The Practicalities Of The Prophetic

Let me start by sharing what happened to me in Church one morning. It was New Years Eve, 2000, the very last day of the millennium. The service had begun and we were doing some wonderful worship songs. The worship team was doing the "church favorites" that morning and it had all the makings of a fantastic worship service. Yet for some reason I was very restless. I could feel the Lord's intensity on me and I could not quite get lost in the worship. I felt frustrated because we were doing some of my favorites, but I could not seem to enter in. I finally began to dialogue with the Lord about this.. actually I began to complain to Him about it (smile). Then God told me that He had a word for the congregation, that I was to write it down and give it to the pastor. Furthermore, I was to complete the word BEFORE the worship was over; once the sermon started, I was not to write another word. (My usual style would be to worship and then work on the word during the teaching.) But God said it was important to have the word completed before the teaching began. I assumed this meant that the word would correlate with some aspect of the teaching, and it did.

So, at the Lord's direction, I gave up the worship time that I so enjoy to work on that prophecy. And I did not complete it until about two measures before the last song ended. I missed the whole worship time to do that word, which was a bit of a sacrifice for me since they were doing so many of my favorite songs.

Our service format is that after the teaching, we go straight into a worship and ministry time. Those who want prayer come up front and the others filter out of the room as they feel God is done with them. Most stay for at least one song. As soon as the worship time began, I took the paper with the word and bee-lined for the pastor, to give it to him. En route, God gave me this instruction, "Give the paper to the pastor and let him decide what to do with it." So I did, but I hoped he would read it to the congregation after the song ended. He read it silently to himself, set it on the podium and began to minister to someone who came up for prayer. It looked as if the word had been set aside and ignored.

A thought flashed through my mind.. I did not understand why God made me give up my worship time. Since the word was not used at the service, God could have asked me to write it after service. I felt a brief moment of frustration and then I let it go.

There are times when God gives us a word and based on the circumstances, and it looks to us like we are to give that word "right now". But the prophets in the congregation are not the ones in charge of the service, the pastor is. I would like to have seen that word read to the congregation as soon as that first song ended. But it was not my responsibility to make that to happen. The order of the service is the pastor's responsibility.

When this occurred, I had a choice. I could get upset and bent out of shape. I could murmur to myself that the pastor suppressed the word. Or I could trust in my pastor's ability to hear God and his desire to be led of the Lord. As it turns out, my pastor is one who hears God very clearly and who really has a heart to obey God and follow His directions. So I was content to let my pastor decide what to do with that word and trust his hearing of God. On the surface level, it looked to me like God wanted this word read in this service. But I did not have the authority to make this happen in this meeting. I presented the word to the leadership and I allowed them to decide what to do with it. At that point, my responsibility was complete. I had delivered the word to the pastor as instructed. Now it was between him an God as to what to do with it.

You see, there is a biblical principle for this. It is the principle of godly submission to leadership. This is not a popular topic with many prophetic people, but it is very important in God's economy. Let's look at a few verses about this. Hebrews 13:17 says, "Obey those who rule over you, and be submissive, for they watch out for your souls, as those who must give account. Let them do so with joy and not with grief, for that would be unprofitable for you." And 1 Peter 5:5 says, "Submit to God, Resist the Devil. Likewise you younger people, submit yourselves to your elders. Yes, all of you be submissive to one another, and be clothed with humility, for 'God resists the proud, But gives grace to the humble.'"

Some of you may have been in situations similar to the one I just shared, where the Lord gives you a word in some dynamic way but the leadership does not appear to embrace or receive the word. What do you do? How do you handle it? There are two factors that enter into this: your actions and your attitude. You may have submissive actions, you may not argue or insist or murmur and complain to your friends. You reaction may appear submissive to any observers. But on the inside you may be seething. You may be telling yourself that the pastor missed it, that the pastor is not in submission to God or is resisting God. You may be angry or you may have bad thoughts about the pastor. Or perhaps you struggle with some sort of offense over pride issues, "Doesn't this pastor know I give really keen and accurate words? How dare they ignore a word that God gave me!"

Please consider this.. the Lord may be more interested in testing your response to the situation that He is in having that particular word delivered. Sometimes God intentionally sets up situations to watch what our response will be, to test our heart and attitudes. This is really quite scriptural. Jeremiah 17:10 says, "I the LORD search the heart and examine the mind, to reward a man according to his conduct, according to what his deeds deserve."

