Some of you have found yourselves experiencing a John the Baptist moment. You are calling out from the isolation of a social wilderness. Your message might sound discordant to what has become the accepted norm for a life of faith. 

What you speak can challenge people’s assumptions about God and His Kingdom.  You will appear as strange to some of your listeners as John was while wearing camel hair, eating locust and honey, and raising his voice loud enough for all to hear. When John spoke, tens of thousands of people from Jerusalem, Judea, and the surrounding region came out to hear his message. The religious establishment of the day mocked those who made the journey because their control over people was being challenged.

The Lord has given a unique purpose for your voice, just as it was for John. You are announcing the arrival of Jesus in this generation. Jesus must be at the core of your message, not your opinions or the venting of your frustration, or it will not contain the magnetizing power of the Spirit, the same magnetizing power that summoned an immense audience to hear John’s message.

We should not reject an unusual messenger because they violate our sense of religious decorum or what we have been taught to believe about how our faith should be expressed. When we hear these unusual messengers, our first prayer should be “Lord, give us ears to hear what you are saying to your Church.”