Live Missionally
How God Grows the Church
Have you ever wondered how a movement around a man who lived, died, and rose again over 2,000 years ago is still around today? And not just dwindling off, but growing? Have you ever wondered how God grows the church?
While God is the source and sustenance for growth of the church, the conduit for growth as decreed by God is the church! We must not be ready to live missionally IF the Lord calls, but as called out Christians, we have been called to live missionally in everything we do.
God uses the church to grow the church by:
1. Scattering His people to unfamiliar people and places (19-21)
- God sets the expectation: the regular experience of the believer will be scattering to unfamiliar people and places, not collecting into one comfortable and familiar people and place
- How does God scatter His people?
- Persecution (as in the case of Stephen, cf. Acts 7)
- Commission (cf. Matthew 28:18-20)
- Church multiplication (NT church pattern)
How do you respond to thinking about the idea of being scattered? How do you view the spheres that you’ve been scattered to? Perhaps the scattering of God in your life has not been to the ends of the earth, but what about the neighbourhood, grocery store, school, workplace, or friends that you’ve been scattered to? Is God asking you to scatter beyond the neighbourhood you’ve settled into? Has God placed an “ends of the Earth” assignment on your life you’ve been resisting?
2. Strengthening His people through encouragement, exhortation, and example (22-24)
- When the Gospel advances, we should rejoice!
- God used the spiritual maturity of Barnabas to mature infants through:
- Encouraging the good (23)
- Exhorting to grow (23)
- Setting the example for godliness (24)
Have you been hindering a way that God intends to grow the church through you by being slow to encourage, exhort, and set an example? In what area of your life are you deficient that is keeping you from being a bold instrument of Christ’s to strengthen the church? What area of personal holiness needs some growth in your life?
3. Solidifying His people by humble and faithful presence and preaching (25-26)
- When someone serves in a higher capacity or a wider platform than you - rejoice that the Lord has given them that capacity to glorify Himself and bless the church! But be warned - The higher capacity gifting of another does not excuse you from needing to use the gifting God has given you!
- God’s people were solidified through Barnabas and Saul’s:
- Humility (25)
- Faithful presence (26)
- Faithful preaching (26)
Do you undervalue the spiritual health benefit and evangelistic witness impact of gathering together? What humble and faithful presence and preaching/teaching/passing along of the Scripture has God called you to do?
4. Supplying for His people’s needs through His people’s obedience (27-30)
- God had sent Jesus, the bread of life, and was rejected. Because they did not bring forth their spiritual need to God, God would bring physical need to them.
- Whose needs were supplied for? The church!
- How were the needs supplied for? The obedience of His people!
In what ways is God seeking to provide for His people through your obedience? Has your disobedience been hindering the provision of God in your life? How can you proclaim the greatness of the God who provides your every need to the world as a proclamation of the power, might, and grace of the one true God?
Are you ready and living in active obedience, willing to be used by God as He sees fit to grow the church through your obedience?
Series Information
