Acts 4:13 is more than a verse to me. It is the banner over my life. It is the kind of testimony I want written over my name when my time here is finished. The verse says that when the leaders saw the boldness of Peter and John, they realized they were uneducated and ordinary men. That description alone could have dismissed them. But it did not. Something in their lives spoke louder than their lack of formal training.
I think about where I came from, and I understand why this verse grips me the way it does. I come from a family of twelve children, and I am number eleven. There is nearly thirty years between my oldest brother and my youngest sister. That detail matters because my parents were not young when they had my sister and me. They came from a different era, a time when a man’s word meant something and character was not optional. A handshake still carried weight. Standards were not rewritten every decade. Integrity was expected. I grew up in that atmosphere, and it shaped me long before I realized it.
Yet if you measured me by academics alone, you would not have predicted much. I do not have college degrees. I struggled in high school. By the world’s system of evaluation, my future should have been limited. I was supposed to rely on physical strength, not intellectual depth. I was not the obvious candidate for influence or wisdom
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But something happened to me that no transcript could measure. I met my Savior.
When I came to know Jesus Christ personally, my education truly began. I learned that the deepest wisdom is not always taught in classrooms. It is learned in the quiet presence of the One who created life itself. In the early hours of the morning, I would bring Him my rejection, my anger, my disappointments, and my wounds. And He began to teach me. He taught me how to endure pain without becoming bitter. He taught me how to respond to criticism without losing my identity. He taught me how to forgive when pride wanted to fight back. That kind of learning does not come from books. It comes from walking closely with Him.
I will not pretend I have mastered every lesson. I still struggle. I still grow. But I know where to go for answers, and that knowledge has anchored my life more securely than any degree ever could.
Because of that, I have also experienced something else. There will always be people who measure worth by credentials. They look at degrees, titles, and accomplishments and decide who has value. It can hurt when those closest to you speak in ways that diminish your thoughts or question your depth. It can sting when someone implies that because you did not pass through their system, your voice carries less weight.
That tension is exactly what Acts 4:13 reveals. The leaders of that day tried to reduce Peter and John. They tried to label them. They tried to dismiss them. They saw uneducated and ordinary men and assumed that was the end of the story. But it was not.
The verse delivers the most powerful conclusion of all: they recognized that these men had been with Jesus. That is the difference.
The world may look at someone and say, “He is not educated.” But heaven looks and says, “He has been with Jesus.”
The world may say, “He does not have credentials.” But God says, “He has My Spirit.”
The world may measure wisdom by scholars and training, but it is difficult to argue with the kind of depth that comes from sitting at the feet of Christ. There is a strength that comes from prayer. There is a steadiness that comes from suffering with Him. There is a clarity that comes from obedience and truth. And that is the real point of my life.
I am not writing this to complain about being underestimated. I am writing this because there is no greater title a man could ever carry than this:
“He has been with Jesus.”