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Discipleship Focus: Prophet
- Prophet: A prophet is one of the fivefold ministry categories that is used throughout the Bible. The prophet is primarily concerned with whether or not the people are hearing the voice of God. The prophet is also concerned about whether or not the people are responding to God’s voice.
This is a
great chapter to look deeply at the life of the prophet and how they relate to
the world. It’s also a great chapter to
have a challenging look at the Lord, too, if you are willing. But each of these looks are not without their
challenge.
What does it
mean to be a true prophet? Well, the
true prophet is usually an unpopular sort.
Do you hear the king of Israel’s reaction to Micaiah? The king doesn’t want to hear Micaiah. Micaiah doesn’t tell him what he wants to
hear!
This is such
an incredibly honest perspective. As a
prophet, you can either give people what they want to hear or you can give them
the truth. If you give people what they
want to hear, then you will have their favor.
However, it also means that you will have to lie, speak only shallow
things, or avoid the truth. If you
decide to speak the truth, then you are going to have to accept that you will
be telling people things they don’t want to hear. The truth usually hurts. When we look in the mirror honestly, we
usually see the things we don’t enjoy seeing.
The king of Israel hates Micaiah because Micaiah forces him to see the
things he doesn’t want to see.
Welcome to
the life of the prophet. It’s what
prophets do. They are usually wise
because they care more about truth than making people happy. They care more about obediently presenting
the ways of God than having loads of friends and being all kinds of popular.
In a weird
way, let’s look at the perspective of God that Micaiah gives, too. Micaiah speaks about a vision he had of the
Lord. The Lord decides to entice the
king. Is the Lord being deceptive? No.
The Lord isn’t actually deceiving the king. The Lord knows that the king will not listen
to truth. Therefore, the Lord decides to
encourage the king to go into a situation where he will be confronted with the
truth since he will not listen to it.
The king decides to go up into battle in spite of Micaiah’s warning that
he will die. The king tries to out-think
God and fails. The king takes an arrow
in a vulnerable spot and has to come face to face with truth. Micaiah, and more importantly the Lord, was
right.
Prophets are
about as popular as the truth. Humanity
likes to parade around that we are all about the truth. We are about some truth. We want scientific truth. We want political truth. But we don’t usually want personal
truth. We don’t want truth that pertains
to us. We don’t want the truth that
challenges us to grow and change. That’s
what makes Micaiah unpopular in the worldly kingdom of Israel.
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