From Dream to Destiny: The Ten Tests You Must Go Through to Fulfill God's Purpose for Your Life (16 page)

So he explained exactly what he meant.

Prophecy is like water that is coming out of a pure-water hose. It comes from God, and it is pure when it comes from God. It is pure when it comes from the hose. But we are like the window screen, and the water goes through us. Sometimes our screens are dirty. So even though the water is clean when it comes out of the hose, if there is dirt in our screen, the water will have some dirt in it when it comes out on the other side.

There are prophets who have come and ministered at my church, and their screens were judgmental. It was like they were hearing from God, but everything they were saying was tinted with harshness or judgment.

So when that pastor had said, “Thank you for coming with a clean screen,” he was just thanking me for allowing God’s prophetic words to flow to his congregation without mixing in “dirt” from my own personality or my own issues.

That pastor had learned to do what the Bible says to do: to judge prophecies (see 1 Cor. 14:29). And that is what we must learn to do with prophecies. We must learn to discern what is dirt from the screen and what is the pure word that comes from God.

How We Judge Prophecy

We Judge Prophecy by the Word of God

We must judge prophecy and test it. And the first way we judge prophecy is by holding it up to the Word of God. The Word of God is always our standard. God never contradicts Himself, so a true prophecy will never contradict the Word of God.

God makes this very plain in Deuteronomy 13. He warns us that there will be prophecies which contradict His Word, and that these false prophecies will sometimes even be accompanied by signs and miracles.

If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, “Let us go after other gods”—which you have not known—“and let us serve them,” you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams, for the L
ORD
your God is testing you to know whether you love the L
ORD
your God with all your heart and with all your soul (Deut. 13:1-3).

God is letting us know that we should never listen to a prophecy which contradicts His Word—even if that prophecy is accompanied by the prediction of a sign or miracle which comes to pass! If a prophecy contradicts God’s Word, it is not a prophecy from God—because God never contradicts Himself! He never says one thing in His Word and
something else through prophecy. That is why God’s Word must always be our standard.

And God actually calls this a test (see Deut. 13:3). He says He is
testing
us in these situations. Will we love the Lord our God with all of our heart and with all of our soul? If we do, we will hold fast to His Word, no matter what. We will hold fast to His Word, and not to signs or miracles or false prophecies. We must judge every prophecy by the Word of God, allowing God’s Word to be the final answer.

I never cease to be amazed at the fact that some people have actually told me, “God told me to do this” or “God told me to do that.” And it is all too obvious that God never told them anything of the kind—because what they had been “told” to do was a clear violation of His Word! God is not going to contradict what He has said in the Bible.

We must go by the standard. And the standard is God’s Word. The standard has nothing to do with whether someone gives you a prophetic word and you think that word is right. If that word doesn’t line up with the Word of God, it is not right! Don’t tell me God told you to do something which contradicts what the Bible says—He didn’t. If it is contrary to the Scriptures, you have not heard the voice of God.

This is the prophetic test. Joseph had to take it and so do we: “Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the L
ORD
tested him” (Ps. 105:19).

No matter what you hear, no matter what you see, no matter what you experience, will you be faithful to the word that God has spoken? Will you hold fast to God’s Word, no matter what trial you might be going through? Will you hold fast to God’s Word, no matter what the circumstances might be saying?

We Judge Prophecy by the Inward Witness

Another way we judge prophecy is by the inward witness—by holding it up to what God is saying to us in our own hearts. After all, the Bible says, “The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit” (Rom. 8:16). That just means that our own human spirit can recognize the Spirit of God when He is talking. When our spirit recognizes the Holy Spirit, the Holy Spirit
is bearing witness with our spirit. And the more we know God, the more readily we will recognize His voice.

There may be times when you receive a prophecy, but it just doesn’t seem to agree with what God has been speaking to you personally. It doesn’t contradict God’s written Word, yet it just doesn’t seem to line up with what the Holy Spirit has been speaking to you in your own spirit. If that should happen, don’t be concerned about it. Just put that prophecy on the shelf. If that word is from God, He will eventually make that clear to you in your own spirit. And if it is not from God, it can just stay on that shelf!

Someone once asked me, “Aren’t I supposed to be faithful to the prophecy?”

“No,” I replied. “You’re supposed to be faithful to God! Just stay faithful to Him. If you don’t understand a prophecy, just tell God about it and give it to Him. Say, ‘God I don’t understand this right now. If this is Your word for me, I will embrace it. But for now, God, I choose to embrace
You.
I choose to trust in
You.
And I trust that every word that
You
have truly spoken will come to pass in my life.’”

Judge every prophecy by the Word of God and the faith of God.

In Jeremiah 35 there is a great example of a situation in which prophecy had to be judged by the inward witness. The Rechabites had received a word from their father, Jonadab, not to drink wine—and then they received another word that contradicted the first one (see Jer. 35:5-6). Were they to listen to the “prophet” Jeremiah? Or were they to hold fast to the word that their father had commanded them?

