Friday, April 10. Acts 5:12-16.

Note to the regular devo reader: We have abruptly jumped into the book of Acts. If you would like an introduction to Acts, I invite you to read here. Now onto today’s reading…

The book of Acts is a description of what the first generation of Jesus followers were like. The first few chapters give us little portraits of the church. Today’s reading forms the third “portrait” of the first church in Jerusalem. Compare and contrast this passage with Acts 2:42-47 and Acts 4:32-35. What stands out to you about this current description of the church?

Here is one simple observation from this portion of the portrait. When the church was courageous enough to be the church, to be filled with God’s mighty presence, even in the face of adversity, then people were drawn to it. The church didn’t go out and get people ramped up to come to their meetings. They simply WERE the church.

When something is real, then people notice. There was power there and people from all over the region began flocking to them to tap into it. Let’s remember the simple overflow principle. If we keep first things first, create the space in our hearts for the Holy Spirit to have freedom to transform us, then God will overflow from our authentic self and people will encounter the power of God in us. They will either be drawn to it, or they will hate it. But that is not up to us to decide or to worry about.