We have a prophetic chatroom that is designed to be a safe place for people to learn to move in the prophetic and to improve their ability to hear God's voice. We had a difficult situation arise in the chatroom that has left many of the regulars asking themselves some "hard" questions. I want to address some of those questions, because I think that they are relevant to everyone. (I don't claim to have all the answers, but I hope my insights will be helpful in processing this type of question.)
Let me start with a little background. Our prophetic chatroom is on IRC, an interactive chat environment on the internet. People from all over the world come together in this chatroom to grow in the prophetic and to fellowship with likeminded individuals. (If you would like to know more about the room, or when the facilitated sessions are, please see www.godspeak.net/chat)
We have a small group of leaders who help me run this chatroom. One of those leaders was a lady named Vicky, who was known as "jlea." She had been a leader with us for years, and a lot of people knew her from the chatroom. One day Vicky seemed to drop out of sight for a few months, and no one knew what was going on in her life. Her daughter contacted us about two and half weeks ago to let us know that Vicky was in the hospital with lung cancer. That was on a Wednesday. The following Saturday, one of the leaders asked those in the room to seek words of encouragement for Vicky. The words were emailed to Vicky's daughter for her to read to her Mom.
I wasn't there and I did not see the words. But apparently many of the people prophesied to her that this was not her time to die, that God had more for her to do, that she would recover, and other things along those lines. The words were all very encouraging, full of hope and a bright future. But Vicky died less that 48 hours after those words were given.
This lead to a crisis for a lot of people, and they have handled it in different ways. Some blamed themselves, or labeled themselves as false prophets. One person told me that they had spoken words of life over Vicky and now they are thinking that perhaps they should never prophesy again. Others got angry and wanted to blame someone else. A few have been openly hostile to the facilitator who asked them to seek words for Vicky, blaming her for the situation. Others are handling this by questioning the very fabric of the prophetic itself--e.g., they are wondering if prophecy is valid or if they should reject all prophetic words from here on out.
Other people did not go into a "crisis of faith" over this, but are still troubled by it, and they have a lot of questions. Some are soul-searching because they thought they heard God release words of life over Vicky, then she died right after that. Others did not release words but still question how God could allow words of life to go out in His name, and then let her die so soon afterwards. In short, the integrity of the prophetic is being called into question to one degree or another, because words of life were released and death ensued shortly afterwards.
There is no single "right answer" but I would like to throw out three things to consider.
- The words might have been God-words, but were conditional in nature.
- The words might have come from the people's hearts imitating God's voice to them because they were emotionally involved.
- There might have been spiritual warfare effecting Vicky's outcome.
Let me briefly discuss all three. I will discuss the first one this week and the other two next week.
The words might have been legitimate God-words
Many of God's words are invitational (or conditional) in nature. Some of the conditions are spelled out explicitly, and others have the conditions implicit in the word. Let me give you some examples. Isaiah 1:19 is an example of an explicit condition. It says, "If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the best from the land." The promise is prosperity and a bright future, but the condition is that you have to be willing to fulfill God's destiny and also obedient to His laws. The condition is made clear along with the promise.
Many New Testament prophecies are contingent on faith or on obedience, but these things are not mentioned in the prophecy. Both faith and obedience are very important. When Jesus healed people, He said things like, "According to your faith it will be done to you" (Matthew 9:20). When Jesus gave the great commission, He put an emphasis on obedience right in the commission. Matthew 28:20 says, "and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you..."
Now, some of the bible promises are "conditional" on these two things, but that condition is not explicitly spelled out in the promise. For instance, Jesus said in Matthew 18:19, "Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in Heaven." The promise is that if two believers agree together, they can have whatever they ask for. But that promise is contingent on "asking in faith" and on living in accord to God's principles.
