The Prophecy Series: Prophecy and the Bride
THIS IS PART OF AN ONGOING SERIES ON THE GIFT OF PROPHECY
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“The treasure of the secret place is that you would be moved by Me and nothing else.”
There is a reason I am so passionate about introducing people to their own hearts. This is because without knowing your heart, you will fail to know your fallibility. Without knowing your fallibility, you will fail to know your weakness and without knowing your weakness, you will be susceptible to temptation. And that does not even take into account that without knowing your heart, you will constantly conflate the will of God with your own.
The ramifications of this towards our ability to operate in any of the love gifts of 1 Corinthians 12 is great. Without admitting our weaknesses, we are far too susceptible to prophesying out of our needs, wants, desires, opinions, and theological beliefs.
There seems to exist a belief today that God is intensely invested in the direction of a nation, or the appointment of a political leader. This was very obviously on display during the recent US election. The nation that is most often the object of prophetic declaration is America, but we generally get a fair bit of other countries thrown in for good measure, depending on the nationality of the prophetic voice. We too often forget that the orientation of your gift will, in part, dictate what you hear. We are very susceptible to our own interests.
However, God did not come for a nation, He came for a bride.
The anticipation of the fathers of the faith was towards a heavenly country, not hope in a nation:
It seems to me that there is an imbalance. We assume God is passionate about a political outcome and forget that His interest is in His bride. Perhaps it is far more we that are passionate about the nations.
What if we re-centred prophetic ministry around the bride of Christ?
That thing He emptied himself for?
That thing that was the mission of the coming Christ?
When did we get so far away from caring about the bride of Christ that we began to think God only cared about speaking towards political issues?
When did God begin caring more about the president than the integrity and Christlikeness of the pastors and leaders?
I wonder if many today would not consider the church the central place of God's power to transform the world. Part of me fears that many prophetic voices have given up on the church. They no longer look at the church as their main mission, but rather, the political sphere has become their main mission.
This does not mean that we should be completely disinterested in politics. I am invested in politics because the right people in place will preserve for me the freedom to fulfill the mandate of the church (James 1:27) and fulfill the great commission (Matthew 28:19-20). We must restore a high view of the church and our role within the bride of Christ.
Where is God more invested?
Your nation or His bride?
Erin and I recently covered this topic at greater length on a Facebook live stream with our church. We talked about how we are to practically respond to the call to restore the primacy of the bride of Christ as the focal point of God’s mission here on earth.