Voice of a Prophet: We Need Prophets, Not Promoters
Voice of a Prophet
We Need Prophets, Not Promoters
(Excerpted)
And God said unto Moses,
I AM THAT I AM:
and he said,
Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel,
I AM hath sent me unto you.
EXODUS 3:14
What prepared Moses for his great work was what I refer to as the crisis of encounter. Out of this crisis came a sense of the sacred.
Perhaps the reason there is such a lack of reverence today is because most people have never met God in this way.
Made Beautiful in the Presence of the Fire
Many years after this burning bush experience, Moses prayed a wonderful prayer:
“And let the beauty of the Lord our God be upon us: and establish thou the work of our hands upon us; yea, the work of our hands establish thou it” (Ps. 90:17).
When Moses saw that beautiful blaze in the twilight, he said,
“I will turn aside now and see this great sight.”
That attractiveness is the great and mighty need of religion today. More than any other thing, we need the sense of sacredness that brings beauty to light. One of the tragedies of the hour is unlovely orthodoxy.
Those Who Are Called to Do God’s Work
To anyone going out into religious work, you are called to be a burning bush, not to imitate a movie actor.
You are not called to be great; you are called to be beautiful.
The beauty may be in the fire or in your boldness or in your courage.
Your call could be a burning bush, and I would seriously recommend to all who feel themselves called to do God’s work to shun the coarse ways of the cheap gospel and the amateur.
Stay away from them.
We are suffering today in evangelical circles from an epidemic of amateurism.
Anybody who can talk can get up and talk.
Coarseness, ignorance, cheap humor, a flash of wit at times to wake up an audience;
I say, shun it and stay away from it.
We already have enough promoters; we need prophets.
We already have enough organizers; we need men who have met God in the crisis of encounter.
Do you want to be that fire at any cost?
The rank and file of the half-saved will think you are a fanatic.
I believe there are many crazy people in heaven, because everybody who truly meets God is branded as being a little bit wacky.
The sanest man is a man who knows God the most; the sanest mind is the mind in which the fire dwells the most perfectly.
When you start to seek God in the crisis of encounter, people will say,
“He’s lost his mind.”
After you are established and get your feet down, and something goes wrong in their house, the phone will ring and they will say,
“There’s trouble over here. Could you come?”
The Lord is calling His people to the Spirit-filled life; He’s calling them to a consecrated life, to a life committed to a point where they cannot back out and do not want to.
The question is, do you want to be one of them?
O God of the fire, burn in my life today as You have never burned there before.
Set my life aflame with the holiness of Thy presence.
I pray this, O God, in Jesus’ name.
Amen.
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