God had told Jeremiah to go set wine before the Rechabites and tell them to drink it (see Jer. 35:1-2). So Jeremiah obeyed God. He called the Rechabites, put wine in front of them and said, “Drink wine” (Jer. 35:5). What were the Rechabites to do? Their father had commanded them not to drink wine—but now, a true prophet of the Lord was commanding them to drink wine! Do you know what the Rechabites said to Jeremiah?

The Rechabites said, “You are telling us to drink wine, but that can’t possibly be right. Because God already gave a word to our father, Jonadab, that we were not supposed to drink wine. God has already spoken to us about this” (see Jer. 35:6-8).

Jeremiah was a true prophet of the Lord, and he was obeying God by telling them to drink wine. But
this was a test.
And the word Jeremiah spoke to the Rechabites did not bear witness with them. It didn’t contradict God’s written Word. But it did contradict what God had
already told them to do
through their father Jonadab. And the prophetic word of their father Jonadab still witnessed with them as being the true word of God. So they judged the prophecy from Jeremiah, and they did not obey it. They obeyed the prophetic word that had first been given to them, and that word seemed right.

Then God said to Jeremiah, “Now you go and tell Israel about this. Tell them that the Rechabites are obeying the word that was given to them by their father—but you Israelites are not obeying the Words that I gave to your fathers” (see Jer. 35:12-14).

God told Jeremiah to do this in order to show us something. When God has spoken to us, we must hold fast to His Word and obey it. We must hold fast to His written Word, and we must also hold fast to his prophetic word. And we must judge every prophetic word by the Word of God and the witness of the spirit.

Every Word from God Is Submitted to the God of the Word

Remember, there is a human element to prophecy—because prophets are human beings speaking God’s words to other human beings. And all words from God are submitted to the God of the Word. That means that every word of prophecy is submitted to God who has spoken it. Now can I blow your theology, just for a minute?

The Bible tells us of a true prophet who had a true word from God—
but that word did not come to pass!
That prophet was Jonah. I would say Jonah was definitely a true prophet, wouldn’t you? After all, he did get his very own book of the Bible, and that’s not bad! But Jonah spoke a true prophecy from God, and that prophecy did not come to pass. We tend to think that if someone is a true prophet, then all of his or her prophecies will come to pass. But that is not always the case, because
every word of God is submitted to the God of the Word.

Jonah disobeyed God’s command at first, but then later he obeyed. He went to Nineveh and said what God told him to say: “In forty days Nineveh will be destroyed” (see Jonah 3:4). Notice Jonah didn’t say, “Repent, or you will be destroyed.” No, he simply said, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh
shall
be overthrown!” (Jonah 3:4, emphasis added).

But 40 days went by, and guess what happened? Nineveh was not destroyed! Why? The word Jonah had spoken was a true word from God. But
all words from God are submitted to the God of the Word.
And when the people of Nineveh heard God’s word, they decided they didn’t want to be destroyed, and they repented. The Bible says that when they repented, “God relented from the disaster that He had said He would bring upon them, and He did not do it” (Jonah 3:10).

In other words, God changed His mind about what He had said He was going to do! When the people of Nineveh turned to God, God turned the prophecy.

You would expect that Jonah would have been glad to see that an entire city had been saved from destruction through his prophetic ministry. Jonah had obeyed God and spoken God’s prophetic word to Nineveh; and as a result, the city had repented and was not destroyed. But Jonah was not happy about it. Instead, he was very angry—because now it looked as though he was a false prophet. Because of God’s mercy on Nineveh, Jonah’s prophecy had not come to pass!

Jonah even admitted to God that this was why he had refused to obey God in the first place and had fled to Tarshish.

Therefore I fled previously to Tarshish; for I know that You are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abundant in lovingkindness, One who relents from doing harm. Therefore now, O L
ORD
, please take my life from me, for it is better for me to die than to live! (Jonah 4:2-3).

Because now it looked to the people of Nineveh as though Jonah was a false prophet, he had decided it would be better to die, rather than face the fact that the prophecy he had spoken did not come to
pass. He was more concerned with the word God had spoken through him than with pleasing the God who had spoken it. I am sorry to say that I have been amazed to see this occur sometimes in those who move in the prophetic—they would rather be right about their prophecies than have a whole nation turn to God! (That was a pretty strong statement—wasn’t it?)

Jonah’s situation was not unusual. Isaiah was a true prophet of God—and yet Isaiah also spoke a word from God that did not come to pass. God sent Isaiah to King Hezekiah and told him to say, “Thus says the L
ORD
: Set your house in order, for you shall die and not live” (Isa. 38:1).

That was a true word of prophecy from the Lord. But when Hezekiah heard that prophecy, he prayed and asked God to change His mind. Then the word of the Lord came a second time to Isaiah and said, “Go and tell Hezekiah, ‘Thus says the L
ORD
, the God of David your father: “I have heard your prayer, I have seen your tears; surely I will add to your days fifteen years”’” (Isa. 38:5).

Because Hezekiah humbled himself and prayed, God had mercy on Hezekiah. God changed His mind, and He then spoke another word about Hezekiah’s future—a word that was radically different from the first word. So the first true word of the Lord that Isaiah had spoken did not come to pass.