{"id":353,"date":"2021-06-03T22:09:18","date_gmt":"2021-06-03T22:09:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/?p=353"},"modified":"2021-06-03T22:09:22","modified_gmt":"2021-06-03T22:09:22","slug":"easily-devoted-your-guide-to-living-out-acts-242-easily","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/?p=353","title":{"rendered":"Easily Devoted – Your Guide to Living Out Acts 2:42 Easily"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

*originally posted at Life and Limb Blog<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I don\u2019t know about you, but when it comes to doing well in life, I like good, easy, practical suggestions. If you heard Pastor Aaron\u2019s message<\/a> on March 14 about how we can be contributors during our What\u2019s Next series<\/a>, you heard him talk a lot about Acts 2:42. His message was SO good, and if you haven\u2019t heard it yet, you can get it here<\/a>. It was so good, I knew I wanted to write a blog post just on Acts 2:42. I wanted to get to the solid, practical way we can live that out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This verse states, \u201cThey devoted themselves to the apostles\u2019 teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer\u201d. So, what\u2019s the no-nonsense simple answer to obeying Acts 2:42 in a simple way? That\u2019s easy: church attendance, groups, friendship and prayer.<\/strong> Truly, there\u2019s many more ways to obey that text, but I\u2019m here to help ya out. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Church Attendance<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first part of that verse says they devoted themselves to the apostles\u2019 (or in our case, pastors\u2019) teaching and to fellowship. We are so blessed at The Grove to have some of the best teachers<\/a>! They are unashamed of the gospel and will teach it passionately with a good mix of entertainment, aha moments of historical facts you never knew as well as gut wrenching heart checks. If you attend on a Sunday whether in person, drive-in or online<\/a>, and take good notes<\/a>, there is no way you won\u2019t leave better for it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And fellowship? That goes easily with church attendance too! Even with social distancing and masks you notice the smiling eyes and there are moments of intentional conversation. What\u2019s super fun is all the connection that happens during one of the online gatherings \u2013 especially during the Ryan and Heather show<\/a>! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Groups and Friendship<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the Grove Church we offer seasons of LifeGroups and seasons of Discipleship Groups<\/a>. These are places where you can further dive into the teachings of scripture and learn how to apply them to your life. Not only that, you learn how to become a disciple by taking your own initiative for your growth in the Christian life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cool thing about groups is they kinda hit all the marks of Acts 2:42. That\u2019s right. By simply joining and participating in a group, you will be completely obedient to Acts 2:42. You will devote yourself to the teaching by learning alongside others, you\u2019ll often eat together (because the best of life happens over food), you\u2019ll organically grow in fellowship\/friendship with one another, and you\u2019ll most definitely pray together. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other group settings that we offer include: MOPS, GroveMen, GroveWomen, retreats and conferences,<\/a> Senior Luncheon and more. I know we\u2019ve put a pause on many things, but I anticipate many, all or variations thereof to come back before we know it! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

One other little side note on friendship \u2013 yes, you can get friends through groups and joining serve teams<\/a>, but there\u2019s always a level of intentionality that you need to add whether you meet someone in a discipleship group or not. Notice someone comment something funny or that touched your heart during online church? Introduce yourself in the reply comment under them and then send a friend request! Meet someone in the discipleship group you connect with? Invite them out to coffee! Even on Zoom you can do this by using the chat feature! Be intentional \u2013 remember, Acts says they devoted<\/em> themselves to these things. Devotion takes intentionality. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prayer<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last but oh so cliche-ily not least, is prayer. Devote <\/em>yourselves to prayer. As mentioned above you can do this in groups. You can also do it by attending our zoom prayer meetings<\/a> every Wednesday! These are some of my favorite times together. We have our faithfuls that attend every week and we have amazing people that pop in every now and then and let us join them in prayer for what\u2019s on their hearts. I also truly love the multi-generational side of these prayer meetings. We have young children attend on their mom\u2019s laps all the way up to seniors in their 70s! It\u2019s such a special time. I will also say, when I was a young teen during some of my most formative years as a Christian, I loved just attending stuff like this to listen to the more mature saints pray over anything and everything. It did something amazing to my faith! <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also want to mention that during any of our gatherings, there\u2019s opportunities to share your prayer requests so that our staff will personally join you in prayer. This can be done by filling out a connect card<\/a> or joining the prayer room on our online platform. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Devoted<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey devoted themselves<\/em>\u2026\u201d To devote means to give all or a large part of one\u2019s time or resources to. Wow. All or a large part. Am I devoted<\/em> to teaching and to fellowship, to the breaking of bread and to prayer? Are you? We can only answer that question for ourselves but if you\u2019re wanting to know where to start or how to go about it, I hope I\u2019ve answered that for you today. We\u2019re in this together!<\/a><\/a><\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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*originally posted at Life and Limb Blog I don\u2019t know about you, but when it comes to doing well in life, I like good, easy, practical suggestions. If you heard Pastor Aaron\u2019s message on March 14 about how we can be contributors during our What\u2019s Next series, you heard him talk a lot about Acts…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5],"tags":[36,40,41],"class_list":["post-353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-living","tag-community","tag-devotion","tag-discipleship"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pac8FG-5H","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=353"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":355,"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353\/revisions\/355"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=353"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=353"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/asmymindunwinds.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=353"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}