Foot Washing: Precious from the Worthless
Author: Andrew Comiskey
March 23, 2024
‘I will pour out on you a
spirit of grace and supplication…
We will look upon the One
we have pierced and will mourn as one grieves for an only child…
On that day, I’ll open a
fountain to cleanse you from sin and impurity;
on that day, I’ll banish
the idols from the land…
On that day, I’ll remove
both the prophets and the spirit of impurity from the land…
On that day, every
prophet will be ashamed of his prophetic vision.
He will say, “I am not a
prophet, I am a farmer.”
When asked about the
wounds on his body, he will answer:
“These wounds I was given
at the house of my friends”’ (Zechariah 12:10-13:6).
Paul Cain had booze and boys, Bob Jones his girls, Misty
Edwards her lovers. The current IHOPKC scandal gives prophetic ministry a bad
name and highlights the special fathering required by the prophetically inclined.
Mike Bickle did more to father the ‘prophets’ than
anyone I know. When he was good, he soared; addled by prophetic misuses, he
stumbled into vice. He couldn’t discipline the messy mouthpieces and songbirds
who needed him.
Boundaries and structure liberate the prophetic. Both help
ground those whose spiritual sensitivity risks careening into delusion. Gaps in
one’s growth and development can become grandiose efforts to secure love
wrongfully. Then fake spirituality becomes a cover, a manipulation, a source of
shame greater than mere sins of the flesh.
We must heed Zechariah in this ugly time: ‘Let every
prophet be ashamed of His vision.’ He continues: ‘Do not put on a prophet’s
garment of hair to deceive’ (Zech. 13:4). Expose the sin and spiritual cover-up!
We all share this shame. Every one of us. We are each
a part of one Body and the scandal of a fellow member uncovers all of us. Shame.
Good shame. That means we don’t need any seer telling
us about his dream or her vision, the ‘real’ truth of the matter based on some subjective
leading. We need to quiet our hearts and grieve the misuse of a precious gift
and its defilement: fewer prophecies, not more, in this season of stripping and
burning.
May the heat incinerate any tendency to mistake a
presidential candidate with Jesus, Savior of America. ‘In God We Vote’, a
slogan employed by a strange group entitled Catholics for Trump, says it all.
Please. Discern your political choices. Weigh the complexities.
Lay down partisan interests masking as prophecy.
Forego Old Testament justifications for MAGA. Vote and influence as you will; that
is a blessed democratic right. Just don’t fuel it with any ‘thus say the Lord’
nonsense. You lose my vote if you do and cheapen the treasure of reason in
making wise political decisions.
Read the room. We who love the prophetic can allow the
searchlight of scandal to humble us and check our vulnerabilities. How known am
I? How aware and at peace with my own humanity? How protected in my skin with
its longings and blemishes? In my marriage and family, the most accurate of
mirrors?
IHOPKC suffered from a revolving group of leaders inadequately
trained to pastor, let alone restrain, prophetic ‘types.’ Freedom to grow in
one’s gifting requires form. Wise shepherds can provide a community that
nourishes things of the Spirit while encouraging members to integrate with
others to develop trust and virtue and the capacity to be refined, even
disciplined, when gifts outweigh the human gaps.
I see this in my friend Cheryl Allen and the way she
has built a prayer room in Pasadena, CA, PIHOP. She majors on beauty, the
enjoyment of creation, and the healing of persons—body, soul, and spirit—all
while tending to a diverse community of worshippers and healers. She nurtures
flesh (the Imago Dei) and Spirit. It’s healthy, and prophetic too. The two need
not be mutually exclusive.
I love how my son Nick, a pastor, does this. He helms
a large Anglican parish where he makes room for a band of ‘fire-chasers’ whom
he encourages to help build the church, one Spirited advance at a time. He
neither grandstands nor minimizes the prophetically inclined—he deploys them to
empower the humble.
Both Cheryl and Nick are using pastoral leadership to
nurture the prophetic. They grandstand no ‘prophet’ but Jesus; both love messy
persons who prophesy often, sometimes for the good of Jesus’ house.
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