LifeGroup Yesterday

Last night we had our first LifeGroup proper. We had met last week but yesterday was the first of our Bible Study sessions. I was on Acts 1 and I have to confess I had a poor impression of the chapter. I guess that I had only ever seen it as a sort of prologue or introduction to the chapter that follows. Thankfully, God, in his grace, showed me just how wrong I was.

There were several points whioch came up that made me think deeply about what God was saying.

1. The disciples dedicated themselves to prayer. Prayer is vital obviously, but in this case they had a mission and they had to get ready for it. The disciples had been told to wait in Jerusalem but they had no idea how long they were going to have to wait. Of course they prayed, they had a lot to do and organise.
2. Matthias has always been an unusual part of the story for me. Why bother replacing Judas at all (well, scripture does say they should)? Then we look at the Job Description and realise that the person had to have been with Jesus since his baptism (Jesus' not the apostle)
3. This made me think about the baptism. How many of those people who heard the voice of God declare Jesus His son became believers. Some of them must have
4. I also discovered that there is a tradition that Matthias was also known as Zaccheus. It isn't important but it is a nice way to think about it.
5. They aren't disciples anymore; they're apostles. An important distinction
6. Finally, there is a little verse about the women who were there. Right at the start of the church there were women. This is something that the church has ignored for generations and this is something it needs to apologise for. Women are, and always have been, as much a part of the church as the men.