Ready to Hear Something New

On my return home from a long hike in the mountains, I passed the plastic newspaper box in the attached image. I was drawn to the box, realizing the Lord was getting my attention for a reason.

A couple of old newspapers were stacked inside along with pine needles, pinecones, and a leaf or two. It was obvious no one had picked up their newspapers for a long time. While standing in front of the old newspapers, the Lord began to speak. 

For those who look at the Church from the outside, we can resemble the old newspapers in the box. We can get comfortable and settle into a previous revelation and forget that with God, a life of faith is new every morning. God is always releasing a new sound that carries the potential to change hardened hearts and shift the trajectory of culture. But first, we must be willing to clear out our prophetic inbox and make it ready for a fresh expression of the Good News.

In the coming days, expect to hear something new from the Lord. These words will carry the power to shift the environment of a family, a business, and culture. Just like it was for young Samuel hearing the voice of the Lord for the first time, this sound of revelation will be, quite possibly, unusual and even strange to our ears.  

Something new and news-worthy is about to be delivered to our spiritual address. In preparation for that delivery, the Lord wants to reach into the box of our lives and remove whatever we are allowing to remain that is old and out of date. If we give Him permission to remove the old in preparation for the new, we will hear things that will dramatically change our lives and the lives of those who hear the sound of our voice.

A Prophetic Reality Check

“Don’t say such things,” the people respond. “Don’t prophesy like that. Such disasters will never come our way!” (Micah 2:6).

Some believe prophecy in the New Covenant should only be words that strengthen, encourage, and comfort. While that is true for some prophecy, it is not true for all prophecy. Love warns us and will challenge those things that weaken, discourage, and disquiet our souls. A prophetic word can also reveal the consequence of our sin if left unchallenged. 

 

We need to be careful we don’t craft prophetic messages in the image of our worst fears or false interpretations of reality. We need a daily infusion of discernment to help us wade through the sea of prophetic insight coming our way. 

 

Prophetic words travel from the heart of God and pass through the personalities of those who attempt to share those words. We need to make sure we have allowed the Lord to mature our discernment to such a degree that we can pick through the personalities and presentations involved to discover what the Lord is saying.  

We are living in a difficult and dangerous time in history. Be careful what message you choose to follow. All words have destinations for those who follow their content. Not all those destinations are where God wants to lead His people.

The Sound of Your Voice

We will miss what God wants to say and do through us in this season if we interpret the lockdown and social isolation as an inactive time. This is one of the most spiritually active times I have experienced in the last 40 years. 

God is resetting the priorities of His people. He is helping silent and fearful saints shake off the fear of what other people think. They will reclaim their voice. Some will actually discover a voice they never knew they possessed. Those who are able to understand rightly interpret the purpose of this resetting and reclaiming will be positioned by the Lord to speak to individuals and audiences not thought possible before the resetting and reclaiming took place.

Just as I finished writing this word, the Lord spoke something I believe is all of us. "I will use your voice to awaken slumbering and silent saints. When the sound of your empowered voice is heard, the fog of deception and resulting silence will clear away from the minds of those with ears to hear My voice.  I will reposition your message within My body to be used according to My will. Reset and reclaim what I have given to you." 

Polls, Opinion and the Word of the Lord

Polls and opinions do not reliably reveal the future. It is a prophetic voice, empowered and informed by the Spirit that brings the most trusted revelation of what is to come. Resist the urge to follow polls and opinions. The unreliability of those sources has been proven time and time again that it is God, not our ability to evaluate the future, who will have the last word.

The New Sons and Daughters of Issachar

The Lord doesn’t want to define us by the obedience of a past generation. He is calling men and women in our day who will be just as honored in history as “…the sons of Issachar, men who understood the times, with knowledge of what Israel should do” (I Chronicles 12:32). What made the sons of Issachar so unique was not just their accurate understanding of the times. They also had insight for what Israel should do in response to a prophetic word from God. A prophetic calling is not only the ability to see and understand what is taking place. It is also the ability to offer the next steps required to lead people into the will of God. 

