Spiritual Gifts 4 – The Prophetic

“I grew up in the church” is a phrase you hear often by all types of people, and it’s almost always followed by one of two contractions.  The “and” group seeks to carry the baton of positive memories they received onward; and will finish the sentence with something sentimental, meaningful, or purposeful.  The “but” group, on the other hand, holds their church memories in contempt as proof of the irrelevance & hypocrisy inherent within; seeking to throw shade in the direction of people & practices that tarnished their formative years.  Then you have the third group; those who grew-up in another faith tradition or with no religion at all, who see an endless sea of un-unified christian factions seeking very different expressions of the life & teachings of a special man who lived 2,000 years ago in modern-day Israel.  This continues to confuse and confound many of us.

Today I’m not going to spend any time on parsing the myriad forms of “churchianity,” instead I’m going to cut through the various traditions of men so as to get to some of the real stuff behind them. There’s a vast difference between carrying-on Jesus’ preferences & purposes and hijacking them to justify our own! I’m writing today about what I consider to be a missing link, a lens through which we can view the nature of God’s interactions with people and our own personal histories, which brings His truth into sharp focus in a world of countless opinions.  As a 34-year student of the Bible, I will say that the more I read and understand it, the God who inspired & inhabits it, and the timeless purposes & practices it promotes, I see one overriding theme that many of us instinctively forget day after day.  It’s weird, and it might surprise you.  It’s that the real God who is there is inherently personal and supernatural, and He insists on interacting with us on His terms.

Ever since Adam & Eve were kicked-out of the Father’s direct presence in the Garden, every subsequent move of God recorded in scripture has been heralded, activated, proven, pronounced, and spearheaded by spiritually inhabited men & women in committed relationship with Almighty God who performed miracles, spoke on His behalf, lived differently than the world around them, and recorded their experiences for those of us who would abandon primary allegiance to our earthly societies in favor of living as agents of His Ongoing Spiritual Kingdom.

Why am I writing this?

Because the American Church is asleep, and needs to be woken up!  The vitality and influence of America’s Christians has been steadily declining…free-falling actually…for at least 2 decades, and the answer to turn-around this huge ship and get back on-course is not better music or deeper sermons or more programs, it’s dependency on the supernatural power of God Himself!  In scripture and reality, spiritual vigor is always preceded by humble prayer, initiated by miraculous acts & prophetic words of God, and cultivated by the various gifts of the spirit of all God’s people inside and outside the Church.  We seem to have forgotten these principles, and instead entrusted ourselves into the hands of American business strategies for church growth…which in my opinion are almost always anathema to the Voice Of God.  I’m also writing this because I’m learning.  I grew up in a predominantly stoic genre of Christianity, which at best offered a very small funnel for the more “supernatural” workings of a real, engaged God.  This was true of my upbringing, formal education, and the bulk of my years in full-time church ministry.  I’ve been in detox and reformation ever since, seeking to rediscover and experience a more authentic & spiritually vibrant way of following Jesus like I read about in the New Testament…and I refuse to settle for anything less.

Francis Chan, well-known Christian author/speaker, says ”I believe that the biggest thing the enemy has stolen from the Church in America is our faith in the supernatural. Like we start looking at everything from a fleshly perspective…just like the world.”

Today, in this 4th part of my Spiritual Gifts series, I’m focusing in on THE PROPHETIC.

Prophecy has very spooky & erratic connotations in our post-enlightenment Western society.  You might be thinking right now about the fortune-teller down the street, or the scene from Star Wars of the Jedi prophecy about Anakin Skywalker, or the spacy co-worker who tells about her loopy visions.  That’s not what I’m talking about.  I’m talking about scriptural, contemporary, and personal experiences where God’s thoughts & instructions are supernaturally communicated through reliable, trustworthy, faithful people. Dictionary.com defines Prophecy as 1) the foretelling or prediction of what is to come; 2) something that is declared by a prophet, especially a divinely inspired prediction, instruction, or exhortation; 3) a divinely inspired utterance or revelation; 4) the action, function, or faculty of a prophet.  The Bible portrays a much wider variety of Prophetic communication forms that show themselves from beginning to end, and continue to this day.  Here are some rudimentary definitions:

• Prophecy (generic) is when someone receives some kind of message from God to give to others.
• Dreams are often used by God to inform us about what He’s doing in our lives or someone else’s.
• Visions are like dreams when you’re not asleep…like a super-strong flashback or even a trance.
• Word of Knowledge is when you’re given information about something or someone that you have no way of knowing.
• Word of Wisdom is when you’re given a direction/answer about a situation that reveals God’s will.
• Discernment of Spirits is when you’re given insight into the spiritual source of a person’s motivations & power.
• Tongues with Interpretation is when you’re given a message for the church in a foreign language (either human or angelic), and you or another interprets its meaning. 

I could give a thousand examples of various types of prophecy from scripture, through the ages of God’s people, and of contemporary friends that I know and trust.  Here are a few:

1. Old Testament: Samuel lived in a time of the history of God’s people when “the Word of the Lord was rare; there were not many visions.”  There was widespread corruption among the people and spiritual leaders, which prevented God’s prophetic messages from “breaking through” (sound familiar?).  Samuel sought God faithfully throughout his growing-up years and into adulthood, and became first in a line of prophets who spoke for God, shared visions from Him, etc. (1 Samuel 3)
2. New Testament: Paul & Barnabas’ first missionary journey was the result of prophecy.  “Now in the church at Antioch there were prophets and teachers…While they were worshiping the Lord and fasting, the Holy Spirit said, “Set apart for me Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.” So after they had fasted and prayed, they placed their hands on them and sent them off. (Acts 13)
3. History: St. Patrick returned to Ireland, where he had been held in captivity, to preach the Gospel about Jesus as the result of a vision. “I saw a man coming, as it were from Ireland. His name was Victoricus, and he carried many letters, and he gave me one of them. I read the heading: ‘The Voice of the Irish.’ As I began the letter, I imagined in that moment that I heard the voice of those very people who were near the wood of Foclut, which is beside the western sea-and they cried out, as with one voice: ‘We appeal to you, holy servant boy, to come and walk among us.'”
4. Contemporary: The birth of Catalyst’s free construction projects was the result of a prophetic prompting, a resulting conversation, and a corresponding dream the night before that foretold the whole thing.  I’ll tell you about it if you’re interested!

