Friends in Christ Message for May 2, 2015

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Friends in Christ Weekly Message
May 2, 2015

     A heavenly messenger brought this short message from the Lord to Philip during his time preaching in Samaria:

Messenger of the Lord: "Leave Samaria. Go south to the Jerusalem-Gaza road."

     The message was especially unusual because this road runs through the middle of uninhabited desert. But Philip got up, left the excitement of Samaria, and did as he was told to do. Along this road, Philip saw a chariot in the distance. In the chariot was a dignitary from Ethiopia (the treasurer for Queen Candace), an African man who had been castrated. He had gone north to Jerusalem to worship at the Jewish temple, and he was now heading southwest on his way home. He was seated in the chariot and was reading aloud from a scroll of the prophet Isaiah.

     Philip received another prompting from the Holy Spirit:

Holy Spirit: "Go over to the chariot and climb on board."
Acts 8:26-29 (The Voice*)

Calls from the Lord come in various ways. Often we do not understand the reason why we are called, but we are to be obedient anyway - even if it means leaving something that seems important.

Philip was doing the Lord's work preaching in Samaria. He hears the Lord's messenger telling him to leave to go to a road through uninhabited desert. I suspect he had no clue as to why he should do that, but he did it anyway. And then he sees a chariot with a man from a different culture who was ritually unclean under Jewish law (because he was castrated). The Holy Spirit tells him to climb on board that chariot, which he did. These are all things he would not have done out of his own will.

What if you get a strange call from the Lord that you can't understand? Will you drop what you are doing, no matter how important it seems, and do what the Lord is telling you to do?

Bill Samuel