Acts 8:26   Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, "Go south to the road--the desert road--that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza."

 

God's guidance is a strange thing at times. Philip has been involved in an amazing, spontaneous, evangelistic campaign in Samaria where signs and wonder had followed (Acts 8:5,6). It had been truly amazing. Then Peter and John arrived from Jerusalem and helped establish the believers there so that the church was well established. So is Philip now to be the chief elder of this new church? That would seem to be the obvious thing. But God turns up and moves him on. The Lord doesn't want us to settle, He wants us to keep on moving on in Him, in our spiritual growth and in our serving.

 

So what might we expect the Lord to say? “Come on Philip I've got another great evangelistic campaign for you in the north.”? No, go south on the desert road. Go south? There is nothing there except desert? No there is a road there Philip and there's someone on that road I want you to meet – except He doesn't tell him the last bit!

 

Praise God that Philip was obedient because tradition has it that the Ethiopian he met was the first one to take the Gospel to Africa. Thank the Lord for simple faith that didn't demand lots of detail before he went. Does God have a ‘desert road' that He wants me to walk to encounter lost people who need to hear?