Fear No Fear

(All scripture from the World English Bible, ebible.org, all rights reserved)

The lion has roared. Who will not fear? The Lord GOD has spoken. Who can but prophesy?
Amos 3:8 (emphasis added)

The ministry of the prophetic is one of the easiest to dismiss. It doesn’t mean you’re mocking or deriding it per se. But it is easy to dismiss. The language of the prophetic is kind of weird at times. It can seem simplistic. It can seem out of sorts with our personal views of the Lord. It can be tinged with a LOT of human things. It can seem to be appropriating natural phenomena. But none of that means it should be dismissed. Whether we are viewing it correctly or incorrectly, the prophetic is a very simple thing: God speaking to us.

“The LORD, the God of their fathers, sent to them by his messengers, rising up early and sending, because he had compassion on his people and on his dwelling place; but they mocked the messengers of God, despised his words, and scoffed at his prophets, until the LORD’s wrath arose against his people, until there was no remedy” (2 Chronicles 36:15-16). “Don’t quench the Spirit. Don’t despise prophecies. Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good” (1 Thessalonians 5:19-21). “Surely the Lord GOD will do nothing, unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets” (Amos 3:7). These verses here are a roadmap of the prophetic. They encapsulate the ministry of the prophet, how God views the prophetic, and how we should deal with it. Basically, they answer every question that I just asked.

The Lord wants to talk to us. So why does the prophetic have such weird language? It references the world around us. It uses flowery pictures. It takes things we know and compares them to other things that we may or may not think fits. I remember one prophet in recent years who was talking about a public figure and saying they appeared to him as Satan. It took me by surprise. I liked the individual in question. I liked how they thought and expressed themselves. Not necessarily agreeing with everything they said or did, but overall sympathetic to where they were coming from. But you have to listen to the prophetic. Just because I think a thing about someone or something doesn’t mean I am right. I had to re-evaluate what I thought about the person. They weren’t the enemy. But were they operating the way the enemy operates? Were they being used by the enemy — knowingly or unknowingly. Was there more to what was going on than I had thought?

Samuel went to anoint the next king of Israel. He didn’t have a lot of luck at the beginning. All these strapping young lads who looked like kings. Or at least the type of man we think of as a king. Every one of them had something going for them. But none of them were chosen. Because God chooses people based on what He can see, not what we can see. Samuel had to look with prophetic eyes to see what God saw. In the end David was chosen. A runt of very young age. Dirty and unkempt. And smelly. But he had what it took on the inside. No, he didn’t get it right every time. But he had the heart to be God’s chosen king.

The prophetic is a tool for the Lord to get things to us that we otherwise might not listen to. To get us to look at that which we may not have bothered to observe. There is an awareness experiment that was done. You can search for the video on YouTube. More than one version is out there. A group of people are gathered with two basketballs. Some of the people are in white. Others are in black. There is more black than white. You are asked how many passes the team in white makes. And then all the people move around, passing the balls back and forth. Then the video stops and asks you if you saw the bear. A man in a bear costume walked into frame, did a little dance, and then left. If you are counting the passes the white team makes, then you probably didn’t notice the bear. Although they then seem to rewind the video and play it again to accentuate the bear, it is not a trick. Go back and watch again and you will suddenly see the bear. The human mind filters out a lot. Just because you didn’t see it, doesn’t mean it wasn’t there. The prophetic is God stopping our video and accentuating the bear He wants you to notice.

That is vitally important. Because God doesn’t just tell us about things that are there but we aren’t noticing. The Lord also speaks to us about what is coming. “Surely the Lord GOD will do NOTHING, unless he reveals his secret to his servants the prophets” (emphasis mine). Nothing is a lot. In fact, nothing means everything. God doesn’t do ANYTHING unless He has revealed it first. Malbim (a rabbi in the 1800’s) talks about the prophetic like this: ‘For during a vision, the soul possesses the same nature it has after its separation [from the body], at that moment when it returns to the treasury of life (1 Samuel 25:29) with the Lord its God, when it no longer has need of either the discernment of intelligence or the confirmation of comprehension, not even of faith. For what is seen with the prophetic faculty is unequivocal knowledge, unerring, beyond consciousness and intellect. It is in this way that those truths which are beyond the reach of our senses are made known by God; through revelation and prophecy. This is God’s grace to mankind, for in this way were the truths and foundations of belief revealed in sure knowledge through the Master of the Prophets, with whom God spoke face to face (Exodus 33:11), and to whom He showed His Glory (Exodus 33:18.).’

So God tells us everything that He is going to do BEFORE He does it. And He uses the prophetic because with it He sidesteps our thinking and our limitations and speaks spirit to spirit directly. Our spirit translates to us the language of God. In the prophetic, comparisons don’t have to be accurate. The spiritual cannot describe things to us without using the language that we know and the natural world with which we are familiar. It uses terms of daily experience to describe what is out of our experience. We get these pictures to give us an inkling of what is coming down the pipe. It was vital that Jonah get to Nineveh to prophesy because God was coming to Nineveh and it was not going to be good. That wicked city had to be told what was coming because God always tells us what is coming. When it is good, He wants us to prepare for it with eager anticipation like little children before their birthday. When it is bad, He wants us to repent and turn away from what is bringing the bad. To move into His yard where we have protection instead of staying out in the rain, snow, and sleet of the curse. If we aren’t given the opportunity to do something, then we haven’t exercised free will. And God always wants us to exercise free will. We need to choose to accept His good gifts. Or we need to choose to spurn His good gifts. We need to choose to obey to accept His protection. We need to choose to reject Him and take the judgment for our actions. Without being told something is coming, how can we have free will about it?

