🌅 Good Morning.

What if you could magically donate $1 (for free) to support Daily Devotion — without actually spending it?

Well you can, the good people over at Morning Brew decided to sponsors today’s newsletter. 🥳

They’re giving us $1 for every person who clicks the link below, so if you’d like to support Daily Devotion, do us a small favor:

Click the link to check them out (They’re awesome)! ⬇️

Go back in time with me.

Not metaphorically. Literally. Imagine you wake up in Jerusalem right after Jesus has ascended into heaven. You don’t know the language perfectly. You don’t know where anything is. But you’ve heard there’s this new thing called “the church,” so you go looking for it.

You won’t find it.

At least not the way you expect.

There’s no building to walk into. No crowd heading toward a stage. No sign telling you when the gathering starts. For a while, it honestly feels like you’re missing something.

Then you start noticing smaller things.

People packed into homes. Meals happening constantly. Conversations spilling out into the street. And one name keeps coming up. Jesus. Not like ancient history. Like something that just happened.

Because it did.

Jesus had risen from the dead and gone back to heaven. Before He left, He told His followers to wait in Jerusalem for the Holy Spirit. So they waited. Then Pentecost came. The Spirit showed up. Peter stood up and spoke openly about Jesus. By the end of the day, about three thousand people believed and were baptized. That moment, right there, is the birth of the church.

So what happens next matters.

Acts doesn’t tell us they organized services or built anything. It just tells us how they lived. They listened to the apostles teach about Jesus. They spent time together. They shared meals. They prayed. That’s not interpretation. That’s straight from Acts.

And they didn’t do this once a week. They did it daily. Sometimes in public spaces. Often in homes. Church wasn’t something they attended. It was something woven into normal life.

If you stayed long enough, you’d also notice how they treated each other. Nobody got ignored. Needs didn’t sit around unanswered. Acts says they shared what they had and took care of one another as needs came up. No system. No pressure. Just attention and love.

Here’s the surprising part.

Nobody was trying to grow the church.

And yet people kept joining. Acts literally says the Lord added to their number daily. God handled the growth. They focused on living out what they believed.

Later, when religious leaders looked at Peter and John, they were confused. These guys weren’t trained. They weren’t impressive. Acts calls them ordinary and uneducated. The only explanation anyone could come up with was that they had been with Jesus.

That’s the throughline.

If you could actually stand there in Acts 2, you wouldn’t think you’d found a perfect church. You’d think you’d found a living one. People who genuinely believed Jesus was alive and were reorganizing their lives around that belief.

That’s what the first church looked like.

And that’s why it still matters.

When you’re not sure how to pray, A.C.T.S. gives you a simple path to follow: Adore, Confess, Thank, and Ask.

Adoration: God, You are faithful and You build Your church.

Confession: I confess I often trust my own plan plan more than your spirit.

Thanksgiving: Thank you for using ordinary people to do extraordinary work.

Supplication: Help me stay close to Jesus and live like the first church.

In Jesus name, Amen

“I See Grace” by Micah Tyler

Click play to Support Daily Devotion ⬇️

Thanks for letting us be part of how you start your day with God.

Before you head out, would you take 10 seconds to click play on the YouTube video above? Every link click helps us reach more people and attract sponsors so we can keep Daily Devotion free for everyone.

See you tomorrow,

Zach and the Daily Devotion team