Philip - A life filled with the Holy Spirit

I think these examples of people like Felipe are designed to teach us the possibilities, to open our eyes and our appetite so that we yearn and believe that those same things can also happen in our lives. How is the life of a man filled with the Holy Spirit? Because that was definitely Felipe. What features are there?

And I am going to start by reading a passage in chapter 8, but I want to go back a little bit later because there is a part of Philip's life that does not appear there in that passage, and that many do not know about. Many only know of this event when he met the eunuch in the desert. Verse 4:8 says:

"... But those who were scattered went everywhere announcing the Gospel and then Philip descending to the city of Samaria preached Christ to them and the unanimous people listened attentively to the things that Philip said, hearing and seeing the signs he was doing, because of many unclean spirits came out with loud voices. And many paralyzed and lame were healed so that there was great joy in that city.”

That is, we see Philip with an incredibly notorious ministry and great supernatural manifestations. Later in verse 26 we see the meeting of Philip and the Ethiopian where he says:

“…An angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, 'Get up and go south along the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza, which is a desert,' and then he got up and went. And it happened that an Ethiopian eunuch, servant of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians, who was over all her treasures and had come to Jerusalem to worship, returned sitting in his chariot and reading the prophet Isaiah. And the spirit said to Philip, 'Come closer and join that chariot.' Going Philip heard him reading the prophet Isaiah and said, 'But do you understand what you read?' And he begged Philip to come up and sit with him.

I'm going to leave it there because we're going to reference this later. But we see this man living a life on a super supernatural level, very powerful. Philip is a man who was born spiritually during the revival in the book of Acts. You've experienced the infilling of the Holy Ghost, you've been baptized in the Holy Ghost, and now you're moving in the glory, in the energy, in the power of that spiritual anointing.

I want to point to certain ones that I see in this book and I don't know if I'm going to get to all of them, but I'm going to tell them that way so that they're there. What is a life filled with the Holy Spirit like Philip's? Number 1, it's a life of service. 2. It is a life of love for souls. 3. It is a life of miracles and supernatural and powerful manifestations of God. 4. It is a life directed by the Holy Spirit. 5. It is a life of humility that serves a person or a crowd in private and in public. 6. It's a life of supernatural encounters. It is a life of unpredictable acts because sometimes the Holy Spirit will ask you to do one thing or another or to do something that seems contrary to reason, but if you are led by the Holy Spirit you will do it anyway. . And finally, it's a lifetime of replicating. I'm going to invent a word, I don't know if it exists in Spanish, for replication. A lifetime of replication and fidelity.

Let's see how these things play out in Philip's life. First, it is a life of service, it is a life of serving others, because we already see the glory of Philip when he appears here in that chapter 8 doing great miracles, a sensational public ministry, of great renown, but that is not the first time Philip appears on the pages of the Book of Acts.

We go to chapter 6 of the Book of Facts and there we will find for the first time the first reference made to Philip. And it is found in chapter 6, as I said, and there is a crisis among the first Christians, there is criticism and conflicts between the first Christians, the Jews and the Gentiles because the Gentiles complain that the widows – long to explain – of them , of the Gentiles, are being neglected in the distribution of food.

Do you know that the divisions and problems among Christians are not only here in the 21st century, they have been there before, so if you think that León de Judá is the only one who has problems among believers, it is not so. That has existed even while the disciples were with Jesus himself there were fights between the disciples of Jesus. You will remember that they fought over who was going to be first in the kingdom of heaven. No, not me, not you... etc. Even with the Master himself, there were struggles between them.

So there was this fight between the first disciples that there was preference, preferential treatment for Jewish widows, etc. and the Apostles, the 12 Apostles said, you know what? We cannot get involved in serving the tables and supervising those things because God has called us to speak and to pray and to direct the general vision of the church. And so they decided that deacons should be chosen so that they could take care of the tables. Look at 6, verse 2 says:

“It is not fair, say the Apostles, that we leave the word of God to serve tables. Seek then, brethren among you, 7 men of good testimony, full of the Holy Spirit."

