A certain gentleman whose tweets can be followed with various gasps of ‘surely this time he is joking’ apparently when asked about power and how it works responded with the word ‘fear’. For him to be effective and get things done the best attribute to have is one that enables a climate of fear to be cultivate among those around him. Fear certainly enables the exercise of a certain type of power.
In some of the medieval religious art the fear of hell fire and torment was certainly a tool employed to keep everyone in line. There are consequences to choices and it is a ‘fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God’ so some measure of ‘nervousness’ is probably in order. That though is a long way from using fear to control and make sure that everyone complies with our will.
We head off to Brazil in a few weeks time after a pause of some 9 years. Back in those days I was travelling doing prophetic seminars and soon discovered that in the highly exalted prophetic world of that country there was so much abuse. Prophets who would give a word and say if it was not received the person would be ill or even die! It was no surprise that when we broke those literal curses off people there were significant outbreaks of instantaneous healings. That was a not so subtle means of using fear to control.
When Sue was ill with cancer I had a phone message left on my ansaphone. A person with great revelation who discovered that in the book ‘Impacting the City’ there was an error. I was to seek the Lord, re-read the book, discover the error, repent and lo and behold Sue would be healed. If only there was only one error in the book!! I am glad the call was so ridiculous that it was easy to dismiss.
Discerning where there is an effect from choices that we genuinely need to put right, and where we are looking (in vain) for where we have been wrong, and so things are not as they should be, can be a challenge. However, approaching any such question from fear will not get us any where positive. Even if we were to find the right ‘answer’ the underlying approach is so wrong that the answer is unlikely to produce the desired solution.
There are a couple of fairly strong Scriptures that have a ‘warning’ sign attached.
… but if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.
For with the judgement you pronounce you will be judged, and with the measure you use it will be measured to you.
A couple of pretty strong ‘fear-inducing’ Scriptures those two, and two pretty strong life-giving Scriptures if we come close to lining up to them. Life-giving: forgive. Can be tough and thank God I have never faced tough situations where I have had to dig deep to forgive, so I want to be careful what I write. To forgive is to release, it is not to say what was done was OK, in fact it can mean to do the opposite of that. Forgiveness to be real is to accept what was done was not OK but I am not going to ask for my pound of flesh. Life-giving for that is what we will then experience ourselves. To experience forgiveness at a human level is wonderful but to expand that to the divine level is incredible. That is freedom, and the pathway is to forgive others. Be cautious about judging is a good bench mark. Religion likes to judge, but does not give life. I have been a happy advocate for Identificational repentance because identification is pretty easy. Repent for the crusades of 1000 years ago – easy as I too have wanted to conquer for God (= make life easy for me, prove me right, get God on my side, suppress all who challenge me).
When Jesus spoke the above words it was not to put the fear of God in us, but to outline paths of life. Imagine a world where forgiveness went up by just a few percent, and judging went down just a little. Wow!!
God does not control by fear. Indeed I would suggest that those who have something to fear are the religious… the very ones who try to control by fear. Oh and the power hungry as religion is just one more manifestation of power hunger.
The power that God exercises is power for change coming from love. That threatens us to the core. What if people do not want to change? Well apparently God is not so ignorant of that to be surprised and has not changed his ways. If he has not changed his ways I was simply wondering if it might be a good thing for a bunch of God’s people to get back to his ways?
The whole of this is so interesting. What you said about the abuse of prophecy is particularly interesting to me as I feel as if I am not free to speak out against certain prophetic proclamations for fear of curses or backlash. When I have spoken out or challenged this bad things have sometimes happened to me or my family so to some extent I am living in fear which I am not proud of. I’m already chronically ill so feel very vulnerable. I very much dislike the way prophecy has lately become elevated above scripture or what Jesus so specifically said about caring for the poor and destitute and loving our neighbour and praying for our enemies and has been used to justify the unjustifiable. I value prophecy but real prophecy not that which just reinforces our own political/personal agendas. The fear/love issue is very important to me. When people say things like ‘I would not like to speak out against God’s anointed’ without questioning if they are in fact genuinely anointed I am frustrated when everything in my being and conscience says they are wrong, but also somewhat afraid…
Thanks Joanna for the contribution. We can all hide behind texts: ‘the Lord’s anointed’ being one of them. Prophecy has to be judged / assessed – that is a ‘command’, so when I encountered some of the mal-practices in Brazil I was shocked. The fear is what gave it all power to bind people.
Scripture is clear on so many issues and if someone comes to me and asks about a practice that is clearly against Scripture I can respond (of course Scripture has to be interpreted so even then we have to be careful rather than insisting on my interpretation). But if I gave someone a prophecy they have the right to weigh it and reject it.
I think the big aspect is often fear that binds. We can also put something on the shelf. We do not have to accept it even if a person is visibly strongly anointed and has a track record of being right. Right on a 1000 occasions cannot absolutely guarantee right the next time.
A response of integrity, honesty and humility is what the Lord looks for – even if we find ourselves unable to receive something that we might later find out was correct and from the Lord. That humility can also mean we can keep quiet as well as speak up at other times.
Thank you for your response. Yes humility is important and I try not to react to prophecy I strongly disagree with and tend not to say what I’d like to say or challenge it in the way I want to. Sometimes however I wonder if this is just as much out of fear than out of integrity because of previous bad experiences where it hasn’t gone well when i do perhaps if I truly had integrity I would. However it is hard to change the opinions of people who strongly feel they’ve heard from God so it is often pointless back and forth. Then as you say there is always the possibility they could be right even if it doesn’t feel it. Difficult and complex issue.