Swmming Upstream: “Selling Your Prophetic Words”

After a long period of fervent prayer, the small assembly of believers sat quietly in their chairs, expecting to hear an answer from heaven concerning their problem.

A young man stood up. “Yesterday, I was driving my car when I had this impression about our problem…” He proceeded to tell his story and sat down.

A older man stood up. “My experience completely disagrees with his story. Yesterday morning, Gabriel, the angel,  woke me up while I was in bed and took me up to heaven where I talked with Jesus about our problem. He told me…” He told his story and sat down.

Without being at the meeting and without knowing the problem, most of us would tend to think that the older man’s story had the most validity and that the younger man had the least.  Why? He had the best sales pitch, the most dramatic delivery and the younger man had nothing but a prophetic impression.

But yet, scripture does not tell us to be impressed with sales pitches or dramatic deliveries. Instead, we believers are called to judge prophetic words through spiritual discernment and scriptural knowledge.

This probably sounds trivial, but it is not. In the days ahead we are going to be deluged with prophecies and spiritual experiences. And we believers need to be prepared ahead of time by praying for greater spiritual discernment for ourselves and others, and spending more time studying our Bibles.

If we are not prepared, we could end up in a swamp of misery.

Swimming Upstream appears at this blog site on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. It’s  a little of this and a little of that, all written  to encourage and exhort believers in their Christian jouneys.