Confronting False Contentment

Every promise of God will have conflict associated with its possession. When we finally arrive in a place of promise many things will still stand between us and receiving the benefit of living in that new reality. It is in that place of tension that critical choices are made that will determine our future.

After a surprising defeat by a much smaller army, the leaders of Israel were dismayed. They did not understand why they were defeated by the small force from the city of Ai, the second of the ten cities Israel would need to defeat. The defeat came because of the sin of one man. That sin caused the entire nation to suffer and stumble in their mission.

Joshua, seen by many as one of Israel’s most courageous and faithful leaders, had his moment of doubt after the defeat at Ai. As Joshua cried out to the Lord wanting to know what happened, he said, “If only we had been content to stay on the other side!” (Joshua 7:7). The problem with Joshua’s comment was that it was made after Israel had miraculously crossed the Jordan River and were now standing inside the border of the Promised Land.

As believers in the New Covenant, we continuously live inside the Promised Land. Our Promised Land is not geographic or some futuristic heavenly dwelling. It is found in the person of Jesus Christ. We carry our Promised Land with us wherever we walk. 

The COVID-19 pandemic, the current economic problems, our unresolved racial issues, and the cultural dysfunction we see being played out on our smartphones and computer screens, is what all of us are facing at this time in our history. None of these problems has the power to defeat the plans of God for all people and all nations are to flourish under the banner of His love.

When we find ourselves wanting to go back to what life was like before these painful issues arrived and we find ourselves uttering similar words of despair like those spoken by Joshua, we need to stop and correct our negative response.  That correction will be sourced from the realization that we stand securely in the Promised One. Our act of faith is to bring every opposing thought into compliance with that reality. If we can do that, it will change how we view the current conflicts that can, at times, overwhelm even the strongest examples of faith.

Words in Time

Be careful about releasing a word before its time and declaring, “Thus saith the Lord.” The word may indeed carry Heaven’s authority, but only if it is released in the timing of the Spirit. What we speak in God's name must be shared without the impulsiveness of undisciplined emotions and frustration. 

When Dreams, Visions and Prophetic Words Miss the Mark

Many believers are concerned about what is transpiring on earth. Some of that concern can blind us to a greater reality. A fear-based concern will paralyze our faith because it is absent of hope.  Fear can cause us to believe and take stock in diversions.  To remain spiritually healthy, we must receive our insight and marching orders from the throne of God, not from a lesser dimension of revelation.

Paul addressed different levels of what he called “heavens.” We live on earth in the first heaven, where spiritual warfare is waged on the battlefield of human minds. The throne of God is established in the third heaven in a secure position of ultimate authority, forever unchangeable. It is in the second heaven between heaven and earth where spiritual battles are fought between light and dark, demons and angels, and where the prayers of the saints have a tremendous effect in determining the outcomes of earthly spiritual battles.

Kingdom vision and prayer assignments are created and released from the third heaven. From that secure place, we can pray with confidence and live in peace when life seems spiraling out of control. When visions, dreams and prophetic words are sourced only from the battle being waged in the second heaven, we will live in fear and limit our response to only what is seen in that realm. We can even get what appears to be a word of knowledge from the limitations of a second heaven revelation and actually miss the greater truth because what we have chosen to believe is not sourced in hope. God’s revelation, and even His warnings, always contain hope.

Jesus is enthroned in a place of ultimate authority at the right hand of the Father. As believers, we are seated there with Christ. This realization does not produce a fearful response to a world in decay and disorder, nor does it produce theologies or an understanding of the culmination of time that is wrapped in the dark cloth of disaster and despair. The sound and content of our voice will reveal which heaven we have chosen as our source of inspiration.

A Voice Without Compromise

There is such a thing as a healthy compromise. This is a meeting where two opposing parties step over existing prohibitions and warnings and try to work things out no matter what the cost might be to them personally.  Compromise becomes unhealthy when we filter our obedience through “what will so-and-so think?” or “how will this affect my standing in the group?” 

When the issues of life become emotionally over-heated, and opinions are being expressed at warp speed 24/7, it becomes too easy to compromise the prophetic nature of our voice. This happens when we silence our voice out of self-protection. 

