Philip: The Evangelist

“Now an angel of the Lord said to Philip, “Rise and go… and he rose and went.” — Acts 8:26-27 ESV    

In Acts 8, Philip the Evangelist goes to Samaria and preaches Christ there. Crowds listened, and people who were demonized, paralyzed and lame were healed, and there was great joy in that city (8:5-8). That is what you could call a “city revival.”

This is really the goal of any Evangelist: to go preach somewhere and revival breaks out to the point that you keep having nightly services because God is moving. Imagine how happy must have been to be used by God like this. Suddenly, an angel of the Lord told Philip to “rise and go” down to a desert road. That’s it! No details. So what was Philip’s response to the command “rise and go?” He rose and went (Acts 8:26-27). He left the revival to go to the desert, and ended up ministering to one person.

At the revival in Samaria, Philip was used to having crowds being saved, healed, and delivered. But in the desert, it was a different story. He was led to talk to one Ethiopian man traveling through the desert reading the Book of Isaiah. And you may wonder why God would call this revivalist to stop reaching crowds to go get one person saved. That just seems to go against simple mathematics. But the key is understanding who the one person he minister to was. He was a high ranking official in the Ethiopian government. He had great influence. He is the person responsible for introducing the gospel to the continent of Africa. Today, there are over 600 million Christians in Africa, and it all started with one Ethiopian man. But it required the obedience of a preacher who valued calling over comfort and had no ego to get in the way of God’s plan or drown out his voice.
Philip left the platform to minister to one person. In the natural mind, this makes no sense. And in reality, it doesn’t have to make sense to the natural mind. After all, faith only makes sense on the other side of obedience.


------------------
This blog is an excerpt from Robert Presson’s devotional book, “People Of His Presence,” available on Amazon: Click here to purchase on Amazon.  Alternatively, the book is available for free when you give a donation of any amount to City Revival Ministries at  cityrevivalnola.com/give. Please indicate that you would like the book when you give.