Watching God Work
Philip sat in the scorching desert heat just south of Jerusalem, waiting to see why God led him there. An angel of the Lord told him to follow the road south, and he obliged. But now that the blazing sun bore down upon his head and nobody appeared on the roadside, he was beginning to wonder why the Lord sent him out to that dusty highway.
Just then, Philip noticed a cloud of dust growing in the distance. Soon, an Ethiopian eunuch traveling home in a royal chariot emerged in the sweltering heat. As Philp approached the chariot, he noticed that the eunuch was reading from the book of Isaiah. Philip used the opportunity to share the gospel with the eunuch, who placed his faith in Jesus and was baptized that day. Afterward, the eunuch returned to Ethiopia, and God moved Philip to another town.
On the surface, God’s plan made little sense to Philip. God didn’t have Philip preach a sermon on the busiest street corner in Jerusalem; he had Philip travel to a desert road. He didn’t have Philip knock on doors and seek out the lost; he simply put Philip in the path of a lost man. If Philip was going to put together a list of things he could do to grow the early church, standing on a dusty roadside in the middle of the desert surely wouldn’t be on that list.
Here’s the incredible truth: God is perfectly willing to work through us to accomplish his will of magnifying Christ, but he doesn’t need us to do all the planning and the heavy lifting. He just needs us to surrender to him and allow him to guide us.
Last week, I went on a mission trip to Armenia, Colombia. Throughout the week, I saw God do incredible things—working in the hearts and minds of the people we spoke with before we ever met them, preparing the soil for the presentation of the gospel. Then I arrived home and encountered the same thing in our church. I have seen God moving at Fee Fee in ways that can only be described as answers to prayer. As a church, we are seeing people coming to know Christ, getting baptized (soon), joining in membership, stepping up to serve, and responding in a variety of other ways to God’s Spirit—and there isn’t one person in the church who can claim credit for the wonderful things that are happening.
God is at work. Let’s continue surrendering to him.
In Christ,
Britton