Daily Manna, Year Two · Day 96 · April 6
Continued Stedfastly
“And they continued stedfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers.”
Being told to do more at church has worn you out, you missed last week, and you are half expecting this to be another push.
I want to put one verse in front of you and then leave you alone with it. And they continued stedfastly in the apostles' doctrine and fellowship, and in breaking of bread, and in prayers. Four things, and one verb governing all four. That verb is for sticking at something, staying near it, refusing to drift off; Luke uses it of the eleven in the upper room, who continued with one accord in prayer and supplication. It describes attendance more than intensity.
Look at what the four are. Teaching, one another, a shared meal, and prayer. Three of them cannot be done alone in any version of Christianity, and the fourth was being learned in a room full of people who had been strangers a fortnight earlier. This is a description of a young church. Reading it as a private performance review for a tired individual is the fastest way to fail it.
The invitation stands on that. There is a room somewhere near you this week with a chair nobody is sitting in, and four ordinary things going on in it that outlasted the empire they started in. You would be welcome there, without a testimony prepared and without your week in order. Continuing was never something the three thousand did on their own.
Daily Manna runs on a two-year cycle. The year one reading for day 96 is Carried from Start to Finish (Isaiah 46:3-4).