If two believers agree together for something that contracts God's principles, God is not going to give that to them. Let me give you an example--this example is so outrageous you might think I am making it up, but (sadly) it is a true story. One time a pastor from Miami called me. He wanted to know how long he had to wait for God to keep His promises, because he was weary and frustrated and had been waiting over a year. I asked him what situation he was talking about. It turns out that he had marriage problems and had "fallen out of love" with his wife. He was very attracted to another woman in his congregation, who happened to be happily married to some other man. So this pastor and his elder claimed Matthew 18:19. They agreed together that the pastor's wife and the other woman's husband should both die, so that the pastor could marry this other woman. He had waited "in faith" for over a year for these two people to drop dead so that he could fulfill his carnal lusts, and he wanted to know why God wasn't keeping His promise.
Obviously, Matthew 18:19 had an implied condition--that you had to agree together for things that are in accord with God's will, but he missed that condition.
It is possible that God's promise for life for Vicky had some implied condition attached to it that was not met. Perhaps it was the "if you are willing..." portion from Isaiah 1:19. Perhaps He was offering Vicky a choice: "I have these things I'd like you to stay on earth and do for Me if you are willing..." Maybe she strongly preferred to go home to Heaven instead of having more pain/suffering here on earth.
Vicky had told me on the phone that she knows for sure she will go to Heaven and that she is not at all afraid to die. Her daughter told me that at times Vicky wanted to just "quit" and go to Heaven instead of dragging this disease out any more. Maybe God offered her a choice between staying here longer or going home. Maybe the prophetic words spoken over her were an offer that God was making to her. But God ultimately let her choose whether or not to accept that offer, and He honored her choice.
We know that God's prefect will is not always accomplished. At times He defers to our desires and requests. Look at Hezekiah for example. He had lived well and had completed all the tasks God had for him. The Lord wanted to take him home to heaven on a triumphant note. (See 2 Kings 20 for the whole story). God sent the prophet Isaiah to tell him that. But Hezekiah wanted to live longer and pleaded with God to extend his life. God knew that Hezekiah would make a mistake that would cause Israel to go into captivity to Babylon, and God's perfect will was to take Hezekiah home before he made that mistake. But God honored Hezekiah's request; He healed his fatal boil and extended his life by 15 years. And shortly after Hezekiah recovered, envoys came from Babylon to see Hezekiah's treasures, which ultimately put Jerusalem on Nebuchadnezzar's "lands-to-conquer" list.
If Hezekiah had died at God's planned time, he would have gone to Heaven with an incredible record, and that was God's perfect plan for him. But God changed His plan in response to Hezekiah's pleas, and as a result, Hezekiah got a "black mark" on his otherwise prefect record.
The whole point is that God responds to our choices. Sometimes He gives us promises that are contingent on us doing certain things (or abstaining from them). Other times, God takes our will and desires into consideration, and He has been know to change His prophetic word in response to our desires. 2 Kings 20 is an example of that. Isaiah spoke a true God-word when he told Hezekiah that he would die. But before he could get all the way out of the palace, God told him to turn around and go back and then God had him prophesy the opposite of what He'd said a little earlier. God change's His word to Hezekiah in response to how Hezekiah responded to that word.
The same could be true for Vicky. Maybe those words were God's will for Vicky--recovery and more kingdom work to do. But maybe Vicky's response was, "Lord, please take me home now."
I talked to Vicky on the phone Friday afternoon, about 3 days before she died. She told me that she was not at all afraid to die because she knew for sure that she'd be going to Heaven. Vicky told her daughter that she was "ready to go to Heaven now." Maybe God offered Vicky a choice and she chose to "go home" to be with Him.
There is one more thing that I want to mention. I am pretty sure that this doesn't pertain to Vicky's case, but I should mention it to make the discussion on conditional prophecies complete.
We have already seen that Bible promises can be contingent on things not stated explicitly in that promise. The same can be true in promises that God gives to individuals through modern-day prophesy. He means what He says absolutely and 100%, but He requires a certain response from the person in order to get them. If they don't do that response, then they don't get the promise.
