The Unexpected

DEVOTION

THE BOOK OF ACTS

THE UNEXPECTED

Acts 8:36-40

36 As they traveled along the road, they came to some water and the eunuch said, "Look, here is water. Why shouldn't I be baptized?"   38 And he gave orders to stop the chariot. Then both Philip and the eunuch went down into the water and Philip baptized him. 39 When they came up out of the water, the Spirit of the Lord suddenly took Philip away, and the eunuch did not see him again, but went on his way rejoicing. 40 Philip, however, appeared at Azotus and traveled about, preaching the gospel in all the towns until he reached Caesarea.

NIV

Although it does not specifically say the Eunuch accepted Jesus Christ as his savior it is certainly implied as he decided that he should also be baptized as well. Of course baptism is one of the ways in which we follow Jesus, and it signifies the old self being buried and the new self being resurrected. This is quite a life lesson for us in that we should be a new self, a different self then when we were before we accepted Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior and followed him in baptism. But the other interesting event that took place here was after the baptism of the eunuch. It appears Phillip was transported in or by the Spirit of the Lord. He was in one place and suddenly he was no longer there but was in another place, and this was way ahead of anything Gene Roddenberry invented for Star Trek. It seems the miraculous was still happening and it was with more than the first twelve disciples. This is a kind of faith that moves mountains, a faith that believes all things are possible, a faith that allows gives God the freedom to act in supernatural ways. Phillip was open to anything God had in store for him and this was just one more of the ways God moves in the miraculous. But have we restricted God to our human understanding? Have we put in that proverbial box, not allowing him to move in the supernatural? Do we devise human ways and expect God to preform according to our ideas? God was about doing something special and wonderful in the life of Phillip, but he also showed this newly baptized eunuch something miraculous as well. We can only imagine what kind of a story he had to tell when he arrived home, and how excited he was to tell about his experience with Phillip and that when this man had baptized him, he simply disappeared. Once again we can learn from this as well in that we too should be excited about our experience we Jesus that we have to tell everyone about what happened to us. Do we do that, or have we retreated to human devised ways to witness, formulas for effective evangelism? Once again we are faced with God and his miraculous ways and we must once again remind our self that he is God and we are human, his creation and he can do things far beyond anything we can imagine and so we must learn to expect the unexpected. Certainly Phillip nor the eunuch were expecting Phillip to be transported suddenly, but God did what God does, the unexpected.