anointed prophetic moment has been saturated in power that opens my eyes to the depth of His love for His people. Even in Jesus’ most stinging rebuke of the Pharisees, you hear His love pouring forth, “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing” (Matt. 23:37 niv).
The Church needs to be regularly reminded of Christ’s unchanging love, as we are prone to drift away in busyness, idolatry, and the cares of life. At times, we are stubborn, unwilling children who must be brought back by the overwhelming kindness of the Father. Jesus took upon Himself the lethal rebuke of God’s wrath we fully deserved for our sin, and He has forever removed any condemnation in the Father’s voice toward us (Rom. 8:1).
The Father’s Voice Always Sounds of Pure, Unreserved Kindness
In the Old Testament, prophets often took a harsh tone (coupled with the most tender expressions of compassion you’ll ever hear). Before the cross, God’s Wrath had not been satisfied. Today, after the work of the cross, there should never be a harsh tone in true prophetic ministry. Because of Christ, condemnation has been completely eradicated and all we should hear in the Father’s voice is kindness that leads us to repentance.
Any harsh assessment of the Church and her obvious weakness is flawed and self-righteous. We should be regularly and wonderfully swept up in the new mercies of God pouring forth from the gospel of prophetic anointing.
This doesn’t mean we never address sin, but a harsh prophetical tone for the Church is from our uncharitable and impatient hearts. But God is charity and patience personified; should we grow harsh, He will patiently lift our eyes to see what He sees—not a flawed people as they now are, but as the faithful people they will become by His grace, a glorious and unified Church!
Through anointed prophetic ministry, He’s going to use His eternal perspective of our glorious future to wash away the temporal perspective of our circumstance and failures that steal our joy.
This is the essence of prophetic ministry—to continually, through His unimaginable kindness, redirect the Church’s temporal perspective toward the eternal.
Why Do Spiritual Gifts, Especially Prophecy, Matter?
The gifts mentioned in Scripture, especially prophecy, exist as manifestations of the indwelling Holy Spirit to herald the heart of God among His people in the most intimate way possible, meeting our deepest needs, and speaking to our deepest selves about who He is in our lives.
The Holy Spirit is manifesting the grace of Jesus Christ through the gifts. The point is never to make much of the spiritual gifts, but of Jesus. That is what the Holy Spirit was sent to do, and the gifts are a means of grace to make it so. If we hope to see the gifts manifesting in our meetings, then we have to make room for the Holy Spirit to lead and participate.
We must not just assume that He wishes to bless our plan to glorify God, but that He wishes to glorify Jesus through us in His chosen way, through our faith.
The gifts function by faith in God, but they also increase faith when they are manifested. Faith that must continue to grow, so we see these gifts, especially prophecy, become a great and powerful demonstration of His love and power to a lost and dying world, through us, His Church. “For it is the Spirit of prophecy who bears testimony to Jesus” (Rev. 19:10b niv).
Jesus is the reason we have gifts and are using them for His glory. This is entirely about Him. When the gifts manifest, they should unswervingly point to the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ in our midst. The Holy Spirit was sent for that purpose, and any demonstration of power, especially prophecy, that does not point us to Jesus Christ alone, is not of Him and should be avoided.
We must demystify the gifts by seeing them for what they are. They are Holy Spirit expressions of God’s mercy, grace, and love toward us, and through us, at the point of our deepest need. They are made possible through the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross and His resurrection from the dead. To suggest that they exist for any other purpose than to make much of Jesus is to make much of ourselves.
Chapter 3
Two Purposes of New Testament Prophecy
1) To Build Up the Church of Jesus Christ
(1 Cor. 14:12, 26)
The purpose of prophetic ministry isn’t to honor men, but to equip and build up the Body of Christ through messages that strengthen, build, edify, encourage, exhort, console, and comfort her. These words represent a cross-section of the various translations of 1 Corinthians 14:3 that highlights this command. The singular direction from Paul regarding any prophetic message is the same: Love the Church.
He interrupted his own exposition on the gifts in 1 Corinthians 12 and 14 with a passionate plea to love the Church and one another, above all else, in 1 Corinthians 13. Without love, prophecy is a clanging cymbal and nothingness (1 Cor. 13:1-2).
A dear friend once challenged me that the prophetic gift will not be perfected in us until His love for the Church is perfected in us. Any accuracy in predictions, discernment of spirits, consistent words of knowledge, or anointing to impart wisdom is entirely pointless without His love infusing every spoken syllable. It is nothing. It’s a mirage of ministry propped up by presumption and pride.
Just as in preaching, if we aspire to any hope of legitimacy in prophetic ministry, we must root out any treasonous, self-promoting motive, throw it on the altar of His mercy, and cry out to the Holy Spirit for a fresh revelation of His love for the Church.
This common yearning for authenticity in our love for the Church would be further validated in extending the right hand of fellowship toward each other.
We must endeavor pastorally and prophetically to strengthen, build, edify, encourage, exhort, console, and comfort each other as different, but equally important, members of the Body of Christ. There are certainly false teachers and prophets everywhere in the Church to discourage such an effort, but the failure of others’ integrity should not excuse our own in any way.
Genuine preaching and prophetic ministry is demonstrated as Jesus said in John 13:35, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
In true preaching and prophetic ministry, we are first heralds of the holy love of God to His Church in our generation. I’m confident that a growing unity between the pastoral and prophetic ministry within the Church will have the same effect Paul intended for all the gifts, especially prophecy—encouragement, edification, and comfort.
2) A Sign of God’s Manifest Presence (1 Cor. 14:25)
There is one more distinction of true prophecy and its purpose setting it apart from all other gifts and ministries that the apostle Paul highlights for us in 1 Cor.14:22b-25:
...prophecy is a sign not for unbelievers but for believers. If, therefore, the whole church comes together and all speak in tongues, and outsiders or unbelievers enter, will they not say that you are out of your minds? But if all prophesy, and an unbeliever or outsider enters, he is convicted by all, he is called to account by all, the secrets of his heart are disclosed, and so, falling on his face, he will worship God and declare that God is really among you.
True prophecy manifested in the church is intended to be a sign for believers (:22b) and unbelievers (:23) that
