Acts 7: Fix Your Eyes on Jesus Like Stephen

Introduction

"Turn your eyes upon Jesus." Romanian pastor Vasilica Croitor starts from this well-known hymn to ask the Kensington Temple church in London a simple question: how do you personally relate to the living Lord, who is always ready to turn his face toward you?

The text read that morning is Acts 7:54-60, the death of Stephen. At the worst moment of his life, surrounded by a crowd ready to stone him, Stephen looks up and sees Jesus. The preacher draws from it an invitation to build a spiritual discipline, then describes four blessings waiting for the one who fixes his eyes on Jesus.

"It's not just something you feel," he insists. It is a decision: to make this gaze a way of life, a daily routine, "a habit of the soul."

Message Outline

1. Staying Focused in a World That Distracts

According to psychology, 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts cross our minds every day. Most are automatic, fleeting, and hard to control.
There are outside distractions, strong emotions that overwhelm us, mental fatigue, and technology: notifications, ads, ringtones.
Hebrews 12 asks us to keep our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. "It's no longer automatic. We need a discipline."
It is not about saying "I prayed, I thought a little about Jesus," but about a condition of the heart. The preacher regrets that modern man has almost forgotten this privilege: being in the Lord's house without knowing how to enter the Holy of Holies.

2. First Blessing: Personal Revelation

God wants to be known, lived, and real in your life. Not just head knowledge, but being able to say: "I know the Lord, I walk with him."
Stephen is summoned before the Sanhedrin, facing accusations of blasphemy against the temple and the law. His long speech goes straight to the heart: his listeners are "cut to the heart" and grind their teeth at him (Acts 7:54).
With humor, the preacher tells how in the United States, after a message on the end times, a woman told him he looked like the Antichrist in the movie Left Behind. Stephen, for his part, faced an audience that saw him as a demon and was already picking up stones.
"Where would you look?" Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looks up to heaven and sees the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God (Acts 7:55). The whole Trinity is there.
He is calm, and he does not soften his message. The preacher thinks it was not the first time: Stephen knew he had access to God's throne. That access is permanent for the child of God. "The problem is that we simply forget to turn our eyes to Jesus."
David, when his men spoke of stoning him after losing their families and belongings, strengthened himself in Yahweh (1 Samuel 30:6). John was in the Spirit on the Lord's day (Revelation 1:10).
A man born blind in Quebec in 1940 lived without sight until age 66. After a fall, a surgeon repairing his face offered to operate on his eyes as well. He finally saw colors. "I'm afraid many believers serve the Lord without ever having opened their eyes" to the spiritual realm.

3. Second Blessing: Personal Transformation

Peter and John, going up to the temple, fasten their eyes on a beggar and say to him: "Look at us" (Acts 3:4). He was probably looking at their hands and their pockets. He was about to receive something else: God was ready to change his life.
You don't rush into God's presence to say your prayers and leave. "He invites you there because there is work to do in your heart." The preacher often hears the Holy Spirit tell him: change this, let go of that, take the other direction.
We are being transformed from glory to glory (2 Corinthians 3:18). Even if you experienced the greatest glory of your life today, God has something new for tomorrow.
David prayed: "Don't hide your face from me" (Psalm 27:9). He was not content to have seen it ten or twenty years earlier.
This takes time set apart for fasting and prayer, solitude, "no devices if possible," and meditation. Jesus went to the wilderness to be alone. "When you read God's Word, God's Word reads you."
Richard Wurmbrand, whom the preacher hosted at his parents' home, spent 16 years in prison in communist Romania, three of them in solitary confinement. As he meditated on Jesus' words about joy in persecution (Matthew 5:11-12), he began jumping for joy in his cell. The guards thought he was mad and, following the regulations, brought him a double ration of food. "God is there, he is in charge, and he invites you to see that he will fight for you."

