We live in a day and age when it is more fashionable to tickle people’s ears with what they want to hear. The messages are almost alll “feel-good” packages. The so-called prophecies of the day are exactly the good-sounding things that people want to hear.
Those of us who have accepted the task of declaring truth are often maligned and mocked, despised and persecuted on all fronts. At times, it gets so bad that we are often tempted to tone it down a bit and not rock the boat so much.
Last week, I told a sister how I have at times felt like giving up preaching the Gospel. Her response:
Really? You have fooled me. You seem resilient!
When I further told her how I cry almost everyday, how my heart breaks everyday and how I am weak everyday, and keep crying to the Lord, she responded:
Please stop. You are scaring me. What do u mean? You are strong!
It was an interesting discussion. Well, I shared with her how the Lord’s strength is made perfect in our weakness. Like our brother Paul, my boast will always be in my weakness, that the power of Christ may rest upon me. And in those weaknesses do I take pleasure; in reproaches, in necessities, in persecutions, in distresses for Christ’s sake: for when I am weak, then am I strong (2 Corinthians 12:9-10)
Standing for the Lord is often a lonely job, but we have several examples of men who did so in Scriptures, and we can be certain that the Lord will keep us.
The accounts in 1 Kings 22 show us the sterling example of a relatively unsung prophet named Micaiah. He has no book to his name, but this brief account reveals a man of character, a man who knew and respected the Lord above anyone else, and a man who dared to speak the truth regardless of who’s ox is gored.
400 prophets claimed to be speaking for God, but they were all speaking by a false spirit. Do the math – 400 lying prophets. They had all probably come out of the school of the prophets; yet they prophesied by a lying spirit.
In practice, the odds that 400 prophets are lying and only one is telling the truth are terrific. But that’s what it was.
It is the same way that people question the odds that our numerous self-appointed General Overseers, Bishops, Senior Pastors et al are lying and only a handful of us are telling the truth. Odds or not, that’s the way it is.
Unity is a good thing, but only when built on truth. Micaiah had enough sense to refuse unity on a platter of falsehood. He would not get in on the bandwagon with the majority.
In all probability, he was not being mentored by any of the 400 prophets. He was not upwardly mobile. He had no desire for acceptance and recognition. He was not seeking to build the fastest growing church in the land.
Note also that Micaiah respected not the evil king. All God’s messengers all through the Bible have this stamped on them. When men rebelled against God, respect for status, age, position or authority went out the window.
While our self-serving pastors today continue to tell corrupt and wicked men in power that it is well with them and that they are God’s anointed ones, invite them to speak at their events, and even collect money from them “for the Lord’s work”, Micaiah would have none of that.
Note in verse 13 that the messenger that was sent to Micaiah had even attempted to persuade him to speak “that which is good” to the king.
But the prophet wouldn’t. He was made of a different cloth from the sort of people that the bishop at Otta and the overseer by the highway are – those men who claim to hear God but whom God didn’t (and still does not) tell that the politicians and characters they frolic with are evil.
Micaiah was certainly non-conformist, and was not out to earn points, build a followership or fan anybody’s ego. He was a man of God in the truest sense of the word.
He was not going to go motivational either and tell the King that he could make it if he believed it. He was only going to tell Him what the Lord said.
I pray that God would give us more men of the stock of Micaiah today. We need men who will speak the truth whether it is popular or not. We need godly shepherds and preachers who won’t tell people what they want to hear but what they need to hear.
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