Acts 8:29 “Then the Spirit said unto Philip, Go near, and join thyself to this chariot.”

Acts 10:19 “While Peter thought on the vision, the Spirit said unto him, Behold, three men seek thee.”

Hello readers, it’s the last Sunday of June. Another month nearly done, and what did we do with it? What have we been doing with the time that God has given us? Good question isn’t it!

Recently we’ve just gone past winter solstice, so we’ve had our shortest day of the year in terms of sunlight hours. So we’ve experienced the maximum amount of darkness in one day that we will see this year as we are now tracking towards longer and longer days in terms of sunlight hours… and that is most welcome!

The Bible says in 1 John 2:8 that “the darkness is past”. I do hope you are past the darkness in your life. The most important darkness to be past in our lives is the darkness of not being saved… and if you are not saved, you are in darkness and under the power of darkness right now. Trust in Jesus Christ to save you from that horrible black darkness of sin “Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness, and hath translated us into the kingdom of his dear Son”.

… But also, every Christian goes through times of great darkness, and they’re horrible, but also good and necessary and even very spiritually rich, and it just makes the light that much more anticipated and welcome and valued and loved in our lives “Truly the light is sweet, and a pleasant thing it is for the eyes to behold the sun”.

It’s not fun to be in the dark, especially as children of light and children of the day. But if you are a child of the light… you will not be in the darkness forever! So there is hope! God will bring daybreak to your life, you can count on it “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”

But those nights of our lives can be very long when we are in them and can’t see out of them. I can think of some long nights I’ve had through my life, nights which never seemed to end. Nights of trouble and turmoil. But God does visit in the night. So maybe your darkness is also a time of blessed visitation! Even if you feel totally lost and helpless and in despair… Jesus is still there, he still loves you, he still cares for you, and he will take you through to the other side.

Today I’ve quoted the two times that the phrase “the Spirit said” is in the Bible. As in that exact specific phrase, and I believe this little thought could be helpful to you as it is to me from God’s word. Because I want to think about when and what the Spirit has said to me, and hopefully you think about when and what the Spirit has said to you! We should all want a Christian life where “the Spirit said” to us!

This year, 2023 has been a life changing year for me, and it has to do with this exact topic of “the Spirit said”. It’s completely changed my walk with God. Not changed as in departure from the faith changed, or followed some false doctrine changed… but changed more as in Jacob’s walk changed. God wants to take our faith and our Christian journey to the place he always designed it to be. There is a promised land for each of our lives… may God cause us to go in and possess it. May not even our own selves stop us from going in.

We really need to hear God’s voice in these days. How can we take the right steps in life if we do not know “the Spirit said”? How can we serve God if we do not know “the Spirit said”. The answer is, we can’t. So we must know that God has said, and what God has said. And refer back to Genesis 3, because this issue is actually a WARZONE, it’s a battleground, it’s trench warfare, because Satan wants you and I to live swirling, reeling, staggering, and groping in endless question marks… so that we never get to the life of actually obeying God, because we’re perpetually stuck in a life of wondering if he has said and what has said to each of us personally.

I do not know where you are at in life. But it doesn’t necessarily matter, because I am not who you should look to for answers in your life. But I can tell you where to look. And the Bible says “looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our faith”. Remember when Peter left the ship to walk on the water to Jesus? He was doing fine until he stopped looking at Jesus, and started looking at the situation and circumstances… and realized what he was actually doing. Have you ever been trying to step out by faith… and then realized what you are actually doing and immediately started sinking? Peter was there before you! And Jesus grabbed Peter, and he will grab you “underneath are the everlasting arms”.

I have come to realize that one of the most important things in the Christian life is knowing when and what “the Spirit said” to us personally in our life. How can we really do anything as a Christian without “the Spirit said”. Is life just a series of guesses and what will be will be and will happen anyway, do we just take our own steps and make our own way and hope God makes good of it? Well we can live like that, but it’s not how we should be living!

To know what “the Spirit said” to you, firstly, you have to believe what the Bible says and take the scripture as truth. That absolutely must be in place. Non negotiable! Because the Bible is the basis for the Spirit speaking to us. And so what the Spirit says in the pages of the book is all true. But then there is how God leads us personally with that in place, like here with Phillip and Peter in Acts. These guys heard the Spirit say, and they obeyed, what they heard wasn’t written down in scripture, but it was scriptural. Because if you are in the Bible, as Phillip was, you are in a position where God takes the scripture and ministers it to you personally within the context of your life, situation and circumstances.

The thing is, I feel like I have believed a devil’s lie for a good amount of time about the leading of the Holy Spirit in my life. The rise of charismatic churches which talk so much about the Spirit and gifts of the Spirit has been very offputting to me in my life. And then there are the many professing Christians that I have been exposed to in my life, who say “the Spirit said” when it’s pretty obvious that the Spirit didn’t say… and this how somehow undermined my own trust in God’s leading in my own life.

And so I can and have ended up having belief in the Bible, but not necessarily having a walk of life hearing and following the Spirit’s leading in my day to day life. That’s not to say I haven’t had it, but I just haven’t had what I could and want to have. Thinking back, I’ve had quite an impersonal walk with God, and that also explains flailing prayer life… and that’s been a result of being put off by professing Christians who talk all about personal walk with God while they don’t care about scripture at all. So there’s believing scripture and no personal walk versus no scripture and all personal walk. And neither have the right balance.  The Bible says that “all the weights of the bag are his work”. So it is God’s work to get the balance right. God wants to have a vital personal relationship with us. After all, he is the God that made and created us. He is the God of the living. And we are meant to have life and life more abundantly… but do we have that?