4. Third Blessing: A Testimony Filled with Power

People are always watching you. During 45 years of communism, the Romanian Securitate watched everything. The preacher has read thousands of pages of reports, including about services at the church of his childhood.
False converts got baptized and lived in Christian families. They drew up the list of the church's strengths, and officers planned how to destroy each one of them, as in The Screwtape Letters by C. S. Lewis.
Yet the Pentecostal church of Romania tripled during communism, then tripled again since the 1989 revolution. "It was a church that knew God was watching it while the world was watching it."
Those sitting in the Sanhedrin saw Stephen's face "like it was the face of an angel" (Acts 6:15). It reflected the glory of God, like Moses, whose face shone so much that he had to veil it (Exodus 34:29-35).
"What do people see when they look at your face?" Trials are no excuse for complaining. Stephen knew it was not about him: he was there to serve Jesus.
The cloud of witnesses in Hebrews 12 encourages us not to give up. And every time you look to Jesus, it is like a fragrance (2 Corinthians 2:15). "You don't need to tell people you've been with Jesus. They will know."

5. Fourth Blessing: Personal Fruitfulness

As we look to Jesus, our vision changes: we look at the people around us with different eyes.
At Lystra, Paul fastens his eyes on a crippled man and sees that he has faith to be healed (Acts 14:9). "If it had been me, I would have seen his bad condition."
During an evangelism outreach in Constanța, the Holy Spirit showed the preacher that a young man was struggling with drugs and family tensions. The young man denied it, then, that same evening, confessed everything in tears to another pastor.
The blind man whom Jesus touches the first time says: "I see men, for I see them like trees walking" (Mark 8:24). "I'm afraid many of us see people as trees," as objects or obstacles. We need a new anointing on our eyes.
In Chișinău, Moldova, a woman thought the team's precise words came from training in psychology. On the second evening, a pastor told her as he prayed: "It's not psychology, God knows your heart." She was changed.
"Lift up your eyes, and look at the fields" (John 4:35). See the harvest with the eyes of Jesus, and not like the priest and the Levite who, returning from the temple, see only a problem to avoid (Luke 10:31-32).

6. An Invitation Open to Everyone

God's presence is not "by invitation only." Neither color, nor culture, nor social status, nor age matters: you are invited, whether you are present or online.
The Creator says to you: "I have prepared a feast for you in my presence. I want to give you a revelation, a transformation, a mission. I want to make you fruitful."
"No one ever went to meet Jesus and came back empty-handed." Build your life on this simple practice: turn your eyes to Jesus.

Key Takeaways

Looking to Jesus is not automatic: it is a decision and a discipline, a habit of the soul.
Stephen saw the glory of God at the worst moment of his life because he already knew the way into God's presence.
Every moment spent with Jesus lets the Holy Spirit transform your heart, from glory to glory.
The world watches your face. The one who has been with Jesus carries his fragrance without having to announce it.
Looking to Jesus changes the way you see others: no longer as trees, but as God sees them.

Personal Application

What most distracts your attention from Jesus today: your thoughts, your emotions, your fatigue, or your phone?
What time of your day can you set apart, alone and without devices, to fix your eyes on Jesus?
In the trial you are going through, where do you look first?
What do the people around you see when they look at your face this week?
Whom do you see "like a tree," and how can you ask the Holy Spirit to show you that person through his eyes?

Verses Cited

Frequently Asked Questions

What does it mean to turn your eyes upon Jesus?

For Vasilica Croitor, it is not first an emotion but a long-term decision: looking to Jesus as a way of life, a daily routine, a habit of the soul. It takes time set apart, solitude, meditation on the Word and, if possible, no devices.

What did Stephen see as he was about to be stoned?

According to Acts 7:55, Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, looked up steadfastly into heaven, saw the glory of God and Jesus standing at the right hand of God. The preacher sees the whole Trinity in it, and he thinks Stephen had learned to do this long before that day.

What blessings does the one who looks to Jesus receive?

Vasilica Croitor names four: a personal revelation of God, an inner transformation, a testimony filled with the power of the Holy Spirit, and a fruitfulness that lets you see others through the eyes of Jesus.