[Darris McNeely] How responsive are you to the lead of God in your life to the Holy Spirit leading you and directing you to whatever God has for you as one of His disciples? I was thinking about this and going through the story in the eighth chapter of Acts of Philip who was evangelizing up in Samaria in the northern part of Israel and had a great deal of success so much that even Peter and John had to come up from Jerusalem to help out. And then basking in the success of that particular story, the way Luke records the account, Phillip wasn't done. But he perhaps didn't really understand it because he had to be told, it says, by an angel of the Lord, "Arise, go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza."

And so his next assignment was to go toward the south, down toward Egypt and along the main highway that went down in that area. God had something in mind for him because there was an individual, the Ethiopian eunuch who was returning from being in Jerusalem and he wanted to intersect, Philip with this unique along that road. Phillip had no idea about that, but God sent him and Philip had to respond. And it went on down. He arose, it said, and he went and behold, here was this eunuch and there he was in his chariot and he had a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. And he invited Philip to come up and help him to read and most importantly to understand what he was reading out of the book of Isaiah 53. In fact, as the account goes on, when Phillip came upon this eunuch on the road, the spirit said to to Philip, "Go near and overtake this chariot." So Philip ran to him.

What really caught my attention on this story was sometimes as we read the book of Acts and we study the work of the disciples, the church kind of lagged behind the actual intent and progress and speed by which Christ was guiding the church to do His work. He told them that, "You would be witnesses of Me in Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, and to the ends of the age...ends of the earth." And it took them a while to pick up on that and ultimately Christ moved them out and He did so in a sense by shoving them out the door of Jerusalem. And this is an example of that where Philip had to be moved by the angel of God, and then God's Spirit prompting him to close and to engage with this individual.

I think God works that way and the church has to always be anticipating, thinking ahead, not lagging behind God. And also in our own lives, we have to be close enough to God and aware of what He is doing and where He is leading and be responsive to His prod, to His lead, and to be receptive to what God and His spirit leads us to do to accomplish in our lives as disciples. God moves and we don't want to get caught and be left behind.

That's BT Daily. Join us next time.