Elijah made a major life decision with a false prophecy.
- He prophesied to himself.
- He believed in the prophecy.
- He acted upon the prophecy.
- He attempted to make the prophecy come to pass.
It was a false prophecy. Elijah prophesied to himself: “I am the only one.”
This false prophecy led him to jump to false conclusions. “If this is true, then this is also true…”
“He sat down under a juniper tree and prayed that he might die. ‘I have had enough, LORD,’ he said. ‘Take my life, for I am no better than my fathers.'”
He had no revelation for this false assumption. He prophesied from his own conclusion, and he jumped to this conclusion. He began with the natural, conjured an evitability, zoned out spiritual possibilities, analyzed with his own heart, and started running.
- It invoked fear.
- It motivated panic.
- It invested him with dread.
- It magnified a false inevitability.
God let him run for a while. God even strengthen him during his Great Escape. God sent angels to feed him. “Your journey is too great for you,” they said. Three times angels fed a prophet fleeing his own folly.
The great one falls into his own delusion, and God feeds him to strengthen him. The strength will take him further from his assignment. God helps him get to the cave of his ultimate isolation from purpose and destiny. Why? God intends to reset the prophet there.
If you are determined to live out a false prophecy, God will accelerate your forward motion to get you to the place at which you stop running. There, He will reset your purpose.
Beware of the tendency to see a swift, God-assisted desertion of your assignment as “miraculous favor.”
I have witnessed several of my spiritual children run into the wilderness. Angels come to assist them. They shout about this “confirmation” of their rebellious determination to quit. They say, “God would never help me run from my true destiny. God is showing me the way forward by blessing me. Look! Angels are feeding me. I am right! My spiritual father is an idiot!”
Yeah, right.
Once you jump to the conclusion that your false prophecy is true, it becomes the context for hammering everything into your own way to destiny.
God helps you get to the place in which you will finally listen to Truth. There, He resets your destiny. There, He does what is necessary to get you back on track.
1. God reset Elijah’s submission.
God says, “Eljiah, stand there!” It is a whisper but it is a whisper that cools the deepest places of the soul with Divine terror. It is God saying, “You have stopped listening because you stopped submitting. “Stand there! No, not in the cave. No, not over there. Not, not six inches from ‘there.’ Stand THERE!”
Most parents fail to understand the first step in gaining honor from their children. It is obedience founded upon submission. It begins with training children to immediately respond to our voice. You must get their attention before you communicate. If not, you will escalate into confusion when the child ignores you. Insist that children honor you buy stopping what they are doing when you speak to them.
It is dishonorable for a child to ignore the voice of a parent or an adult leader.
When a spiritual son or daughter steps into rebellion, they have trouble hearing our voice. They will have something to do during your preaching or teaching. They will justify dishonor. They have a false prophecy inside at work to ignore your voice. They will not listen to your voice because they wish to be the source of all God has for them. They wish cut you out as an unneeded middleman.
They will tell themselves, “I’m mature enough to hear God on my own.”
This dishonor leads to justification for quitting.
Train child to come where you are so you do not have to yell. Then, say, “Stand there. Look me in the eyes so you can see my emotional condition. Listen to my words.”
When you have their attention through honor, reset submission. Then, give instructions to be obeyed. Respond to any disobedience in the same way. The source of most disobedience is limited submission. Limited submission means they no longer have sufficient honor for your position of leadership.
Elijah stopped referencing God’s voice when he jumped to the conclusion that he was the only one. Elijah did God a great favor: “If Jezebel kills me, God will have no one left. God will be helpless without me. I will run away from Jezebel to save God from this embarrassment.”
