Encountering Misguided Prophecies: When to Say No to a Thus Saith The Lord

Twenty-three-year-old George Whitefield sat on a ship ready to sail for America from the port of Deal, located approximately 70 miles southeast of London. For some time, he had experienced a compelling call to preach the gospel to colonial America and now the day for his departure had finally arrived. His heart was filled with gratitude, excitement and expectation.

As he waited for the ship's crew to hoist anchor and sail, a letter was delivered to him from John Wesley who had just returned from a failed mission to Georgia. He opened the letter and was stunned by what he read. Wesley wrote that when he saw that the same wind that brought him in was taking Whitefield out, he inquired of the Lord about Whitefield's journey. Wesley emphatically stated that the word God gave him for Whitefield was, "Let him return to London."

Whitefield was shocked and momentarily confused. Wesley was 10 years his senior and had been a mentor to him. He held the Wesley brothers, John and Charles, in very high esteem. However, this word from John contradicted everything he believed about his call to America.

Whitefield went to prayer, and as he prayed, there came to his mind a story from the Old Testament about a "man of God" who lost his life because he listened to the words of an "old prophet" instead of diligently adhering to what God had instructed him.

I Kings 13 tells this story of the unnamed "man of God" whom God instructed to go to Bethel and prophesy against the idolatrous altars that had been established there by King Jeroboam. God also instructed him not to stop to eat or drink but to return directly home to Judah when he had completed his assignment.

Based on this directive from the Lord, he went to Bethel. As he prophesied against the idolatrous altars, they miraculously split apart, and the ashes were poured out on the ground. As he departed Bethel according to the Lord's instructions, an "old prophet," who heard of what had happened, saddled his donkey, caught up with the "man of God" and invited him to his home to eat and drink.

When the "man of God" recounted to the "old prophet" what the Lord had instructed him, the "old prophet" said, "'I am a prophet like you, and an angel spoke to me by the word of the Lord, saying, 'Bring him back with you into your house so that he may eat bread and drink water'" (1 Kings 13:18). The "old prophet," however, was lying.

The "man of God" went back with the "old prophet" in contradiction to the instructions the Lord had given him; and as a result of his disobedience, he lost his life and was not buried in the burial ground of his ancestors.

With this story so vividly impressed on his mind, Whitefield knew what he must do. He sent back a reply to Wesley in which he said, "I cannot return to London." Whitefield said no to Wesley's "thus saith the Lord."

History has demonstrated that Whitefield made the correct decision, for he became the major figure in the Great Awakening that rocked Colonial America and prepared her for statehood. Everywhere he went, great revival followed his preaching.

Because of God's blessing on his labors, he became the most recognizable person in colonial America and Thomas S. Kidd, who teaches history at Baylor University, calls him "America's Spiritual Founding Father."

We can all be thankful that Whitefield said no to Wesley's "thus saith the Lord."
I pray that God will helps us to always take the right decision[s] at all time in Jesus name. Amen...! 

Pasted from: Charisma Magazine.

God bless you.

The Flesh

   If a man or woman does not know himself/herself or who he/she truly is, nine out of ten times, he will take the wrong decision. That is why spiritual knowledge is very crucial.

Who Are You?

   Do you know who you are? Do you know why you do the things that you do? Do you know why you respond to situations the way that you respond? Do you know why you get angry? Do you know why you don’t get angry? Do you know why you make the choices you make? Do you know what motivates your life?

 

If you don’t know who you are, nine out of ten times, you will take the wrong decisions. And if somebody keeps taking the wrong decision, his life can never make any progress.

    As a reminder,  man is - spirit - soul and body.  The body, which is known as the FLESH, is the outer part. Let us use an egg as an illustration; an egg is made up of three parts, the shell, albumen (the white matter) and the yoke. The real life is inside the yoke. But the shell is necessary as a house ,case container for the yoke and the albumen, once you break the shell, the egg is finished you don’t have an egg anymore. Once the shell is broken, the shell has finished its work, it is thrown away, it can’t be used again for the same purpose.

   That is the way the body of a human is once this flesh is destroyed, once it is broken, the spirit man and the soul goes out, and we say or hear,  a man is dead. But while the man is alive, his flesh has the capacity to suffocate the spirit-man and suffocate the soul. However, whatever God is going to do in any life, God is going to work through the spirit.

   Therefore, your flesh must be submissive; your flesh must be broken . The resistance and the sinfulness that is in the flesh must be destroyed. When people do terrible things, they smoke, they commit adultery, they tell lies, and they gamble, it is not the devil, it is the flesh. When people gossip, slander, harbour unforgiveness, or are malicious, it is not Satan, it is the flesh.

   There are people whose lives are controlled by the flesh. They never mind their own business, it is not the devil, it is the flesh. There are people who bear grudge, they are so stingy, so selfish, some are so self-centred, and yet some are so proud; for some they crave for recognition and unless you give them, there will be trouble. It is not Lucifer, it is the flesh. If the flesh is what is controlling a life; the person is going to have a hard life. You will be wondering why people don’t like you, you will wonder why wherever you go people seem to resist you, and you will wonder why you pray, and it never get answered. What some people do is that they transfer the responsibility of their personal weakness to a devil. Some transfer it to an invisible and imaginary enemy and some churches encourage them by teaching them to pray: “All the enemies of my life, all the enemies of my progress, all the enemies in the village, all the enemies in Lagos.”

   The bitter truth is, there is no enemy anywhere; you are the enemy of yourself

If you don’t know yourself, you will not face reality, you will keep blaming other peole. It is unfortunate, there are a lot of Christians who blame everybody under the sun but themselves, but in actual fact, they are the problem of themselves.

   Many claim ancestors who are supposed to be sleeping in peace inside the grave are responsible for their problem.  Some will say they are going to break ‘ancestral covenants’.  which they believe are the ones that keep troubling them every time.What has ancestral covenants got to do with you?

   “They say it is something in the village that the ancestors used to worship...  The scriptures say, “if any man be in Christ, he is a new creation, old things are passed away.” Whatever your ancestors worshipped, he has died with it. If you chose not to worship that thing, it cannot exercise dominion over you. It can’t.  It is what you surrender yourself to that can have dominion over you. So if you surrender yourself to anger, anger will have dominion over you, if submit yourself to unforgiveness, unforgiveness will have dominion over you. If you submit yourself to adultery, adultery will control your life, when you surrender yourself to drinking; drinking of alcohol will control your life. The bible says, “Whoever you yield your members to, the servant you are” if you submit to a man, then you become the servant of that person... (to be continued)

God bless you.

The Present-Day Christian and His Emotions

 In some Christian circles, repressing or disavowing authentic emotions is considered a virtue or perhaps even a gift of Spirit. Denying anger, ignoring pain, skipping over depression, running from loneliness, and avoiding doubt are not only considered normal but actually virtuous ways of living out one’s spiritual life.

But this is not the model we find in Jesus, who freely expressed his emotions without shame or embarrassment:

• He shed tears (Luke 19:41).
• He was filled with joy (Luke 10:21).
• He felt overwhelmed with grief (Mark 14:34).
• He was angry and distressed (Mark 3:5).
• He was sorrowful and troubled (Matthew 26:37).
• His heart was moved with compassion (Luke 7:13).
• He expressed amazement (Mark 6:6, Luke 7:9).

Jesus was anything but an emotionally frozen Messiah.

In Gethsemane, we see a fully human Jesus—anguished, sorrowful, and spiritually overwhelmed. He is pushed to the extremes of his human limits: “and being in anguish, he prayed more earnestly, and his sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground” (Luke 22:44).

So, we must ask ourselves: Where did we get the idea that acknowledging and expressing authentic emotion is somehow less than spiritual? And why do we believe that we can—or somehow should—grow in spiritual maturity without simultaneously growing in emotional maturity?

And then there’s the example of Job:

After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his

birth. He said:

“May the day of my birth perish,

and the night that said, ‘A boy is conceived!’

That day—may it turn to darkness;

may God above not care about it;

may no light shine on it.

May gloom and utter darkness claim it once more. . . .

If only my anguish could be weighed

and all my misery be placed on the scales!

It would surely outweigh the sand of the seas—no

wonder my words have been impetuous.

The arrows of the Almighty are in me,

my spirit drinks in their poison;

God’s terrors are marshaled against me.”

(Job 3:1—5a; 6:1—4)

Job was one of the richest men in the world in his day. In contemporary terms, his assets would have included a fleet of Rolls-Royces, private airplanes, yachts, thriving global companies, and significant real estate holdings. “He was the greatest man among all the people of the East” (Job 1:3). After a series of natural disasters, however, something unthinkable happens—Job is reduced to poverty and his ten children are killed in a terrible natural disaster. When he attempts to get on his feet, he is infected with “sore boils” from the soles of his feet to the top of his head. Physically, it looks like he is about to die at any moment. His wife’s compassionate counsel? “Curse God and die” (Job 2:9).

Job finds himself alone, isolated, and living outside the city walls in the garbage dump. As the text indicates, Job is very angry. But there is a lesson for us even in Job’s anger. Here is how author Philip Yancey describes it:

One bold message in the Book of Job is that you can say anything to God. Throw at him your grief, your anger, your doubt, your bitterness, your betrayal, your disappointment—he can absorb them all. As often as not, spiritual giants of the Bible are shown contendingwith God. They prefer to go away limping, like Jacob, rather than to shut God out. In this respect, the Bible prefigures a tenet of modern psychology: you can’t really deny your feelings or make them disappear, so you might as well express them. God can deal with every human response save one. He cannot abide the response I fall back on instinctively: an attempt to ignore him or treat him as though he does not exist. That response never once occurred to Job.”

In the same way, God invites us to feel our emotions, experiencing them without self-condemnation, and exploring them in his loving presence.

Question to Consider

In what ways do you tend to suppress or deny difficult emotions—anger, sadness, fear—rather than admit them to yourself and God?

Prayer

Father, the idea of being emotionally transparent with you—especially when my emotions are raw—is very difficult. In fact, it almost seems disrespectful. Thank you, Lord, that you love all of me—the good, the bad, and the ugly—and that your love is without conditions. In Jesus’ name, amen.

________

Adapted from Emotionally Healthy Relationships Day by Day: A 40-Day Journey to Deeply Change Your Relationships by Peter Scazzero. 

In this groundbreaking devotional book, Peter Scazzero reintroduces and expands upon the ancient spiritual discipline of the Daily Office. The basic premise is simple: Christians need to intentionally stop to be with God twice each day to create a continual and easy familiarity with God’s presence for the rest of the day.

Stray Blessed.