I had to give a prophetic word last night. It wasn’t fun, and it wasn’t glamorous. In fact, it was rather painful, and I felt rather sick the whole time I was speaking.
In our Christian culture, the gift of prophecy is highly coveted. It’s like the icing on the Christian cake for most people. After all, who wouldn’t want the prestige that comes with being the person in the know?
The answer is the person who is really in the know. The one who sees past the facades and understands the prophecy isn’t about giving people the warm fuzzies, making empty promises of health, wealth, and prosperity, or even the promise that all things work together for good in your life, so hang in there. Now, I know that somewhere along the way you were told that the gift of prophecy was given for encouragement and exhortation, that negative or judgmental words have no place in a New Testament church, and if it isn’t building you up then the prophetic word given is invalid.
The thing is, I read all through my Bible, and I can’t find that anywhere. And if I take Paul’s word about all Scripture being profitable for teaching, reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness (2 Timothy 3:16), and keep in mind that Paul had to be speaking of the Hebrew Scriptures because the Christian Bible did not yet exist, I am faced with the very real responsibility to measure the prophetic in accordance to the examples within what we call the Old Testament. I am also forced to take Paul’s own words into account – teaching, reproof, correction, and training in righteousness. Not uplifting, not positive, not motivational, and certainly nothing about warm fuzzies.
Is this carte blanche permission for people who operate in the prophetic be jerks? Of course not, but you have to admit that the majority of the prophetic words recorded – even the prophetic words of Jesus - aren’t all sunshine and glitter. They were designed to confront sin, and they were designed to jar us from our complacency and passive justification of sinful actions in our own lives. Is there hope and promise to be found within prophetic words? Yes, but only after repentance, only after obedience, and only after we bow our hearts to the Lordship and authority of our God.
And what happens when you confront sin in someone’s life? They go stupid on you. Well, most of the time anyways. They deny that you have a right to speak, they condemn you for judging, and they hate you for your lack of compassion. At this point, all sorts of wonderful and amazing things can transpire for the one operating in a prophetic role, they can lose friends, they can family, they can be physically or verbally attacked by the ones they love, and they can be ostracized from the community that once valued their presence. Don’t believe me, look it up. Read the story of Joseph whose brothers sold him to slavery because he dared speak the prophetic vision God gave him. Read the accounts of Jeremiah who feared for his life and was left to rot in a cistern. Read about Elijah who hid in fear from the rage of queen.
None of this happened because they were promising warm fuzzies and financial success to the ones that God commanded them to go to. It happened because they dared to speak an uncomfortable truth. Truth that struck at the core of the listeners’ sense of self and security. Truth that would no longer allow the listener to walk in ignorance and forced them to move forward either in brokenness for their sin or in willful rebellion against God. No one wants to face that, I don’t even like facing that, and I hold no illusion about how painful it is to have to stand before another stripped bare of your own hypocrisy. It hurts, and it is humiliating in the beginning. I know, I’ve been on the receiving end more than once and every bit of selfish pride rose up in protest at being called out on my own sin.
What is hard for us to understand is that when someone is operating in an authentic gifting of the prophetic, there is no sense of superiority in it. There is only brokenness and pain on behalf the one to whom we speak. We are moved forward not because we wish to wound. We do so because we feel the outright misery of the broken relationship they have with Father, and everything within us yearns for their restoration. We move with compassion that must sometimes be brutal in order to be heard and so that message is not watered down or compromised. In my mind, it something akin to being a field surgeon, knowing that the procedure needed to save the patient inflicts more pain than the original wound, but must be done if they are to survive. So you close your ears to the screams and you pack that bloody wound with truth until the flow is staunched. Because mercy that brings death to another, physically or spiritually, is not mercy to anyone but yourself.
For me that is the hardest part, knowing that my words will hurt and knowing that once the truth has been revealed I have relinquished all perceived and delusional ideas of control in the situation. From there it is up to the one to whom I sent to respond, to reject or to receive, to act or to deny. For me that is often the darkest time, because I know that they are now responsible for a truth that can no longer be rejected out of ignorance. I have to fight my tendency to worry that my words were too harsh or too heavy, and it is why I often hesitate when I should have been quick to obedience. And why I can point to list of moments when I was the broken one or they were further injured because I allowed fear of consequence for myself and others to keep me silent.
No, operating in the prophetic is not sweet or pretty. It never was, and I don’t believe it ever will be. Certainly, there are moments when you are allowed to participate in breakthrough and revelation that will change a person’s life, but those are rare and easily forgotten. For one who truly walks in the prophetic perceives the effects of sin as few others do, and their hearts break for the world around them. Yes, we hear from God but when you have been confronted by the light of holiness, the darkness that surrounds us only deepens. And when you have tasted the perfection of his presence, the brokenness of the world is only more tragic.
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