Prophesy is not necessarily a mark of His pleasure

“Don’t you know anything? Can’t you see that it’s to our advantage that one man dies for the people rather than the whole nation be destroyed?” He didn’t say this of his own accord, but as Chief Priest that year he unwittingly prophesied that Jesus was about to die sacrificially for the nation…” John 11:50-51

When I read this I think about how and why God uses leaders.

My great desire is for God to use me as a pipeline of His love and grace as my heart is shaped to reflect His will. I want to be fully used, but more than that I want to be fully His.

However, to be honest, I’ve known times where God has used me in spite of myself. I’ve spoken God’s words and deeply impacted others, but my motives were really ugly, or my personal life was a bit of a wreck. Other times the Lord is very present, but I feel like my ministry is a treadmill—I’m walking hard but getting nowhere.

Leaders need to be careful. We can see God’s impact through our words and ministries and assume that is the mark of His approval. But sometimes we need to recognize that we are simply unwitting conduits of something He wants to do. God can use anyone or anything (as Balaam discovered); He’ll speak through you even if you are an…um….donkey.

Prophesy, platform, provision or parishioners are not necessarily accurate measures of God’s presence in and through our lives. But the existence of those things doesn’t necessarily mean we are missing God, either. I just think we shouldn’t get too caught up in the external evidence of impact, because those things we tend to measure are not always a faithful dashboard telling us what God is really up to.

Let’s contend to have a prophetic voice and ministry that flows through a radically surrendered life, not just because we have positional leadership that God chooses to use for the good of His people. Let’s seek to be those who carry the mark of His pleasure on our lives, and are not simply content to be a tool that He may sometimes choose to use.