Prophetic Gifts for Multiplication

 

Hello everybody, my name is Dean Davis, and this is “Multiply,” the podcast that provides a word of encouragement for Village Church Planters. 

In my last episode, I mentioned that the word “apostle” is often misunderstood because it has so many different meanings for different churches. Even so, we need to be looking for Christ to provide apostles to our churches just as He promised in Ephesians 4. We need people, gifted by God, to be sent out and start new churches where none has existed before. That is the work of an apostle!

Ephesians 4:11,12 tells us “Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers, to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up. Wow, the first word on that list, apostle, is often misunderstood, and so is the second one: prophet. Even so, Christ wants to give His churches prophets so that the Body of Christ may be built up. But for the Church, what is a prophet?

A prophet has God-given strengths to encourage the church and to identify situations in the world that grieve the Lord. A prophet proclaims truth from God and calls believers to obedience. Prophets strongly rely on prayer and spiritual gifts to accomplish the ministry. 

But when a prophet fails to walk in the Spirit, negative traits may appear. The prophet who fails to submit to the Spirit may have a condemning attitude or become arrogant because of their spiritual insight. He or she may claim to prophesy without having heard to Lord’s voice or understood His word in the Bible. And he or she may interrupt others to speak an inappropriate word.

Your churches need prophets just as they need apostles, evangelists, pastors, and teachers. Your churches need both encouragement and correction. They need leaders who spend much time in prayer and who are willing to speak messages from God. Prophets energize the evangelistic and church planting ministry of a church by calling church members to action and by providing encouragement to those who do obey.

But are you looking for men and women with prophetic gifts in your midst? Jesus said he would give our churches prophets. If we are to be good stewards, we must look for prophets to emerge, accept and encourage their ministry, correct them when they fail to walk in the Spirit, and give them a place to speak messages from the Lord. As the apostle Paul says in 1 Thessalonians 5:19-22, “Do not quench the Spirit. Do not treat prophecies with contempt but test them all; hold on to what is good, reject every kind of evil.”

My prayer for your churches is that God will provide the gifted men and women of God you need to do his will, to grow and multiply!

This has been Multiply! And I’m Dean Davis asking, “Who will you share this encouraging word with today?

#EncouragementForVillageChurchPlanters #Prophets