FireSide Chat II

We spent the last two weeks talking about the times when a prophetic word is released, but then things happen so that the word is not fulfilled. One example might be where a word predicts an election result, but the wrong candidate wins. Or perhaps the word is for a future destiny for someone who dies shortly after that, without fulfilling any of the things promised in the word.

It might have been a false word, possibly arising out of the prophet's own emotions/desires. When someone is emotionally invested in the thing they are speaking into, it is very easy for their own heart and desires to imitate God's voice to them. They can end up prophesying "their will" instead of God's will. That is why most experienced prophets are careful about releasing a word on an issue they have strong feelings about. Before they release it, they will usually sit on it for a while and prayerfully test it to be sure it is really God and not their own desires. (We talked about this last week.)

But the unfulfilled word could have been a true God-word. There are two things that could have happened to keep a true prophetic word from coming to pass. The first is that some words are conditional, and if we don't meet the condition, then God doesn't deliver the promise. Sometimes the condition is explicitly stated in the word and other times it is implied. God doesn't lie--His words are true. But some words are like a contract--if we break our end of the bargain, we can't expect God to keep His end. (We talked about that in quite a bit more detail in Part 1.)

There is one more thing that can interfere with a true God word. That is unopposed enemy opposition against that word. There are times God gives us a word and the enemy comes in to resist it. In those cases, we have to war (e.g., fight) for the word. That is what I would like to discuss this week.

Spiritual Warfare And Prophetic Words

We tend to assume that God's will is always accomplished, because He is sovereign. But that is not true. **Please hear me out before you "stone" me for blasphemy.** There are certain things that God has put in the hands of man by giving us free will. Because of that, there are times when sin interferes with God's perfect will, and it doesn't happen the way He wants it to.

One obvious example is Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. God's will was for them to live forever in the garden in a sinless state, fellowshipping with Him every day. But when they choose to sin, their choice overrode God's perfect will. In short, their "bad" decision forced God to change His plan, and God did not get His way. He had to put Adam and Eve out of the garden, so they couldn't have access to the tree of life. God also had to set a redemptive plan in place, because their sin denied Him the type of fellowship that He wanted to have with man. In short, God did not get His way regarding Adam and Eve because He gave them the freedom to choose, and they chose the wrong thing.

Let me share more two Bible verses with you where God doesn't get His way. Look at Matthew 23:37. Jesus was speaking, and He said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."

God wanted to lovingly protect Jerusalem from all harm, but the people who lived there were not willing to submit to Him--so He did not get to do what He wanted to do. The result was devastating: the city that God wanted to protect was destroyed because they refused His protection. That is why Jesus said (in verses 38 and 39): "38 See! Your house is left to you desolate; 39 for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!'" This is an example of God not getting His way because He gave man free will, and the men in Jerusalem would not submit their will to His desires.

Let's look at one more verse where God does not get His way: Matthew 18:14. It says, "Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish." In short, God doesn't want a single person to die without Jesus and go to Hell. But that happens all the time--several times a day. Each time that a person dies and goes to Hell because they did not believe on Jesus, God's will is not accomplished and God is not getting His way.

To summarize, even though God is sovereign, He has put certain things in man's hand and therefore, He doesn't always get His way. I would like to add a caveat to that--there are certain things that God will insist on, regardless of what choices people make. Those things are what I call His "absolute will". They are the non-negotiable things in God's plan and agenda. For instance, when Jesus returns to earth, every knee will bow before Him, and every tongue will confess His lordship, as per Romans 14:11. That will happen regardless of whether people want to do that or not. God will override their free will and that point, and have His own way. He is all-powerful and no one can stop Him from doing what He wants to do. It is true that He has given us a lot of latitude in free will, but there are limits to it.

However, even with those limits, there is still enough latitude that it can cause problems for us. There are times when man's free will keeps things from happening that God wants to happen, and God permits this because of the value He puts on free will. The opposite is also true, at times things will happen that He doesn't want to happen--again because of free will.

There is some sort of parallel in the spirit world that we don't fully understand. The devil does not have power of his own. He is not strong enough to override God's will to make Him do something He doesn't want to do; nor is he strong enough to prevent God from doing anything He wants to do. God is much more powerful than the devil is. But there are certain things that the devil is permitted to do to counter God's perfect will here on earth. I don't know why God allows him to do that, but He does. At some point, God will say "enough is enough." God will cast the devil in to a pit and he will be powerless to effect the affairs of man. But that hasn't happened yet, and the devil is still an issue we have to deal with.

At present, the Lord permits the devil to have certain power, and the devil uses that power to oppose God's will. Again, there are limits and boundaries to that power, but for the time being, it does exist, and it can cause problems for us. Jesus has, in fact, won back the authority that the devil usurped from man. He has given it to the church, but we need to use it if we want to prevail over the devil. (It is like a college student having his father's credit card to pay for his books. The card has the "authority" to pay for the books, but that card doesn't do him any good until he actually uses it.) Likewise, God wants us to use the authority that He has given us to accomplish His will.

There are two things that can oppose God's perfect will and prevent some things from happening that God wants to happen: 1) man's free will choices that opposes God's will and 2) demonic activity that opposes God's will. As a matter of fact, many times the devil often chooses to work through men and women who have not submitted their wills to God's, so those two things can get a bit "mudged" together.

Demonic activity can effect the prophetic. At times God speaks forth His will, but things that oppose God's will come into play to resist a given prophetic word. I.e., sometimes God's will for us is not automatically accomplished, and we have to engage in spiritual warfare to obtain His promises. That is just like the children of Israel--God prophesied that He would bring them to a promised land overflowing with milk and honey. But there were giants occupying that land, and they had to engage in battle in order to possess their prophetic word (e.g., to get their promised land).

In the prophetic, the promise is ours, but it is not handed to us on a silver platter--we have to fight for it. At times we have to stand in faith when circumstances make the word look impossible, and claim God's promises in the face of what seems like immeasurable odds. But if we stand in faith, and take whatever actions the situation requires, we will prevail--because God keeps His promises when we stand on them.

Look at 1 Timothy 1:18: "This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare." This is saying that at times we have to "war" to see God's prophecies over us come true. I like the Young's Literal Translation (YLT) for this verse because it paints the picture a bit more clearly. "This charge I commit to thee, child Timotheus, according to the prophecies that went before upon thee, that thou mayest war in them the good warfare."

In short, there are times when the enemy opposes prophecies that have been released over us. We can have either of two responses to this. We can give up and let the liar/thief of John 8:44 and John 10:10 steal our destiny from us. Or we can rise up in faith, stand on God's word and fight for it.

It is possible that the words spoken over Vicky were true God-words, but that they required spiritual warfare to overcome the enemy's opposition against them. That warfare might have been something Vicky needed to do herself, or it might have been something that her family or friends or prayer partners needed to do on her behalf. I am not trying to blame anyone in particular for not doing that warfare; I am just pointing out the possibility that maybe there was some spiritual warfare needed in Vicky's case that did not happen, and as a result, the devil stole her promises from her. (Again, this is just one of three possibilities and not necessarily what happened in Vicky's case.)

I would like to take more about spiritual warfare and the prophetic next week. We laid a good Scripture foundation for it this week, but I would like to flesh it out a bit with some real-life examples. So next week we will look at some true stories of people warring for their words and obtaining them.