Acts 6:8: “And Stephen, full of faith and power, did great wonders and signs among the people.”

April 3rd, 2022 by Pastor Ed in devotional

God desired to not only do miraculous signs through the apostles, but through other believers as well. We first see Stephen, “full of faith and power,” simply serving the church by waiting on tables. But in the coming chapters we see him being greatly used by the Lord. There is a beautiful lesson on faithfulness here. We must not miss what God was doing in Stephen’s life, because He does it in our lives as well. In the beginning of our walk with God, He usually calls us to seemingly small things. But they are doorways to a life filled with service to others. His call on each of us is to love Him and love others, to be both God-centered and others-centered. God allows us to experience the small things in life, before He entrusts us with bigger things. And we need to treat those little things as though they were big things. The result will be that God will have also taught us to take care of big things like they were little things, trusting Him completely.

There are also negative consequences to not taking care with little things. Little things, like little sins, become big things if we ignore them in our lives. A blood clot no bigger than a BB pellet can quickly kill a 275-pound professional linebacker. If we let little sins go by without any kind of effort to resist them, then Satan will bring out the big guns and destroy our lives. When we see a famous believer fall into notorious sin, we can be assured it was not their first temptation. We must not ignore the little things of service or sin, because there is no such thing as a little service or a little sin in the kingdom of God. As we pass the test of handling little things humbly and faithfully, the Lord will begin to bring bigger things into our lives.

“LORD, keep us carefully focused on taking care of the little things well today. Keep reminding us of the privilege of serving the living God by serving others.”