All You Need is Love

God is love.
-- I John 4:8

What does Christian life look like? Well, if God is love (and he is), then any gathering of Christians will be marked by love in their worship of God, in their life together, and in the way that they serve others. This love will not be perfect, but it will be genuine. After all, Christians are not people who have it all together, Christians are people who have discovered they need God to hold them together. And Acts 2:42 portrays God's love working itself out in the lives of his people as "they devoted themselves to" four simple, life-transforming activities.

1. "the apostles' teaching"
The apostles' teaching is simply the Bible, God's truth about who he is, who we are, and how we are to relate to him and to each other. God's revealing of Himself helps us to understand everything else properly. When Jesus famously said "the truth will set you free," he meant that God's revelation of himself in Jesus frees us from wrong ways of thinking which keep us from knowing and having fellowship with God. Christians read many books because God has made a big world. But they are in a profound way people of one book - the Bible: for it is the Bible that reveals the full extent of God's love.

2. "and fellowship"
Fellowship refers to life together, sharing what God has done for us and in that way encouraging, sharpening, and loving each other. Early Christian devotion to fellowship reminds us that though Christianity is a very personal religion, it is not a private one. Christian life is not solitary life! Since we need each other, and since we will only grow well with each other's love, Christians make it a priority to spend time together.

3. "to the breaking of bread"
Christians share many meals together, but this phrase refers to the special meal of the faith, the celebration of the Lord's Supper. In this meal, God gives us visible signs of his great and sacrificial love for us in the giving of his Son, Jesus Christ, and through faith unites us to him.

4. "and the prayers"
If the Christian life is communion with God, then prayer is God in love turning the hearts of his people to himself through conversation. In prayer we adore God for all he is and has done; we confess our weakness and brokenness before him; we thank him for restoring us through his Son and for every other blessing; and we ask him to accomplish his will in specific ways in us and the world.