Encouraging Prophecies, 9/1/20
This is a brief lesson on how to handle encouraging prophetcies. Our text is Daniel 9.
Notice that Daniel, in verse 2 below, received the prophecy, from the Book of Jeremiah, that Israel would be restored after 70 years in slavery. Notice that he did not just say, "Ok, cool, we will be restored after 70 years, we can relax now." No. We see from verses 3 onward that he not only received it but he began to pray it into being, confessing all of Israel's sins and repenting for them from his authority as a prophet.
Daniel 9 New King James Version (NKJV)
Daniel’s Prayer for the People
9 In the first year of Darius the son of Ahasuerus, of the lineage of the Medes, who was made king over the realm of the Chaldeans— 2 in the first year of his reign I, Daniel, understood by the books the number of the years specified by the word of the Lord through Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the desolations of Jerusalem.
3 Then I set my face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with fasting, sackcloth, and ashes. 4 And I prayed to the Lord my God, and made confession, and said, “O Lord, great and awesome God, who keeps His covenant and mercy with those who love Him, and with those who keep His commandments, 5 we have sinned and committed iniquity, we have done wickedly and rebelled, even by departing from Your precepts and Your judgments. 6 Neither have we heeded Your servants the prophets, who spoke in Your name to our kings and our princes, to our fathers and all the people of the land....
The rest of the prayer is good too. I just did not want overload you.
So this is how we handle encouraging prophecy. We pray for it to come to pass. And in so doing we hasten its coming into the natural. The more we pray in agreement with a prophecy, more quickly it becomes not just a promise in the spirit realm, but a reality in the natural realm.
This is the same principle as what Paul is getting at with Timothy, on the personal level, in Timothy's life and ministry:
This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you, that by them you may wage the good warfare,
So we all need to learn to pray the good things God says to us both personally and for the Body or for our nation. Obviously we can't really pray every single thing we have heard him say, we will have to pick an choose what to prioritize. But this is a good practice. I need to do better on this myself!
So I hope this is helpful. This is another good example of the value of studying the Old Testament as well as the New. Be blessed!
Steve Pursell, 9/1/20