Listen to me, even to serve tables you have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. People believe that being filled with the Holy Spirit is only to go to the jungle and minister to the savages anywhere, in the Amazon or in Africa. Brothers, for you to cook you need the anointing of the Holy Spirit. There are some sisters who need it perhaps a little more than others. I couldn't stop saying that. and there are some that when you touch that food you say, wow, here was the anointing of God. One begins to speak in tongues and prophesy.

No matter how small the task, one needs the work of the Holy Spirit, to be a mother you need the spirit, to be a father, to be a husband, to drive a taxi you need it, to drive a truck you definitely need the Holy Spirit. You don't want to take someone out on the road. When one gets up in the morning one has to say, Holy Spirit I need you for today's homework. I don't want to put my feet on the floor without counting on your anointing. Do not leave your house without entrusting your life to the spirit of God, without entrusting your burden to the Lord. No matter how small the task, you need God's anointing on your life. The Holy Spirit has to be a companion for all situations in life.

Then, the Apostles said, “look for 7 men full of the Holy Spirit, of good testimony and wisdom whom we entrust to this work and we will persist in prayer and in the ministry of the word. And the proposal pleased the whole crowd…”

It's interesting democracy even with the Holy Spirit was here, the people were asked their opinion. How interesting is this, right? I believe in the voice of the people of God. A church where the pastor is the only one in charge and the only one who does all things is a weak church. The voice of God's people needs to be heard. We must value the opinion of the Lord's people. In the multitude of counselors there is wisdom, says the word of the Lord.

I don't believe in that idea that everything is only controlled by a small group of people. No. We must listen to the voice of the people of God. Notice that here the crowd… the whole crowd liked the proposal. They consulted. It is good to lead when you have the support of the people and the people feel that they are taken into account. For me it is one of the marks of good leadership, taking into account the opinion of others and listening too.

“And they chose Stephen, a man full of faith and spirit – and here Philip appears – and Philip, Prochorus, Nicanor – don't even think of naming his son, Nicanor, or Timon, even less Timon – Timon, Parmenas and Nicolás, a proselyte from Antioch, whom they presented before the Apostles who, praying, laid their hands on them.”

Again, look at a church filled with the Holy Spirit, with a supernatural vision, where these people are being assigned an everyday task and hands are laid on them. Lord, we entrust them to you, give them wisdom, give them understanding, give them a sense of justice, give them conviction in what they are going to do, give them understanding so that they do not let themselves be carried away by the flesh but rather in the spirit.

And so these brothers with laying on of hands then carry out their task. And the word of the Lord increased and the number of disciples multiplied greatly in Jerusalem.

So we see Felipe here. How does Felipe's career begin? Serving food. Working the tables, maybe with a towel tucked around their waists, picking up dirty dishes and chicken bones and taking them to wash and making sure there was a good layout.

The Lord also said, look, I am Lord, he said, and they say well because I am, but what did the Lord do? He took the towel, he took the basin, he washed the feet of his disciples and he taught them that the greatest manifestation of leadership in the Kingdom of God must be to serve others. The person who does not serve, does not serve. Amen.

If you believe you are too anointed and too full of the Holy Spirit to wash someone's feet, you are lost, don't dress, you won't. The Bible says that he who is faithful in a little, will be put in much. Many of us want, oh Lord, take me to the crowds to preach the Gospel, give me anointing so that miracles can be done through me. But sometimes there is an old lady who needs help, a blessing, or someone for you to call and comfort her, or for you to invite someone to her house one afternoon, which she needs because her family is in Guatemala or the Dominican Republic and she is alone here. No, I'm too busy and who do you invite? To the tasty people to talk to, to those who are like you, and to others we leave aside.

