Growing In The Apostolic

Growing in the Prophetic
the area of the man’s finances. He interpreted this to mean that the man was
stealing money, but his interpretation was totally wrong!
Soon after this prophecy, the man’s business partner embezzled a large
sum of money from him. The prophetic word was a warning to the man
to watch out for someone who might steal money from him, but it was
mistakenly pronounced as a judgment against his character. The brother was
humiliated publicly by the prophetic word, and he missed the warning that
someone was stealing from him.
In this, we neglected to follow the scriptural protocol necessary in giving
corrective prophecies. If the man was in fact guilty of financial sin, then he
should have been approached privately as called for in Matthew 18:15–17.
If we had interpreted the prophetic word accurately as a gracious warning
from God to help the man prevent someone stealing from him, then it would
have been spoken differently. It would have been spoken something like, “The
Lord is indicating there is a dark cloud over you in the financial arena. Let’s
pray that God will protect you from the enemy’s attack.” If we had properly
distinguished between the revelation and the interpretation, perhaps the
warning could have prevented the financial loss.
Interpreting Prophecy
Through Our Pride
When someone prophesies to us about our promotion, we must guard our
hearts against believing everything that is prophesied to us simply because
we want it to be true. It is easy to accept prophecies that are not based in
truth because of our unperceived ambition that helps us to believe great
things about our ministries whether or not the Lord confirms them in an
authentic way. Prophetic words that promise us future promotion can stir up
our pride just as gasoline stirs up a fire. Because we long for such words to be
true in our lives, we do not always apply the same standards of truth to them
as we would if we were helping a friend interpret prophecies over his or her
life. In other words, some people will run with positive prophecies without
really caring if they are truly from God.
I have received plenty of flattering prophetic words that simply were not
true. I just push “delete” and move on and forget them. If we find our identity
in Jesus, then we are not as prone to be a sucker for flattering words that
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