JOIN THE JOURNEY JR.
Families Abiding in Jesus together
With shorter reading assignments and kid-specific focus areas, Join The Journey Jr. is designed to help parents disciple their kids and engage with Scripture in the best ways for their age.
This month's memory verse
All these with one accord were devoting themselves to prayer, together with the women and Mary the mother of Jesus, and his brothers.
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Therefore, brothers, pick out from among you seven men of good repute, full of the Spirit and of wisdom, whom we will appoint to this duty.
Acts of the Apostles 6
Seven Men Chosen to Serve
1But as the believers* rapidly multiplied, there were rumblings of discontent. The Greek-speaking believers complained about the Hebrew-speaking believers, saying that their widows were being discriminated against in the daily distribution of food.
2So the Twelve called a meeting of all the believers. They said, “We apostles should spend our time teaching the word of God, not running a food program. 3And so, brothers, select seven men who are well respected and are full of the Spirit and wisdom. We will give them this responsibility. 4Then we apostles can spend our time in prayer and teaching the word.”
5Everyone liked this idea, and they chose the following: Stephen (a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit), Philip, Procorus, Nicanor, Timon, Parmenas, and Nicolas of Antioch (an earlier convert to the Jewish faith). 6These seven were presented to the apostles, who prayed for them as they laid their hands on them.
7So God’s message continued to spread. The number of believers greatly increased in Jerusalem, and many of the Jewish priests were converted, too.
Let’s pretend that your teacher is trying to teach, but there are other tasks around the classroom that need to be done, like sharpening pencils and passing out papers for the lesson. So, your teacher asks some responsible students in the class to help with the small tasks so she can focus on teaching the lesson. As a result, those small tasks get done quickly and your teacher gets to focus on teaching the lesson well, when she might not have been able to because the smaller tasks were keeping her from teaching.
In Acts 6:1-7, the apostles are faced with similar situation. God had asked them to teach the Word of God, but there are tasks that need to be done that would take them away from their primary job. Look at today’s story and use the questions to discover how the apostles accomplished both jobs!