Acts 6:1 tells us that the church encountered complaining. Complaining is a frightening thing. When the Israelites were in the wilderness, they wandered there for 40 years. Six hundred thousand able-bodied men died in the wilderness because of grumbling and complaining. Complaining is like a contagious disease. When someone starts to complain, someone will surely follow suit. One turns into ten, ten turn into hundreds. When the church is full of complaining, division will eventually happen. Acts 6:1 records the first time the problem of complaining came up in the early church. However, Acts chapter 6:7 tells us there was a good outcome – the word of God spread, the number of disciples increased rapidly, and a large number of priests became obedient to the faith. At the start, there was complaining, but in the end there was good news. Initially, there was a crisis but it was turned into an opportunity. What happened in between? Let us use three “one’s” to study this – one problem, one proposal, one outcome.

Today, let us look at the story of a man whose life experienced transformation, his name is Zacchaeus. Luke 19:7 “All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a `sinner’.” People publicly referred to Zacchaeus as a sinner, thus we can safely conclude that Zacchaeus must have really been a notorious sinner. Verse 9 Jesus said, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham.”

The Battle of Jericho occurred thousands of years ago. What does this battle have to do with us? What truths can we learn from it and how is it relevant to us? I discovered that there are at least three eternal truths, let us learn from them.

A survey came out recently from the United States that 46% of Americans feel that they are happy, 37% of Indians feel they are happy, and 36% of the English feel they are happy but only 9% of Chinese feel they are happy. In other words, out of 10 people, 9 Chinese feel that they are unhappy. Are Chinese really becoming more and more unhappy?