No, invite those who cannot reciprocate, brothers. And then God who sees in private will reward you in public. There are many people, brothers, that God sometimes puts a little shell on them to see what happens and they fail the test. And then he is praying, Lord, give me great things, thinking of great things, but if you cannot be faithful in a little, God will not put you in a lot.

You have to start serving. No, we want to serve. Yes, I want to serve but I want to go to Boston Common and preach to the Mayor and to a crowd of 50 thousand people, and there are children who need to be taught... Ouch! in Sunday school on Sunday. No, not there because that is... I don't want to lose my service. I come here to church and I have too many problems to also go there to work with the children. I have my needs.

Brothers, I have learned that the best way to be blessed is when you serve in the name of the Lord and for his glory, you sacrifice yourself. I believe that the Lord is powerful to provide you with the anointing and blessing of a sermon intravenously while you serve the boys over there, you clean their noses. There the Lord will minister to your life. And I think it will be better than the preaching that you are going to receive here because I prefer what the Lord gives than what man gives, even if there is a certain degree of anointing in it.

If we thought like this, brothers, many times, if we understood that when we serve in the invisible, no one else is seeing us, but we do it in the name of the Lord, God delights in blessing us abundantly. You have to serve in the small so that God puts you in the big.

So, we see here that the anointing life is a life of serving others first and of humbling yourself, and then God likes to set them up high. The life of great men and women of God often begins with a simple, invisible act, something that no one sees of personal despondency that delights God and God says, that is why I am going to use you and exalt you.

It says that he who humbles himself will be exalted. He who exalts himself will be humbled. God seeks the humble heart and God approaches the humble. So the life of a person filled with the Holy Spirit is a life of service and love for others and serving in secret.

Felipe's real training began with cleaning tables. And now in chapter 8 when we see him in another dimension it is because he went through that period of invisibility and learning as the son of God. It is a life of service.

Now here it begins in verse 4, chapter 8, another dimension of Philip's life. It says: “…but those who were scattered in a persecution that is in Jerusalem, the authorities are widened against the first believers and begin to persecute them after the death of Stephen and they are scattered, they are taken to… the people fleeing from Jerusalem, the first Christians fleeing Jerusalem and going to different surrounding towns to flee persecution.

And those who were scattered went everywhere announcing the Gospel among whom is Philip. It says, “Then Philip going down to the city of Samaria preached Christ to them.”

I would say something else that is not included here, that a life in the spirit is a life that takes advantage of opportunities, even sometimes adverse circumstances, even suffering and suffering. When one is in Christ, the Bible says, that all things work together for good. One takes advantage of everything, even in situations of suffering one finds something there that can be redemptive. These Christians who fled would have said, well, where was God who didn't free us from persecution and they could have become inflamed against the Lord, but no, what you do is they go and preach the Gospel. And Felipe does the same. Felipe doesn't care what is happening, he says, this is an opportunity for me to preach the Gospel.

It is a very important thing because you have to have love for souls. That characteristic did mark a life of love for souls. Felipe instead of licking his wounds running away from persecution, sees a great opportunity. The Samaritans were a people that did not know God, they were descendants of the Jews but they had mixed with pagans and they were semi-pagans, semi-Jews, it was not known what they were, they were a strange mixture of people and they needed the Gospel.

And Philip led there and love for souls leads him to forget about his own adversity and preach the Gospel to them. So it is a life of love for souls. If you are truly filled with the Holy Spirit you will love those who do not know Jesus Christ. We have to ask the Lord, Father, fill us with passion for the souls that are lost because if a soul does not know Christ, no matter how well intentioned it is, the Bible says, it goes to hell, it has no salvation. And we have that word and it is difficult, I know, to preach the Gospel at this time, at work. People are so difficult and so protective of their privacy and their rights to believe what they want and sometimes they feel like if you talk to them it's going to be a violation.

