In reality, it's more like trying to push out a watermelon and screaming bloody blue murder for 24 hours, dealing with about 400 dirty diapers a day and sleepless nights for months.
I can't emphasize enough how much this is just like the prophetic. Everyone thinks this is awesome, we can hear the voice of God and He can tell us what's on his heart. He can undo years of not knowing and wondering what's going on in our lives, and brings some order to us.
In reality, what happens is far different in the beginning. People are like babies and they make mistakes. Wrong interpretations will be given, people will act out of order, and there will appear to be a great lack of order. Feelings will get hurt, people might leave the church and new ones will show up. If you’re a person that likes perfect order, you will go through an adjustment time. In biblical times the focus was surely not on the prophetic, people were dying for their beliefs. Hiding in homes, running for your lives was the order of the day. No one cared if your interpretation was a little bit off. They were just trying to survive. Look how many people sat with their bags packed, thinking Jesus was returning any day now. How silly was that?
I can't imagine what it's like to know the next day I could get eaten by a lion at other people's amusement just because I would not recant my beliefs.
Inviting the prophetic into your church is no different from inviting Jesus into your church. Yes it will become messy but if you want order I recommend getting a job down at the cemetery. I have seen churches embrace the prophetic and about a year later push it back out the door. They were not willing to deal with the dirty diapers and the sleepless nights. They gave their babies up for adoption.
Learning, growing, making mistakes is a necessary part of Christianity. We don't keep our children in a crib till they can run. We let them go through the necessary learning curve to stand up and then walk. They fall down, bump into tables, cry and hurt themselves. This is a normal way of life and we just accept it. I once heard a pastor say that I think Christians should be locked up for the first two years. It shocked me when I heard it. It was obvious in the Bible that most of the people that embraced Christianity did their greatest works as babes.
One of the best ways that we learn is from our mistakes. It's great when we can learn from other people's mistakes. But that doesn't always happen. I myself had joked several times that I could write a book just on my mistakes.
If the church is not ready to embrace the mess then there will be a greater mess. Knowing the outcome and watching for it will ease the struggle. Not allowing the prophetic into a church is like purposely preventing healing and restoration to God's people. It's a wonderful sight to see a simple prophetic word given to a person completely restoring them. It's the reason I continued in the prophetic. I loved watching people be restored and continuing in their walk with God. There are many brokenhearted people and most of them seem to be in the church. How could anyone stop the healing just because it's messy? Christianity itself is messy.
I was speaking in a small church on the prophetic and afterwards I was praying for the pastor who was lying on the floor at the time. In addition, I could clearly see a building that they were praying for and I saw flames coming out of the roof. I immediately assumed and so did he, this of course was the fire of God. They then continued wholeheartedly to try to obtain the building and consequently declared it as the future church building. One day we even marched around the property and claimed it for our own. Time went on and it seemed like they had hit a brick wall in trying to get this property. Of course it was a financial problem.
One day I was driving up the road to where the future church was going to be and the road was closed. It was blocked by fire trucks. They were busy trying to put out the building. Giant flames licked the sky just like in my vision.
How could I have gotten it so wrong, or did I? This whole situation got messy. Diapers were overflowing everywhere including my own. There were many hurt feelings, misunderstandings and just the general loss of the prophetic appetite. Nobody wanted to hear another prophetic word. We had enough.
I'm not even sure how we could have prevented this. The vision I had was exactly right. But our interpretation was clearly wrong. We just wanted the fire of God to fall so that's what we interpreted it as.
When you're operating at an impression level the word has to be tested. I don't think any of us tested it. We heard what we wanted to hear. Of course it's easy to see that now, but at the time...
Unfortunately, I have many of these stories. I didn't give up though. I got run out of a couple of towns and churches but I never gave up.