Has it occurred to you that God may be more interested in developing your character than He is in having you deliver a specific prophecy? When leadership appears to not receive your word, it may not be the devil resisting you. It might actually be God setting you up. A friend of mine used to say, "The test is not always the test." In other words, God's agenda in setting up a given situation may be quite different than you expect. You may be focusing on the fact that a word was not delivered; but God might be focusing on your reaction to that situation, and He may be examining your attitude towards your leadership. Do you continue to love and respect them? Do you continue to trust their leadership when you don't get your own way? And do you continue to submit to those who God has put over you? Or does offense rise up in you. Do you find a need to defend the word instead of letting the Holy Spirit bare witness to people's heart?

We know that God wants us to walk in love and humility. We also know that God calls us to be in submission to our pastors and spiritual leaders, because when we do this, we are really submitting to God. Even if our leader "misses it" or makes a mistake, God remains in control of the situation, and can work His glory in it. God has a way of giving us victory through submission. James 4:7 tells us that we gain authority over the devil through our submission to God. And part of submission to God is to be in godly submission to those who God has put over us (Hebrews 13:17).

I am in a unique situation, because I am both a leader and a member of a congregation. I head a ministry and face many of the same issues that a pastor faces. I have people coming to me demanding (in the form of a prophecy) that I do a specific thing or run the ministry a certain way. I am responsible to go before God and to determine His will in each of these situations and then do what He tells me to do. Fortunately, most of the people I deal with are very reasonable and pleasant to work with. But from time to time I get someone who is more interested in having their own way than they are in allowing me be faithful to what God tells me to do.

At the same time, I am a member of my church. And I am in submission to my pastor and under his authority there. I am the authority for the GodSpeak ministry and I have ultimate responsibility and accountability before God for the decisions I make about this ministry. But when it comes to Church issues, the pastor is the authority, I am not. He is the one who is ultimately accountable to God for the leadership decisions that he makes. We (the members of his church) can bring inputs to him, but ultimately, God has given him the responsibility to run the church. God has given him the vision and the strategy for this Church and he is responsible to obey and implement that vision. I understand his authority and I respect him in it. When it comes to church issues, He is the one who calls the shots. I know I hear God very clearly, but so does he. If we have a disagreement about what God has said, then he is the one who gets to make the final decision because he is the one with the spiritual authority in this area. I trust his heart after God and his ability to discern God's will, so I get behind his decisions and support him. God holds me accountable to be in submission to my pastor and to have a good and godly attitude towards him. And He expects this from all of His prophets.

I would like to go back to my opening story and tell you the ending to it. You remember that I had been given a word during worship and wrote it down and gave it to the pastor. And he elected not to share it with the congregation in the service. After the ministry time began, I became busy talking with and ministering to some people. I totally forgot about the prophecy. Maybe 40 minutes later, my pastor and I ended up in a brief conversation. He mentioned that he thought the word I had given him was a good word, and that it went along with the new teaching series he had just started that day. But he felt that it was better to put the word in next week's bulletin instead of reading it after service today. He said that there were a few people he was going to give the word to before the bulletin came out, because he felt it applied specificly for them. So the word was received after all. God had just given him a different strategy of how to implement it.

I must say one last thing on this subject. If you are in a church where you do not trust your pastor's heart before God and you do not trust his (or her) ability to discern God's will, I question if this is really the church that God has for you. In this case, you need to go and have a very serious talk with God, to find out whether or not you are where He wants you to be. If God confirms that you are where He wants you, then you need to develop a godly submission to your pastor. If you are not where God wants you to be, you need to relocate to the Church that He does have for you. And once you get there, you need to learn to walk in Godly submission to the leadership there.

If you want the Lord to use you propheticly, you can also expect Him to work His character in you. The character of the prophet is more important to God than their accuracy in hearing His voice. God has made it very clear in His word that He expects us to be in godly submission to our leadership. This applies to His prophets just as much as it applies to everyone else. Submission is not just our outward actions and behaviors, but it is also our inward motivations and attitudes. God expects us to obey Him WITH A GOOD ATTITUDE. He expects us to have respect and love for our pastors and to trust their judgement. One of the ways that God will develop and test His prophetic people is to see how they are doing in the area of submission to authority. From time to time they will find themselves in a situation where there is a conflict between what they think God wants and what their pastor thinks God wants. When this happens to you, remember God's take on submission to authority. It is not enough to simply submit, God wants us to have a good attitude while we do so!