The good - the best´s worst enemy?

To be able to hear God´s prophetic
voice, your thinking needs to come in
line with the Word of God in the Bible.

But the biggest hinderance to hear
God can actually be your until today
knowledge of God.

How come? God always wants his
people to proceed, to take new steps in
faith. Not in panic but in steps, and to
enter new portals.

But if we trust too much in what we
have learned about God until now - we
may be found resisting what he has for
the future.

God will not speak against the words
which has built us up to where we are
as per today.

But - as we never get to an end of
learning, there will always be a mix in
our current understanding; a mix of
God´s revelation and man´s thoughts.

So for each new step God wants us to
take, there may be a struggle between
voices inside, or there may be a
hesitation; is this really God speaking,
does this new really come from him?

This can become a dangerous hinder-
ance for the people of God, the Army
of God, to proceed.

We do need to meek ourselves on our
knees and ask God when we see new
things and we don´t understand them.

Otherwise the risk is that we backtalk
the new or the prophetic, and we keep
to "what is safe and well-known".

The thing is that the safe will then work
for a while, but the spiritual life may
eventually turn more and more barren,
instead of being the land of milk and
honey.

This phenomena can affect a congre-
gation, so that there is only room for
the pastors calling and maybe the
teachers.

While the apostle, the evangelist and
not the least the higher prophetic call -
find no place, and are not encouraged
among the youth that carries such a
call.

If the congregation get stuck in a
theological question and the teaching
ministry is lacking, it may mostly be
the pastor that gets the last word.

One example: the prophetic view on
Israel and the church´s Esther call may
be silenced - "as there are so many dif-
ferent opinions in the church, let´s just
be friends, and stay quiet where we
disagree".

Or the unbiblical view will actually
reign, like in the Swedish state church,
where it is believed no longer necessary
at all to receive Christ as savior.

The hinderance for the church´s devel-
opment can often be related to the
ideology in the region or in the country.

For example Sweden is more affected
by socialism than we understand.
Therefore the church easily gets in-
volved in charity (which is a good
thing), but lack a prophetic under-
standing in sometimes very important
areas or tasks.

/Björn Hellman