You have to be understood, you have to be prudent, I believe in that. But there is also another passage that says that the Gospel must be preached in season and out of season. We must preach the Gospel. If God gives you an opportunity, put your 4 legs through that hole that opens, preach the Gospel, preach the word of God. Ask the Lord to open your heart and to give you passion and compassion for souls. And if you testify privately, individually, perhaps God will then put you to preach to large crowds.

I ask the Lord to fill us. If each one of us committed to bring two or three people to the knowledge of the Lord in a year, I am not going to say to the church, it could also be, of course, to a Sunday service, invite them, but also pray for them , you preach the Gospel to them, you ask them if they want to accept Christ, you take them to the feet of the Lord, you disciple them and share the word of God with them so that they grow. Maybe the pastor won't be able to do it, maybe they won't come to a discipleship class, but you can tell them, "come to my house six times and we'll study the word together." And you can preach the Gospel to them.

Philip's life was a life of love for souls. I think that was why God rewarded him with such great manifestations. So, a life of service, a life of taking advantage of opportunities even if they are adverse, a life of love for souls, and it is also a life of miracles. It is a lifetime of supernatural events.

It says here that "the people, seeing the things that Philip was saying, listened attentively, hearing and seeing the signs and supernatural manifestations that he did, because unclean spirits came out of many who had them, crying out loud, and many paralyzed and lame were healed."

You may never experience such a lush, abundant, and spectacular manifestation of God's power as the one God used Philip to bring about. But certainly, brothers, I believe when the Holy Spirit is in the life of a church, a crowd, a person, there are supernatural manifestations of the power of God in one's life.

I hope that here each one of us who knows the Lord can refer at least to a time when it was clear to you that the power of God was manifested in your life. Whether it was through a healing, whether it was through a revelation, whether it was through a dream, whether it was through an unexpected encounter somewhere, something that happened that you could tell, this was God who did it. Amen.

And it is not that one is looking for and manufacturing miracles, it is that the life of a person filled with the Holy Spirit by definition has to include miracles. And we have to be people who expect miracles. Many times I believe that miracles do not manifest in our life because we do not expect them, because we say, that is for other times. If you expect miracles, miracles will happen in your life. If you pray, if you fast, if you seek God's anointing in your life, you will become a magnet for God's supernatural manifestations. I know that I can absolutely speak of moments in which it was almost as if I touched the hand of God. So many things in my life and in the life of my family and in other ways, that there is definitely no way to explain it other than by appealing to divine intervention in our lives.

And we have to live in that expectation that God is going to do great and miraculous things in our life. He says, believe in me and I will show you great and hidden things that you do not know. How many are looking for great and hidden things? How many have an appetite for the manifestation of the power of God? cultivate an appetite for the manifestation of the power of God in your life and that will happen.

Commit to living a supernatural life and when you go to sleep say, Lord, tonight bring a revelation into my life. I often pray like this to the Lord, Father, tonight give me a supernatural dream, give me a revelation. Fill my dream with word and revelation. And God frequently gives me words and revelations that help me in my life and in my ministry. You can do the same but you have to believe that this is for you and you have to live a life that cultivates the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit.

A life of service, love for souls, a life of miracles, and it is also a life of direction from the Holy Spirit. It is a life directed by the Holy Spirit. And here we enter new territory. We see then those great manifestations of power, those great miracles that God is doing through Philip and now in verse 26 we are entered into the intimate life of this man of God and we are told here that:

“…an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip – wow. If one were to think of that scenario, one's brains would blow out – an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip. We sometimes think that angels are too sublime for an angel to speak to them, but the Bible says that those who serve the Lord are ministers of God in favor. And again, I am waiting for an angel to speak to me one day. I might be scared to death but I'd rather see him, he might have to take me to the hospital with a heart attack but amen. I would give anything and I don't put myself above God.

