Does Prophecy Have to be Profound?

“It’s going to be okay.”

That’s what I heard from God. As I stared at the back of my friend’s head I heard those words over and over in my head. I kept telling myself this wasn’t worth telling him, it wasn’t going to make a difference, and it wasn’t necessary. But I couldn’t shake it. Also, these words weren’t biblical, they weren’t from scripture, so why on earth would they matter?

We were at a Foursquare Leaders conference, and the speaker had just let us all go to speak prophetically to one another. This was only the second or third time I had ever been asked to do this in an official way. As I wrestled with whether or not to pull my friend aside and tell him it was going to be okay, he suddenly left the room. 

I thought: “phew, I’m off the hook.” 

But then he came back. 

God knew I wouldn’t walk out of the room and go looking for him: especially since I wasn’t even sure that what I was about to say would do anything. And not only did God send him back into the room, he sent him directly to me. 

“Ondi I have a word for you,” and when he was done praying for me, what was I to do except say “I have a word for you, too.”

I won’t go into the ins and outs of his story, but I do know that the Holy Spirit wanted me to tell him that. And as I prayed, more things came to mind, things I knew about him and his family, and things I knew he would need to hear in order to believe that it would in fact be okay. In this instance, I had no scripture, but I knew what God felt about him, and how God loved his family, and used his family for His good works. God would in fact say to him, “it’s gonna be okay.” So the Holy Spirit led me to pray in such a way that would impact him.

As we finished praying, he told me that what I said to him just affirmed and confirmed many things he had been wrestling with all weekend. He said that it felt like a necessary piece to the puzzle: that as things in his life fell together, he knew it was gonna be okay. 

And all of that would not have been possible, if I had not allowed the Holy Spirit to speak to me, and then in turn spoke the Holy Spirit’s words to someone else. 

None of what I said was profound. The words “it’s gonna be okay,” are plain, every day words that people say to each other all the time. Those words can be trite, and without the Holy Spirit backing would mean nothing to this person, but with the Holy Spirit they meant something. With the Holy Spirit, through prophecy, the Lord moved in my friends life. 

The reason prophecy (ie the movement of the Holy Spirit in His people) exists today is because Jesus ascended into heaven. We can no longer sit with Jesus—in a physical sense— and ask him any and every question we want. We can’t go wait in line at a temple (like in the Old Testament) and ask a priest to go into the inner room and ask God a question for us. God sent his Holy Spirit to fulfill these purposes in our lives. Post-Jesus’ ascension into heaven we need the Holy Spirit to speak to us, direct us, and comfort us. And the Holy Spirit communicates in all sorts of ways.

He can, for sure, communicate directly to us in our hearts, through scripture and prayer, but sometimes He needs a vessel. Sometimes our hearts aren’t ready to hear the things He wants to say to us. Sometimes we’re just not listening. Sometimes we need to hear it 100 times to believe it, and sometimes the Lord just wants to solidify relationship between us and others. We weren’t meant to go this alone, and God can prove that point in and through the gift of prophecy. 

And if we continually get hung up on WHAT the Spirit is asking us to say, we won’t ever do what He’s asking. 

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.” Isaiah 55:9

God’s ways of doing things are way above our pay grade; we just need to listen and obey. When God wants us to speak we need to speak, in the same way that when God wants us to do something we obey. If we can remember that prophecy is just another act of obedience, no matter how silly we might think it sounds, then we can just focus on the obedience. The words don’t have to make sense or be word-for-word scripture, they just need to align with the Lord’s heart. In this instance, the Lord would definitely say to my friend “it’s gonna be okay.” And we know it’s the Lord’s heart because in scripture we hear the Lord say that in His own words to His people time and time again.

And you’d be surprised when we let go of the way it looks or sounds to others, the Spirit is able to do “immeasurably more than we could ask or imagine. (Ephesians 3:20)” When we let go of our expectations and our parameters, God is able to do amazing things. When I decided to let go of the fact that “it’s gonna be okay” sounded dumb, my friend was able to hear the Lord in a real and profound way. And when we let God do His thing in our lives, through our prophesy, we will see Him work in the lives of others through us. And, my friends, that is an amazing feeling, and a way we can see His kingdom come here on earth, just like heaven. And isn’t that always the goal?

Have you ever heard a word from the Lord that didn’t sound profound? How did it work out in your life or the life of someone else? 

Please share in the comments so others can hear more stories about the work of the Lord through prophecy.