Dear Friends,

All to Jesus, I surrender;

Humbly at His feet I bow,

Worldly pleasures all forsaken;

Take me, Jesus, take me now.

— Judson W. Van DeVenter, 1896

“Go south to the road — the desert road — that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza” (Acts 8:26, NIV). That’s what the Angel of the Lord told Philip to do — to go out to the empty spaces of the desert, alone, with no specific instruction except to go.

This is not how Philip thought it would be on the day the apostles laid hands on him and prayed for the consecration of his ministry as a deacon. That ministry suited his gifts of leadership and administration — arranging food distributions, caring for widows, and mediating ethnic conflict within the church. It was a dream job for a Spirit-filled servant who loved people (Acts 6:1-7)

Not long after that the persecution of the church escalated, triggered by the mob violence that killed Philip’s colleague, Stephen. The believers fled Jerusalem and scattered across the countryside of Judea and Samaria (Acts 8:1-4)

Philip went to a city in Samaria. That’s where he found out that gifts and calling are not the same thing. In the power of the Holy Spirit, the administrator became a preacher proclaiming Christ as Messiah to crowds and a healer whose faithful prayer healed many others who were paralyzed, crippled or possessed by unclean spirits. Luke wrote that “there was great joy in that city” (Acts 8:8).

But Philip was only the advance man for the Apostles Peter and John who came to Samaria, preached the Word, and baptized the new believers with the Holy Spirit (Acts 8:14-16, 25). The angel of the Lord told Philip to move on, not up, but down south, to the desert road to Gaza.

Have you ever done a good job and served well to success, only to have someone else be sent in to “finish the job, you started,” putting you out of a job in the process? It’s hard to accept even when it is the right thing to have happened.

There is no question that Philip was a faithful servant of the Lord. He may have said, “Alright, Lord, I’m ready to go wherever and whenever!” We’d like to think so. But to go from preaching to enthusiastic crowds eager to receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior to the rocks, sand and scrub of the coastal desert would stir an aching, “Why, Lord? ” in many a human heart no matter how devoted.

Philip didn’t argue. We know that because the next verse says, “So he got up and went” (Acts 8:27).

It turned out that there was one chariot on that road. Riding in it was the minister of finance for the Queen of Ethiopia. He had traveled to the temple in Jerusalem to find God, but no one there could point the way. So the official had started home, still seeking, reading the prophet Isaiah.

The Spirit told Philip to hitch a ride and Philip ran to catch up. He heard the cultured official reading Isaiah. Philip asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” That led to an invitation to get in and talk and Philip shared the good news about Jesus.

Before that ride was over, the official asked Philip for baptism and Philip obliged, only to be “snatched” away by the Holy Spirit as soon as they came up out of the water (Acts 8:39). The longest-existing Christian church originated in that encounter.

Philip showed up in the coastal city of Azotus and kept moving north to Caesarea, preaching the gospel in all the coastal towns along the way (Acts 8:40). There he disappeared from the Scriptural narrative.

It is a dry season when I write this message. The hills are sere and brown and the freeway from home to work to home again has all the emotional appeal of a rutted track through a wasteland. This is not where I thought I would be in my 59th year.

I was born and raised in a coastal community blessed by the beauty of waves and redwoods, white beaches and green forest. I sought opportunities to stay there, but the doors all opened in the desert places and closed behind me. So what? I have work that is intellectually stimulating and spiritually satisfying. Here is where the Lord brought me and awakened me to his life. I am happy.

Are any of us where we thought we’d be when we started out? Maybe a few, but I suspect that those of you who say your life has proceeded according to plan wonder from time to time if there shouldn’t have been a different plan, or that more God and less plan might have been a good idea.

Many of us were told in our youth, “The Lord has a special place for you to serve and use your talents.” There is a grain of truth in that, and a lovely appeal to recognize the connection between us and the God who created us. But there are also pernicious temptations to self-pride and to find our identity in our natural strengths and weaknesses.

Focusing on talent in the service of God is misplaced. God has all the talent he needs and can create more as he wishes. The God who gifted Balaam’s ass with speech is not limited in any way in the talent department (Numbers 22:28). How much time do we waste in search committees seeking just the right talent for the right opportunity at the right time when Jesus said he moves in his own time for his Father’s purposes? (John 7:6-9). How many times have we suppressed the prompting of the Holy Spirit to go and serve simply because we were waiting for more attractive opportunities?

We seek our significance in our relationships and position with regard to persons and things. “Finding our niche, putting down roots, bonding with a community, building a career, making a legacy” is what we call our handholds and footholds, our fortifications and strongholds as we tenaciously cling to life in the here and now. The Lord may have other plans. “My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor your your ways my ways, says the Lord” (Isa 55:8).

There is a pathway called “downward mobility” epitomized by Jesus’ instructions to his disciples, “The greatest among you must become as the youngest, and the leader like one who serves. For who is the greater, the one who is  at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one at the table? But I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:26-27).

Philip followed that downward path. His life zigged and zagged from respected leader and administrator of a growing Church to itinerant evangelist and healer to solitary witness in the desert back to beach-town preacher. He didn’t stop at any point to argue for his job or his cause. Neither did he seek credit for accomplishment. There is no book of the Bible bearing his name; no “Letter of Philip to the Samaritan Churches.”  The wisdom of Philip was this — he was available to God for what God wanted to do when God wanted to do it.

Availability is the lesson here. The Lord desires our availability to live out his thoughts and his ways through us (Rom 12:1-3). If we are to live in the sovereign reality of Jesus Christ, we must release our grip on everyone and everything else and turn toward him saying, “Have your way with me, Lord.” (See, Luke 14:26-33).

There’s no effective way to teach availability in my experience. There is no waiting list or trial status to see if we like what the Lord wants to do with us. We either are available to him or we are not.

There is no special method to learn about releasing our death grip on people, possessions, position and place so that Jesus can take our hand and lead us on. Our hand is either free and open to him or it is clutched tight.

Sometimes what we are clinging to is vindication. We insist on acknowledgement that we were correct or recognition for our hard work and unique contributions or redress of our wounds before we can let go and move on with the Lord.

There is no heavier baggage than wounded pride and resentful judgment. Their crushing loads have denied many a spiritual pilgrim the destination reachable only for those who accept the easy yoke and astonishingly light burden of Jesus (Matt 11:29-30). While Philip carried whatever the Lord wanted him to deliver, he was obviously unfettered by personal baggage that would delay or deny his availability to answer the next call.

Please understand that I do not write the message as one who has all of this worked out. My seething and stewing can not only make a toxic froth of my soul, but can greatly distress those who love me and share my life and work. That’s my human nature. I have learned ever so slowly that my agitation is not justification to dig in and fight which renders me unavailable to the Lord. Instead, my concerns, no matter how justified and insightful I think they may be, are emergency signals that I must yield my soul’s weapons and defenses to the Lord God who “alone is my rock and my salvation, my fortress” (Ps 62:2).

That yielding can be a bruising struggle of prayer and even if my feelings don’t subside, faith compels me to say, “Lord, forgive me for my presumption. Have mercy and take over until only Your will and Your way command the situation. Use me or not as you will.” It often isn’t pretty and it certainly isn’t sophisticated, but praying like that and trusting God to be the source of the leading to my surrendered heart is the only reliable route I know out of the dark strongholds of pride and selfishness into the light of availability. Philip’s example guides me on that journey.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who find refuge in him” (Ps 34:8).

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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The Lord is the strength of his people;