I gather you realize by now I have many airplane stories because I fly so much. I probably fly 300,000 to 350,000 miles a year preaching the gospel. Spending that much time on airplanes gives me great opportunities to be a witness for Jesus.
I usually get the flight attendants to help me out with my witnessing. They come by with a magazine rack and ask passengers what magazine they would like to read. When they get to me, I always ask for the same thing. For example, I tell the flight attendant, “I’ll take the Gideon.”
One time when I said this, the flight attendant questioned me. “The Gideon?” she asked. She wasn’t sure what I meant.
“Yes, the Gideon.” I said.
“There’s no magazine named the Gideon,” she said.
“Oh, yes, there is,” I said. “In fact, there’s one here on this plane right now.”
“We must have missed it,” she said.
“No, it’s there,” I said. “You’ve just never picked it up. You’ve never offered it to anybody before. That’s all.”
“Well, what is the Gideon?” she asked me. “What does it look like?”
“Go back to the rack and look in there,” I told her.
I saw the flight attendant go back and look in the magazine rack and read the words, “Placed by the Gideons.”
She came back to me and said, “Oh, the Bible.”
“Yes!” I said. “A Bible!”
She gave me the Bible, and I started reading from the beginning. I love Genesis, and it gets very vivid to me when I read it. So I turned that Gideon’s Bible to page one and started reading. And in my mind I was reading Genesis 1:1-2, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And…” [whirrrrrrrrrrrrrrr] the spirit of God moved – the word moved in the Hebrew means “fluttered.”
Now, this was going on strong in my mind, and I got excited about it. I got so excited that the man sitting next to me started to notice.
I started saying, “Woowwwwwww! Glooooory!”
That man looked at me and asked, “What’s the matter?”
I said, “God! He just created the earth! Look!”
He said, “Ooohhh. Man, you’re really into this.”
“No,” I said, “it’s into me.”
“You seem really excited,” he said.
“Yes, I am! I am possessed!”
That guy looked at me and went, “Whoaaaaa!” He wanted to know what planet I had come from.
He looked at me and said, “You must be religious.”
“No, no,” I said. “Religious people don’t talk about God. Born-again people witness about God. Religious people have Thursday night visitations, a time when they walk up to people’s homes at dinnertime and say, ‘Hello, would you like to join my religion and become just like me?’ No, I don’t think so. Religion is very boring. But I’m very expressive when I talk about the Lord because I enjoy Jesus.”
I shook this man up, and I knew it. I knew I could preach to him on that airplane because he wasn’t going anywhere. I’ve never seen anyone yet with enough faith to get off an airplane which was going 500 miles an hour.
If they do get up and run, they can only go so far, you know. If they try to escape to the bathroom, for example, you can just get on the microphone and get to them in there.
So I witnessed to this man right there on the airplane. Sometimes God’s Word will become so alive to you that you can’t help witnessing. It will just fill you up inside until you feel as if you’re going to burst unless you say something. You can actually get so full of God’s Word that you feel like you must talk to somebody about Jesus or you’ll burst.
That’s the creative power of the Holy Spirit. As you exalt Jesus, the Holy Spirit will begin to flutter just like He did in Genesis when God was creating the earth. That’s the creative factor of the Trinity. God’s just waiting for you to get excited about Him.
Then the minute you start talking about Jesus, it’s like saying, “Light, be!” It will cause the Holy Spirit to flutter on the heads of people and create an atmosphere for them to get born again into the kingdom of Jesus Christ!
Excerpt permission granted by Harrison House Publishers
Jesse Duplantis, minister of the Gospel, motivational speaker, television personality, and best-selling author, has been in full-time ministry since 1976 and is the founder of Jesse Duplantis Ministries, located in the Greater New Orleans area of south Louisiana in the United States of America. With over four decades of sharing his unique blend of humor and faith around the world, generations of believers have been inspired by his messages and countless numbers have come to know Jesus Christ as Savior through his ministry.
Known for his unflinching, status-quo-breaking messages and humorous take on experiences in the life of the believer, Jesse continues to draw large audiences of believers through social media, television, and meetings held around the world. With speaking engagements booked years in advance, Jesse Duplantis continues to keep an intense traveling schedule, flying throughout the United States and the world preaching the Gospel of Jesus Christ. With no booking agents pursuing meetings for him and no set fees imposed upon churches for speaking engagements, Jesse chooses his outreach meetings based on the same two criteria he always has: invitations that come in and prayer over each one. This uncommon way of scheduling in today’s world means Jesse’s many followers may find him speaking in some of the largest churches and venues in America and the world, as well as a great many small and growing congregations, too. No church is too big or small for the Holy Spirit, as he says.
Side by side with his wife Cathy Duplantis, the co-founder and chief of staff of Jesse Duplantis Ministries and the senior pastor of Covenant Church in Destrehan, Louisiana, Jesse continues to fulfill his life’s calling by daily taking up the Great Commission of Jesus Christ: “Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Through social media, television broadcasts, books, and other ministry products, as well as through many evangelistic meetings, the JDM website, the JDM app, and Voice of the Covenant magazine, Jesse Duplantis continues to see growth in his ministry and expand each year while maintaining his roots. Jesus is the center of his life. The salvation of lost people and the growth of believers is the purpose of his ministry. And for both he and his wife, every day is another day to “Reach People and Change Lives, One Soul at a Time.”