Lena's Discipleship Journalin' to Acts 6 Today

The Cross is shaped like a “t”. There are vertical points going both up (North) and down (South), horizontal points reaching East and Westward.
Its symbolism is much like that of our relationships, both with God (N to S, He to us, us to Him)and with people here on earth. (E & W)
There is an order of priority in relationships. One has got to be first in order for the other to work well.
There is that greatest commandment and the one just like it, Love God with everything, and then love people the same.
If we love people wholeheartedly and neglect a relationship with God it can be we are doing some good, for we do kind deeds, but it is out of priorital order and will not hold up well without its “missing link”.
If we love God and are not ever very interested in people, we’re “missing the boat”, the very intended purpose for being on earth.
The disciples said, we cannot only tend to people and their physical needs. We must attend to God.
Now in attending to people we do attend to God’s will, yet tending to God must be first priority to properly love and serve His people. Jesus was a grand example of this. He would wake up early, go away for hours, with His Father, find out His will for the people and then be that will to the people, not in writing as Moses did, but on a tablet of flesh, a living breathing man.
The words that God gave Moses were laws written on tablets of stone. Jesus showed us that through a relationship with His Father He became the living alive and breathing word with His father’s words inscribed on His heart. Without being in the Lord’s presence, the words or deeds we might do or speak are as stone tablets, and our words and actions can be quite weighty to the hearers.
Jesus spoke weighty and serious words, yet His relationship and obedient love of His Father held the weight needed to be carried.
We also cannot neglect the Lord, and our relationship building with Him to do a good work in soup kitchens, or visit the elderly, or do any good work in the place of relationship building and then say we did it for or with God. He wants our presence as much as we want His. We can do the good and practical work all day long and never be with Him or we could have been with Him, then do the work as living breathing examples of that love relationship with Him.
Is there enough evidence coming out of your heart and life to convict you of being Christ-like? Do other people look at you and say, “man, they’re just like Jesus was?”
Christians are called Christians, by others, not by themselves.
We all know you cannot convince anyone that you are what you say you are, unless you prove it by your life force. Being with God daily brings out that life force that is evidence of being with Him.
Stephen, a man who served the “soup kitchens” of their day, did good works among the believers, had a solid relationship with his Father God and the Lord Jesus Christ, one that was visible enough for others to see outwardly, enough to convict him of being with the Lord!