Pastor’s Blog 3.29.18
Back in about 1984 I had my first “big misunderstanding” with God concerning His voice in my life. I believed with all my heart that He had told me something, and then I discovered it was not His voice. I was devastated! I made inward vows that I would never believe anything I heard in my heart again as being His voice. I vowed I would never tell anyone anything again that I believe the Lord said, unless it was quoting a direct scripture.
For the next year I experienced the chastening of the Lord. I was broken and did not see any way to ever believe I would hear the manifest voice of the Lord in my heart again. I would receive strong unctions in my heart, to the point I felt like I was going to explode! But I refused to speak what I was hearing in my heart for fear of making a mistake, because my greatest fear was to misrepresent God.
This went on for months until I finally came to a breaking point. I was so immature at that time in the things of God. I was exalted and promoted very quickly as a young believer because of the gift God had put within me. I could do things, “in the Spirit” better than so many who were years, and even decades, older than me in the Lord. Finally, I out of a heart of desperation, I demanded to the Lord in prayer that He meet me at one o’clock on the following Saturday. I wanted an explanation for why He allowed me to be deceived.
So at one o’clock that Saturday, I waited in my living room and nothing happened. Devastated, I began to rant and tell the Lord, “I have given you my life and you can’t even explain to me why I was deceived?” I finally just collapsed and literally gave up. It must have been about 2:30 or so and all sudden a presence came in the room that I will never forget. I was so afraid I was going to die!
All of a sudden the Lord began to speak to me, not like I had ever experienced before. He sounded like an angry Father scolding a disobedient child. “I told you to go to Jackson, Ohio to take this city for Me and you will do it My way or you won’t do it at all! I have called you as an Apostle to this nation” “Not so Lord,” I said, “because an Apostle is one who goes where the gospel has not been preached”. Immediately, He said, “No!” “I called you as an Apostle of the Full Gospel to this nation!”
(Before this time I had fully intended to go overseas to live and preach the gospel.)
Instantly light filled my heart and I saw the spiritual pride I had walked in. During a Christmas trip to my hometown a year and a half or so before, the Spirit of God had called me to come to my hometown and plant a Full Gospel Church. At that time I said, “I am not moving back here, I joined the army to get out of this town and I am never coming back!” I then realized I had walked out of God’s authority, and from that moment, out of arrogance, pride and selfish desire, I determined it was my decision what I would do, or where I would go.
Over the last couple weeks I have written about judging in the church. When do we judge? As I have led the local church for the last 32 years, I have watched many gifted young men and women make the same mistake I did. Because of their gifts and abilities, they confuse the voice of the prophetic with their own desire.
This is where we need the Elders in the church. Men and women who have lived long enough in the Spirit to judge the prophetic. Many like myself, out of zeal and desire for God, get exalted in their own thinking. They actually begin to believe almost every thought and inward conversation they have is the voice of God. We call this time “spiritual puberty” and it is a dangerous time in our spiritual development for sure.
Thank God the Apostle Paul had an unction from the Holy Spirit to write the following instruction.
1 Corinthians 14:29-33
29 Let two or three prophets speak , and let the others judge.
30 But if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent.
31 For you can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be encouraged.
32 And the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets.
33 For God is not the author of confusion but of peace, as in all the churches of the saints. NKJV
This is where I erred as a young prophetic gift. I didn’t submit what I was hearing for judgment, I just assumed since I was the most gifted in the room I was right. Didn’t work out to good. We are all subject to deception, thinking otherwise is the first deception you may experience.
Will continue next week!
Be Blessed!
- Date - March 29, 2018
- Author - David Chisholm
