Pastor Bell's Words To Live By

To develop a prophetic anointing the individual has to learn from a mentor and have their own personal relationship with Lord. There are safeguards that every budding prophet must mitigate against. It is easy to succumb to the whims and wishes of interested parties particularly if they are wealthy and become benefactor. I will use two characters from scripture to highlight this problem. In the first instance we see a prophet called Balaam who is given this gift by God. However he is asked to use his gift to curse God’s people (Numbers 22:5ff) in return for financial remuneration. He was nearly killed by an angel of the Lord because of the abuse of his gift. On the contrary we see in 2Kings 5 another prophet, Elisha who was approached by a commanding officer of a foreign army to be healed of his leprosy. After speaking the word of God to him and effecting his healing, the officer wanted to pay him and give him gifts. Because of his desire to stay neutral, he refused his presents. He recognised that when God gives a gift, it is to be used wisely or else it can be abused even if the motives of the recipient is honourable, we are told to avoid the very appearance of evil (1 Thessalonians 5:22KJV). In this story the servant of the prophet, i.e. the trainee prophet takes the money and merchandise from the commander thinking he could fool the prophet and keep it for himself. The prophet knew what was going on and declares that the disease of leprosy which the commander was cured of would affect him and his descendants continually, which occurred as declared by the prophet(2 Kings 5:19-27).

Today, although we are encouraged by the apostle Paul to desire to prophesy, when we do, remember that our integrity is worth more than our gifts. To be a truly influential prophet we must be reliable, honest and have integrity, else the words we speak can come back to haunt us.  Read Numbers 22 & 2kings 5.