I can tell you of a situation in which an angel was apparently behind me, in a deliverance of a demon possessed person. The person saw it, I didn't see it, but later I found out what she had seen while she was trying to physically attack me and she was holding on and I could see that, that she was trying to throw herself on me and that she couldn't and she turned her face away and Later he told me that he saw a gigantic white being behind me, which filled him with terror and the evil spirit that was inside him did not allow him to attack me. I was alone with that person in an office, the little office in Cambridge that was a place to store the photocopier, a counseling place. I had nowhere to run if that man attacked me in there. Thank God there was an angel there who freed me from that situation.

But there are angels. Angels are real. Perhaps some of you have seen angels. I have seen brothers here who have said that they have seen angels in the church. Sister Dilia has spoken several times of seeing angels here. and others also through the years many have seen them related to this ministry.

Said an angel of the Lord spoke to Philip saying, 'Get up and go south on the road that goes down from Jerusalem to Gaza – this was before the GPS, they gave him exactly the directions to follow, you turn here, a little bit down. there and here it will reach the north and there it will find a person. – Go south because I believe in that, I believe in directions.

Again, I'm so interested in the material that sometimes I don't have time to give you the illustrations, I want to comply. I have had encounters that have been directed by God in situations where there is truly no way that it was a coincidence. And one of them was actually the first time I went to visit my in-laws in Puerto Rico. I am not going to say too much about the story but I was going from Mayaguez to the metropolitan area and there I had an encounter with 2 people, a family that had left here... God was moving in a precious way at that time in our lives and there was performed a miracle of physical liberation of a young woman who had schizophrenia and I had stopped seeing them and had many doubts about what had happened and had in my heart a desire to see these young women. And it had been a long time and I asked him, Lord, that I could see them one day and realize that I made the right decision to fight for them and take them out of the hospital against the wishes of the Department of Mental Health, who wanted to leave them. tucked in there

And God used me to get those young girls out. And I had been left with that doubt of whether I had truly done the right thing. And the Lord knows that there in a field in Puerto Rico, driving along a lonely road, by myself, going to where Meche and her family were, I met those young women in the middle of the road. I couldn't believe it, I saw them from the cloud when they went into a little hill and I kept driving and said, it's impossible. I said, but if I have prayed to the Lord that I wanted to see them again, why not?

I turned around, made a U turn on the same road, I went into the bush where they had gone and there I found her and her family and I saw that the young lady is fine, the family was fine and God healed my heart of that doubt . But it is one of many such encounters. I believe that in supernatural life there are encounters. God directs specifically, it is so much that we could allude to that, brothers. When one believes in the direction of the Lord and you believe and you open space in your mind and make your mind perceptive and absorbing of God's miracles, then God loves to perform miracles in favor of those who believe him, says the word.

It is a life of direction. So, the Lord took Philip out of the crowd and that is what I also want to say about a life of humility. The 2 things are included here, Philip is serving multitudes, it is a multitudinous, miraculous ministry, and now God tells him, leave the multitude and go and minister to only one person, to a man in the desert and Philip does what the Lord directs him, because it is a life directed by the Holy Spirit.

Philip does not say, no, how can I, Lord, leave all these people here, this great crowd? There are many souls, going to minister to a single person stuck there, in a desert. Because you do that? No. Felipe allows himself to be directed by the Holy Spirit. Again, brothers, when you live in the spirit, God will give you his guidelines. Ask the Lord to give you wisdom in every decision you have to make: Marriage, work, life, where you are going to live, small or big decisions, what sermon you are going to preach, what passage you are going to preach. Sometimes preachers just get carried away by inertia and it's so easy.

I have boxes of sermons, brothers, in 30 years of preaching, how many outlines has one done. But many times God tells me, put all that aside, leave that. Once I preached one of those sermons that God sometimes gives me without notes or anything and I got down from the pulpit saying, wow! Too bad I didn't have notes so I could preach it again at another time. And God told me, how did that come out? I have much more, don't worry. And I have learned that one does not waste. This sermon, I don't have notes for it, but God has it written in the spirit world and when I need it again he revives it again.