Take Ananias and Sapphira for example (from Acts 5). They were given a promise that if they give financially to God's work, God will bless them and out-give them (from Luke 6:38). They followed that recipe. They sold their property and gave a large portion of the profits to the church. Therefore they expected blessings (financial and otherwise) to be given back to them. But instead, God struck them dead because they lied to the Holy Spirit by saying that they'd given 100% of the profits when they'd kept a portion for themselves. If you look at Jesus' spoken promise (recorded in Luke 6:38), there were no conditions against lying explicitly stated in it. He simply said, "Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you." But there were conditions (obedience and faith) implicit in that promise. Lying to God is a form of disobedience, and instead of getting a reward for giving, Ananias and Sapphira were struck dead for lying to God. In short, the word they acted on was conditional and they did not meet the condition.
Our Desires Imitating God's Voice
Last week we started talking about a difficult situation. We talked about what happens when words of life and destiny are released over a terminally ill person, then that person dies shortly afterwards.
This type of thing leaves questions: was the word from God and somehow unfulfilled? Or was it a false word?
In our case it was even more difficult because the terminally ill lady was one of the prophetic-school chatroom leaders, and many of our chatroom participants gave words to encourage her just 48 hours before she died. Several of those words were things like "this sickness is not unto death" and "God still has more things for you to do on this earth." Obviously, those words went unfulfilled since she died so soon after they were given.
That has been traumatic for the ones who spoke the words to her. At the time, they truly believed they were hearing God and they felt that they were speaking what the Lord was saying. But since Vicky died shortly after those words were given, it has raised some difficult questions. Some are convinced that the words were true God-words and they can't understand how they went unfulfilled. Others are left wondering whether or not they can hear God correctly. And yet others are asking themselves if they've accidentally become false prophets. One or two think that the leader tricked people into prophesying what that leader hoped God would say instead of what God was really saying (though I don't agree with that assessment.) This incident has raised some difficult questions for a lot of people.
I started to address this last week, I said that there is no single "right answer" to this type of question, but I would like to throw out three things to consider.
- The words might have been God-words, but were conditional in nature.
- The words might have come from the people's hearts imitating God's voice to them because they were emotionally involved.
- There might have been spiritual warfare effecting Vicky's outcome.
We talked about the first one (some prophesies are conditional) last week. This week I'd like to discuss the second one, and we will talk about the third one next week.
Our Hearts Can Imitate God's Voice And Produce "False" Words
It is harder to hear God clearly when you are emotionally involved. Do you know why that is? It is because the more you have at stake, the more your own heart is likely to jump in with opinions and imitate God's voice to you in an attempt to get it's own way. In other words, our own heart and desires and issues and fallen nature can deceive us by imitating God's voice to us.
We all have fallen natures, don't we? Even when we love God with all of our hearts, we still have a carnal fallen nature to deal with. And that nature can definitely get in the way of us hearing God speak to us. Even the Apostle Paul struggled with his fallen nature. Many consider Paul to be one of the greatest New Testament believers, a hero of the faith, a very mature and godly man. But look what he says about it in Romans 7:14-20 (NLT):
14 The law is good, then. The trouble is not with the law but with me, because I am sold into slavery, with sin as my master. 15 I don't understand myself at all, for I really want to do what is right, but I don't do it. Instead, I do the very thing I hate. 16 I know perfectly well that what I am doing is wrong, and my bad conscience shows that I agree that the law is good. 17 But I can't help myself, because it is sin inside me that makes me do these evil things.18 I know I am rotten through and through so far as my old sinful nature is concerned. No matter which way I turn, I can't make myself do right. I want to, but I can't. 19 When I want to do good, I don't. And when I try not to do wrong, I do it anyway. 20 But if I am doing what I don't want to do, I am not really the one doing it; the sin within me is doing it.
The sad fact is that we were born with a sinful nature, and that nature will continue to effect us until the day that we are perfected in Christ. Yes, the Holy Spirit is at work in us, transforming us to be more like Jesus as per 2 Cor 3:18, "But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord."
Unfortunately, the transformation process will not be completed until we are with Jesus in glory and have been given our new eternal bodies that no longer carry the sinful nature. In the meanwhile, we continue to struggle with our fallen nature. The sad fact is that we have wants and desires that don't always conform to the perfect will of God.
