Focus
As you quiet yourself for this brief time, be willing to be open to God in whatever way that may take place.
Read
Acts 8:26-40 New Revised Standard Version (NRSV)
Then an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Get up and go toward the south to the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.” (This is a wilderness road.) So he got up and went. Now there was an Ethiopian eunuch, a court official of the Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, in charge of her entire treasury. He had come to Jerusalem to worship and was returning home; seated in his chariot, he was reading the prophet Isaiah. Then the Spirit said to Philip, “Go over to this chariot and join it.” So Philip ran up to it and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah. He asked, “Do you understand what you are reading?” He replied, “How can I, unless someone guides me?” And he invited Philip to get in and sit beside him. Now the passage of the scripture that he was reading was this:
“Like a sheep he was led to the slaughter,
and like a lamb silent before its shearer,
so he does not open his mouth.
In his humiliation justice was denied him.
Who can describe his generation?
For his life is taken away from the earth.”
The eunuch asked Philip, “About whom, may I ask you, does the prophet say this, about himself or about someone else?” Then Philip began to speak, and starting with this scripture, he proclaimed to him the good news about Jesus. As they were going along the road, they came to some water; and the eunuch said, “Look, here is water! What is to prevent me from being baptized?” He commanded the chariot to stop, and both of them, Philip and the eunuch, went down into the water, and Philip baptized him. When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord snatched Philip away; the eunuch saw him no more, and went on his way rejoicing. But Philip found himself at Azotus, and as he was passing through the region, he proclaimed the good news to all the towns until he came to Caesarea.
Reflect
Our sovereign God has proven that He is our divine leader. From mass conversions, during Pentecost and the 3000 souls that were saved, to how He used Philip in the land of Samaria to usher many souls to be saved, to the one being converted in this scripture, God’s divinity is unquestionable.
No, we are not these men, and later those many women, (those written about, and those implied in biblical history) who conducted or assisted in crusades, and courageous travels, to meet people where they were, as assigned…sent by God. Yet, because God is whole and because He has ‘no respect of persons’, we, ‘sinners saved but by the grace of God’, Christian believers, are called and equipped to do individual/personal evangelism. Just as God, also, sent Philip to Gaza, we’re being sent, if we are willing and if we make ourselves available to people with the Good News, the Gospel of Christ.
God did not make us the same. God did not equip us the same way. God did not cookie-cut us. God made us ‘unique and set apart’, for the ‘work’. The work that is not contained within comfortable walls of a building we incorrectly call the ‘church’. Regardless of what we’re called, religiously and/or racially and culturally, God chooses who He uses and equips who He calls. So, because God is…we need not worry about all the details and nuances, but simply say to God, “Send me, I’ll go.” By faith, believing the victories are assured.
God, being the divine leader, and the only divine leader, ‘gets His things started’, then places who He chooses onto those paths. He is ‘the First Mover”, and all we have left to do is follow GOD’S lead, and His priority…saving souls.
Pray
Father God, I am grateful for Your divine leadership, and sovereignty. If it were not for You, where would we be? May we be modern-day disciples, apostolic, willing, and available servants, day and night, in every season. May we submit our internal/personal struggles to You, so we may live and serve less the clutter of our human-ness, our natural state, that we may become supernatural in all the ways that please you. In the matchless, marvelous name of Jesus the Christ, Savior and Lord, amen.
Go with God!
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