I have learned to let God direct me and sometimes I stop with fear and trembling thinking, I'm going to make a fool of myself because I don't have grades and God tells me, don't worry. And thank the Lord I have never come down from a pulpit ashamed. God always provides because God gives direction. You have to ask the Lord, Lord, what do you want? And if God tells you, go this way, look, even if you are terrified and afraid, go there and you will not be ashamed.

The Bible says, those who trust in him will not be put to shame. Learn to let the Lord direct your life. May the Lord direct all aspects of your life, may the Lord direct all the decisions of your life. Be like a fearful child who says, Father, I need my portion today.

I thought about that the other days, the more one grows in the Gospel I feel, brothers, truly more like a helpless child without God. and more than ever I cultivate the sense of helplessness without God, of total insufficiency and the more unqualified I feel and less sufficient in myself, more dependent on divine guidance, weaker I feel, more in need of God's grace and I find that in that sense of inadequacy there is great power.

That thing that, Father, I need my portion today, when I get out of bed, Lord, if you don't pick me up in your arms I don't know what will happen. Cultivate a sense of dependence on God. Cultivate the sense that, Father, without you I cannot do it. Even though you have done the same job for 50 years and you think you already know everything you have to do about that job, put all that aside and say, Lord, today I need revelation for this day, how to be a good husband. , how to be a good son, how to be a good worker, how to be a good pastor, how to be a good leader, how to be a good teacher, whether in the secular world or in the spiritual world.

Throw yourself at the feet of the Lord and ask the Lord for direction, ask the Lord for wisdom. If you are a student, ask Jehovah for divine understanding. And ask him to fill your mind with wisdom and divine revelation for even the tasks of the intellect. God loves to give wisdom, brothers. God loves to give intellectual knowledge. He is the owner of the logos that created everything and ordered the entire universe and God says that he pleases him, gives him wisdom and knowledge.

It gives him understanding that it is not for bad but for good. There are people who have intellect and knowledge but are deficient in intellect and knowledge. The wisdom from above, says the Bible, is humble, it is simple, it is for blessing. This world is full of knowledge, there is no time in the history of humanity that has more knowledge than this time in history. Yes or no? We know the world of chromosomes and the genetic code, we know the world of space, we know the world of the cosmos and all the mysteries of the cosmos and of the galaxies and of the sea and the atom. We know the micro and the macro, we know about anthropology, archeology, all the 'gies' that have been and will be, and yet it is a world more damaged and more terribly trapped and in conflict and in terrible dissolution than ever before in history, I believe. More danger than ever before. Because? Because it is not the wisdom of God.

But ask the Lord for direction in your life, ask him to speak to you every day about what you have to do, entrust your path to the Lord, he says, and he will do it. Every day ask the Lord how to educate your children, how to be a good husband, as I say, how to be a good worker and the Lord will give you knowledge.

Philip was directed by the angel. Go to such a place, leave the crowds for now. Now is the time to minister to just one person. Again, it is a life of leadership and it is a life of humility. Be few or many, be private or public. And Felipe goes there. And there he has a supernatural encounter because the life of people filled with the Holy Spirit is a life of supernatural encounters.

God is going to direct you to conversations, God is going to direct you to dialogues, he is going to direct you to opportunities, God is going to open doors for you, they are going to call you from other places. How many times and forgive me for referring to my life, how many times have I been looking for things and rather they have come to me. I rather wait for God to bring many things into my life. And so God brings them in so many forms continually. And I believe that God is a God of supernatural encounters. He brings things to you without much pain.

This is how he leads Felipe to have a supernatural encounter with this man who is the treasurer of the queen of Ethiopia. Felipe does not know that, they have directed Felipe, there is a man who is in such a place and he is in the desert and what's more, they don't even tell him that, they tell him, go to the desert and then he got up and left. And it happened that an Ethiopian eunuch did not know that this man is an official of Candace, queen of the Ethiopians.