And at times, we can want something so bad that our own heart/desires will try and convince us that God is going this to us. Jeremiah17:9-10 says, "The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it? I, the Lord, search the heart, I test the mind..." In other words, our own hearts can deceive us, but they can't deceive God. And when our heart tries to imitate God's voice to us, that imitation won't stand up to the scrutiny of God's truth.
Our heart can get "selective hearing" at times, where it only hears what it really wants to hear and it ignores everything else that the Lord and the Bible have to say. I cannot tell you how many times people who have gone through painful divorces have "heard" God promise that their marriage would be restored--even though the spouse had already remarried to another person. Instead of moving on with their lives, they hold on to that "promise" for years and years and wonder why God hasn't fulfilled it yet. That is an example of a very intense desire of the heart mimicking God's voice to them, and telling them what they wish He would say.
In general the more intensely that we want something, the greater the level of deception our heart will apply in imitating God's voice. Most of the time when our own heart imitates God, it will not be at that strong of a level of intensity as what I shared above. Let me give you an example of a less intense (but equally deceitful) desire.
There was a time when I was suffering from hypoglycemia. The Lord told me that I was not eat anything with sugar at that time. But I was visiting some friends in Canada and they took me out to eat at a very nice restaurant. When the dessert menus were passed out, I really wanted some dessert. The pictures looked so good, and everyone else was going to have some. I knew God had instructed me not to eat any sweets. But I really wanted some. So I asked God if I could have a dessert. I thought I heard the Lord say to me "Sure, Teresa go ahead with My blessings. I promise you that you can eat dessert and not get sick."
Now, who do you think told me that? Was it God or my own desires? I was immediately reminded of the way the Lord had instructed me not to eat sweets because it was bad for my health (because of the hypoglycemia). Some Scripture came to mind. I remembered John 14:15 (about obeying Jesus because we love Him). Could that have been the Holy Spirit speaking to me to correct my "mishearing?" I choose to ignore it. Then another passage came to mind, the passage about our bodies being the temple of the Holy Spirit and not our own (1 Corinthians 6:19). I choose to ignore that as well, holding on to what I heard, e.g., that I could have dessert. So I had dessert and it tasted good. But about an hour after I ate it, I had a hypoglycemia attack and was sick for the rest of the night.
In my case, the Lord used Scripture to try and show me that I'd heard the desires of my own heart instead of His voice. He is faithful that way, when we hear wrong, He will usually try to speak His truth to us. But often times we choose not to listen because we heard something we really wanted to hear, so we give in those desires. As Jeremiah 17:9 says, our hearts are desperately wicked. At times they will imitate God's voice to tell us what we really want to hear.
We need to make sure we apply God's truth to the situation instead of immediately giving in to our desires. If I had listened to Him just before ordering dessert, then I would not have gotten sick that night. God was faithful to speak to me and let me know that He hadn't really said that. I was just unwilling to listen because I wanted to hear that it was ok to have dessert.
The sad fact is that, at times, our hearts do imitate God's voice to us. We need to be willing to bounce what we hear against God's truth and verify that it really is God speaking to us.
The same thing can happen when we are prophesying. It is more likely to happen when we are emotionally vested in the person (or topic) that we are speaking into. It is particularly hard to hear God clearly when we are speaking into the life of someone who we know and like, especially if we know that person is dying of a terminal illness. Our heart wants that person to recover and be well. We want them to be happy and to have a prosperous life. And it is very easy for our desires to imitate God's voice to us, so that we end up prophesying our desires for that person instead of prophesying God's word to them.
Does that make us a false prophet? No--not if we only do it rarely. But it is a mistake anytime we say "God says..." when God hasn't actually said that. If we make a mistake, then we need to fess up to our mistake, to prayerfully review it with the Lord and to learn from it.
God's goal is not to destroy us if we make a mistake. That used to happen in the Old Testament. If a word spoken in God's name did not come true, the prophet was to be stoned for it. But it is different in the New Testament because each believer has the Holy Spirit residing in him, helping him to judge the word.
