If the phone doesn't ring, it's me

One of the difficulties in life is trying to convey God's view of temporal situations from His eternal perspective.  A prophet is witness to events (sometimes in advance) and reports what he or she sees. 

 

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Herschel  who died in 1972 wrote this:  The main purpose of Prophetic activity is to bring the world into divine focus.

 

Sometimes that means differentiating the meaningless and unimportant (but apparently urgent thru the worlds eyes) from the important but unrecognized (and apparently able to be deferred).  The urgent overshadows the truly important.

 

This is a difficult task, not easy.  And it offends.  God is in the business of offending.  He takes our comfortable world and turns it upside down to accomplish His purposes back on track for his destiny for us.  He is unwilling to allow us to remain as we are in our self made world.   Our destiny will never be accomplished in a world we create for ourselves.

 

Only when we have put roadblocks of our own bias, purposes and constricts does God's purpose in our lives become an offense we can't overcome.  Since we can't be angry with God we get angry with the messenger.  Or in some cases the messenger's taxi driver.  We decide that if that guy didn't exist in my life I wouldn't have any problems.  He's a troublemaker.

 

Of course that's absolute baloney.  You will be in just as much pain if you don't listen, you'll just be further down the road to nowhere before you hit the wall. 

 

I understand when the phone doesn't ring.  No one likes news that might upsets an apple cart.  What's worse is if your apple cart is firmly on the ground, full of apples and you believe that nothing can upset it, you don't know God.  He loves you too much to allow you to rely on yourself.

 

If my phone doesn't ring, I understand.  It will.  God will cause you to pick it up.  I just had such a call.  Life turns on the heeded prophetic.  It collapses on the rejection of the prophetic.

 

Here's what God says in 2 Chronicles 20:20:

Jehoshaphat's army went out into the Desert of Tekoa early in the morning. As they were starting out, Jehoshaphat stood and said, "Listen to me, people of Judah and Jerusalem. Have faith in the Lord your God, and you will stand strong. Have faith in his prophets, and you will succeed."

 

Most people have no problem with faith in God, they don't have to deal with him speaking directly to them.  So they stand strong.  When the Prophetic voice speaks and they heed, he clears the way and points out the obstacles that need to be moved for success.  If they ignore him they set themselves up for failure.

 

Sometimes good Christians live in a religious construct (like the Matrix) that means they can stand but never succeed.  That is living below the destiny God has for you.

 

Have faith in the Prophets and you will succeed.  Pick those whose prophetic voice you will hear, but hear them.  If they are true prophets they will say the same things other true prophets are saying.  False prophets will only tell you what you want to hear and you will fail.

 

Unless you are being irritated sometimes, it's not probably prophetic.  The prophetic will initiate change and encourage you to make those needed changes.