Funny how a lot of prophecies particularly apply to the person sharing it.
From time to time—in bible studies, church, conferences, prayer groups, what have you—prophets get up and say a little something which “God laid on their heart,” which is Christianese for “God told ’em.”
Or at least they think God told ’em. They were listening to their consciences, which is probably the easiest way to hear God. When we become Christian, the Holy Spirit gets to work on our consciences, growing good fruit in them, fixing our attitudes, poking us there whenever we misbehave. For some of us, it’s our most regular form of communication with him; we’re used to it. Many prophets have learned to listen to our consciences, in case any tugs we might feel are messages from God.
So let’s say a prophet detects this idea in there: “Someone’s not so sure she believes in God. She has doubts.” Sounded to them like something the Holy Spirit would say. So they take it and run with it.
“I feel in my spirit,” they’ll say (this’d be Christianese for “I think”), “there’s someone in this room who’s not sure whether she even believes in God anymore. She has days when she can’t even feel God’s presence. She’s struggling. I just want everyone in this room to know God is real. He cares about you. And if you wanna come forward we’ll pray for you, and pray that God show up in your life. For you to feel his presence.”
Thereafter, five or six girls come forward to be prayed over. And sometimes one or two guys who don’t care which pronoun was used: They’re kinda feeling that way too, and also want prayer.
Okay, time for the analysis.
Everybody doubts. Those who don’t, either had such a profound God-experience they don’t doubt anymore, ’cause they used to doubt, ’cause everybody doubts. Or they’re in heavy denial, which ain’t good. In any event, skip a rock into a crowd of Christians and it’s a safe bet you’ll hit a doubter. So we don’t actually need the Holy Spirit to inform us, “Hey, there’s a doubter in the room.” Maybe we need him to remind us, but not inform us. But get up in any large meeting, prompted by the Spirit or not, and declare, “Anybody have doubts? Come forward for prayer,” and people’ll come forward for prayer. Because everybody doubts.
And because everybody doubts, why’s “Somebody has doubts” sitting in this prophet’s conscience, waiting to be heard? Because the prophet has doubts. That’s a message for them. Since we humans are far more alike than not, it’ll also work for many of the people in the room. But we humans tend to have some really serious blinders on when our consciences are talking to us about ourselves.
So nine times out of ten, you know who’s really going through the struggle with belief and doubt in the room? Duh: The prophet.
The next dozen times you hear prophets get up and declare something, ask yourself, “Say, does this message also apply—if not primarily apply—to the person giving the declaration?” And y’know what? It almost always will.