Acts Invites Us to Join God’s Mission through His Church

Acts invites us to join God’s mission through his church. As we study the book of Acts together as a church, my prayer is that we will see the importance of the church to God and his mission. Acts recounts the spread of the gospel around the world in the first several years after Jesus’s ascension, and our hope through this series is to draw attention to whom God uses to spread the gospel. He uses the church. He uses his people who have trusted in Christ and devoted themselves to worship and serve God together. As broken and flawed as they are, God uses his church.

In the books of Acts, we see that our Triune God advances his mission through his church. God is on a mission to usher in his kingdom. He is working to recreate and restore all things. He will dwell with his people forever. The life and work of Christ stand at the center of this mission, but now in the book of Acts, we see that God continues his work by sending the Holy Spirit to empower his people, the church. It is through the church’s Spirit-empowered witness to gospel of Christ Jesus that God uses to advance his mission.

In light of those truths, I pray that God will help us to apply this book in three major ways:

1. Rejoice in and enjoy our God who saves. In Acts, we will see God working to save people from every culture and background. God continues to save all kinds of people today, and we can rejoice that by his grace has called us to saving faith in Jesus Christ.

2. Trust that God will accomplish his mission. Even as we are invited through Acts to join in his mission, we have the hopeful confidence that God will accomplish all his good purposes.

3. Join in God’s mission with and through your local church. As we are drawn through Acts to make Christ known in our community, the book reminds us that we do this together in the community of our local church.