Power is in God's Word lesson #7

IN this lesson we will look at what can detract from the conveyance of God's power with the word of prophecy we are ministering.

Role of faith
Mix faith with the Word of God for yourself and for others (Heb 4:2). We can’t expect the Holy Spirit to bring the words we speak to life in another if we do not have faith that we speak from God. Peter tells us that “each one should use whatever gift he has to serve others, faithfully administering God’s grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, he should do it as one speaking the very words of God.” (1 Pet: 10-11) We want to leave the person or people we are ministering to with God’s presence in His words and not with our unbelief.

A few years ago I heard a man sharing with a large group of Christians. He told of a brother that was very humble about prophesying. Though the man sharing was very impressed by what the second man prophesied, he spent many words relating how this man spoke (what I call damage control) in phrases as follows: “I may have heard the Lord say . . . please pray about this . . . I could be wrong . . .” Then the man sharing spent one sentence on what the contents of the prophecy actually said. As my husband and I walked away from the gathering, I turned to Dave and said “I can’t remember what the prophecy was. Can you?” Dave couldn’t remember either. All we could remember was the man sharing about how humble the prophesier was. Saying “I could be wrong” is something we should say to our mentor before we get up to prophesy. It is a matter for prayer beforehand and should not precede a prophecy. Also, too many words introducing a prophecy, no matter how well-meaning we are, distract from the power of what God wants to say.

Pollution of the Word

An example of how a minister of God's word can pollute it with words of his own is found in Ez 34:18-19 “Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture? Must you also trample the rest of your pasture with your feet? Is it not enough for you to drink clear water? Must you also muddy the rest with your feet? Must my flock feed on what you have trampled and drink what you have muddied with your feet?” In this portion of scripture we read about how the Lord feels when His Word gets polluted. The symbolism of the feet represents preparation, getting ready. (Eph 6:15). What was given to the sheep was pure. But what was prepared for the flock by those sheep was muddied, polluted. What follows are more examples of how the word of God can become polluted.

Thinking that what comes from our own mind is as important as the Word (1 Cor 1:17) “For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel – not with words of human wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.” Earlier in this lesson I mentioned that we should not speak many words of our own before we prophesy. It diverts the attention towards us and away from what the Lord intends to say. In my experience the Lord has had me hold a prophecy when the speaker preceding me uses so many words that He (the Lord) does not think the listeners can take in much more. When this happens I write down the prophecy and post it on my own site, referring people to it. I have had people tell me later how “powerful” the prophecy was. It would not have been powerful in a service wherein the listeners were full.

Cultural boundaries (Mk 7:9-13) “You have a fine way of setting aside the commands of God in order to observe your own traditions!”and “Be on your guard against the yeast of the Pharisees and the Sadducees.” (Mt 16:6) As Christians, we have a culture in our various areas. We have denominational ways of doing things, and we have traditions that originate from how people think things operate best. Just as in Jesus’ time, our traditions do not always measure up to God’s scriptures. In this section we are going to take a look at some traditions that influence the content of prophecy.

• It is all about relationship – If our ministry depends on our relationship with the other person, we would never prophesy to a stranger, or one who is just an acquaintance. There is no scripture to support this. In fact there is scripture that shows Christians prophesying to unbelievers who come to their worship service. “But if an unbeliever or someone who does not understand comes in while everybody is prophesying, he will be convinced by all that he is a sinner and will be judged by all, and the secrets of his heart will be laid bare. So he will fall down and worship God, exclaiming “God is really among you!” (1 Cor 14:24-25) Having someone recognize that God is present among us is really good fruit!

• Prophecy is not corrective- In the above passage from 1 Cor 14 we see that the “secrets of his heart will be laid bare.” This is the nature of prophecy; to see the secret. This man was “convinced” that he had sin, and needed to repent of it. Though we should not be condescending to the one we minister to, the nature of prophecy is to tell the unknown but real truth, with the goal in mind that God initiated the words for. In this case, repentance. Yes, God does correct people.

I have heard it said that, since each Christian has the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit will correct people, in private. I agree that is the ideal which the Lord works towards. However, we have an entire New Testament full of corrections (which we know as “scriptures”). So we see that God still corrects us through others. I find comfort in that. I am only a toe on the body of Christ and consider it necessary to receive from my brothers and sisters according to their gifts also. Personally hearing from God was never meant to reduce scripture or prophecy to only nice things.

Man-pleasing

• Justifying ourselves before others (Lk 16:15) “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.” To justify ourselves is to state that the reasons we think and do the things we say and do are good, and may be better than the scriptures. In Jesus’ day the leaders took money that they should have given for support of their parents and gave it to the temple. They justified this within themselves as being good because it resembled service to God. It is our nature to justify what we do within ourselves, and to think our motives are good. But the basis of this is that we want to appear good to others also. Giving large sums of money to the church makes us look good. Regarding the ministry of prophecy, we might justify ourselves as seeking the unity of the brethren by withholding a prophecy we think would stir up “trouble”. Or, we might cut out the part that could possibly offend some people, reasoning within ourselves that they would reject it anyway.

• Seeking the praises of men (Jn 12:42-43) “Yet at the same time many even among the leaders believed in Him (Jesus). But because of the Pharisees they would not confess their faith for fear they would be put out of the synagogue; for they loved the praise from men more than praise from God.” Fear of Man will produce a person who seeks to please Man. When we are more concerned with our reputation and acceptance in the church than pleasing God with our service, we will fall into fear of what a man can do to us. If we try to protect our ministry from being censored or rejected, we will find many reasons for tampering with the purity of God’s word flowing through us. Seeking the praises of men needs to be laid at the foot of the cross, where the One who hangs there caused great offense to many.

Application –
1. Give an example on how the Word may get muddied. Has this happened to you, or through you?
2. Do you feel as if you must minister in prophecy according to the traditions of men? Or have you set in place your own traditions? What are they?
3. It is understandable to not want to “get in trouble” when we prophesy. Have you felt the need to manipulate the prophecy to please the listener, or those in authority? Is there a standard set in place that interferes with the purity of prophecy?