Do you understand what you’re reading?
Written by Pastor Jon Heeringa

I want to consider one of the great evangelism questions we find in scripture.

This question comes from Acts 8:30, where Philip asks an Ethiopian eunuch, “Do you understand what you are reading?”

The best definition of evangelism is one beggar leading another to food, so this is a great evangelism question. Jesus is “the Bread of Life,” so evangelism is simply leading people to Him, and one of the best places to find Him is scripture. As the Jesus Storybook Bible says, “every story (of scripture) whispers His name.”

I’m guessing many of you are hesitant to ask someone if they understand the scriptures because you may not understand all of them yourselves. I don’t either, but this is precisely why the scriptures are key in evangelism. When we wrestle with and try to understand something in the scriptures, we inevitably find Jesus.

Now, you probably won’t find many people reading the scriptures like Philip did, but you can find something you don’t understand in the Bible and ask a pre-Christian what they think it means. They probably won’t understand either, but you will have opened a conversation that leads to seeing Jesus.