A Watershed Event

Acts 8:1-4

　
There have been only a few historically significant watershed events in my lifetime. This is where something happens and as a result nothing is ever the same again. For me, I can remember where I was, what I was doing and approximately what time it was. My list includes the assassination of President Kennedy and 9/11, among others. You may have your own list.

You may also have a list of your own personal watershed events. These are circumstances that affect you so that your personal world is never the same again. For me, my girlfriend breaking up with me during college changed the rest of my life. God used it in ways that I didn’t understand until looking back with twenty-twenty hindsight.

The stoning of Stephen was a watershed event that changed the first century world. There was a crowd mentality that took over. Stephen’s stoning seemed to give Saul the courage to persecute Christians on a wholesale basis. The Message puts it like this:

"And Saul just went wild, devastating the church, entering house after house after house, dragging men and women off to jail".

Where was God when Saul was going wild persecuting the believers?

"Forced to leave home base, the Christians all became missionaries. Wherever they were scattered, they preached the Message about Jesus".

The last words that Jesus spoke to his disciples were, "But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth".

And where does Acts 8:1 tell us that the believers were scattered? To Judea and Samaria, the very places that Jesus spoke of. Who knows how long it would have taken for the Gospel to be spread beyond Jerusalem, if it all. But God used this watershed event to accomplish his sovereign will.

The same is true today, not only in the world around us, but also in our own personal world. How has God worked in your life through watershed events? How is He working now? And most importantly, how do you respond to what is beyond your control but within His sovereign will?

http://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=acts%208%3A1-4&version=NIV;MSG
http://www.biblegateway.com/audio/mclean/niv/Acts.8.1-Acts.8.4