Banding Together 4/24/24 What Have I Done: questions about my calling

1 Thessalonians 5:19–20 (NET): 5:19 Do not extinguish the Spirit. 5:20 Do not treat prophecies with contempt.

When I was told decades ago that I had the gift of prophecy, in what I understood to be a “DTS” Bible church, I was surprised. How could a cessationist church tell me my spiritual gift was prophecy?? Also, I was not sure I liked the pronouncement. Prophets suffered. If the pastoral staff and Spiritual Gifts Inventory were correct and I was called to the tasks of a prophet? Gee. Thanks.

Over my more than 26 years in this local church, elders, staff and members planting hundreds of churches in two communist countries (Russia and Cuba) ended cessationist thinking. Things occurred among these hundreds of church plantings that were clearly the full range of spiritual gift activity. The Spirit acted. Was, however, the pronouncement about me correct? I hoped not.

I have had a “Yeah, nope…don’t want it” relationship with my reported gift. Yet, there have been many instances where I have known things within seconds with no overt source of insight. Many instances and they were proven true as I shared these things with the person in front of me. They would often exclaim, “How did you do that!” Was this prophecy or intuition? Well, the knowledge and wording to convey that knowledge also simply occurred. I learned long ago to listen to what I say.

In these instances, many times I said something and immediately thought “WHERE did THAT come from?!” It certainly was not what I was thinking. Initially, this was kind of cool. Then it wasn’t when YHWH led me to intervene in the actions of evil humans. Prophets in my experience and understanding don’t say all the happy things that typical believers equate to current prophecy. Prophets are interveners disrupting wrongdoing in the world and in believers’ human systems. I communicated YHWH’s happy intervention once in 30 years. It took 10 years to fully come to pass.

Some of those evil ones I was sent to were powerful humans. Some were respected humans. Doing what I was called to do fundamentally altered me. I became a Christian stranger in a strange land. A land below the surface of common Christian experience. A land of reefs and sharp coral.

It became abundantly clear to me that after year upon year of this work that the way I experience the world was fundamentally changed. My awareness of evil, harm, hurt, wounding in the lives around me penetrates to the center micron of my bones and soul. I suffered because of this. I suffer because of this. I am a stranger.

Prophets speaking hard things are generally disbelieved. Mocked. Sometimes silently or quietly. Sometimes openly to my face. I generally can deal with this. Having others attempt to quench the Spirit in me is extremely painful though. In low moments in my life, these folks get through my armor. The numerous wounds from opposing evil begin to speak. Amplifying my desire to flee my call. Flee prophecy and all the nasty tasks. I have fled before. More than once.

The first time after I attempted to leave my calling, YHWH confronted me on an interstate. I was driving to meet an employee at a family’s home due to the counselor’s concerns. I had never gone to a home like this before. Suddenly, just as I left town, a section of Jonah began scrolling through my mind. Never had memorized that passage. You can guess which one. I had tried to board a ship to Tarshish. This event on an interstate scared the crap out of me.

When I got off the interstate and reached the house? A child’s intense screaming could be heard from the street. I quizzed the parents on why the boy was screaming. The child’s surgeon, in the ER hours before, blew off the parents’ concerns and the boy’s pain. I scooped the 8 year old up. Put him in my car and drove him to a pediatrician I trusted. The boy’s bone was infected. After a month hospitalized on IV antibiotics ordered by the pediatrician, the 8 year old recovered. He would not have a permanently and painfully damaged limb. Was this prophecy?

Yes, in my opinion, prophecy is about system change via disclosure of YHWH’s speaking into a situation and/or answering YHWH’s call to action on behalf of his people and of those at risk without the ability to fight back. Had I not been at that home, been prompted to act and acted? My employee would never have done what I did. It was a huge risk challenging a surgeon’s contempt for a family system whose only ‘crime’ was poverty and little education. My going to Tarshish could have left an 8 year old boy in indescribable pain with a limb permanently deformed. What had I almost done?

I ended, then, even considering an escape attempt. Yet, years later, there was a second attempt and even an attempt to escape the second escape. This time I made it all the way out of my profession and became an employee in a for-profit company for 9 years. A Christian owned company.

My consequence? I spent 7 years silently witnessing to an executive, an avowed “mechanical Christian,” that was a key lay leader in his church. YHWH would not let me speak to this man until 7 years in when, while in tears, this brutal man said, “You think God sent you to me don’t you?” My reply? One word. “Yes.” The man’s reply, “I do to.”

My only allowed means over 7 years to confront his emotional abuse of employees, his family, etc. was to live out true Christianity in his office, in the company and to never retaliate against him. This was incredibly difficult.

If you know OT prophets, they had 2 main tasks. First, speak YHWH’s truth to power. Second, witness against a person or persons by highlighting error via the prophet’s statements or the prophet’s actions. I was called to the second. Physical witnessing.

Prophets are also at times sucked along by the sin of those they intervene with and disrupt. This meant that I intimately witnessed YHWH’s destruction of this man’s idols. Like him, in 1998, YHWH took my idol, my intelligence. I knew the pain and embarrassment of idols destroyed piece by piece. Step by step. For 2 years, I was there with this man. I knew intimately what I was watching.

I watched him lose his family in a horrible abandonment and divorce. Control and money were his only gods even as a leader within his church. The man’s blindness to YHWH’s truth cost him almost everything. His gods failed him. My living witness before this man cost me my health.

Ironically, 4 years into the 7, I tried to escape the escape via a new job at a well known Christian company. A company called Logos. I could not believe what came out of my mouth to tube my second round interview. Why could I not control my speech? Yeah. No new job. I remained stuck silently witnessing YHWH’s message as a prophet.

My accumulating physical struggles from the stress of 7 years of abuse heaped on me plus amplification of the stress while I watched this man suffer his consequences brought 1 word from YHWH that kept showing up. Endure. Endure. Endure. My wife and I prayed hard for 3 years for me to be released. No. The same word always came back, endure. I did. Until a replacement witness from within this man’s church finally appeared. Finally, I was released after 7 years.

I quickly ended up at Mayo Clinic in 2016 from the 7 years of profound stress. Fourteen months of brutal outpatient treatment followed my Mayo Clinic ultimate diagnosis. The treatment was successful, but I could not work during this time for 18 months.

Over the years, I have been used to confront devastating sin in the lives of CEOs, CFOs, executives in business and more disturbingly pastors, leaders and elders in multiple churches. I did not seek to do this. Evil came to me. I did not chase it. I never wanted any of it. I have again suffered multiple major medical issues due to the pounding my body has taken doing this work over and over and over for the last 30 of my 43 years of serving Christ.

Am I a prophet? Given YHWH’s tasking that I never wanted, never pursued, yet kept finding myself dropped into repeatedly for 30 years? Umm, well, I think so. It would seem to fit. I would still rather say, “Nope, don’t want it.” Yet, I can’t. Or more precisely, I won’t.

As Paul writes to the Thessalonians, I cannot treat the tasks of my life with contempt. What the Spirit has done through me? I cannot blaspheme. Even if those around me doubt me. Say that prophecy ceased. Say that what I did does not fit their theological definitions. Ultimately, I will know if I was a prophet.

I will know at the great white throne, if I was right or wrong in accepting in my own mind the title of prophet. When I answer at the throne for what I have done.

I mentally accepted the title in trying to make sense of and to cope with a complex and difficult life. I pray that I truly repeatedly answered a call to be a prophet…and…that I was not a fool. That taking the title of prophet in my own thoughts was not my old enemy, arrogance, acting yet again.

Yet, it is better for me to be a fool than for me to blaspheme the Holy Spirit.

Do not extinguish the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt.