Rejoice Instead

Sometimes it’s hard for me to realize that I don’t always need to be around “church kids” to see who God is through others. He often teaches me powerful life lessons when I’m not constantly around other Christians. Sometimes I learn the best when it’s just Him, the world, and myself, because when I read my bible or I pray or I just think, I don’t have other people’s opinions influencing my thoughts. Sometimes it’s just better to hear what God has to say directly rather than through other people. Not always, but sometimes.

I think one of my favorite stories I’ve read in the whole Bible is in Acts chapter 8. In this chapter, Phillip is sent by an angel of the Lord to Gaza to share the Gospel with the people there. On his journey, he meets an Ethiopian eunuch reading a passage from the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament. The Holy Spirit tells Phillip to go talk to the eunuch, so he does. Phillip asks the eunuch, “Do you understand what you are reading?” and the eunuch responds, “How can I unless someone explains it to me?” Phillip shares the Gospel with this eunuch, he accepts it, gets baptized, and they both go their separate ways, rejoicing, to share what they have learned with other people they meet. (My summary is not as effective as the story itself, if you want to check that out go to Acts 8:26-40).

I’ve heard several sermons on this passage, and they have been focused on Phillip and his boldness in sharing the Gospel with a man he never met. Recently I read it, and I put myself in the place of the Ethiopian eunuch rather than in Phillip’s. Whenever I have had someone come and share something with me as life changing as Phillip did with the eunuch, I want that person to stick around for a long time, not just tell me what they know and leave my life forever.

I find that more often than not, God doesn’t keep those life changing people, or “Phillips” around for a long time. I think if He did, we would forget how to appreciate different people’s opinions. God often takes us away from people so we can learn new lessons from new people, and we can take the things we learned from the Phillips in our lives and teach them to the eunuch’s we will come across on our journey.

The thing that stuck with me the most was that the Ethiopian eunuch did not get upset that he would never see Phillip, a man who God used to change his life, ever again. Instead of being upset, he “went on his way rejoicing,” being joyful of the things he learned.

I need to be more like that. I need to learn to rejoice about the things and the people God placed in my life for a time, rather than being upset that they are no longer there. I need to learn to take what I learned from those people and share it with different people so they can be just as encouraged as I was.

I think we could all be a little bit more like the Ethiopian eunuch and rejoice over the things God has given us, rather than being upset over that fact that He has taken them away.