This doesn’t mean we get a personalised warning about things. Jesus told us that the end times would have earthquakes and disasters (Luke 21:10-18). Wisdom tells us that we should expect them and be prepared. In the modern era preparing doesn’t take a lot of effort. An emergency kit, some non-perishables, and some potable water and you’ve done about all you can do. He warns, we prepare, and done. He made a statement, we responded with free will, and now He can do what He wanted to do. He can bring blessings or protect us from the curse. He can keep His word and exercise judgment. Whichever way we choose, He will respond. But He will have warned us, which as a just God He tells us He always will.

What about when prophesy gets political? When every prophet seems to talk about America this and America that and everything has to do with that country and the election cycles and the politicians and everything? Well, God meets us where we are, doesn’t He? He wants to talk to us. He doesn’t get political. We do. And since we are political, He talks to us about what we’re thinking about, talking about, and focusing on. God is a communicator and He wants to communicate with us. If all we will do is think about politics, then that is what He is going to talk about with us. Since every nation is closely tied to every other and with the advent of electronic communication, it is important to listen to what other countries are doing and experiencing. The larger the influence of the country, the more important it is to listen to. The important thing is not to dismiss it. Maybe it isn’t directed at you, but it is still God talking. We aren’t being taken into captivity to Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar, but there are a lot of principles about God’s nature that we can learn from the books of the prophets where the Israelites are being talked to by God.

A good prophet doesn’t embellish. They report exactly what they are told to say. But sometimes our humanity gets the better of us. It doesn’t mean the prophet or the words they speak are bad. But it can mean that they miss it. Or they miss part of it. We’re not told to spurn the prophetic that doesn’t come to pass. We are told to test the prophetic. The words, not the prophets. With the prophetic, testing is easy. Wait. Wait and observe. It will either come to pass or it won’t. Prepare for it with wisdom as the Holy Spirit leads you, and then wait. If it comes to pass, it was an authentic word of the Lord. If it doesn’t, they missed it. It doesn’t make them a bad prophet. It means that word was missed. There is a big difference between the two.

We’re called to listen to prophets. We’re called to take heed and pay attention to them. We would be less confident in Jesus’ identity as the Messiah if there hadn’t been hundreds of prophetic words spoken about Him that He then fulfilled. The prophesies confirmed what Jesus said. They pointed to His nature as the Last Adam, the Son of the Most High. The Lord spoke, we prophesied, and Jesus fulfilled.

It is much the same today. As prophets prophesy, listen to them. Listen to the themes. Listen to the specifics. Pray and listen to the Holy Spirit. Be guided into wise and prudent preparation. Don’t be afraid to do something the neighbours might not ‘get’. Don’t make trouble for trouble’s sake. Be led by the Lord. Then wait. See if it comes to pass. Because the Word of God always comes to pass. It is always trustworthy. Always worth listening to. Honour the prophets of the Lord. Don’t follow them blindly. Listen. Test. The Lord says nothing that is out of 100% agreement with the Word. Reverence the Word. Heed it like you would heed hearing a lion’s roar. The Lord is moving and preparing to move all over the world. You KNOW He’s going to say something about it first.

Daily Affirmation of God’s Love: Nahum 1:7

This is a book about judgment. About judgment on a city that had a chance to repent. To truly repent. But that, on the whole, did not. We are in a world that is facing judgment. A world that is being given a chance to repent. To truly repent. God doesn’t have to wait. He is well within His rights to end it all now. But He isn’t. And He won’t until His conditions are met. They aren’t arbitrary. They weren’t chosen by spinning a wheel. He loves us too much to leave anything to chance. He loves us too much not to give us all the chance to repent. God doesn’t want to judge anyone. God wants to reward us. If we are saved, we don’t get judged. We’ve been spared from that (Romans 8:1). But we were tasked with spreading the good news of no more judgment to the world. To make sure every single human being hears the message. To give all the people a chance to choose. Instead of us facing judgment, our deeds, words, and thoughts will be held to the flame. If they were founded on Jesus, they’ll survive. If they are built on anything else — even good intentions — they will burn and we’ll end up with nothing to show for all of our time here (1 Corinthians 3:10-15). Judgment is coming on this world and the Lord wants the maximum number of people under His wings when it does. Sheltered and cared for. He doesn’t want to weep over the loss of even one person. God is good and big enough for everyone. He wants us to take refuge in Him. He wants us safe and secure. Why? Because He loves us. Everyone. Big and small. He loves you so much.

Your Daily Confession of God’s love to YOU:

Today God loves that I _______.