We all have access to prophetic content. This content is not reserved only for those who might call themselves prophets or have a ministry with a public presence. A prophetic voice belongs to each and every member of the Church. Prophecy is no respecter of people, position, or title. 

In the coming days, when many repetitive “prophetic” clichés have run their course to no avail, and few are willing to break free from a place of unhealthy compromise and self-protection, we will begin to hear new voices emerge. These new voices will rise and begin speak with a clarity that only comes when someone is so sold out to the Lord and His truth, they have nothing left to lose.  

Prophesying Hope to the Seed

“Israel will remain a stump, like a tree that is cut down, but the stump will be a holy seed that will grow again.”

—Isaiah 6:13b

When I was a boy, I watched my father trim the mulberry trees that lined our driveway. When these trees were in full bloom, they provided a wonderful place of shade during the hot summer days. The first time my father trimmed these trees, I thought he had killed them. He literally cut them back to a stump and a few branches. But each year the trees grew back healthier and larger than before because within the DNA of the tree was a life and a structure that no amount of trimming could destroy. Life is like the mulberry trees of my youth; there are times when we get so trimmed, we wonder if we will ever grow back, and then life happens again.

Once, when I read this verse from Isaiah 6, the words seemed to hang in the air. The Lord spoke to me, saying:

I am raising up a host of prophets who will prophesy hope to the seed that remains in the stump. I never leave a stump without a seed. This seed contains the DNA of My life. It is activated and brought to life by hope. Raise your voice and speak hope to the seed that remains. The seed is waiting for the sound of hope. Do not focus on the stump. The stump only carries the seed. This present devastation is temporary. Words of hope are anchored in eternity. Rise up and stand before the stump just as My servant Noah did when I asked him to build the Ark. You will look foolish to those who only see the stump, but I will grow the seed and the tree will stand again. Prophesy to My seed.

(excerpt from Prayers from the Throne of God)

God is at Work in the Midnight Hours

At least twice last night, something usual took place. It was unusual because I was not aware it was happening. Jan said she awoke two times to hear me prophesying over various people while I was asleep. She did not recall all the content, but they were personal words to individuals. At one time, I was prophesying that the hand of God would sweep away the opposing forces that were hindering a person’s life.

Each night I kneel at my bedside and ask the Lord to speak to me and give me dreams in the night. I did not consider this would mean I would be releasing prophetic words. Jan did not recognize the names of those receiving these words. I believe these prophetic words were a work of God’s Spirit that does not require we know the recipient. I was speaking from the depths of the Spirit, not from natural wisdom or known relationships. It was much like prayer in the Spirit, where God will use us to pray for things our natural mind had not entertained.

At this moment in history, we need the manifestation of a supernatural God who steps over the solutions offered by the limitations of human intellect to bring freedom where freedom was thought impossible. God is releasing prophetic hope at unusual times and by unexpected means. Many of us were not aware this was taking place. I am so glad Jan shared with me what is going on in the midnight hours.  Tonight, I will go to sleep with a new level of expectation and faith in the goodness of God.

Discovering the Substance Behind Prophetic Predictions

Maybe it’s because I have been doing this for a long time, but I’m no longer impressed with stand-alone prophetic predictions no matter who gives them. What catches my attention is the heart and purpose of God behind the prophecy. If we are not careful, we can miss the deeper reason why a predictive revelation was given in the first place. 

The next time you hear someone make a prediction, ask the Lord to show you why He let you know something before it happens. That "why" is the most essential element in a prophetic word. A predictive prophetic word is simply a spiritual butler who opens the door of revelation and invites us inside the mansion of God’s heart. The Lord's reasoning behind a prophetic word, not the initial announcement itself, is where the real substance of a prophetic word is discovered.

The Checkmate of God

This morning in prayer, I saw an image of the Lord seated at a chessboard. The chess pieces were ornate and represented the nations of the earth. I looked to see who His opponent was and realized he was so insignificant in comparison to God that I could not even see his head above the tabletop. It appeared as if no one was seated across from the Lord. The enemy’s lack of significance did not allow him to play the game with any hope of final victory.  Each move he made could not stand up against the wisdom and power of God’s strategy. Patiently and peacefully, the Lord continued to move each chess piece around the chessboard, according to a plan none of us can fully understand or comprehend the complexity of its design.

