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You must believe something good about everyone, because no one is hopeless. Every person you meet has some value. Now, I've had some people working for me who I thought were hopeless. Let me tell you, some of these people were seriously hopeless-looking people. I looked at some of these people and thought, God, I wouldn't want to hire these people to work for me. Let me just give you a prime example.

I hired a guy over 16 years ago who still works with me today. He was my very first ministry employee besides Cathy. When I first hired him, his pastor told me, "Don't hire that boy." That's what he told me! So I agreed not to until I heard the Lord tell me otherwise. But sure enough, God said, Hire him.

"Oh, Jesus!" I said. "God, did you hear what his pastor said?" God answered me and said, "What his pastor said is the truth. But hire him anyway, and I will perfect him through your ministry."

That's how I came to hire this guy. As soon as he started working for me, he jumped in with both feet. He would say, "Tell me what to do, boss, and I'll do it for you. I'll do anything for you!"

"Thank you," I'd say. "Just do your job. That's all we want you to do."

"I'll do that!"

Now, the Bible says that in your patience you possess your soul (Luke 21:19). Well, I possessed my soul three or four times over with this boy. He did some of the craziest things you have ever seen in your life. For example, he was driving one of our ministry vans with Cathy one night, and I was up ahead in another car. It was late, and Cathy asked him to drive a little faster so they could stay with the others and me.

He turned to Cathy and said, "Yeah - if the Lord tells me to, Sister Cathy, I will."

Oh, that made Cathy mad. She was just steaming! Steaming! She told me later, "Fire that sucker!"

Later I had a talk with that boy about that. I said, "Boy, come here! Listen, you are causing my wife to get on my back. If you keep her off my back, I will stay off your back. Do you understand? Let me give you some wisdom. Shut your mouth when you're in the car with Cathy. If she tells you to drive 95, drive 95. If you get a ticket, we'll pay for it. If she tells you to do something, do it. Did you ever hear what Jesus' mother said? She said, 'Whatever He tells you to do, do it.'"

That was the first little mistake he made with Cathy. But there were others. I don't know what was wrong with him. For example, he would look at Cathy and say, "Boy, your hair is ugly today, Sister Cathy."

I heard that, and I told him, "Look, speak in tongues. Don't speak in English anymore!"

He didn't tell her that to be rude; he just said whatever came to his mind. Let me tell you what I'm talking about. One time we were in a pastor's house having dinner, and the pastor turned to him and said, "Boy, you're a good worker."

He looked at the pastor and said, "Yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate it. But I couldn't work for you. You don't have any faith. Look at that trashy car you've got in your garage."

I couldn't believe it! This guy just spoke his mind! He didn't give any thought to the way it sounded. The Lord had some work to do on this guy.

I remember something that happened involving his car one time. You see, he drove a car that didn't have glass in the back window of the convertible, and he often used that car for the ministry. He once had my tape bag with my money in it and left it in the back seat of that car! When I asked him where the tape bag was, he told me, "I left it in the car."

"What?" I said. "You don't have a back window in your car!"

"The Lord will take care of it," was all he said.

"No," I said. "Get yourself up and go get that tape bag!"

Another time, something crazy happened with him during dinner at another pastor's house. The pastor's little boy was kind of messing with him at the dinner table. You know how kids can get. Well, after putting up with this for a while, he told the boy, "Come here, little fellow. I want to talk to you for a minute."

He got up with the little boy - a five-year-old - and went out of the room. I thought, Where's he going? I heard them walk down the hall, and then I heard, Whack! Whack! My employee was spanking that pastor's little boy because he was messing with him!

He'd set his mind like that sometimes. I remember the time that he started thinking television was a sin. I don't know who told him that, but he became convinced that television was sin. So one day he went over to his mamma's house while she was watching a show and unplugged the television set. I think he thought he was being spiritual. But this was the way Fritz acted when he first started working for us.

"Look," I said once, "I don't want my battery running down on my battery pack. Make sure I have a new battery. Got it?"

"Okay, boss," he said. He never called me Jesse. He always called me boss: "Okay, boss. Whatever you say, boss. I got it, boss."

