All the Way to Glory - EVERYONE

1/3/2007

Were you quite a small number in the beginning?

About a dozen.

And it has grown?

Oh yes.

Because I’m just wondering about the family situation—something starts missing as more and more people join. My perception of family is small. Most families are small.

Well, take the first example you can think of in the book of Acts. How small is 3,120? And in a single day? :)

Okay :) Oh yes, that’s true.

“And all the believers were together and had everything in common. No one counted their possessions as their own. They were devoted to the apostles’ teaching, breaking bread, fellowship, and prayer. They broke bread in their homes and enjoyed the favor of all the people.” The whole thing was passionately simple with 3,120 people and more being added every day. “And a great number of priests were added.” They multiplied and on and on and on. But they were still so simple and basic that they were as one family.

So you have a really flexible situation because you wouldn’t have a building because 3000 would meet together at one time. So that would be either acting in small groups as they feel led by God to meet and go here and there.

That’s a key thought. That’s insightful because most people who think of trying to have a large number and still be intimate as family will think, “Okay, let’s do it by the alphabet. Let’s put all the A’s and B’s over here and C’s and D’s there. Or let’s break it down by age. Let’s break it down by race, or break it down by education, or break it down by geography. Let’s do this and that.” And all of a sudden men start getting their fingers all over it! And there’s not a hint in the Scriptures that they broke it down by anything other than…

Let’s say today I invite a couple families over for dinner and another fifteen people show up, and we’re worshipping and praying and there’s teaching. Tomorrow night somebody invites us to their house and they happen to invite a couple other families over. And the night goes on until midnight or past that until dawn and somebody gets raised from the dead in the middle of that. :) :)

The dynamic is one where we won’t have to assign anything if everybody from the least to the greatest is being what the Scripture says they’re supposed to be—the definition of the New Covenant—“From the least to the greatest they’ll all know Me.” As opposed to the old school where you have to say to your neighbor, “Know the Lord. Know the Lord.” The New Covenant is that everybody who has Jesus living inside of them will in fact be desirous of being devoted to the apostle’s teaching, breaking of bread, fellowship and prayer.

We don’t have 3,000 in Indianapolis, though we could. There are about a thousand people here that asked to move there. We told them, “You need to be involved where you’re at. We’re not trying to gather people here. We’re trying to help people know Jesus better and then be faithful to love the people that they already know.”

There could be more than 3,120 in Indianapolis if we said “yes” to everybody that talks about it and asks. We’ve had people ask once a month for 10 years, “Please, now can I move there?”

It’s not about that. It’s about Jesus and faithfulness and love. It’s not that nobody could move. Certainly some have. But we’re not trying to be part of a movement, start a movement, join a movement or grow numbers per se. We want to see many Sons come to Glory, rather than to just salvation only. We want to see people come all the way to glory, but that doesn’t mean they have to live anywhere near where we live. It’s not about that.

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