The God of the Bible colors inside and outside the lines, painting a multi-faceted picture of a Living Person who cannot be contained by our understandings or controlled by our preferences… and He invites all of us to live on a higher spiritual plane than the world around us.  This is so uncomfortable and counter-cultural that many followers of Jesus simply ignore those parts of the Bible or develop theologies that dismiss them…settling for religion instead of authentic relational spirituality.  Admittedly, this is messy and scary because it opens us up to all kinds of misinterpretations & claims & inefficiencies.  But do we have the right to strip-away things that are uncomfortable in order to approach God on our own terms?  His highest priority is to cultivate our relationship with Him by faith, and with others by interdependency.  This takes time and patience.  This may not be the “American Way,” but it is certainly God’s.  Many of us need to learn new ways of integrating the prophetic into our church relationships, services, and groups…leaving room for God to be in control.  If we don’t, we may miss His voice and end up worshipping Him from afar.  The result is what we see now in most (not all) of American Christianity, and possibly you & I: Spiritual Anemia. Anemia is a physiological condition of the blood when it lacks enough red blood cells to do what blood is supposed to do…resulting in chronic weakness, fatigue, & all kinds of problems.  What happens when churches/christians don’t have enough of God’s Spirit coursing through their spiritual veins?

Symptoms of Spiritual Anemia:

1. Going through religious motions without experiencing the peace & purpose they promise.
2. Focus on God making me happy rather than serving Him from the overflow of joy.
3. Fixation on understanding theology rather than trusting God in daily life.
4. Decision-making based on goals & strategies rather than God’s leading & provision.
5. Prayer becomes an afterthought or last-resort in times of trouble.
6. Disbelief in the supernatural nature of God, the universe, His work in daily life.
7. Holding-on to the world’s value system and the desire to be like everybody else, rather than surrendering our reputations and futures to Him.
8. Redirecting our hopes in worldly political leaders & movements to address spiritual issues

So, what do we do?

• Pray.  Ask God to reveal any part of you that is trusting in things, relationships, or activities other than Him.
• Devote time to His Word.  It is His primary voice, and you will never grow in relationship with Him without it.
• Ask Him to speak to you…through a word or sentence planted in your mind, a vision or dream, a nugget of special knowledge or instructions, etc.  
• Ask Him to bring people into your life with gifts of the Spirit that you do not have.  Learn to work with them, practicing ways of functioning together as the Body of Christ.
• Ask Him to show you examples of people, churches, leaders, etc., who are already functioning in this way.  Learn from them and imitate their examples in your own context.
• Be open to His presence and movements throughout your day, praying constantly and trusting Him.
• Watch as He shows up and leads. Leave the results to Him.

Frequently Asked Questions & Scripture Answers about Prophecy:

• Why?  “Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ. Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people in their deceitful scheming. Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ. From him the whole body, joined and held together by every supporting ligament, grows and builds itself up in love, as each part does its work.” (Ephesians 4:11-16)
• Does the New Testament say that prophecy will be common & normal for followers of Christ? “Then Peter stood up with the Eleven, raised his voice and addressed the crowd: “Fellow Jews and all of you who live in Jerusalem, let me explain this to you; listen carefully to what I say. These people are not drunk, as you suppose. It’s only nine in the morning! No, this is what was spoken by the prophet Joel: ‘In the last days, God says, I will pour out my Spirit on all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your young men will see visions, your old men will dream dreams.” (Acts 2:14-17).  “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.” (1 Corinthians 14:1)
• What’s the purpose of the prophetic? “When you come together, each of you has a hymn, or a word of instruction, a revelation, a tongue or an interpretation. Everything must be done so that the church may be built up… If an unbeliever or an inquirer comes in…they will fall down and worship God, exclaiming, “God is really among you!… (1 Corinthians 14:24-26 excerpts)  
• Why does God have to be so weird & crazy about it?  Why not just make His desires & instructions more normal & obvious?  “My message and my preaching were not with wise and persuasive words, but with a demonstration of the Spirit’s power, so that your faith might not rest on human wisdom, but on God’s power.” (1 Corinthians 2:4-5)
• Does everyone have a prophetic gift?  “For by the grace given me I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought, but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed to each of you. For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others. We have different gifts, according to the grace given to each of us. If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith; if it is serving, then serve; if it is teaching, then teach; if it is to encourage, then give encouragement; if it is giving, then give generously; if it is to lead, do it diligently; if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.” (Romans 12:3-8) 
• What about when prophecies are wrong / don’t work? “You may say to yourselves, “How can we know when a message has not been spoken by the Lord?” If what a prophet proclaims in the name of the Lord does not take place or come true, that is a message the Lord has not spoken. That prophet has spoken presumptuously, so do not be alarmed.” (Deuteronomy 18:21-22).  “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22)
• Why aren’t supernatural things more common? “And they took offense at him. But Jesus said to them, “A prophet is not without honor except in his own town and in his own home.” And he did not do many miracles there because of their lack of faith. (Matthew 13:57-58)  

“The testimony of Jesus IS the spirit of prophecy.” (Rev.9:10)