What are you fighting for?

There are some people, men and women, who claim to have heard from God that Donald Trump was going to win a second term as president of the United States. I have listened to a few of them previous to this, and witnessed some prophesies that happened just as they said they would. Simply put, I do believe that some of these people (I do not know all of them, so I can only speak of a few, but that is not to discount the others) have previously heard from God. This time it looks like they were wrong. Sadly most of them are not ready to admit that they got it wrong, although a couple have apologized and owned their errors in this situation. Unfortunately many continue to claim that they did get it right, but that they were thwarted by voter fraud, and in so doing they are causing many Americans to publicly demonstrate, and in some cases even resort to violence.

There were many who prophesied that Trump would become president in the first place, when it certainly did not look like that was going to happen. I personally struggled even then, when I heard these words. Friends were informing me that Trump had become a Christian, even though the things that he was saying on social media were not very nice. Then they told me that he was just a young Christian. Over his term in office, however, there was no indication that he honoured anyone except himself. As a lover of Jesus, I was embarrassed at any suggestion that Trump represented Christian people. Although some of his policies may have helped the American economy, he alienated many of his allies. And he was cruel to many people with his words.

The prophesies about the American President were not the only ones that were confusing to me. At the beginning of the Pandemic we were informed that it would not last long. And then there were those who spoke out specific dates when the Pandemic would end. Everyone seems to be pretty quiet on that front now. When my kids were young I taught them by example to admit when I got something wrong. “I’m sorry” is not too hard to say. “I’m sorry, I was wrong”, is a little harder, but very important to hear sometimes.

Despite the failure of many of our prophets to get these big issues right, I confess that I still love the prophetic. I do believe that our God is able to communicate with us, and indeed wants to. I am pulling back from those who continue to speak what they consider to be words from the Lord to the nation at this time, however, because I have lost a measure of confidence in them. I am not calling anyone a false prophet. I am simply pulling back. Instead I will focus on my own time with the Lord. I will dig a little deeper into the Bible. And I will listen in the stillness, asking the Holy Spirit to speak to me. I do not expect, do not want, to be told who will win the election. I do not need to know when the Pandemic will end. I need to be faithful to the truth that I read in the Scriptures. I know that I will be reminded that I am loved by God, that he is for me, that I am his, and that I can trust him even if I do not fully understand what is going on around me.

I would encourage you to do the same. Spend more time with the Lord. He does not need you to fight in order to bring about words that you have been informed are from the Lord. The Bible makes it clear that our enemies are not people, but principalities and powers. It is time that we stopped getting our “truth” from social media, and started spending more time with “the Way, the Truth, and the Life : Jesus!