Stephen's Character (Acts 6:8)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 11/4/2017 8:05 AM

My Worship Time                                                                              Focus:  Stephen’s Character

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                             Reference:  Acts 6:8

            Message of the verse:  “8 And Stephen, full of grace and power, was performing great wonders and signs among the people.”

            When we look back at verse five-b we read “they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and of the Holy Spirit,” and now in verse eight we see Stephen was full of grace and power.  John MacArthur writes “full both there and in verse 8 translates pleres, which means ‘to be filled up.’”  From this we know that Stephen was totally controlled by faith, the Holy Spirit, grace, and power.  When we get to chapter seven and the sermon that he gives to the Sanhedrin it will reveal the content of his faith, and it will also show us that Stephen knew his Bible very well and by knowing his Bible Stephen knew that God controlled history, and therefore was confident that God was in control of his life too.  What Paul wrote in Romans 14:8 was surely true of Stephen “for if we live, we live for the Lord, or if we die, we die for the Lord; therefore whether we live or die, we are the Lord’s.”  John MacArthur adds “Stephen saw Jesus as the fulfillment of the messianic prophecy (7:52) and believed He had risen and been exalted to the right hand of the Father (7:55-56).  His confident trust in Jesus’ care for him allowed him to face death calmly (7:59-60).  Finally, he believed in the Holy Spirit (7:51).”

            I suppose as we look at Stephen and the fact that he was full of faith, can we as believers in Jesus Christ be like him or are we like the father of the demon-possessed man from Mark 9:24 who cried out “"I do believe; help my unbelief."”  Many believers today trust God for their eternal destiny; however they find it difficult to trust Him with the concerns of their everyday life.  Stephen on the other hand trusted God fully and so he concentrated on doing what the Lord wanted him to do.  The consequences he ran into he left in the hands of God.

            We next look at the fact that Stephen was full of the Holy Spirit, something that all believers have the privilege of as we see in Ephesians 5:18 “And do not get drunk with wine, for that is dissipation, but be filled with the Spirit.”  Now what does being filled with the Holy Spirit mean?  “It means to obey fully what His will is which is true of Stephen.  He believed God and therefore he submitted to the leading of the empowering, purifying Holy Spirit.  MacArthur writes that these “two realities epitomize the strength of the Christian life.  In the words of the beloved hymn:

‘Trust and obey,

For there’s no other way

To be happy in Jesus,

But to trust and obey.’”

            In our next SD we will look at a third spiritual reality that flows from trust and obedience and that characterized Stephen had grace. 

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  I have to go back and look at some things that I wrote earlier in this SD which spoke of Stephen trusting God, not only for eternal life, but for what happens in his everyday walk with the Lord and this is something that I don’t do as well as I should, and so that means I need to do it more and do it better.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Trust the Lord for the events that will go on today in my life that what I do will bring glory to the Lord.

Answer to yesterday’s Bible question:  “Barnabas” (Acts 15:37).

Today’s Bible question:  “Which book shed light upon the conditions in which the Jews lived in the Persian Empire?”

Answer in our next SD.

11/4/2017 8:45 AM