In the book of Acts, we are seeing an abundant life Christianity, even under persecution. And I can be envious of the quality of life they had, because they had a Christianity that many of us, myself included, just simply do not have… but want to have!

So we are meant to believe what the Bible says and take it as it is and believe it, and then the Holy Spirit ministers the Bible to us personally as we navigate the world we are in. Do you lack in knowing “the Spirit said” in your life? Well, you are not alone! Another thing is, I’ve also always felt I never want to say “the Spirit said” when he didn’t say to me. Because that would be the sin of presumption, to say God told me to do this when he didn’t… and that is actually also the mark of the false prophets through the Bible, saying stuff that God didn’t say. But that shouldn’t dissuade us from having our own personal walk with God and stepping out by faith in what God has told us to do personally! Because we can actually cop out on this doubt that the Spirit said when the Spirit really did say! And we miss out on the blessedness, rest, richness, fulness and fruitfulness that God wants for us in our Christian life when we don’t enter in because of unbelief.

Maybe I didn’t have “the Spirit said” because I didn’t want to hear. And that is a distinct possibility. Because I’ve had the Spirit’s moving in my life and I didn’t follow what he said. I doubted. Or I disobeyed, because of fear or an unwillingness to step out in faith. Maybe I have just been a childish Christian, like the child Samuel who when God was calling him, he didn’t recognize God’s voice. Remember the manna in the wilderness, well, manna means “what is it?”… but we shouldn’t be like that with God’s voice! We should know what that voice is! Because Jesus said his sheep hear his voice and he said “… and know my sheep, and am known of mine”. Far out!

So “the Spirit said” topic is actually mandatory for the Christian who wants to follow Jesus Christ in his or her life. And “the Spirit said” relates to anything and everything in our lives. It could relate to witnessing, as it did here in Acts. God prompted Phillip so strongly that he actually took a long journey… into the desert, because God had an appointment for him, and a divine appointment with the Ethiopian eunuch… which then produces one of the most wonderful and glorious parts of the Bible. Just that mental image of Phillip hopping into the chariot, hey can I help you with that, and no pride, the Ethiopian eunuch asking him can you tell me about who this book is speaking about? Sure! I can tell you! I would love to tell you about Jesus. And so “the Spirit said” preceded a very sweet salvation story in the Bible. Because this is why we want to hear what the Spirit says, because when we follow what God says, there are open doors, there are prepared hearts, there is the blessing of God because we are in God’s will rather than totally out of line with God like we so often can be.

Wouldn’t you like to have a relationship with God where “the Spirit said” to you? Are we content just to read about it in other people’s lives? Do we really want to settle for a much poorer Christianity than God wants us to have? I’m convinced that we just do not know the type of Christian life out there that we could have. And we think we have a quality life, particularly here in countries that are materially rich and in comfort and ease, and we have no real need of God if we are honest… but not recognizing we are living a life that is coming DESPERATELY short of where we could be. I’ve always not wanted to have “asses head” and “doves dung” religion. Remember back to the famine in 2 Kings where asses heads and doves dung were being sold for a pretty penny? Because we can think we’ve got quite a valuable little Christian experience going on here, when it truly is worthless. Let’s face it, an asses head and doves dung truly is worthless no matter how much you paid for it. Don’t we want gold in our Christian life?

And of course, what I’m talking about here ultimately in regards to “the Spirit said” is the promised land. Because “the Spirit said” is really the promised land of Christian living. We want to live a life hearing God’s voice and obeying God’s voice… and if we have that, it will be a rich life… FLOWING with milk and honey. We can settle for a dry and barren wilderness Christianity… or we can have a life that is flowing with the Holy Spirit. And if you doubt the connection here, look at this. Consider that word “flow”… because it is a Holy Spirit term. Because Jesus cried out in the last day of the feast and said in John 7:38 “He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water.” There’s that word flow. And Jesus was speaking about the Spirit in that verse. If you are after the true “flow” state, it’s found in Jesus Christ as one of the lines from the old hymn says “Praise God the Spirit who’s the flow”. Uhh yeah, the writer of the song had already got it!

“The Spirit said” is not some mystical unknowable thing. And we shouldn’t be scared away from a life of following the Spirit’s leading or telling others about how the Spirit lead us just because others say that to justify doing wrong. We also don’t need to give God an out and a safety net. You don’t need a contingency plan with following Christ. Let’s remember that the Spirit is a person, and the third person of the Godhead. So he’s God. And it’s God speaking to us personally in our lives. And if we want to hear him speak, we are going to have to have an ear to hear. We are going to have to read our Bibles, we are going to have to pray fervently as they did in Acts… and we need to be born again by the Spirit in the first place, because if you are not spiritually alive, how can you hear and know the things of the Spirit of God? You simply can’t. To spiritually receive, you need to be spiritually quickened firstly.

So hopefully we are all praying for “the Spirit said” in our lives. That would really help us all I’m sure. When “the Spirit said” in these two verses, it gave Phillip and Peter direction, and I’m sure we would all like to go the right direction… for a change! in our lives. Rather than as we often do, we seem to always be going against God’s will in our lives, and that doesn’t produce harmony, but rather endless issues and problems as we wander and row against the divine wind of God. It’s pretty hard to live rowing into a contrary wind as the disciples did on the lake that night. I’d rather go with the wind, Id rather go with the direction of the Spirit than against. So let us all say to God, “speak Lord, for thy servant heareth”. If we can truly say that, I believe God will speak to us all. May we all enter into a Christian life and quality of walk with God that is based on “the Spirit said”. That is where the blessing is. That is the place of God’s promises. Because we as Christians are a spiritual people, and so we definitely and desperately need to hear “the Spirit said” in all our lives.

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