In Jeremiah chapter 1 verse 8 God tells Jeremiah the prophet to not be afraid of their faces and then in verse 17 He tells him not to be dismayed at their faces. In between those 2 instructions in verse 9 God gives Jeremiah the words to speak. I believe the reason that God sandwiched His words between admonitions to not be afraid or dismayed of their faces is that it is important to not be moved by how people look. If you are afraid of their faces you might be intimidated and then not speak God’s words but your own words. If we speak our own words and not God’s words then we will not see the fruit that we could have.

As I ministered at the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois recently I needed to practice the instruction to not be afraid nor dismayed of the people’s faces. For 2 days I witnessed to people and went over the meaning of the colors of the salvation bracelets that were attached to the end of the walking sticks that we passed out for free. I couldn’t go by what their faces looked like because some of their faces had mean intimidating looks like they didn’t care or that they didn’t like what I was saying. But I would just keep preaching what I felt like God was wanting me to say and to my surprise a lot of those people with hard looks ended up praying to receive the Lord and others as least soaked in what was being said.

In other words we can’t go by the outward and stereotype people by thinking that because of the way this person’s face is or the way their body language is they don’t want to hear the Gospel. We will be surprised when we don’t go by outward appearance but just witness and say what God wants us to that we will bear a lot of fruit; just like we did at the Farm Progress Show in Decatur, Illinois. Hundreds of people prayed with us to get saved.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 15th, 2009 at 8:12 pm and is filed under evangelism, ministry updates. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.