In the New Testament, there is room for a learning curve. The Bible commands us to grow in our gifting, and there is room to make mistakes as we learn to speak for God. He won't strike us dead or disqualify us if we make a mistake. He doesn't get angry when the desires of your heart want good for a person and you mistake those desires for His voice--providing that you learn from it and don't keep repeating that mistake over and over again. God wants you to learn from your mistake so you are less likely to make it in the future.
Again, I am not saying that the words spoken over Vicky were mistakes and bad words. They may have been. But they may have been conditional words where the condition went unfulfilled, which we discussed last week. Or there may have been unopposed spiritual warfare interfering with the word. We will talk about that (the role of spiritual warfare in the prophetic) next week.
Warring For Our Word
We spent the last two weeks talking about the times when a prophetic word is released, but then things happen so that the word is not fulfilled. One example might be where a word predicts an election result, but the wrong candidate wins. Or perhaps the word is for a future destiny for someone who dies shortly after that, without fulfilling any of the things promised in the word.
It might have been a false word, possibly arising out of the prophet's own emotions/desires. When someone is emotionally invested in the thing they are speaking into, it is very easy for their own heart and desires to imitate God's voice to them. They can end up prophesying "their will" instead of God's will. That is why most experienced prophets are careful about releasing a word on an issue they have strong feelings about. Before they release it, they will usually sit on it for a while and prayerfully test it to be sure it is really God and not their own desires. (We talked about this last week.)
But the unfulfilled word could have been a true God-word. There are two things that could have happened to keep a true prophetic word from coming to pass. The first is that some words are conditional, and if we don't meet the condition, then God doesn't deliver the promise. Sometimes the condition is explicitly stated in the word and other times it is implied. God doesn't lie--His words are true. But some words are like a contract--if we break our end of the bargain, we can't expect God to keep His end. (We talked about that in quite a bit more detail in Part 1.)
There is one more thing that can interfere with a true God word. That is unopposed enemy opposition against that word. There are times God gives us a word and the enemy comes in to resist it. In those cases, we have to war (e.g., fight) for the word. That is what I would like to discuss this week.
Spiritual Warfare And Prophetic Words
We tend to assume that God's will is always accomplished, because He is sovereign. But that is not true. **Please hear me out before you "stone" me for blasphemy.** There are certain things that God has put in the hands of man by giving us free will. Because of that, there are times when sin interferes with God's perfect will, and it doesn't happen the way He wants it to.
One obvious example is Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. God's will was for them to live forever in the garden in a sinless state, fellowshipping with Him every day. But when they choose to sin, their choice overrode God's perfect will. In short, their "bad" decision forced God to change His plan, and God did not get His way. He had to put Adam and Eve out of the garden, so they couldn't have access to the tree of life. God also had to set a redemptive plan in place, because their sin denied Him the type of fellowship that He wanted to have with man. In short, God did not get His way regarding Adam and Eve because He gave them the freedom to choose, and they chose the wrong thing.
Let me share more two Bible verses with you where God doesn't get His way. Look at Matthew 23:37. Jesus was speaking, and He said, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing."
God wanted to lovingly protect Jerusalem from all harm, but the people who lived there were not willing to submit to Him--so He did not get to do what He wanted to do. The result was devastating: the city that God wanted to protect was destroyed because they refused His protection. That is why Jesus said (in verses 38 and 39): "38 See! Your house is left to you desolate; 39 for I say to you, you shall see Me no more till you say, 'Blessed is He who comes in the name of the Lord!'" This is an example of God not getting His way because He gave man free will, and the men in Jerusalem would not submit their will to His desires.
Let's look at one more verse where God does not get His way: Matthew 18:14. It says, "Even so it is not the will of your Father who is in Heaven that one of these little ones should perish." In short, God doesn't want a single person to die without Jesus and go to Hell. But that happens all the time--several times a day. Each time that a person dies and goes to Hell because they did not believe on Jesus, God's will is not accomplished and God is not getting His way.
