Day 164

2 Samuel 20:1-21:22, Acts 8:4-40, Proverbs 14:25-35

Sometimes, being the Lord’s anointed one does not protect you from challenge and hassle. David is clearly the Lord’s anointed King and yet he comes under pressure from all sides with people trying to rise up against him. He has just got over the challenge from Absalom and then Sheba pipes up. People trying to undermine what God is doing through him, David points the attention to God and yet these problems are keeping the attention elsewhere. On occasion the challenges can also come in the little things, like people arguing about who has a share in you. Again, David is God’s, no one has a share in him, he is entirely the Lord’s and this all seeks to bring the attention away from God. This is not necessarily a phenomena of the Old Testament, we can see such challenges arising today as well.

Philip is amazing today, if I can boast for my names sake! But then is he really amazing, or is the power of the Spirit amazing in him? I think that we can safely say that it is the latter. It was an angel that told Philip where to go, it was the Spirit that took him away and I think we can easily say that it was also God through the Spirit doing everything in between. What would we do if we were in Philip’s shoes though? If a friend asked us a simple question about God, how would we answer? Sometimes we worry about not having the words, not knowing what to say and yet much more is likely to happen when we don’t say anything and allow God to say it through us. We too can let the Spirit work in us, to be empty vessels for God.

Philip was one of the apostles and we know that Jesus called ordinary people to do his work. If we just look at what God did through Philip in these three short stories: the preaching and miraculous signs, the conversion of Simon (a sorcerer – so a long way from God) and then the conversion and baptism of the eunuch. All this done through the mouth and hands of an ordinary man.

When we think we are wonderfully holy and have it sorted then we are looking at our own lives and not at God. It is when we remember that we are nothing special that God can use us and do amazing things through us.  Bring yourself before Good today, empty and ready to be filled, then be ready for what God might do.