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BRAVER THAN LIONS
Sam Stringer
Aug 11, 2024
So Philip ran to him, and heard him reading the prophet Isaiah, and said, "Do you understand
what you are reading?" And he said, "How can I, unless someone guides me" And he asked
Philip to come up and sit with him.
Acts 8:30-31
In a world run by a sovereign God, there is no such thing as chance. There is a meaning and purpose to
every season of your life, whether things are going great or feel like they’re falling apart. God takes all of
us on journeys, knowing where the bends in the road are leading, knowing why He gave us certain
experiences and knowledge, knowing why He made us the way He did. As Ecclesiastes tells us, to
everything there is a season.
My daughters like to create things like crocheting or building puzzles. It’s always interesting to watch
because when I as their dad have no idea what my younger daughter is crocheting or the picture that my
older daughter is putting pieces together to make, I am much like a person watching God put the pieces
of their life together. I can see something being made but I may get frustrated that I don’t know where this
is going. I can jump to conclusions and imagine pictures or crafts that are not being designed, but I’m not
the maker of the art. Obviously, when we’re talking about our own lives, it’s not as though we aren’t
heavily involved in the process of where things are going, but humility reminds us that God controls the
story of each of us ultimately. We didn’t choose when we came here, what we’d be capable of, what kinds
of opportunities we’d be afforded, the people we’d meet along the way, and the myriad other details;
those are all God weaving an intricate tapestry together called your life.
Philip came to the Ethiopian eunuch, who sat in his chariot on the side of the road in the middle of
nowhere gazing at a scroll on Isaiah. It’s such a spiritually loaded passage, though, because God put that
scroll in the eunuch’s hands, God was prompting him to be curious, but God also wasn’t giving him clarity.
God led Philip into that place through the instruction of an angel, with the knowledge that he had and the
Spirit of God within him. Philip’s role was to be an answer to prayer, whether the man even prayed for the
help coming his way! When it comes to God, there are unanswered prayers and there are unrequested
answers.
Philip asked him, “Do you understand what you are reading?” The word for understand refers to grasping
the significance of something. Take a child to the site of the former World Trade Center, and they may
appreciate the fountains and see a lot of names at those memorials, but they very well do not understand
the significance of what they see. All it may be to them is a pretty place outside that seemed a little
somber with a bunch of skyscrapers surrounding the area. So too, a person may read the Bible and not
grasp the significance of what they’re reading, until God works, that is. The Ethiopian eunuch would be
informed as to what the passage of Isaiah meant, understanding that Jesus was the Christ who died for
our sins, and would place his faith in Christ. He would be baptized alongside the road and that would be
the last of the biblical account we read of him. We can only imagine what happened from there in that
man’s life, as well as the other people he would encounter as a Christian himself and how God would use
him.
I want to encourage you today to be willing to obey God as He leads. You never know what’s going to
transpire when you take the courage to let Him lead you. Years ago, sometime around 1980, a woman in
the military out in San Francisco witnessed to her coworker, a man who’d been serving for nearly 8 years
at the time. Not long before that day, he took his wife past the Mormon temple out in San Francisco and
told her they were going to go there (don’t ask me why). This woman witnessed to him, and he got saved
and never gave a second thought to becoming a Mormon. That man was my dad, who grew up Catholic
but became very unchurched as an adult.
When she witnessed to him, she couldn’t foresee that he would immediately become involved in a Bible-
believing church, serve for many years, and with his wife have two sons, one of which would grow up in a
Gospel culture and become a pastor. She couldn’t foresee that I would be directly tied to her bravery of
sharing the Gospel with someone else. If she’s alive, I don’t think she even knows to this day what all has
happened. The same is true of nearly every person who steps out in faith into another person’s life where
God is working. The stories could go on an on not only of the person who decided to follow Christ but also
the others they’d impact in their walks, too.
Why should you be brave? Because you never know what’s around the corner for you, or for someone
you’re going to meet. You never know how a conversation might turn into an entirely different life for an
untold amount of people. You never know, but God does. Be brave, be blessed.
Sam Stringer
Scripture taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson. Used by
permission. All rights reserved.
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