To summarize, even though God is sovereign, He has put certain things in man's hand and therefore, He doesn't always get His way. I would like to add a caveat to that--there are certain things that God will insist on, regardless of what choices people make. Those things are what I call His "absolute will". They are the non-negotiable things in God's plan and agenda. For instance, when Jesus returns to earth, every knee will bow before Him, and every tongue will confess His lordship, as per Romans 14:11. That will happen regardless of whether people want to do that or not. God will override their free will and that point, and have His own way. He is all-powerful and no one can stop Him from doing what He wants to do. It is true that He has given us a lot of latitude in free will, but there are limits to it.
However, even with those limits, there is still enough latitude that it can cause problems for us. There are times when man's free will keeps things from happening that God wants to happen, and God permits this because of the value He puts on free will. The opposite is also true, at times things will happen that He doesn't want to happen--again because of free will.
There is some sort of parallel in the spirit world that we don't fully understand. The devil does not have power of his own. He is not strong enough to override God's will to make Him do something He doesn't want to do; nor is he strong enough to prevent God from doing anything He wants to do. God is much more powerful than the devil is. But there are certain things that the devil is permitted to do to counter God's perfect will here on earth. I don't know why God allows him to do that, but He does. At some point, God will say "enough is enough." God will cast the devil in to a pit and he will be powerless to effect the affairs of man. But that hasn't happened yet, and the devil is still an issue we have to deal with.
At present, the Lord permits the devil to have certain power, and the devil uses that power to oppose God's will. Again, there are limits and boundaries to that power, but for the time being, it does exist, and it can cause problems for us. Jesus has, in fact, won back the authority that the devil usurped from man. He has given it to the church, but we need to use it if we want to prevail over the devil. (It is like a college student having his father's credit card to pay for his books. The card has the "authority" to pay for the books, but that card doesn't do him any good until he actually uses it.) Likewise, God wants us to use the authority that He has given us to accomplish His will.
There are two things that can oppose God's perfect will and prevent some things from happening that God wants to happen: 1) man's free will choices that opposes God's will and 2) demonic activity that opposes God's will. As a matter of fact, many times the devil often chooses to work through men and women who have not submitted their wills to God's, so those two things can get a bit "mudged" together.
Demonic activity can affect the prophetic. At times God speaks forth His will, but things that oppose God's will come into play to resist a given prophetic word. I.e., sometimes God's will for us is not automatically accomplished, and we have to engage in spiritual warfare to obtain His promises. That is just like the children of Israel--God prophesied that He would bring them to a promised land overflowing with milk and honey. But there were giants occupying that land, and they had to engage in battle in order to possess their prophetic word (e.g., to get their promised land).
In the prophetic, the promise is ours, but it is not handed to us on a silver platter--we have to fight for it. At times we have to stand in faith when circumstances make the word look impossible, and claim God's promises in the face of what seems like immeasurable odds. But if we stand in faith, and take whatever actions the situation requires, we will prevail--because God keeps His promises when we stand on them.
Look at 1 Timothy 1:18: "This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare." This is saying that at times we have to "war" to see God's prophecies over us come true. I like the Young's Literal Translation (YLT) for this verse because it paints the picture a bit more clearly. "This charge I commit to thee, child Timotheus, according to the prophecies that went before upon thee, that thou mayest war in them the good warfare."
In short, there are times when the enemy opposes prophecies that have been released over us. We can have either of two responses to this. We can give up and let the liar/thief of John 8:44 and John 10:10 steal our destiny from us. Or we can rise up in faith, stand on God's word and fight for it.
It is possible that the words spoken over Vicky were true God-words, but that they required spiritual warfare to overcome the enemy's opposition against them. That warfare might have been something Vicky needed to do herself, or it might have been something that her family or friends or prayer partners needed to do on her behalf. I am not trying to blame anyone in particular for not doing that warfare; I am just pointing out the possibility that maybe there was some spiritual warfare needed in Vicky's case that did not happen, and as a result, the devil stole her promises from her. (Again, this is just one of three possibilities and not necessarily what happened in Vicky's case.)
