How
many times has it happened that a prophet gives a word to someone you know, and
you think to yourself, “They missed it! That is SO not them!”
Sure,
it might be a muffed prophecy; the only guy who never muffed a single prophetic
word was murdered for it a couple of thousand years ago. Nowadays, we all
completely miss it occasionally. It’s like the man said, “Now, we see in a
glass darkly.”
But
it might not be a failed prophecy. That’s actually the goal sometimes. The goal
of the prophetic is NOT to declare what everybody already knows.
The
prophets declare the goal, solution, the finished product, the end result of
God doing something in the person’s life. And sometimes they declare it as
early as when God is just beginning work on the project. They're
"declaring the end from the beginning." If you don’t know what you’re
aiming for, how do you aim?
So
when God speaks to a destitute homeless guy, “I see you as a man of substance,
a man of wealth,” he’s probably not saying “This is they way you are now, in case you didn’t
know.” No, he’s more likely saying, “This is your calling, this is your destiny. If you
come with me, this is where you could go. Do you want in on this?”
Or
he might say to the destitute homeless guy, “I see you as a leader of men,” and
that may not show up the way we expect it to. The English language – especially
American English – is not God’s first language. When he speaks of a “leader of
men,” he may not mean what you’d mean: a recognized position of appointed leadership or
power.
I’ve
known guys that chose to be homeless so that they could reach those that nobody
else would reach. Their leadership was often just conversation between bunks in
the local mission. They are indeed “leaders of men,” but nobody except the
homeless guys they lead recognize it.
Really often, the fulfillment of the prophetic promise doesn't line up with our expectation of what it would look like. But it does line up with the word.
Second,
the prophetic declaration releases God's resources to bring about that which
they declare.
When
God speaks to the destitute homeless guy about wealth, that declaration, when
activated by faith, is releasing the grace of God, the power of God, to gather
wealth to the guy. Power to accomplish the word is carried by the word.
That
doesn’t necessarily mean people will hand him cash money, though I’ve seen that
happen. It may mean that God is lining up an educational opportunity, or
bringing him an advocate, or giving him an idea for an invention, or lining up
other, unexpected circumstances to make it happen.
And fairly often, it's true about prophetic words: "If you don't declare it, it won't happen."
If
we want to be in on what God's doing, we can discern what God is breathing on
in the prophetic declarations (1 Corinthians 14:29), and then join in with that.
We can add the prophetic word to our worldview and begin to see and relate to
people according to the things that God has said to them.
Or
we can bury the prophetic declaration, and the power that it carries to
accomplish the thing of which it speaks, under our own unbelief and jealousy
and resentment, and kill the word.
It’s
our choice.
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