There’s a saying that’s been going around that the younger generation of go-getters seems to have adopted as their mantra: the simple, to-the-point notion that success leaves clues. There’s an entire subculture of young people seeking out successful older people and interviewing them, hoping to get some insight into how they succeeded in their chosen careers and made a name for themselves. Granted, most of the people who watch these videos go no further than watching them and remain in the state they’ve always been in, wasting time as though it were an infinite commodity, but we can take the same idea and apply it to the spiritual, understanding that what has worked in the past, will work in the present, and will likewise work in the future.
Testimonies are a great source of encouragement and
edification, but if all we do is listen to testimonies without applying the
lessons the individuals learned along the way, we’re just spinning our wheels,
wasting time, and finding excuses not to execute on what we’ve learned.
It’s not that I’m discounting what passes for prophets and
prophetesses today because I’m mean-spirited or because I don’t believe you can
go to heaven via a porta-potty, which I don’t, but that’s just me, but because
the people claiming to be prophets and prophetesses aren’t doing what prophets
and prophetesses have done since the beginning of prophecy in the Bible.
I have yet to find one prophet or prophetess in the Bible who
had glam sessions, drew the attention unto themselves, said things contrary to
God’s word, or insisted that they were the one and true messenger alive today,
and all others were pretenders to their throne.
Luke 2:36-38, “Now there was one, Anna, a prophetess, the
daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher. She was of a great age, and had
lived with a husband seven years from her virginity; and this woman was a widow
of about eighty-four years, who did not depart from the temple, but served God
with fastings and prayers night and day. And coming in that instant she gave
thanks to the Lord, and spoke of Him to all those who looked for redemption in
Jerusalem.”
Here, we have a woman the word of God refers to as a
prophetess. She didn’t claim the title, call down the mantle, insist to
everyone else that she was the bee’s knees. She was widowed after seven years
of marriage, and well into her eighties, she yet served God with fastings and
prayers night and day.
She didn’t ease up on the throttle because she was getting on
in age; she didn’t go and retire in a senior citizen community in Boca after
having fleeced the gullible by telling the spiritualized fairy tales. Night and
day, she fasted and prayed.
She is remembered not for the prophecies she uttered but for
the faithfulness she personified. Her life consisted of fasting and prayer.
That was it. No public relations firms, no guest appearances on another
prophetess’s television show, no workshops on how other women could become
prophetesses; she fasted, prayed, and spoke of Jesus to all those who looked
for redemption in Jerusalem.
Her purpose wasn’t to spotlight herself or her
accomplishments, to build up her ministry, or to be a name in the evangelical
community; it was to serve the best way she could, which was with fastings and
prayers night and day. Yes, I know. I’ve been repeating that she fasted and prayed
night and day like a chorus or a hook line, but lest we forget, repetition is
the mother of learning.
Before you ask, yes, it matters. The reason it matters is
because women on their fourth husbands who look like blowfish from all the
Botox they’ve had shoved into their faces, who haven’t said a prayer since
Ronald Reagan was president, and who don’t even know the meaning of fasting,
are prancing around insisting that you show them deference and treat them with reverence
because they have decided they were prophetesses. I guess it beats emptying
bedpans for a living, but at what cost?
Ezekiel 13:3, “Thus says the Lord God: ‘Woe to the foolish
prophets, who follow their own spirit and have seen nothing!’”
That’s God’s take on it, but I’m sure the ladies who claim to
make multiple trips to heaven on a given Tuesday have His ear and give Him
advice as to how He should run the universe can make Him see the error of His
ways.
One cannot claim gifting, prophetic or otherwise, without a
life consistent in prayer and fasting.
But how do you know they don’t fast and pray? Because if they
did, the fear of the Lord would be evident in the words they spoke, the things
they said, and the claims they made. When you begin to claim things
antithetical to what the Bible says without batting an eye, there is no fear of
the Lord in you, and if there is no fear of the Lord in you, there is no life
devoted to prayer and fasting in you either.
We need to stop with the whole " God is doing a new
thing " thing because He hasn’t done a new thing for millennia, and He’s
not about to start now, especially when that new thing implies Him going
against His Word in order to do it.
If God changes not, then neither does the way He interacts
with His servants, nor does the standard He holds His servants to. No change means
no change. Not some selective changes, not changes based on the culture or the
generation He is addressing, no change! Just because certain individuals don’t
want to do the work doesn’t mean God no longer requires the work to get done.
It demeans the God we serve when we try to lay our duplicity at His door and pretend as though He is at fault. He is God; He has commanded; we must obey.
With love in Christ,
Michael Boldea, Jr.
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