You know CharliBear, the longer I walk along side of Christ the more I learn just how unlike Him I am. I am full of sinful habits and react badly when something doesn't go like I planned. I keep wondering just how Jesus is going to save me from this body of death. When I delve into His word, I see myself an this evil wretch that God has shined His grace on. It never ceases to amaze me that He still cares and puts up with me. It is a very humbling walk.
You raise an interesting point. What is the centre of who we are? What governs our behaviour and our motivations?
When you see children playing, everything is just a sea of one thing of interest followed by another, with accidents
and things happening along the way. There is little layers or complexity, just exploration and reacting.
Jesus called us to become like this again, or we can never enter the Kingdom of heaven.
When we discover we are fundamentally different from Jesus, we are being asked to change, and build something
new in us through the foundation of the cross and His life.
When you start to let God work at this level, you lose defence, objectivity, and you become what your heart expresses
and you are an expression of His love in the world.
So Stephen saw Jesus, walked with Him, was anointed by the Holy Spirit, and knew He was God.
He was so fed up with the pharisees and teachers of the law, he just told them where they were, and what Jesus had
done, because love mattered above anything else, and God was the light in the world, whether others recognised
it or not, much better to state the truth, even if these hypocrites took ones life, it was far better to go and be
with Jesus than stay in this cazy sinful world. So Stephen preached and died. Amen