I would like to take more about spiritual warfare and the prophetic next week. We laid a good Scripture foundation for it this week, but I would like to flesh it out a bit with some real-life examples. So next week we will look at some true stories of people warring for their words and obtaining them.
Examples of People Warring For Their Prophetic Word
Last week, we talked about how sometimes the enemy of our souls comes in to kill, steal, destroy and otherwise oppose the prophetic words that God has released over our lives. I want to flesh that out a bit this week by sharing inspiring stories of people who received promises from God and held on to them against overwhelming odds, and finally received the promise that God gave them.
This concept of warring for your word is very Scriptural. The Bible gives us a lot of examples of people having to war to possess God's promises. For example, the children of Israel had to war to possess their promised land. In their case, the first generation that Moses led out of Egypt was unwilling to do that, so they did not get to enter the promised land. Likewise there are times when we have to war to possess God's prophetic word to us. If we war, we will possess it; but if we are unwilling to fight, we won't see the promises come to pass in our life.
Nehemiah is another example of someone who had to war for his word. God commissioned him to rebuild the city of Jerusalem, but the task was not as easy as it sounded. It was not just a matter of obtaining the king's permission and then delivering building supplies to the city. He did not just say, "Ok guys, here are the materials. Get started."
Nehemiah faced a great deal of opposition to this task, and he had to battle through one obstacle after another. Every time he turned around, someone else was opposing him. First he faced ridicule from the existing city officials: Sanballat the Horonite, Tobiah the Ammonite official and Geshem the Arab (Nehemiah 2:19). Then when Nehemiah finally got people to work on the wall, his opponents went to the Samarian army to organize an attack on the builders (Nehemiah 3:2,7-8). Nehemiah had to station armed guards to protect the workers, and the workers themselves had to carry weapons. Look at Nehemiah 3:16-18:
16 From that day on, half of my men did the work, while the other half were equipped with spears, shields, bows and armor. The officers posted themselves behind all the people of Judah 17 who were building the wall. Those who carried materials did their work with one hand and held a weapon in the other, 18 and each of the builders wore his sword at his side as he worked.
God promised Nehemiah that he would rebuild the wall, but it was not an easy task. Nehemiah had to battle obstacle after obstacle, and at times he and his workers literally had to engage in armed combat against their foes. If Nehemiah was weak-hearted, he would have given up and failed. If he just wanted for God to fulfill His word without actively engaging in the process, the walls would not have been built. But Nehemiah rose up in faith, stood on his word and warred for it, and he saw it come to pass.
There are many stories like this in the Bible. The pattern has been around for a long time: God releases a promise, the enemy moves in to resist that promise, and the people of God have to engage in warfare to possess the promise that God made to them. And that pattern still holds true today.
I would like to share a few examples of people who warred for their word in order to receive it.
You probably already know the first story that I am going to share in a lot of detail, so I will just share the highlights. There was a worn out missionary named Heidi Baker. Heidi had been on the mission field for years and was discouraged and ready to give up. She came home on a sabbatical and did not expect to return. She went to some meetings in Toronto where Randy Clark was ministering. He prophesied several things to her, including that God would give her the Nation of Mozambique and that that she would pray for blind eyes and see them open.
After receiving that word, Heidi started praying for blind people. Each time she prayed, she fully expected the person to get their sight, but nothing happened. Many people would have given up after 3 or 4 tries, but not Heidi. Every time she ran into someone who was blind, she prayed for them. If she saw a blind person on the other side of the street, she would run across the street to the person and ask if they would allow her to pray for them. A whole year went by like that, and she had not seen a single result. By this point, most people would have given up and they would have written off that prophetic word. But not Heidi--she kept on believing her word and she kept on praying for blind people. Then one day, the person she prayed for was healed. After that, she started seeing an amazing number of supernatural miracles and signs and wonders when she prayed for the sick.
I heard her speak at a meeting, and she said to the congregation, "Do you know what the difference is between me and most of you? It's not that I got prophecies and you didn't. It is that believed mine and latched on to them and pressed into them until I was walking in the promises God gave me. So, what are you going to do with your words?"
