Now maybe you are saved and have a desire to grow but you just fear the presence of God. Why? Because it might threaten your addiction, whatever that could be. It could be drugs, alcohol, pornography . . . it’ll threaten, that presence just threatens what you enjoy. It threatens your goals, and lifestyle. A lot of people don’t want the presence of God because they got it all figured out, and since they are doing a good thing and not a bad thing—I’m cool with God. You better know that you are cool with God. If you start your life out with your goals and your practices without considering your relationship with God, you started wrong—I don’t care how good it is. God owns you.
When you make your goals and stuff, you say, “Lord, in my heart and mind this seems like a good thing and you told me to be a laborer and to provide and so on, and this is the direction I am going in. But Lord, You direct. Close doors or open doors.”
So, it threatens our goals and lifestyle, it scares you. What does? To give everything to Him. Them baby Christians need a whole lot of security, we understand that. Carnal Christians, it scares them because that forces them to admit that they are carnal. But God wants us all, and in order to have that presence we have to die to self, we have to give God everything. You are going to have to purpose that, at the altar at church, at the altar at home, in the car, anywhere. You just need to remove everything from your mind and say, “God, I don’t understand a lot of things about Your will, but this is what I can do. I can right with a vow say that I’m giving You everything in my life.
I know, just looking at this story—Stephen could die right—Stephen ended right—conformed to the image of Jesus Christ. We saw that earlier in verse 60 . . .
“And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep” (Acts 7:60).
“And he kneeled down, and cried with a loud voice, Lord, . . .”
Send lightning down and kill these people! No.
Send a plague on them, Lord! No.
Do this, do that, or the other thing! No.
“. . . lay not this sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell asleep.”
What a blessing. We read it, man, what a story. What a movie we could make. But that is supposed to be our attitude. You see, Stephen shined—we should shine for the Lord. Whatever it means. Either die naturally or whatever, but you want to shine for the Lord. You want to burn for the Lord. Stephen’s sacrifice though, what’s interesting is that he didn’t even know it.
You know, a lot of times we look at Jeremiah, he wrote Lamentations and was called the ‘weeping prophet.’ He saw his people go into captivity, just rejecting his message of deliverance. They put him through all sorts of hellish thing, throwing him into a pit. I mean, if you ever read Jeremiah, man, my goodness—what a prophet going through something. And guess what, to die thinking he had no fruit! He saw no visible fruit. But Lord have mercy, when he was up in glory God said, “watch this.”
And next thing you know, the prophecies of the end-time kingdoms and the Antichrist, and all these were prophesied by Daniel. And you know what Daniel said, he read them in the Book of Jeremiah. And not only that, Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego—what about them? –where did they get that faith? Reading Scriptures. Well, who did they believe? Jeremiah. Somebody heard the preaching, he got fruit—my goodness what kind of fruit! Daniel even got put in charge of a heathen nation as a result of Jeremiah’s preaching. What a blessing!
So, Stephen went out doing what he was supposed to do. He didn’t know what was going to take place later.
“And Saul was consenting unto his death. And at that time there was a great persecution against the church which was at Jerusalem; and they were all scattered abroad throughout the regions of Judaea and Samaria, except the apostles. . . . As for Saul, he made havock of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison” (Acts 8:1, 3).
“And Saul, yet breathing out threatenings and slaughter against the disciples of the Lord, went unto the high priest” (Acts 9:1).
“And as he journeyed, he came near Damascus: and suddenly there shined round about him a light from heaven” (Acts 9:3).
“But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel” (Acts 9:15).
Stephen’s sacrifice started the Gentile church movement, and he didn’t even know it. Listen up, Christian, having and coveting the presence of God is a natural desire of the new nature, not the old one. Having too much flesh, and not enough God contributes to a bad ending in this life. You have chosen self over God, making yourself a God. Now God’s presence should be welcome in our lives—it really should—and our local church. Now Christian, be honest, If God were to view your temple what would He expose. What do you enjoy more than God? And if you are a lost person, you would know that you are lost. Lost and condemned to a Devil’s hell, yet God extends His invitation of mercy during the convicting time. We need you, our church needs you, our country need Spirit-filled Christians.
So, let us shine like Stephen, come hell or high water. Start to make some serious decisions in your life about your Christianity and your relationship with God. If we would seek the presence of God we’d stop doing a whole lot of stuff. We really would. We’d start majoring on the major stuff. You know yourself. With my own kids, I know they ain’t reading the Bible every day—I just know it! It’s just obvious. You get to doing your own thing, and God becomes a P. S. in your life. See, you’re not listening to Him every day, therefore you are not praying to Him every day like you should. You give Him a thank you Lord for the day, and a thank you, Lord for this—and then you go around asking everybody else to pray for you because your prayer life is not what is should be.
As a Christian, you ought to be talking to God and saying, “I need some answers!” And when God starts answering you, some things will have to go in your life—just will have to—they are taking up to much of your time.
And I’m telling you what. God has been so merciful with our country, because apparently there are some things in His plan of things that He is pleased with. He’s still pleased with some people, but, killing innocent babies, and this lifestyle that is acceptable—that doesn’t please the Lord—that brings judgment from the Lord. So, we as a church, ought to be praying for mercy—continued mercy and grace from our Father. Because ‘where sin abounds, grace much more abounded.’ And I think that that is what we are experiencing in our country right now. But we don’t want to presume upon Him.
We are all going to die. All of us are going to face the Lord Jesus Christ. So, it behooves all of us to start to understand how necessary the presence of God is, and what we need. So, here today, you think about that message—think about when you go home—how you maybe ought to start praying and to read your Bible, and maybe that will clean up some stuff in your brain. Maybe God will give you more opportunities to talk about Him. You need to do that, life is short. You get up, you don’t plan on dying and then Boom! It’s here. Or He sends you to a doctor to get a shock wave—oh my goodness, oh my goodness—we are creatures of habit, people. God has to do certain things to drive us to Him. He will crowd you to Christ—in your life.