This life and the affairs of humanity are being orchestrated by the hand of God, not by evil. None of what we see taking place on the world stage is without a righteous and merciful outcome. When things make no sense or people issue warnings that the sky is falling, wait in expectation for the next move of God. His hand is always making a strategic play at just the right time that will checkmate the most elaborate plan of hell.

Creating a Healthy Prophetic Environment

A prophetic ministry requires two elements if it is to remain healthy and endure over time. It requires revelation and an environment. Some good people put out word after word without considering the environment where a prophecy has the best chance to live and thrive and express the character of God's Kingdom. If you are beginning your prophetic journey or you have been doing it for a long time, make sure that you nurture the environment where your words take root as much as you desire to speak the word of the Lord.  Future generations will thank God for both the content of your words and the healthy environment you left behind.  

Prophecy, Critics, and Comfort Zones

A prophecy was delivered by the late Bob Jones, noting that when the Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl, it will mark the beginning of a revival. For some, prophetic words spark a negative knee-jerk response. No matter how accurate a prophet might be, there will always be those who are determined to find something they do not like about either the prophet or the message they deliver.  

The world and, unfortunately, some in the Church have adopted a spirit a denial choosing as their first response to discredit a prophet or prophetic word that does not align with their narrow interpretation of life. Don’t be one of those people. These nit-picking responses are disguised under a false label called “discernment” or a dismissive wait-and-see attitude that is a form religion-speak used to reject anything outside the critic’s narrow interpretation of spiritual reality. 

The Bereans noted in Acts 17 are frequently cited by these critics as their motivation for rejection. In their defense, they quote, “They (Bereans) searched the Scriptures day after day to see if Paul and Silas were teaching the truth.” These critics fail to mention the first part of that same verse that says, “And the people of Berea were more open-minded than those in Thessalonica, and they listened eagerly to Paul’s message.” 

An open mind and the wise use of Scripture is a healthy combination if we are at least willing to listen to the message bearer before rejecting what they speak. The Bereans "listened eagerly," and so should we.

What I Do and Why

There are times, especially when we are new to the things of the Spirit, that we try to find “our gift.” At those early stages, there is nothing wrong with that pursuit. A problem can emerge later on when we become overly focused and enamored with our particular gift at the expense of more important issues.

A few years ago, I had a conversation with the Lord, asking why He had me work for so many years in a pastoral role when that was not my primary spiritual gift. The pastoral gift has never been revealed as my primary assignment in any gift assessment test. Prophet has always come out on top of all the tests I have taken. The gift of pastor belongs to Jan. She is the best pastor I know. We make a great team. 

The day I had that conversation with the Lord He said, “I had you spend all those years in pastoral ministry, even though it was not your primary gift, so you would know how to create a healthy environment for the prophetic movement.” At the time, those words sounded presumptive to me, and they might sound that way to you as well as you read these words. Such are the ways of God.

I write every day. It is a personal discipline and has become the resource pool for several books and a few thousand blog articles. Not everything I write is prophetic like a predictive word. Most of what I write are I Corinthian 14 kinds of words to strengthen people with encouragement and comfort. Some of the Old Testament prophets we quote with regularity only spoke a predictive word or two over their lifetime. We were never designed or assigned to be a predictive prophetic dispensing machine. Waking up to the need to produce a predictive word each day is a fast lane to compromise and a loss of credibility. 

Our spiritual gifts are like seeds we plant in hopes of a fruitful harvest. If the environment where a seed is planted is not healthy the seed will not live long enough to create a generational harvest. I have come to realize the environment in which a gift is delivered is as important as the gift itself. They work together.  In the end, this is called balance. 

The Sting of Love

If we create a message hoping our audience will accept what we share, and if acceptance becomes our primary motivation, we will eventually compromise truth to hold onto our audience. At some point, we have all been guilty of this transgression. Humility, honesty, and repentance is the only way out of this trap. 

