Beware the tendency to assume that a revelation from God positions you to be the source and resource of leadership for a movement, or that His revealing this to you means you are the only one who has this message from God. The revelation itself does not establish an assignment beyond your responsibility to communicate it, and God determines how and to whom you should communicate the message.
Your position in the dream, the perspective of your awareness, may position you as the voice or the one doing the action and activity in the dream, but that doesn’t in and of itself mean that you are the one to speak and act in the application and implementation of the revelation.
Intercessors will have dreams that reveal how to pray for their leaders for whose assignments they pray. They may dream about miracles, preaching, crowds of people, outbreaks of healing so that they anticipate what God is going to do through someone and their intercession birth the reality of what their prophetic dream or vision anticipates. It does not mean they should expect to have an international healing ministry so they can take the mic and do the stuff. They may see a Kathryn Kulhman scenario but it doesn’t mean they are the next healing evangelist.
Prophetic people share assignments through alignments. Their revelation awareness of what God wishes to do directs their function within these alignments and assignments. The scope of the revelation doesn’t expand the scope of their function as much as it directs their function within a scope of assignment in which God has positioned them. They pray or prophesy at a regional or national level without being part the regional or national leadership team.
So, it is normal for a leadership team composed of the fivefold ministry, intercessors, warriors, worshippers, and many other types of kingdom leaders to experience revelation that produces spiritual consensus: they come into oneness by sharing God’s mind through revelation.
When the enemy whispers, “This revelation will finally give you the attention, recognition, and value you know you deserve, the temptation tests your ambitions.” This test of revelation presses you toward distraction and a dead end detour. You stop functioning in your assigned place because you await the recognition and honor that your presumption presupposes should be yours. A sudden discontent with other people’s lack of recognition for your importance becomes a settled disgust or discouragement about what God has called you to do. And, you stop that assigned function awaiting the arrival of a fantasy.
Such an immature approach to prophetic revelation fragments the kingdom because people extrapolate their revelations through assumptions of ambition. In the midst of great revelation and revival, some really spiritual people become offended by the very thing they spent years praying and anticipating because the subtle suggestion that they would sit one on the right and one on the left fails to come to pass.
The example of Jesus questioning Simon Peter speaks to this issue. The true intent of Jesus’ questions about Simon Peter’s love for him is best seen at the point of the story in which Simon Peter asks Jesus about John’s future. This is the real moment of uncovering for Simon’s weakness in devotion and passion.
“What is that to you, Simon?” Jesus asks. “I’ve assigned you your place in the kingdom. Please fulfill that and stop worrying about comparison and contrast as a measurement of My love for you.”
Simon harbored feelings about John from a history of favoritism he perceived between John and Jesus. John is given responsibility for Mary, not Simon. John rests his head on His chest, not Simon. John and his brother asked for the right and left without a thought of Simon – or so he assumes. The history hasn’t settled for Simon, and Jesus touches this raw nerve with His questions, “Do you love Me more than these?”
Apply this scenario to revelation: revelation isn’t God’s way of giving you identity or promotion. Revelation rhythms prioritize your passion, position your performance, and prepare us for oneness when they are worked out in the place of your assignment, part of a greater assignment that produces God’s purpose.
Hearing someone share a revelation dream, I realized the person assumed the dream was God indicating they would do the things they saw in the dream when their position as intercessor and prophetically aware leader did not accommodate that application of the dream. No interpretation of the dream could properly position them to do what they dreamed because it was a revelation of intercession to produce an awareness of what God would do through the greater assignment of which they were part. Passing the dream on to their leaders and praying in concert with them and other intercessors would be powerful! Communicating the dream as a basis for expecting to be promoted to a platform position would be a dead end detour.
