I hope you don’t mind me thinking out loud. This is a thought process at present… I was having a conversation with my good friend Hitchmo at the pub last night that has got me thinking today. We were talking about how you can deal with a situation into which God gives you insight long before it happens and how you can carry this sensation. I shan’t go into details of what we were actually talking about but I have since been thinking about the notion of prophetic insight and praying about what one can do in a situation such as this.
The prophets of the church had a huge responsibility in Biblical times. They had to relay God’s instruction to His people. This has not changed today and often we claim that prophecy should only be encouraging or uplifting. I am not always sure if this is the case – I know that before now, God has revealed things to me that are not encouraging or uplifting and I have not quite known what to do about them. Are we afraid, as a church, to tell people that they have to change the way that they are in order to avoid a destructive path?
Wisdom is the ability to apply knowledge, experience, understanding, common sense and insight. Prophecy, if you like, is knowledge, understanding and insight from God, so wisdom (the application of prophecy in this case) is key. However, you cannot ‘apply’ the prophetic without discernment, which is a bit like wisdom’s filtration system.
Jesus knew all along that he was going to die on the cross. The prophets alluded to it and he did too, but he didn’t spend his entire ministry telling everyone that he was going to die a grueling death. He preached the Word of God. If he had gone to everyone and said “I am going to be crucified because of all the stuff that you get wrong” they might not have believed him and they wouldn’t have understood. Instead, he demonstrated who he was and taught about the one from whom he came (the one that he was). In doing this, he prepared the world for his death and resurrection. He had to carry the whole picture, being the ultimate prophet. He had to use wisdom, to know how to relay that message, but also discernment in order to know how to filter that message.
Then I started to think about the whole notion of death and resurrection and how it applies to so much of life. It occurs, obviously, when we become Christians – we put our old self behind us and become renewed in God. It also happens, similarly, in nature. A tree does not become a whole different tree (as the Bible says, who can re-enter their mother’s womb and be born again?) but it does shed off its old leaves and grow new ones.
The church also experiences periods of death and resurrection. It is incredibly painful during the time of ‘death’ but if you know God’s promise of resurrection you will come out the other side. The thing with all of this is that Jesus had to choose to do God’s will and be put to death. In the same way, the church has to be willing to ‘put to death’ its old ways and embrace the new. It is very hard to do this, but it is necessary. One thing I have always wondered, about the Easter story, is how on earth did Saturday feel? We talk about Good Friday and Easter Sunday, but I imagine that the say in between must have been the longest day of earth’s life. Imagine the doubt, the devastation, the unrest, the despair and everything else that must have occurred at that time. Would I have clung to the fact that in three days he would rise again if I was there? Probably not, I think I would have jumped straight to “Why has this happened?” ”What do we do now God?” ”I just can’t see it”. Perhaps it is Saturday in the church at the moment. We do, after all live in Saturday times – the time between Jesus completing his task on the cross and Him coming again. Let’s not lose sight of the promise.
