Spiritual Stalemate

The problem truly discerning and with hearing the voice of God is that most of those around you don't and most who think they do don't either. #MKLifeKey

Sadly, we have gotten away from yielding to those with a proven track record of hearing God clearly and letting them settle matters of dispute opting instead to be politically correct and refusing ourselves the victories and joys that only come thru successful confrontation.

So what do you do when you have a group of believers all gathered together and they all seem to have differing opinions as to what God is saying or what direction he wants to go next? You have what I call a "Spiritual Stalemate".

Recently I was at a church that shall remain nameless. They prided themselves on being very open to things of the Holy Spirit and giftings from others manifesting during their services. They do deserve some credit for sure for that posture, but even though the leaders were open to letting some folks step up and flow, they still retained the decision making power to decide if something really was of God or not. That they wouldn't embrace a plurality of decision makers on that topic and that was where they failed.

The New Testament model is very clear. In public gatherings, Paul says in 1 Cor 14 that we are to let two or three prophets speak and the other prophets judge. This assumes several things. First that there will be several Prophets in attendance. Second that no single, lone person would ever make a determination if something that someone else brought forth was of God or not. Lets break that down a bit more...

We absolutely have the charge from scripture to be personally responsible for ourselves. That means regardless of when a person or group of people claim something to be of God, it still needs to be witnessing within ourselves thru the Holy Spirit.  At no point are we as believers to ignore the Holy Spirit within ourselves. Anything truly from the Spirit of God should check right within yourself.  That doesn't mean you will like it, enjoy it or be remotely fond of it even... lol ..but it does mean you will know in your heart it truly is God. With that said...

In a church service setting it's a little easier to deal with this because you simply appoint a group of no less than two proven prophetic voices that have to be in UNITY about what is going on.  Note here that agreement and Unity are very different things. Agreement is when two parties share the same intellectual idea. Unity is a Spirit that transcends human understanding. Unity is NOT uniformity and many miss that. I can count on one hand in my entire life when a true Spirit of Unity fell in a live gathering. You are completely overwhelmed with a supernatural love and passion to care about every other person in the gathering far more than yourself. You would happily take a bullet for anyone and everyone because you see THEIR worth before God.. this is what a true Spirit of Unity does.. and this is the tie that needs to be present in the prophetic voices that make the collective decisions about what is of God and what isn't in a live meeting.

Finding an Apostle or a Prophet with enough humility to lay down the decision making power and entrust that into the hands of a small group of others is unusually rare today.. but I can assure you that Satan knows them and keeps them under constant surveillance. There are few more dangerous to the Kingdom of Darkness.  They are not preaching flowery messages about having a nice day, nor are they obsessed with calling everyone to "repent". No, instead they have their head to the heart of Jesus and they are driven by ushering in a move of God's Presence, just like a jealous father would usher a virgin daughter thru life until he finally gives her to her future husband. Anointed leaders treat God's presence that way with that kind of priority.

What do you do outside of the church then when two or more people all feel like they have heard from God and what they have heard appears to contradict each other? Two things. First you each pray again... you pray for specific direction, confirming signs and for God's Peace to be in your heart if you have truly heard from Him. SIf the prayer doesn't solve it, then you need to involve one of those groups I talked about earlier...at least two prophetic voices, proven and seasoned... and lay it all before them and let them pray and convey what God is saying or doing.  When this happens, in almost every situation I have been witness to, at least one person is hiding a fear or a quiet personal agenda using "God said" to hide it.  Proven prophets can spot that relatively quickly.

Hope that helps everyone a bit...

M-

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