Faithfulness.

Friday night the Solid community will meet and fellowship and study together as we always do on Friday nights. This week we are going to be continuing through the book of Acts, we are in chapter 13. The first sermon that we have from Paul is recorded in Acts 13. It is a powerful message about church history and looking for the comming messiah... it is a message that Paul heard almost word for word from Stephan, the first man to die for his faith in Jesus. As Stephen preached this message, that Jesus was the very messiah that they had all been waiting for, that all of the prophesy had pointed to Jesus, that Jesus' death was sufficient for the forgivness of sins more so than the law could ever be... as he preached this message and was drug out and stoned to death for his faith... a young man watched all of it happen. A man named Saul, who would eventually become known as Paul.

I have no doubt that in the last minutes of Stephen's life he probably felt like he just wasnt getting though to these people. It probably pained him worse that the stones to believe that his message of hope and freedom was falling on deaf ears.

Stephen couldnt have known that in that crowd of people, holding coats, was a young man who would become the greatest missionary the world would ever see. And that more than a decade later he would be preaching an almost identical message to his own.

Almost 15 years ago there is no way that a jr. high school football coach could have known the way that simply taking time to invite a kid to be apart of his life, and pouring into him, and sharing a message of love and freedom, would drastically change my life forever!

Isaiah 55 tells us...

"As the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return to it without watering the earth and making it bud and flourish, so that it yields seed for the sower and bread for the eater, so is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it."

I wonder if Stephen thought of this scripture in those last moments of his life.

I wonder if God had Stephen in mind when He inspired those words to be written.

I wonder how we might change the world with our faithfulness...