He Loses His Words the Moment Anybody Looks at Him

In the car he is articulate.

He has the whole thing. The point, the two supporting points, the answer to the objection he knows is coming, and the sentence he wants to finish on. He has said it out loud to the windshield and it was good.

He walks into the room and it goes.

Not the content. He still knows the content; he could write it down afterward. What goes is access to it, and what replaces it is a very loud awareness of being looked at, and by the time he has finished noticing that, somebody else is talking and the moment is over.

Afterward he is furious, and the fury is entirely at himself, and it lasts about two days.

This has happened enough times that he now assumes it will happen, which has made it worse, because he has started declining the moments in advance.

God says something to a young man about exactly this, and the word He uses is not the word people expect.

The instruction is about faces

Here is the verse, and the object of the fear is specific.

Thou therefore gird up thy loins, and arise, and speak unto them all that I command thee: be not dismayed at their faces, lest I confound thee before them. (Jeremiah 1:17, King James Version)

Be not dismayed at their faces.

Not: be not afraid of them. Not: be not intimidated by their arguments. At their faces, which is exactly right, because what happens in that room is not an argument. It is faces. It is being looked at, and something about being looked at reaches straight past the content.

God names the mechanism precisely, and I find that steadying on its own, because a person who has been told for years that he lacks confidence has been given a diagnosis about his character. This one is about a specific trigger, and specific things can be addressed.

You are described precisely rather than diagnosed generally. Jeremiah 1:17 names the faces as the trigger, and it is the Spirit who searches all things, 1 Corinthians 2:10, which is how a person gets an accurate account of themselves rather than a general one.

The warning is the part people never quote

The end of that verse is unsettling and almost nobody reads it out.

Lest I confound thee before them.

Read it plainly. God is saying that if Jeremiah is dismayed at their faces, He will let that be the outcome. It is not a threat of punishment; it is a description of what will happen if a man's attention goes to the wrong place, and God takes responsibility for the arrangement.

I find that hard and I also find it useful, because it means the going blank is not random. There is a mechanism, and the mechanism runs on where attention is placed, and that is a thing over which a person has some say even when they have no say at all over how they feel.

Nobody can decide to be unafraid in a room. Everybody can decide, in advance, what they are going to be looking at, and that is a much smaller and more achievable task than becoming a confident person.

You have some say over where the attention goes even when you have none over the fear. Jeremiah 1:17 attaches the outcome to being dismayed at faces rather than to being afraid, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:6, that to be spiritually minded is described as life and peace.

What was said to him nine verses earlier

The instruction in verse 17 is not the first thing God says to him about this. It is the second, and the first one is the promise.

Be not afraid of their faces: for I am with thee to deliver thee, saith the LORD. (Jeremiah 1:8)

Same phrase, and this time with a reason attached: for I am with thee.

And it is worth knowing where verse 8 sits. It comes immediately after Jeremiah says he cannot speak because he is a child, which means God answers a young man's stated inadequacy with a fact about location rather than with a correction about his ability.

He does not tell him he is more capable than he thinks. That would have been an encouragement and it would have been false. He tells him who is going to be in the room.

You are answered with a fact about who is present rather than a claim about your ability. Jeremiah 1:8 says for I am with thee to deliver thee, and it is the Comforter, the Holy Spirit of John 14:16, who is given to abide with a person continuously.

Moses had the same problem and got the same answer

The oldest version of this is Exodus, and Moses' objection is about his mouth specifically.

And the LORD said unto him, Who hath made man's mouth?... Now therefore go, and I will be with thy mouth, and teach thee what thou shalt say. (Exodus 4:11-12)

I will be with thy mouth. Not: I will make you eloquent. He does not offer to change the man's capability; He offers to be present at the point of failure.

That distinction matters enormously to somebody who has spent years trying to become a different sort of person. The promise is not a personality transplant. It is company at the exact location where the thing goes wrong.

And Jesus says the same in the New Testament and names who does it.

For the Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought to say. (Luke 12:12)

In the same hour. Not in advance, in the car, which is where a person would prefer to have it. In the hour, in the room, while it is happening.

You are promised company at the point of failure rather than a different personality. Exodus 4:12 says I will be with thy mouth, and Luke 12:12 names the Holy Ghost as the one who teaches in the same hour.

What is promised at the end of the chapter

The commission finishes with an image, and the image is architectural.

For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, and an iron pillar, and brasen walls against the whole land... And they shall fight against thee; but they shall not prevail against thee; for I am with thee, saith the LORD, to deliver thee. (Jeremiah 1:18-19)

They shall fight against thee. He does not promise the room becomes friendly. He tells him plainly that it will not.

But they shall not prevail. Which is a different promise, and a more honest one, and it is the promise available to anybody who has been hoping the room would change.

And notice the tense in verse 18: I have made thee this day. Past tense, already done, before Jeremiah has said a word to anybody. The walls were up before the first difficult conversation.

You have already been made into something before the first difficult room. Jeremiah 1:18 puts the making in the past tense on that same day, and it is by the Spirit, Ephesians 3:16, that a person is strengthened with might in the inner man.