SImplify: The Secrets of the Church of Acts Part IV

The Upper Room Prayer Meeting

12 Then they returned to Jerusalem from the mount called Olivet, which is near Jerusalem, a Sabbath day’s journey. 13 And when they had entered, they went up into the upper room where they were staying: Peter, James, John, and Andrew; Philip and Thomas; Bartholomew and Matthew; James the son of Alphaeus and Simon the Zealot; and Judas the son of James. 14 These all continued with one accord in prayer and supplication,[b] with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and with His brothers.
We ended up on Friday with Point #2 Power. After Jesus was taken up to heaven the apostles returned to Jerusalem and entered the upper room as Jesus had instructed them, to wait on the Power that Jesus had instructed them to go and wait on. When and why did the power come. It came when they were in the upper room praying “with one accord”.

Point #3 One

There is so many ways you can play that word in this case. First, our Power comes from the ONE who is above. Or we could say that God and the Holy Spirit are ONE, meaning that literally that God lives inside of us through the Holy Spirit! But that is not the direction I am going this morning. Because, God and His Holy Spirit are not the problem. They are the everlasting constant, it is us that needs to get the concept of ONE. When we get to “ONE” accord, then the church will experience great revival! A divided world must see a united church! The question is what did the church of Acts have that made them so successful? More specifically, with so many more advantages on the outside looking in, how is the American church not seeing the powerful movement we see in the church acts. The answer is ONE. They were ONE with the Holy Spirit and they ONE with each other. A mighty crazy kind of ONE that drew the world to them. We are going to explore this kind of ONE over the next few weeks as we continue to look at the book of Acts, but I don’t want to end a devotional without a practical take away.

What does ONE mean for us. What can we do as individuals to bring about this oneness? I think it starts with the Holy Spirit, we still need to be ONE with the Holy Spirit, like in the book of Acts. Me included, I know that is not the case. Mark lives like Mark wants to. My guess is you do to. Do I believe there are times I led by the Spirit, yes, but I am not ONE with the Spirit! Paul was one with the Spirit, Stephen was one with the Spirit, Peter became one with the Spirit. Did that mean that they became perfect, no it meant that they lived a life where every move was spirit driven. They put aside their lives and sought we he had for them. The other ONE I mentioned earlier was love for one another. For us to become in ONE accord, we must love each other. The Bible says plain and simple they will know us by our love for one another.

So how do we go about doing that? Start by being nice, the world is tired of mean Christians! Then get over yourself. Too many people in the church are flat out selfish. They act like the church exist to serve them, not that they exist to serve the church. It all goes back to HIS LOVE. When we get full of HIS LOVE, it will overflow. That is what happened in Acts, they got so in Love with Jesus, that it overflowed and dominated who they were. And out that Love flowed the oneness that we see in the book!