The Starting Line — Answering The Call - A Redeeming The Time Blog

The Starting Line

By Grant Gaines

They say how you finish a race is more important than how you start. While I certainly agree with that statement to a degree, I’m not so sure that advice is entirely true. For example, you can end a mile race with the fastest final lap in the history of the world, but if you ran the first three laps at a snail’s pace, you still lose. You could close out your fiscal year at work with the best quarter of your tenure with the company, but if you made zero sales during the first three quarters, you probably shouldn’t expect too big of a Christmas bonus check.

I think you get the point. The finish line of whatever “race” you’re competing in gets all your attention from beginning to end. However, it’s often how you start that sets you up to have a favorable finish. In most cases, a bad start will lead to an overall bad finish…no matter how strong you close out. Conversely, a good start will lead to an overall good finish even if you’re limping across the finish line.

So with this New Year in its infant stage, would you mind if we took a moment to look at how the early Church was kicked off? Well, I suppose if you don’t want to take this journey with me then you can stop reading right now but otherwise, let’s look back at the beginning of the Church by starting with the most significant claim the Church is founded on-Christ’s resurrection.

Jesus rose from the grave after being crucified on the Passover for the sins of the world in order that we may be counted righteous in God’s eyes (2 Corinthians 5:21). For the next forty days, Jesus appeared to His disciples and to many witnesses and, “…gave them many convincing proofs that He was alive…and spoke about the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3, NIV). Then, right before ascending to heaven, Jesus gave His disciples the Great Commission by telling them to go spread the Good News of His resurrection and redemption all over the world in Acts 1:4-8. And that’s exactly what happened!

But as we discussed before, I’m not as concerned with how this “race” known as the Church Age is currently going or how it is going to end. Rather, I want to look at how this “race” kicked off. And it all got started ten days before the Jewish holiday of Pentecost which was fifty days after the Passover.

Just to make sure you’re tracking with me: Jesus died on Passover, then appeared for forty days on earth before His ascension, and finally the Church got their wheels turning when the Holy Spirit descended on them on Pentecost which, once again, is 50 days after the Passover (when Jesus died). If you’re doing the math in your head, you’ve likely noticed that there is about a ten-day gap between when Christ ascended to heaven until the Holy Spirit came down during the celebration of Pentecost. It’s in those ten days that the success of the Church was born.

You see, while many of us may be familiar with Christ’s command to His followers in Acts 1:8 (NIV)- “But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be My witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth.” Few of us have taken the time to study the first part of His commandment in Acts 1:4 (NIV) – “…Do not leave Jerusalem, but wait for the gift My Father promised, which you have heard Me speak about.”

The first part of Christ’s last commandment was to stay in Jerusalem and wait (Acts 1:4). That’s it.

The very first thing the newborn Church did was nothing. No new programs, no new buildings, no new sermons. All they did was stay where they were and wait. But don’t let the lack of action make you glaze over these ten days between Christ’s ascension to heaven and the coming of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost. These ten days are debatably the foundation where the early Church’s success was born.

So what did the Church do during these ten days while they patiently and eagerly awaited the coming of the Spirit of God? “They all joined together constantly in prayer…” (Acts 1:14, NIV).

That’s it. For ten straight days all the early Church did was pray. They didn’t go pass out evangelism tracts on the streets of Jerusalem, they didn’t work on their social media campaign, and they didn’t even take the time to plan for what their 3, 5, and 10-year plan was. Instead, the newly established Church devoted themselves to prayer.

Don’t get me wrong. It may sound like I’m dogging the Church for doing nothing but praying, but nothing could be farther from the truth. Instead, what I want to stress is that while the world today emphasizes the doing more and more, Christ commanded that the Church slow down and do just one thing-pray. And what could be more important than that? Psalms 127:1 (NIV) tells us that, “Unless the Lord build the house, its builders labor in vain. Unless the Lord watches over the city, its watchmen stand guard in vain. In vain you rise early and in vain you stay up late toiling for food to eat….”

We can work our tails off to have the best plans, the biggest buildings, and the most cleaver outreach strategies as a Church, but unless we desperately depend on the Lord’s guidance in each endeavor we undertake, we’re laboring in vain. And this truth does not apply simply to churches, it’s true for every area of our lives.

You could buy your spouse the best birthday present, make better meals than Bobby Flay on a daily basis, and write a heart-throbbing letter to your loved one that would make even William Shakespeare himself jealous. But unless you daily beg and plead with God to be the center of your marriage, you’re laboring in vain and it will be as if you’ve made no effort at all.

You could create the best business model, have the biggest business geniuses buying into your idea, and invest a large amount of capital into your company, but unless the Lord is the One who is pulling the strings, your company will go the way of the Titanic.

That’s why it is so significant that the early Church took a ten-day period of time to do nothing but pray. They were begging for the Lord to be the builder of the Church. They were eagerly asking that the compassionate Father would soften the hearts of the Jews whom they were about to share the Good News with. They took the time to pray so that their efforts would be multiplied by the infinite and uncontainable power of God.

You don’t need to look any further than those ten days between when Christ ascended to heaven and the Spirit came to earth if you want to know why the early Church was so successful and why our modern Church, our lives, and our efforts so often take a different course. They weren’t any smarter, richer, or more creative than we are. In fact, Acts 4:13 (NIV) tells us that the majority of the apostles were “unschooled and ordinary men.” The difference between their results and ours is directly related to the amount of time they spent in prayer fervently begging God to do what only He could do.

Do you want this year to be a year marked with success, growth, and newness? Why don’t you take a page out of the early Church’s playbook and devote yourself to prayer for the first week of this New Year. Set your alarm 30 minutes earlier for seven days, turn off the radio while driving to work, or maybe you might even consider skipping a meal every day for one week so that you could devote yourself to praying for the rest of the year.

I know it sounds like it’s an inconvenience to lose sleep, food, or entertainment for an entire week but I can assure you that your one week sacrifice will drastically increase your joy and peace over the remaining 51 weeks of the year. Sacrifice now so you won’t have to later. Pray for favor now so you won’t have to pray for deliverance later.

Are you willing to make the sacrifice the early Church made in order to receive the type of success the early Church experienced?