As a young pastor, I remember the day God challenged me on this subject. I still feel that sting today. I am still being stung to this day in other areas of personal compromise. I want to be stung again and again whenever I find out I am more interested in keeping my readers happy and having them enjoy what I write than serving them the hard and sometimes uncomfortable truth. 

If left unchallenged, our compromise will cause the Spirit to withdraw His instruction and leave us with a message crafted only by human wisdom and our version of spiritual reality. In America, we have created a lot of feel-good theology and subsequent worldviews.  This has taken place in our insulated culture absent from the stark realities of life being lived out each day by our brothers and sisters in other parts of the world. We can too easily create a spiritual and emotional Twilight Zone where reality and truth have been exchanged for a fuzzy, photoshopped lie. 

When God expands the sphere of influence of our voice, no matter if our audience is one or a million, we will experience a challenge to our integrity. If we do not allow the challenge to discipline our hearts and the content of our message, any of us can be susceptible to making a weak turn toward compromise.  This becomes especially important if we have allowed our identity to be hitched to a preferred response from our audience. The principles of truth and honesty never change. They walk with us into each new season of life, carrying with them the sting of love.

A Designated Path

For years, I have been hiking a section of trails above our home and today, I noticed a new sign. It was just put in place by those who manage the trail system. As soon as I snapped a picture, the Lord impressed on me, the sign was a metaphor for something He wanted to say. 

Some of the familiar paths we have walked in the past will no longer lead us to our God-ordained future. These trails have been marked by the Lord as no longer designated pathways when it comes to the future direction of our life. Many will be redirected in 2020 to align in a new direction with the purposes of God for the next decade and beyond.

As the New Year approaches do not follow assumptions from the past. Inquire of the Lord and follow the signs He places on your pathway. For some of us, it means returning to the trailhead of a previous revelation and reviewing the original map of our calling. In that review, a designation and a resulting redirection will be discovered. Follow it. It is your only safe and sure way forward.

The Fog is Lifting

At our best, we only see and understand the events of life in part. The experience of personal and cultural change has deposited people in new places without their full knowledge of how they arrived or what had actually taken place in the transition. Most of life comes as a surprise after a significant change has transpired. In other words, we didn’t see it coming. 

After these significant events have taken place, we become aware that something different is now surrounding our life even though we cannot yet see the fullness of the change. It is like a person standing in a field surrounded by a dense fog. Insight and vision of the encircling environment only come when the morning sun appears, and the sun and begins to burn away the fog to reveal a previously hidden landscape. This is why Scripture advises us to be slow to speak. Premature announcements are many times wrong. No one knows what the current fog of life will reveal once it lifts.

Until the fog lifts, we are to plant and cultivate God’s peace. Peace is not dependent on what we can see or not see. It has the ability to reinterpret the environment within the fog. Peace will adjust our spiritual eyes to see through the mist to comprehend something greater God is doing outside the realm of natural sight. Peace prepares us to see and properly interpret our surroundings without fear and distress becoming our only interpretive tools. 

The greatest work taking place in the foggy places of life is not the work of the enemy, but the work of God. Choosing to live in God’s peace will help us navigate wisely through a foggy experience. Once the fog finally lifts, we will be able to see the greater work God had been doing all along, not the work of fear the enemy offered as our only blinding option. 

I just heard someone begin to laugh in the fog.

God is Raking the Seedbed of Prophetic Ministry

God is raking the prophetic landscape as a master gardener would carefully rake the soil of a delicate flower bed. He is removing the debris that gets in the way of fully appreciating the beauty of what He has planted. The Lord is removing assumptions we have allowed to craft our message and the invasive species of human pride that could eventually take over the simple beauty of the garden if not challenged. 

In this raking time, some will be surprised at what the Lord’s rake will remove from the prophetic seedbed. We have come through a season where much has been planted in the name of the Lord. Some of these words have come from the seed pouch of the Spirit as an authentic word of the Lord. Others have been formed from human opinion crafted under the influence of a religious or political spirit.  

When the Lord finishes this time of raking, He will turn to each of us who speak in His name and hand us His rake. He will ask us to rake at His direction through our motives to prepare our hearts as a seedbed for the critical words He is about to plant destined to bloom in the coming harvest of revival and reformation.