I asked him later, "Did you change my batteries? Do I have a new one?"

"You've got a new battery, boss," he said.

"What did you do with the old battery?" I asked him.

"I have it in my pocket," he said.

"Okay," I said. "Well, I'll see you tonight."

"Okay."

On the way to the meeting that night, the associate pastor asked me, "Brother Jesse, is it all right if I ride with your tape guy to the meeting tonight?"

"Sure," I said and told this employee to pick up the associate pastor.

So he got in the van and started driving down the road with the associate pastor, when suddenly his leg began burning. But instead of checking his own leg, he looked over at the associate pastor and said, "The Lord is telling me that you have a pain in your leg."

The associate pastor looked at him and said, "What?"

"I'm telling you," he said more strongly, "you have a pain in your leg!"

Then he slammed on the brakes, jumped out and started running around the van. The associate pastor got out of the van, thinking, "What is wrong with this crazy guy?"

Meanwhile, my tape guy is running around the van, thinking he's got a manifestation of the associate pastor's pain in the leg!

What had happened was that there was a penny in his pocket and it reacted with the battery, burning a hole in his skin. But he thought it was a word of knowledge from God for the associate pastor! That boy did some crazy things like that.

I'll give you another example of what I'm talking about. I came walking in the back door to a meeting we were having one time, and I saw him going, "Ohhh, ohhh," and shaking his head and pacing around.

I asked, "Do you have a problem? Is something wrong?"

"I'll tell you what," he said. "These women are lusting for me, Brother Jesse."

"What?" I said. "A grasshopper wouldn't lust for you, boy! For God's sake! They just want to be nice and say hello to you."

"No," he went on. "I can see it! They're lusting for me."

"You can't see nothing! Just sell the tapes!"

He thought that just because a woman was nice to him, it meant she lusted after him.

One time, I saw him leave the tape table and take off running at full speed. This was just after a big meeting, in which we'd had about 1,500 people. I saw him running like crazy right through the middle of them. I mean, he was going full blast. He is 6 feet 3 inches tall, and he weighs about a 105 pounds - skinny as a rail. He ran and tackled a guy in the middle of that room in front of everyone!

I thought, My God! What is going on here?

Everybody freaked out while he wrestled with the guy and took something from him. Then he came walking back over to the tape table, where told me, "I got it back! I got our tape back, boss."

He had tackled a guy in the middle of a church reception over a $3 tape that the man had stolen! That's the kind of person I was dealing with back then. This guy was a zealot. He couldn't be stopped when he thought something was wrong or out of place. That turned out to be a good quality later, but it needed to be perfected first.

Today this man is one of the finest men of God you will ever meet. He's been with me for over 16 years, and he's done everything in the world for me. He's a servant who loves God. I could put my life in his hands, and my life wouldn't hit the ground. Why? Because he is a true servant of the Lord Jesus Christ. But we had to perfect that in him. It was in there, but somebody had to get it out. He didn't start out being such a blessing to us at all. During his first four years with us, I had to have the patience of Job.

You see, you must believe in everyone, because no one is hopeless. You can't look at someone and think, He's hopeless, or She'll never amount to anything. You don't know what their potential is, because you can't always see people the way God sees them. God looks at them through the eyes of faith. He knows what they're capable of becoming with a little patience and training.

Just look at the life of Moses. The same Moses who led millions of people out of Egypt, through the wilderness and to the Promised Land started out saying that he was slow of speech and slow of tongue (Ex. 4:10). But it was that same Moses who later talked freely with God and was a great leader.

That's why you can't judge a person by what they seem like to you at the time. God may be raising you up to train them or impart something to them, and one day you will look at them and say, "Man, just look at what you've become!"

Source: Jambalaya for the Soul by Jesse Duplantis
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers

Author Biography

Jesse Duplantis
Web site: Jesse Duplantis Ministries
 
Jesse Duplantis is a dynamic evangelist who has traveled throughout the world since 1978 preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. He is the founder of Jesse Duplantis Ministries (JDM), which has its International Headquarters in America and additional offices in the United Kingdom and Australia.
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