What’s Mine Is Yours

Acts 2:44 (NIV)—

‘All the believers were together and had everything in common. They sold property and possessions to give to anyone who had need.’

 ‘Everything I have, I share with you’. If you’ve attended a wedding recently then this phrase might sound familiar. It’s one of the crazy promises that people make to each other when they get married. To share everything. There’s no longer a ‘mine’ and a ‘yours’, everything is now ‘ours’. It’s part of the deal when two become one. You can’t have a rich spouse and a poor spouse. If one earns a six-figure salary and the other has no personal income, it doesn’t matter. Driven by love, they share everything. This can be quite the adjustment for some when they first get married when, for the first time, they no longer have total control or ownership of their finances and possessions.

 And that’s what makes this picture of the early church even more

extraordinary. They’re taking a ‘marriage’ approach to possessions within the entirecommunity of believers. Driven by love, they share everything. If one person in the church has a need then someone else in the church meets it, even if that means selling possessions to do so.

 This blew my mind a few years ago and completely changed the way that I viewed my money and possessions. Equally, it also changed the way that I viewed my responsibility for and dependence on my brothers and sisters in the church. The impact on my relationships within the church has been transformational.

 What would it look like for us as a church to take a ‘what’s mine is yours’ attitude towards what God has given us? To love each other so radically, that we would sell our possessions in heartbeat to meet the need of our brother or sister. This is the kind of commitment that we normally only reserve for close family. And this is the kind of church that I want to be a part of.

 Activity- Ask God to show you someone who has a need this week. Meet that need.