The Holy Spirit Knows

Sunday’s high point of three incredible testimonies should have clued me that Monday, even Saturday, would be difficult days. After thirty some years of this, I’ve seen over and over how the blessings of God seem to be anticipated by the forces of evil, and I am tempted and tested and dumped on either before they happen, or afterwards, or both.

Satan wants to ruin and destroy everything good that God is doing. Since he can’t prevent it from happening, he works overtime to prevent God’s people from enjoying that good thing, and sometimes even from realizing that God is at work.

Saturday evening, I had a curve thrown at me. I’m still blinking and wondering what to do with it. Monday brought more of them. I came to the Lord this morning in confusion and hoping for some word about these events, something to explain them or make sense of it all.

He didn’t give me that. Instead, He sends me to a story in Acts 8. Philip, an obedient disciple of Christ, is told by the Lord to “Arise and go toward the south along the road which goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza.”

God sends Philip into the desert and Philip goes. He has no explanation, no clear directions other than this is the place he is supposed to be. “So he arose and went.”

I think about myself over the past few days. I know I was to ask three people to give a testimony of what Christ has done in their lives in the past year. I picked one, and the other two volunteered. Both of them surprised me. One is not a Christian, the other quiet and seemingly very settled in her walk with God. How would they interpret my request? What would they say?

Philip may have been similarly surprised at who popped up in the desert. There was a man in a chariot, heading home to Ethiopia from Jerusalem. He was a man of great authority and in charge of the treasury of the Ethiopian queen. This man had been in Israel “to worship” and was reading the writings of Isaiah, an Old Testament prophet, when Philip saw him.

As Philip observed the man, “Then the Spirit said to Philip, ‘Go near and overtake this chariot.’” Philip ran to him, heard him reading the Scriptures, and asked if he understood. He didn’t, so Philip explained what Isaiah wrote, pointing this man to Jesus and salvation. The results of this God-directed meeting was that the man declared, “I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God.” He asked to be baptized and after Philip did that for him, “he went on his way rejoicing.”

When I first read this, I was even more confused. I wanted God to speak to the curves, make sense of the perplexing events of the past few days, but He gave me this. I didn’t get it, at least not immediately. What opened my eyes was that line where God told Philip what to do and Philip did it without any understanding of what would come of it. The Holy Spirit knew what was going to happen.

The woman from my class who is not yet a believer, shared the power of Christ in leading her this far. She wants to belong to Him, to believe and be transformed. She sees Him at work in the lives of the Christians she knows, and it has great appeal to her. But beyond that, this woman is like the Ethiopian. She is from a foreign country, struggles to speak English, and yet comes to a place of worship, and reads her Bible every day. She joins us so she can hear and understand the meaning of what she reads. Her deepest desire is to know this amazing God that she sees at work in our lives and in hers.

Last night, after a rough day and a dozen assaults to my spiritual stability, I mentioned this woman’s testimony to a few who know her but had not heard it. One of them said, “She told me that the people in (her country of origin) need to hear this” meaning the truth about God and the good news that Jesus died for their sins.

I have no idea what will happen in the future, but as I think about this man in the chariot going back home, I get a picture of another person excited about her faith and eager to share Jesus Christ with the people of their homeland. Will she go back and tell them? The Holy Spirit knows.

As for the man, he may have done just that. During the early years of the church, Ethiopia was a dark place, but by the 4th century had become one of the first ‘Christian’ nations. Even after oppression by Marxism and other turmoil, Ethiopia still experiences spiritual growth and religious freedom.

It is not so in the homeland of the woman in my class, but God is at work. He could bring her to Himself here, disciple her to maturity, and send her back to tell them all that He is doing. The Holy Spirit knows.

I didn’t do much in all this. I just asked if anyone would like to speak. God moved her to share with us what He is doing, and it had a huge ripple effect on everyone who heard it. Our spiritual enemy cannot reverse that, but now I see that in his anger at what happened, he is busily lashing out and trying to stop me from praying for her (and everyone else) and ruin for me the joy of God’s grace and power.

I still need to deal with the curves that were tossed my direction, but I’m so glad that the Holy Spirit knows where they came from, and this time, let me in on it.