This past Sunday we began our summer-long study of the book of Acts. In Acts, Luke (the same guy that wrote the Gospel) moves from writing about the work of God through Jesus to writing about the work of God through Jesus’ followers.
In Acts 1 we find that Jesus does not leave his followers staring into the sky waiting for him to return, but calls them to be his hands and feet on the earth. God then gives Jesus’ followers the Holy Spirit to empower them to get to work.
When Jesus ascended to be with the Father, he left his earliest followers and us with two primary jobs: the Great Commission and the Greatest Commandments. The Great Commission is to “make disciples of all nations” and the Greatest Commandments are to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind” and to “love your neighbor as yourself.”
In an effort to make our study of Acts very practical and to invite us into evangelism and outreach, I am going to give a practical task for us to do each week.
Our first task that I shared this past Sunday is to:
1. spend time with God asking Him to place on our hearts several people that we are in relationship with that are not yet followers of Jesus. We should then write the names of these people down in a private place that we will see often, likely in our Bibles, on a notecard, in our wallets, or other convenient place.
2. discern what particular cause, injustice, suffering, or group of people that God has especially burdened you for. There are lots of needs, but what do you feel called to? Remember that the categories of people that God regularly mentions throughout Bible in need of particular care are the poor, orphans, widows and foreigners. God may have laid others on your heart as well.
I am excited to see how God uses Acts this summer to stretch our hearts and hands more fully into His mission for our world.