Don’t Give Up On Prophecy
It can be scary to prophesy to someone. This can be difficult enough when we simply share what seem to be Spirit-inspired thoughts in the course of normal conversation. It is even more difficult when we tell someone that we think the Lord is speaking through us because each of us make many mistakes (James 3:2). It can be really hard to say we believe we are speaking for the Lord knowing we could be wrong.
No one objects to well-intentioned mistakes in knowledge. It is understood that we are all imperfect in knowledge and that learning is part of our lifelong process. Many areas of knowledge are baffling. Teachers, preachers, exhorters – anyone sharing knowledge is usually treated graciously when they make honest mistakes. Somehow, though, we often put prophecy in a special category and demand perfection. Life doesn’t work that way.
We should prophesy in proportion to our level of faith (Romans 12:6). Do we ever unintentionally overreach in our faith? Yes. Do we ever make mistakes in our convictions? Of course. Why should prophesy by any different as long as we are humble and non-dogmatic when we prophesy?
If we receive a prophecy, wait for confirmation. Thank the Lord the person was willing to take a risk. Pray. If there are things we can reasonably do without altering where we believe the Lord wants us to focus, let’s do them.
I had someone who was normally accurate prophesy to me. By any reasonable standard of interpretation, the prophecy did not come to pass. Either the prophecy was wrong or it was somehow blocked despite all my best efforts. (We must give place to a certain inscrutability because we aren’t always told what is going on behind the scenes as was true in the book of Job). The person who prophesied said he had a picture of our young children being on a plane with me. From this, he inferred that God wanted to start launching me into ministry when the children were young. This ‘revelation’ was never confirmed – nor did it come to pass.
Did I write off prophecy because of this apparent mistake? No. Prophecy, like everything else in this life, is imperfect. However, that prophet’s ratio of accurate prophecies was high. Not perfect but good enough for me to at least consider them and look to see if they were confirmed or fulfilled.
I hope you will be able to accept the imperfect. Imperfect knowledge, imperfect people, imperfect prophecies. We don’t reject all knowledge or all people because they are imperfect. Why should we reject prophecy because it is imperfect?
Comforting others is costly but worth it.