Luke 12:48 MSG

"Great gifts mean great responsibilities; greater gifts, greater responsibilities! ”

When I think about great gifts, the greatest gift of all comes to mind. Our salvation is hands down the greatest gift imaginable. And it comes with extreme expectations. I think to the first martyr of the Bible Stephen. See Acts 7. Stephen embodies the message Christ gives us in Luke 12. Stephen fears God, not man. Stephen heeds the Holy Spirit. To Stephen life is more than about surviving; he had a purpose, a message to share. This message enraged his audience. As Christians we should not appease or tickle the ears, if we do please people we are doing something wrong. See Acts 5:29. The injustice of Stephens’s judgment angers me. In Acts 7 Stephen fulfills the great expectation every Christian inherits, by professing his faith at the cost of his life. Now, not all will need to lay their life out literally, but the truth of the Gospel is death. Salvation starts with Christ and his death and leads to our death, a death of our old self and sinful destructive desires. Stephens’s reaction to judgment is remarkable. His pleas for God to have mercy on those that punish him. This is an amazing display of God like love. It reminds me of a movie quote from Cold Mountain, a civil war movie. At one point a character speaks about the self-defeating evil of man and war. She says, ” every piece of this is man’s bullshit. They call this war a cloud over the land. But they made the weather and then they stand in the rain and say, 'shit, it's raining!'”

Owning up to responsibility isn't easy. I think Stephen display of Godly love is the very wrench in the gears of man’s bullshit. We cause our own spiritual problems in this country by avoiding the spirit of God. When we don't hunger for God, we appease men. And when we appease men we fail. God did not die as an example for us to be failures. Jesus dies AND rises beginning the story of our victory. And God willing we embrace it, the end of bullshit!