In short, Heidi warred for her word and did not give up until it was fulfilled in her life. At times, the Lord wants us to do the same.
Let me relate another well-known story about the pastor in Nigeria who was raised from the dead. Before he died, he and his wife were given several prophesies about how God would use them together in ministry. Shortly after those words were given, the pastor was in a car accident and died. He was brought to the local mortuary.
If you stopped the story at that point and looked at the prophecies, it would have obviously been impossible for them to be fulfilled because the man was dead. Most people would have judged those prophecies as a "false word." But the wife had another take on it.
His wife refused to accept his death, because they had received a prophecy about how they would minister together as a couple. She refused to let him be buried because she deemed the prophetic words to be true. In essence, she said, "God made these promises that haven't been fulfilled yet, so it is not his time to die."
She put his body in the car. By then, it was so stiff that they could not bend him at the waist to seat him in the car--they had to roll down the windows of the back seat and have his head stick out one side of the care, and his feet stick out the other side. They drove for hours and hours to a Reinhard Bonnke meeting. She tried to her husband's body into the meeting, but the ushers would not let her. She told them, "There are unfulfilled prophecies about my husband and I ministering together, so God has to raise him from the dead. I brought him here for Reinhart to pray for him and raise him."
The ushers told her to put him in the cellar and they'd tell Mr. Bonnke about it after service and ask him to come pray. But word got out before the meeting was over, and several intercessors came to the cellar where the body was. They began praying for him and he ended up coming to life before Reinhard Bonnke had a chance to pray for him. (This resurrection was documented and the Reinhard Bonnke released a video about it that has widely circulated through the body of Christ.)
In short, the wife would not accept his death because there were unfulfilled prophecies over them as a couple. She believed the prophecies and would not give up. She did whatever she needed to do to go get him prayed for until he did, in fact, raise from the dead. If she had not warred for her words, she would have buried her husband and the words of that prophecy would have been unfulfilled.
A similar thing happened in the USA. I just heard the story in a sermon the other night, and I don't remember the specific details, (like people's names), but I can relate the jest of the story.
A man was in a meeting where Kim Clement prophesied over him. The word said that he would have a son named Caleb and his son would follow in his footsteps in politics. This man had filed the paperwork to register as a candidate for State Senator just before he went to the meeting, and no one know about it yet. He focused on the part about God calling him to politics and was encouraged by the word. His wife was excited about the word for a different reason--they'd been wanting a child but so far she hadn't conceived.
Before the election, the man was hit by a car and was rushed to the emergency room. His wife arrived at the emergency room about 15 minutes later, clutching a piece of paper that held the transcribed word from the Kim Clement meeting. The security guards tried to keep her out of the room, but she pushed her way in. She stood at the foot of the table where the doctors were trying to resuscitate her husband, and kept waving the paper over his feet. She also kept saying over and over, "This word promises you will win the election and get into politics. It promises that we will have a son named Caleb. You can't die, because those things haven't happened yet."
After 27 minutes, the doctors stopped trying to resuscitate him and pronounced him dead. While they were in the process of filling out the death certificate, the young wife changed her tactic. She threw the prophesy paper down on her dead husband's body and said, "In the name of Jesus, I command you to come back into your body right now!" And as soon as she did that, her dead husband started breathing and came back to life.
She believed God's prophetic word (for a son named Caleb, and for her husband to be in politics) more than she believed the circumstances that had pronounced her husband dead. She stood on that word and would not let go of it. I.e., she warred for her word--and her husband was raised from the dead. By the way, He won the election and became a state senator, and she eventually conceived and bore their son.
There are times when God makes promises to us and circumstances seem to shout that these promises cannot come to pass. That is because the enemy of your soul is waging spiritual warfare against your word. If you give up without a fight, then you let the enemy steal your promise. But if stand in faith and war for your word, then you will see it come to pass.
In short, there are times when we have to war for our word, just like Heidi Baker did, just like the Nigerian pastor's wife did, and like the senator's wife did.