Encouragement, upbuilding, and consolation – I don't think
any one of us would say we don't want that or need that in our lives. Having people come into our lives and speak
these kinds of words to us is a very important part of making it through life,
and we don't need to take it lightly.
Those three words come from 1 Corinthians 14:1-4 (ESV),
where Paul is explaining spiritual gifts and how they look when used. Specifically he is mentioning prophecy and
what it should look like in New Testament living. Paul is writing about the gifts of Tongues
and Prophecy; explaining what they are and how to use them in corporate and
individual settings. As Paul clearly
states tongues is meant primarily between a person and God (in a corporate
setting there needs to be someone who can interpret what they are saying – 1 Corinthians
14:27-28), and prophecy is meant for the people of the church – as a way to
encourage, exhort, and comfort believers in Christ.
It really is very simple how prophecy works, the Holy Spirit
brings to mind something encouraging for us to say to someone else. This could be confirming something God has
already put in their heart, it could be a word they need right now because of
something hard in their life, or it could be that God wants to reveal something
to that person, so He brings it in a word of prophecy.
One example of this that happened to me about 10 years ago
is when I was reading my Bible and I felt like I should write an encouraging
note to someone who popped in my head. I
really didn't know this person very well at all, I barely even knew who they
were, and had hardly ever even talked to them.
Needless to say, I didn't have a whole lot of confidence in this. How am in going to write an encouraging note
to this person and I have no idea what is going on in their life or where they
need encouragement?
So I did what seemed like the right thing to do, I wrote a
note along these lines.
I don't know what’s going on your
life right now, but I felt like God told me to give this note to you and tell
you that He is in control and He loves you.
Very simple and short, but little did I know that the person
I gave this note to was going through what has probably been the hardest thing
in their life they have ever gone through, and that note was like the clouds
opening up and God revealing himself to this person. It was not anything that I did or about me,
the words were not even that well put together, but God used it in a powerful
way.
Last Sunday night at Fusion we had special guest Randy Boyd
speak on Proverbs 30:18-19. He broke
down each of the 4 things in the verse and explained how God revealed to him
some incredible insight into what those word pictures mean. At the end of the message we went into a
prayer time where he was praying for people, for some of the people he received
a ‘word’ from the Holy Spirit to encourage, uplift, comfort them in areas they
needed it.
Living a life that is led by the Holy Spirit is not
something we should be afraid of or weary of.
It should be the life we pursue so we can ‘do the works’ (Eph. 2:10) the
Father has created us to do. God never
meant for us to live our lives without ‘the helper/counselor/comforter’ (John
14:16). Jesus even said ‘it will be
better if I leave’ (John 16:7), and the Holy Spirit ‘will guide you into all
truth’ (John 16:13).
It is usually easy for us to understand and feel comfortable
with these truths when we think about our individual lives, but many times we
start to get critical, skeptical, judgmental, and doubtful when we think about
how this is supposed to look in a corporate setting with others. Let me assure you, these thoughts and
feelings are very common to most of us and we should be very careful to not sin
when we have these thoughts and feelings.
Thankfully God has given us His word as a way to help us
understand what is right and what is not right. The whole chapter of 1 Corinthians 14 explains
what is acceptable and what is not acceptable in corporate gathers in regards
to tongues and prophecy. Please go read
that chapter and get an understanding of how God led Paul to teach us about
corporate gatherings and orderly worship services.
What do we do with these situations when or after they
happen? 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21 says
this, ‘Do not quench the Spirit. Do not
despise prophesies, but test everything; hold fast to what is Good.’ So our response to these situations is to
have an open heart and mind to the fact that maybe God does want us to get
something out of it, we do not just despise it and reject it because we are not
comfortable with it. God does many
things in the Bible that were not comfortable with the people in that situation. We test it, to see what is good and what we
should throw away and get rid of.
In the case of last Sunday testing would be taking the
prophetic words Randy said about people and seeing if it was true and useful to
their lives. In many of the cases I know
for a fact he was dead right on what they needed to hear and know many of them
had already had that word from God planted in their hearts, this was simply
confirming it and encouraging them to keep pursuing it. If for some reason something he said was out
of line or incorrect, the way we handle that is simple, we do not receive it as
a word from God. We do not claim it as a
promise and do not pursue it.
Finally, don't throw the baby out with the bath water. If you are ever in a situation where someone
does something or says something you feel is not in line with the word of God,
you must discern what is right for you to do with it. Too many times we throw all of something out
because a small part of it was wrong. I
do not believe this is biblical or pleasing to God. We have to remember that we are imperfect
people with a perfect message. Gods
desire is that we discern and test what we hear and take the good from it and
leave the bad/false teaching. We do this
by being lead by the Holy Spirit, not being led by what is comfortable to us;
many times God will not feel comfortable to us.
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