So its pretty safe at this point to say that bickering in the church isn’t something new. What I like to take away from this is that the disciples made a decision to delegate others to take care of the problem and the people were pleased by this. How often have you seen directive given from authority and people still aren’t happy and still fight over not getting their way. Romans 13:1 everyone must submit himself to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. This isn’t the easiest pill to swallow but it is pretty clear. God has the wisdom and the plan and we can only pretend to know what it is and undermining the authority that God has established (all authority) is undermining God.
Stephens only visible fault was loving God and Loving his fellow man. For this he was lied about and eventually drug out in the street and stoned to death, all the while we prayed for those who were killing him. This is a level of forgiveness that I don’t yet comprehend I pray that some day I can get their. They say Christians are the only ones who shoot their wounded or even in this case their healthy, I can’t really argue that based on what we know of the past. What can do is begin learning from the past couple thousands of years worth of mistakes and work harder towards upholding the namesake of Christian “Christ like”
I find it interesting that Saul, who later changes his name to Paul, is present at the stoning of Stephen. It's not a coincidence. I think that God allowed Saul to be in this situation so that he would be able to draw on the memory after his conversion. Saul had the choice to be there, he made the choice to persecute Christians, but God used his choices to make him a huge part of the Christian church. What choices have we made that we consider mistakes? How has God used them to make us better Christians?
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