02 Prayer and Fellowship

* Last week we started a new message series - “The Marks of a Healthy Church”. In this 10 week series we are looking at eight passages in the Bible to draw out and apply things that characterize a healthy church, including who and what we are as a healthy church and what a healthy church does. These passages include examining the example of the first church, what Jesus said about the church, what Paul said about the church, and what the writer of Hebrews said about healthy believers. * In the book of Acts we have great detail about how the first church (in Jerusalem) exploded from 120 followers of Christ to over 3000 and then to many thousands. Last week, in Acts 2, we covered a list of building blocks that contribute to the foundation of a healthy church. These included genuine conversion (characterized by conviction of sin, repentance, and receiving God's word); baptism by immersion as a public step of obedience and identifying with Jesus Christ (coming after faith in Christ, not before, and symbolizing what has happened spiritually to you as a new follower of Jesus); continuing steadfastly in God's word, fellowship, the breaking of bread, and prayer; praising God; and growing, which can be either and both numerical and spiritual - the former an increase in number of followers of Christ, the latter in each person growing in spiritual maturity. * Today we take a deep dive into prayer and fellowship from the example of the church in Acts 4. * Healthy believers lead to healthy churches, and healthy churches help individuals to be healthy believers. * This message was presented on May 1, 2022 by David Hayes.