As I’ve been studying Acts 6, I was struck by two verses and their
possible applications to my life. The first verse is Acts 6:7: “And the word of
God kept on spreading and the number of the disciples continued to increase
greatly in Jerusalem, and a great many of the priests were becoming obedient to
the faith.”
This verse comes directly after the apostles and the congregation
appointed 7 men to be the distributors of the communally held assets so the
Hellenistic (Greek-speaking) Jews would not be slighted. So the apostles were
relieved from having to handle the daily tasks and could focus on studying and
preaching the word of God. Somehow, doing this lead to an increase in disciples
and impacted a great number of priests so that they came to believe.
I don’t know if the increase in disciples resulted from the apostles
being freed up to preach the gospel (instead of dealing with internal dilemmas
within the church). Or possibly the increase happened because these 7 men
impacted the community in such a way as to draw attention and respect from the
people in Jerusalem. Possibly Stephen and the others, learned valuable lessons
from their service which enabled them to become exceptional preachers of the
message (as seen in verses 8 and 9). It’s possible they learned from serving
God in this behind-the-scenes way more about power, faith, wisdom and grace
(6:3, 5, 8), which led them to be powerful and effective proclaimers of the
word.
This can be applied in my life by recognizing that the seemingly
menial tasks I do (especially volunteering in a couple of ministries at church,
and writing my blog, and even getting healthy) may become (or are) a platform
for sharing the truth of God's Word and work in our lives. I need to be
faithful, diligent, and responsible for doing the tasks ordained to me by God,
so the Word will be proclaimed. Specifically for me, today, this means writing
my “weekly” blog article (which I haven’t done for a couple of weeks now).
Then as I finished up Acts 6 I was challenged
by the second verse that stood out to me. Acts 6:15 says, "And fixing
their gaze on [Stephen], all who were sitting in the Council saw his face like
the face of an angel." This is an incredible description of Stephen as
he's being accused in front of the Council of blasphemous acts and speech. I
asked myself what a "face like the face of an angel" would look like.
I also asked myself if I, in a similar situation having to defend Christ and
His Word, would I have a similar countenance as Stephen did. The first question
was answer by several commentators. Together they indicated that the phrase
"face of an angel" could mean several things. First it could mean,
"God permitted His glory to shine through the face of Stephen to convince
all the people that what he had said was the truth." That's what I always
believed in the back of my mind. However, other commentators said that it was
not some miraculous sign of God. They tended to say that the look on Stephen's
face (a face like an angel) was "denoting that {Stephen] manifested
evidence of sincerity, gravity, fearlessness, and confidence in God . . .
calmness and dignity and confidence in God." That led me to some possible
answers to the second question (would I have a similar countenance?)
I'm not sure what my face would look like. I
hope and pray I would appear to others to be calm, sincere, serious, fearless,
dignified, and having confidence in God. I prayed this morning that God would
develop those characteristics in me. When all is said and done, I want it to be
obvious to everyone – nurse, doctor, mental health worker, policemen, family,
friends – observing my dying days that I have faith in God and belief in the
principles of Christ right up to the last moment I'm alive. And today, I am
trying to develop that character in my life through reading and studying His
Word, as a way of applying these two principles to my life.
No comments:
Post a Comment