Hard Questions #4 (Jim Wies)

Originally from: "Jim Wies" (jimmy@cornerstonemin.org)

Originally dated: Tue, 23 Dec 1997 01:25:47 -0600

another hard question...

IS PERSONAL PROPHECY ALWAYS ONLY TO CONFIRM WHAT YOU ALREADY KNEW?

corollary question:

WILL YOU ALWAYS HAVE A "WITNESS IN YOUR SPIRIT" AS AN INDICATOR FOR THE PURPOSE OF JUDGING AS TO WHETHER OR NOT A "PROPHECY" IS A TRUE WORD FROM GOD?

1 Cor. 14 speaks of prophetic words revealing the secrets of men's hearts. Although often God will speak to us things that we knew deep in our hearts and will use the revealing of those things as a testimony of His presence or confirmation of His guidance; there are also times when a word from God is something fresh and new that we had not considered before. Not always, will there be prior knowledge of a point, direction or perspective that comes through prophetic ministry.

If a word is from God, and we are born of God, it is right to say our "spirit" will bear witness. We will often experience a confirmation of His word though the witness of the Spirit in our "born again" spirit. But to use our subjective "sense" to determine whether a word is from God is actually not the best criteria for judging it.

The difficulty with using whether a word "witnesses" to our hearts or not, is simply that we all have difficulty at times distinguishing between our "soul" and our "spirit". In fact, only God's word is able to divide between soul and spirit. We often get the two parts of our inner man mixed up. God may speak things that confuse our mind, (a part of our soul man) or disturb our emotion (again, part of our soul man) and yet they will be truth. We may become emotionally distressed from a "word" but it still might be a true word.

I'll draw from my personal life to illustrate.

In 1987 I was serving the Lord as a very happy associate pastor and head of a counseling ministry in a moderately large church in Phoenix, Arizona. A prophetess, while ministering to my wife and I, stopped and asked if we had ever considered pastoring our own church. I said out loud "no".. but to my self said "no way". She went on however, and told me God was challenging me to consider that within 5 years I would be doing so. (I had no plans, desire or aspirations to do so) But, as was (and still is) our custom, we tucked away the word and pondered it.

Two years later, in July of '89 a prophet who did not know us began to prophesy about the new house, the new location and the new base we would be operating from in the near future. We had no plans to do anything new, and had in fact just bought a home in Phx. with no intention of leaving the staff position I was in or moving from the house we lived in. Yet the word even went so far as to describe aspects of what our new home would look like.

This was a very confusing word to our minds and distressing to our emotions as we were firmly connected to the people of that church and had served as staff there for 10 years. From that moment on however, through an amazing set of circumstances, God moved us; and within 6 months we found ourselves relocated 1,800 miles from Phx. and taking the senior pastoral position of an existing church in the Florida panhandle.

While certainly scripture tells us the "prove all things, and cleave to that which is good" regarding prophecy; our judgment of such "words" must primarily be with the plumbline of the written word and the ways of God. It may or may not "feel" true at the time, but we must cleave to God and let Him show us what He wills.

When a prophetic word seems to be confusing or distressing,, the general rule is do nothing about it and wait to see if God brings further direction. In the case of the above illustration, we had to look to various aspects of guidance from God; but when the time came, the word suddenly made sense and we knew God had directed us.

Jim Wies

(jimmy@cornerstonemin.org)