This man had a strategic role to play in the development of the Gospel at the international level because the Lord wanted to take the Gospel not only to Jerusalem but to the whole earth. This man was a powerful man, he was a strategic and key political functionary in taking the Gospel to another very important country.

Do you know that the Ethiopians, our son-in-law, the husband of Sonia our first daughter, is Ethiopian and that has led us to learn more about Ethiopia and the history of the Ethiopians. But even before that we knew something about Ethiopia. Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian countries in the world. They date, indeed, before Christ, to an encounter that Solomon had with the queen of Sheba. They have always said for centuries that they are descendants of the Jews and in fact that was confirmed about 30 years ago or a little more, when it was discovered that genetically there were a number of Ethiopians who were indeed Jewish descendants. And the Jewish government airlifted them one day practically airlifted thousands and thousands of Ethiopians to Jerusalem as citizens of Israel because it was clearly proven that they were descendants.

And there are things that the historical tradition says and one sometimes doubts, but they are very real. Ethiopia is one of the oldest Christian nations and to this day the Ethiopians are a very rare people. In fact they say that they have the ark of the covenant that was transported to Ethiopia but the fact is that it is a nation that loves God, they are Ethiopians, they are Orthodox, they are not Christians like we are, but they are Christians who love Christ and everything else. They are a bit more like Catholics because their development was different in Christianity. But they are Orthodox Christians and it is believed that they come from that meeting between Philip and that Ethiopian who brought the Gospel to Ethiopia after he had his meeting with Philip.

Look for that. Read it on Google. Nowadays the phone answers all your questions, if not ask Gregory's son. Daddy, ask him on the phone, that's what Noah says. I'm finishing.

The point is that this man was a strategic encounter. He looked like any other person but no, this guy was sitting in a limousine with a chauffeur next to him and this man was obviously a God fearing man as there were many at that time. He knew something of Judaism and was afraid and believed in the God of Israel but was ignorant of many things. And God sends Philip, miraculously transports him, physically to that place to speak to this man and since he is an anointed evangelist, Philip, and this man is at that moment reading the Old Testament, specifically the book of Isaiah.

And look at what that book said, in verse 32, the passage of scripture that he read was this:

“He was led like a sheep to the death and like a lamb mute before the shearer, so he did not open his mouth. In his humiliation, justice was not done to him, but his generation, who will tell it, because his life was taken from the earth.”

Who was the prophet talking about? Of Jesus. One of the most classic messianic passages in all of scripture. God had engineered, God had managed to make everything coincide at that moment. At the very moment that Felipe finds him, the guy is reading the book of Isaiah. He does not understand who he is talking about and Philip led by the Holy Spirit tells him, "But do you understand who he is talking about?" "But how will I understand if no one explains to me?" and Felipe said, “Yes, here I have it.”

When God opens the doors, when the meeting is divinely inspired, everything becomes possible. Painlessly gives birth. You don't have to be fighting or anything, because God has already prepared everything. It's a little loose tooth that you just have to do like that and it goes away on its own. This man in his heart was ready, but he needed someone.

How many people are there at work, on the subway, on the street who need you to talk to them about the Holy Spirit, about Christ, many other things. I had even forgotten that we had the sacrament. Thank God we have eunuchs here who help us, they are not eunuchs, they are both married. Sorry bro, I missed that. They are men with hair on chests. Let me hear your voice because the eunuch has such a fine voice. No, these are real men.

So, this man was consecrated, prepared, ready, we have to take advantage of opportunities. The man says, how am I going to understand, there is no one to tell me. And then Felipe opens his mouth and begins, he explains the Gospel, boom. The man receives Jesus Christ and it seems that in Philip's explanation, one of the things was, look, you need to be baptized in water. You have to believe in Jesus Christ, be baptized. And this man, imagine, he was a businessman, he was a strategist. He is a statesman. He is used to thinking strategically.

