God will meet your needs through the church, especially your primary need of hearing His Word.
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Acts 6 Summary
Explosive growth can often lead to explosive problems. The new but rapidly growing church is just coming off the scandal of Ananias & Sapphira's lies, which resulted in their immediate deaths, and now pre-existing racial divisions begin to be felt in how the Church is taking care of the widows.
In both of these situations the apostles take immediate action to make sure that their ability to devote themselves to prayer & preaching is not compromised.
Once again a meeting is convened and seven Godly men are chosen to serve as deacons, a word that simply means servant.
Five of these chosen men will not gain notoriety; they'll simply serve the Lord by serving the vulnerable members of His church and we'll not read of their names again.
However, Stephen radiated grace and power, and his actions quickly get him into hot water with the establishment (in a few days we'll read of how God used another of these deacons: Phillip).
Dig Deeper
So far in Acts we've seen how the Church's primary function is proclaiming the Word of the Lord and submitting to Him in prayer. These simple (and by the world's standard, foolish) actions have resulted in thousands of people realizing their salvation and joining the church in the opening chapters.
This is why as Worthington CRC has been defining what it means to be a thriving church, our values we've identified are centered around the preaching of the Word.
As important and central as what communicating the gospel is, we learn in chapter six that it's not the only task the church has, and taking care of our needy members is only one of those tasks.
This is why God has ordered deacons to serve in His church: so that critical tasks are addressed in a way that does not detract from the church's primary calling: to preach the Word of the Lord.
AAA Prayer:
ACKNOWLEDGE WHO GOD IS: Our Father, whose Word is powerful and brings salvation;
ALIGN YOUR LIFE WITH GOD'S WILL: Pray that you will serve the Church as faithfully as these first deacons
ASK GOD FOR WHAT YOU NEED:
