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Amos 3:8

Everyone is terrified when a lion roars—
and ordinary people become prophets when the Lord God speaks.

 

Thought for the day – Speaking up

Recently we had a discussion about the Holy Spirit in the Old Testament, and how it seemed the Holy Spirit turned those people it came upon, into prophets. Think King Saul, David, Moses, Ballam and Bezalel. It didn’t happen in the same way we as Christians are filled with the Holy Spirit but rather it was for the empowerment of a task. And as I said, the majority of the time they prophesied.

 

And I find myself asking the question, if those that Spirit moved in in the OT prophesied, why don’t we who are the people of God, filled with the Holy Spirit prophesy more. I know that prophecy is a gift of the Spirit and that the Prophet is one of the ministries in the fivefold ministry Paul lists in Ephesians. And I wonder if we think that we can’t prophesy because we may not have the gift or because we don’t think we fit into the elevated fivefold ministry, something that is our assumption rather than an actual Biblical reality. But we can all prophesy. That’s prophecy from Joel and actually as Amos puts it we can all prophesy when God needs something said. 

So the question is ‘What is God asking you to prophesy about.’ It doesn’t have to speaking truth to power. But how about speaking truth to a friend. Or reminding people of how much God loves them. These are all types of prophecy. God’s word to his people and his world. When God speaks ordinary people become prophets.



This blog post is part of the Walking the Way Podcast series. All views expressed in this essay are those of the author. This essay is freely available under Creative Commons License with Attribution-ShareAlike, allowing users to share it in other mediums/formats and adapt/translate the content as long as an attribution link, indication of changes, and the same Creative Commons License applies to that material.

 

This work is licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0


 

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