance will come back."

b. Devotion to doctrine is measured by those doctrines lived out in our lives!

3. Real devotion cannot be devoid of action, or it is just sentimentality and not spirituality!

a. It is not devotion to just "FEEL" for our brothers and sisters in Christ if we can do something to minister to them.

b. We are living in a society that has separated feelings from actions, let this not be true in the Church!