God is calling His prophets to watch and pray. Are you on your post?
Are you building walls of religion or towers
of prayer? Your answer could denote the difference between a
woe-filled fate and a fulfilled destiny.
Prophets obsessed by the fear of man or unholy desires will not
fulfill God’s ultimate plan. We must be careful, then, not to
prophesy according to the party line in order to establish and
preserve popularity in ministry circuits. If we fall into this trap
we find ourselves in danger of perverting the gift of God by
building walls of religion.
True prophets are not always the most popular five-fold ministry
gift on the block because they are bold enough to release a word of
the Lord that deals with sin or that warns the local church of
potentially unpleasant circumstances coming down the proverbial
pike. In order to properly carry this mantle, genuine prophets must
build towers of prayer.
False prophets build walls of religion that lead people astray with
fabricated edification, misleading exhortation and counterfeit
comfort. “These evil prophets deceive my people saying, ‘All is
peaceful!’ when there is no peace at all! It’s as if the people have
built a flimsy wall, and these prophets are trying to hold it
together by covering it with whitewash! Tell these whitewashers that
their wall will soon fall down” (Ezekiel 13:10 NLT).
Verily, verily, the whitewashed walls of religion are going to come
tumbling down in a heap of self-righteous rubble and the false
prophets are coming down right along with them. Let’s not forget
that Jesus pronounced woe on the Pharisaical hypocrites, calling
them whitewashed tombs that look beautiful on the outside but are
full of dead men’s bones and everything unclean (Matthew 23:27).
You can’t whitewash sin. You can’t whitewash religion. And you
certainly can’t whitewash false prophecy. We must guard our hearts
in order to maintain a pure prophetic flow and a life of prayer that
will wash away the plans of the enemy instead of fortifying his
deception by watering down the truth for the sake of acceptance.
True prophets may not always have the flare, charisma or appeal of
their false twins, but who said they are supposed to? Jeremiah
wasn’t the most popular prophet in his time, nor was Ezekiel in his
day. John the Baptist had his head served up on a silver platter for
warning the people of the looming decision between everlasting life
and eternal hellfire. But they were the unadulterated mouthpieces of
God. And so it should be.
One of the key disparities between the true and the false prophet is
prayer. The Bible says the foolish prophets discussed in the 13th
Chapter of Ezekiel did not stand in the gap or make up a hedge for
the house of Israel so that it could endure the battle. These
diviners did not intercede in prayer to protect God’s people.
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True prophets, by contrast, may not win any popularity contests in
the local church, but they will sacrifice to make intercession.
Instead of building walls of religion, they build towers of prayer;
watchtowers in the spirit that allow them to see the assignments
coming against the local church. They take that revelation and use
it as spiritual mortar to make up a hedge in prayer.
You can’t separate a prophet from prayer any more than you can
separate an evangelist from preaching the Gospel. The very first
time you ever see the word “prophet” in the Bible, it is connected
to prayer. In the Book of Genesis when Abimelech took Abraham’s
wife, the Lord said, “Now return the man’s wife, for he is a
prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live…” (Genesis
20:7). So while not every intercessor is a prophet, every prophet is
an intercessor.
Consider the prophets of old. They were often called watchmen.
Scripture reveals three types of prophetic sentinels whose mission
is to stand guard, keep watch and report what they see. We find Old
Testament prophets on the walls, walking in the streets of the city
and in the countryside.
“I have set watchmen upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, which shall never
hold their peace day nor night: ye that make mention of the Lord,
keep not silence…” (Isaiah 62:6) Watchmen on the walls are
positioned to see far distances in the spirit and discern whether
friend or foe is approaching. The watchman gives word to those in
authority so they can decide whether to sound an alarm of welcome or
an alarm of war. In today’s local church, these watchmen help
protect against enemy attacks. Every prophet is called to this post.
“They surround Jerusalem like watchmen surrounding a field, for my
people have rebelled against me, says the Lord,” (Jeremiah 4:17 NLT).
This relates to the prophets in the harvest fields. Prophets have a
clear role in evangelism as watchmen who protect Gospel-preaching
efforts against the destructive work of principalities and powers
that keep the lost from hearing the truth. Prophets should be
deployed on local church outreaches and international missions to
watch, guard, pull down and destroy opposition to the Good News.
“The watchmen found me as they made their rounds in the city” (Song
of Solomon 3:3; 5:7 NIV). In today’s times, this watchman is
assigned to stand guard over the Body of Christ to see emerging
problems. This is a larger responsibility that carries with it a
heavier prayer burden and greater implications for the Church at
large.
The point is anyone who stands in the five-fold function of prophet
should keep their spiritual binoculars around their neck and watch.
But not just watch – watch and pray always. Anyone carrying a
prophetic mantle needs to closely examine the fruit of his or her
ministry. If we have prophesied peace unto popularity, then we need
to repent. We need to trade in our whitewash for some substantive
mortar and start building towers of prayer that will bring genuine
edification, authentic exhortation and legitimate comfort to God’s
people.
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Let us not be foolish prophets who build our ministries on the sands
of seduction for the sake of acceptance because Jehovah promises
that rain will pour from the heavens, hailstones will come hurtling
down and violent winds will burst forth against those whitewashed
walls and expose them (Ezekiel 13:11-12).
Instead, let us build our ministries on the Rock and prophesy the
mind of Christ so that when the hurricanes of religion come against
the local church and when Jezebel hurls her spiritual sleet at the
sanctuary and when the winds of witchcraft blow against the walls,
the foundation of our ministries and our local churches will be
fortified to stand and withstand in the day of battle.
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