Philip of Bethsaida

            Hi my name is Philip of Bethsaida. I am a follower of Christ, also known as one of the disciples. I actually was the first disciple who was asked to follow Christ by Jesus himself. I will never forget that moment it changed my life forever. I was in Galilee when he approached me. This was finally Him, the one we had been waiting for since Moses wrote about Him in the book of the law. The prophets wrote about him also. This was Jesus of Nazareth; he was going to be the ruler of Israel. At least this was what I only thought at first. I thought that Jesus was going to take His rightful place on the throne and rule like the prophets had said. So he walked up to me and simply uttered two words that would draw my interest and lead me on a path that would cost everything. Jesus came up to me and said, “Follow me”. This was the promised messiah and I could do nothing else but follow him. I immediately ran to my friend Nathanael and told him that I had found Jesus of Nazareth. Now my friend Nathanael was a bit skeptical of this and he asked me if this could be true, if something good could even come out of Nazareth. I told him all I could say which was come with me and let’s see if this is true. This was the first time that Jesus did something that would astound me. Jesus said things to Nathanael that no one else could possibly know. Jesus told us that if we thought that was impressive we were going to see things even greater than that. This was such an important day for me. Once I knew I had found Jesus I had to tell my friend and invite him along for the journey.

            I witnessed one of the greatest miracles to happen ever in history. Not only was I amazed at what Jesus had done but also it taught me a lesson for my future ministry. Jesus had been preaching on a mountainside to thousands of people. You could see people all over and Jesus asked me a question that confused me. Jesus asked me where we could buy bread for all of those people to eat. Where could we buy bread? What was he talking about? There is no way we would have enough money to feed all of those people. I told Jesus it would take over half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each to get one bite. You see I was already considering how we could take care of all of these people. This is something about me that Jesus knew and he was teaching me a lesson by asking me how we could feed them. It is important to take care of others. Jesus then did the unthinkable. He then took five pieces of bread and two fish and multiplied it to feed everyone there, it was 5,000 men plus the women and children weren’t even counted. What an incredible miracle. Jesus promised Nathanael and me that we would see incredible miracles and this was certainly one of them. What a lesson I learned about faith and trust. Jesus took his time to include me in that miracle by asking me about where to buy bread for everyone. I was from that area and I thought he was asking me because I might know where the bread would be. He was showing me that he could provide the miraculous. This would come to help me so much later on in life when times seemed difficult and I wasn’t sure where provision would come from.

There were times in my life when I would have different people coming to me looking to meet Christ. There was one time when a group of Greeks came to me during the Passover festival and they wanted to meet Jesus. I made sure to care for people when I was around them and this allowed me to develop relationships with people. All I could do was to bring them to the Messiah when they would come to me.  If they weren’t coming to me then I would go to them. This was what would drive me. I wanted people to know the Messiah.

There was this time very soon before he died when he taught me the greatest lesson I ever learned. Jesus would take time to teach me directly and everyone else around me. I asked him to show us the father and that it would be enough. That is all we wanted. You see this whole time I thought that Jesus was simply the King of the Jews who had come to rule over the earth. I didn’t realize that he was God that whole time and now Jesus would bring me to God like I had done for others. Jesus responded to me by saying that he was God. I was taken aback by his direct answer to my question. It made my question almost seem foolish. See It is important to see God for yourself and not just bring others to him. I was expecting to rule with Christ and forgot to acknowledge that God had been walking with me, performing miracles and teaching me this whole time. I was amazed that I had missed something that was so apparent and right in front of me. My focus was on the wrong thing the whole time. In his way of teaching Jesus opened my eyes to the truth. His answer was almost like a rebuke to my question but the time was coming where He would leave us and He needed me to understand that He was God. I dedicated the rest of my life to leading people to coming to know Him. To see the God I had walked with and who was the Savior of the world. Jesus was Christ the Messiah He was God.