They are walking around or I don't know if they had moved, but they say, look, but there is water here. Why don't I get baptized here right now? That is why I say that it is a life of unpredictable acts. Life in the Spirit Sometimes God will lead you to do things that don't seem traditionally acceptable. There are times when one has to listen to the Holy Spirit, brothers, and sometimes there are things that for orthodoxy will not seem acceptable but God speaks to you in another way. And it is a very rare case, but there are. There are times that I have done things in the pastorate that I said, Lord, have mercy on me because otherwise I am going to hell. But God has spoken to me.

It's like when David ate the shewbread which was holy but his men were hungry if not starving and David said look God is a God of life not death so reach into that Italian bread and eat the ham that is there, although you are not supposed to eat it too... There are times when God speaks like that and you have to obey the Lord. There are things that when the Holy Spirit directs you sometimes you have to violate orthodoxy a little.

Because? Because many times before baptizing people, we ask you, first you have to know the 12 laws of spirituality and the 37 principles of salvation and the 45 truths about the spiritual stratosphere and a number of things. I believe that all it takes to be baptized is to accept Christ as Lord and Savior. Let's not complicate life. It's good to teach people, that's very good, but the other day when we were going to give the baptism class someone... a man's brother came and asked Gregory and me in the hallway, look, my brother says that wants to be baptized with the group. He doesn't attend church, can we baptize him? He says that he believes in Jesus Christ and has wanted to be baptized for a long time. We told him, of course, bring it and we put it in the water, we plunge it. I dove it like 4 times to make sure it was christened right.

I don't know if he's going to come to church, but I think… I asked him, have you believed in Jesus Christ? Oh, yes I have, of course, I have. He is my Lord. He is my savior. He gave me a whole sermon about…Well, amen, let's baptize him. What prevents him from being baptized. Sometimes people think they have to be perfect to be baptized. No. It is a contrite and humiliated and longing heart.

Okay, let's get you in the water. He baptized the man and says that the man left happy and content to do what God had for him in Ethiopia. It is a life that allows itself to be guided by the Holy Spirit. Don't be too square. If God tells you something, commend your cause to the Lord. I am not saying a license here to commit atrocities, I am saying that there are times when with fear and trembling we are going to have to do things that are not in the manual. And sometimes you have to invent your own code in the name of the Lord and entrust yourself to the grace of God.

And it is a lifetime of replication and fidelity. If you look in chapter 10 of the Book of Acts we see Philip… Paul later being ready to be taken to Jerusalem to later be taken captive to Rome, we discovered Philip years later with 4 daughters, I think they were all prophetesses. There were 4 daughters that he had who prophesied, who did the same thing he did. he was an evangelist but these young women, his daughters, were prophetesses and they prophesied to Paul. The anointing continued in the second generation. It had replicated.

Because I believe that when one serves the Lord and one loves the Lord and one... those children are going to be holy, the Bible says. I believe that God, his mercy goes to the second…. Never stop believing that your children are going to meet the Lord. Fight for them. Although right now everything may not be clear and well defined in your life, go ahead, tie it to one leg of the Kingdom of God, of the Lord's table and believe that God is going to bring it in some way. Hold on to it, don't give it up to the devil. No matter how far away they seem to be from the Lord, those children are sanctified. Fight for them, kneel for them. Do not give them to the devil because the children of God have the right to have their offspring blessed too. Our children are sanctified. And believe in that and trust in that promise of the Lord.

Felipe, years have passed, he has served the Lord and now we find him, daughters, not only who believe in Christ but who prophesy and serve the Lord and are women filled with the Holy Spirit. A lifetime of replication.

God wants that to be our life too. My brother, my sister, fill yourself with that faith, with that vision. Believe and I ask you, brothers, let's develop that appetite, a church filled with the Holy Spirit, a church of miracles, a supernatural church.