This was based upon the reality that God didn’t kill Jezebel and protect Elijah from the threat of death. “God, where is the lightning of Carmel now? That woman is an obstacle to my next move. I’m scheduled to appear on Sid Roth next week, and my picture will appear on the cover of Charisma Magazine next month. My “Lightning of God” international ministry launch is coming up in two weeks. I have several thousand monthly partners. My new book, Shut Up, Heaven!, comes out tomorrow. But, this woman…”
Elijah thinks his great delusion will not come to pass where he is, so he runs. His delusion of being the only one convinces him that he alone will save Israel from Jezebel. He is working on the details of his strategy while he runs. God feeds him. This is confirmation. God is in this retreat! This misreading of the food fills him with boldness to sass God!
I have seen these things with my own eyes!
God says, “Elijah, stand there!”
In other words, “Shut up! Stand at attention! Let’s reset your submission, great man of the lightning. I am God. You are not. You sent the lightning. You didn’t. I stopped the rain when you prayed. You just prayed what I told you to pray.”
“Elijah, what are you doing out here in this cave? See, I can shake the earth, blow rock into gravel, or burn down the forest any time I wish. I sent the lightning. If I wanted Jezebel dead right now, My little fingernail falling off would be enough to turn her into an ink blot on the palace wall. I could wink and she’d fall down dead. Hey! Stand there! Did I tell you to move two inches to the right? No, I didn’t. Stand THERE, not there.”
Elijah says, “Yes, sir.”
2. God reset Elijah’s heart.
“Elijah, you have prophesied a false word.” The prophet gasps. That is not good news to a prophet! You have prophesied to yourself that you alone remain to represent Me. Yet, I have several thousand – yes, more than those that attended your last prophetic conference at that resort of the Sea of Galilee – several thousand that have not bowed their knee to Baal. They do not partake in temple prostitution or spiritual lovemaking with Jezebel.”
“So, I sent an angel to feed you to get you here so I could kick the backside of you prophet robes. I didn’t help you get here because losing you would leave Me without options. In fact, I’m way ahead of you on getting rid of that rotten, baby-killing queen. And, now that I’ve finally gotten your attention again, let Me tell you what to do with the rest of your life…”
3. God’s reset Elijah leadership.
God told Elijah to start fathering another prophet. God told Elijah to anoint someone to get rid of Jezebel. God told Elijah to rearranged the governments of other nations. He basically says, ‘Elijah, shut down your prophecy for your own purposes machinery and start doing what I want to be done again. This is not about you as you supposed.”
“You represent Me. I do not represent you and your ministry, big boy preacher man! I am God. You are not. Got it? Great! Now, let’s move on with My purposes since they are your purposes. I am not here to service your purposes. You exist to fulfill Mine. Thank you, that will be all. I’ll get back to you when I need something done.”
God cured Elijah of fear, dread, intimidation, and false inevitability. He did it with a straight shot of discipline, a sharp crack of the whip on Elijah’s back, and a deep thrust of painful truth to his delusions. The air went out of Elijah’s hot air balloon so fast it melted off the makeup he was wearing for his TV appearance.
Running off is not being separated to. (Compare 1Kings 19 with Acts 13.)
Prophets become false by prophecying falsely to themselves. They create scenarios in which the value of their prophetic leadership exceeds God’s influence in history. They are certain that nothing will happen until they speak.
They shout, “Everyone pause what you are doing until I speak. I am Lighting Man.”
God rolls His eyes in disgust. Several angels giggle behind their hands. The devil snickers. Demons laugh out loud. Several prophetic websites warmup the computers to share Elijah’s “I alone am left. The mark of the beast lies before. The Nephilim will eat your children like breakfast cereal. The Illuminati will destroy all we have built in one day. All is lost! Give up!” (“Buy these ten books today! (They won’t help at all because Elijah is the only one. Buy them anyway because we need the money to keep sharing these great words with you)”
Test Your Own Heart
The tendency to prove your prophetic words superior leads to bizarre thinking. Jumping to conclusions is the great weakness of prophetic people. That is why they need strong leaders in their lives who speak strong correction to their false conclusions.
So, let’s look inside at your personal false prophecies to yourself that have justified you being out of place and position to produce. Let’s recall the angels that fed you when you quit and ran. Remember how you thought that was confirmation of your delusions?
Let’s stand THERE where God is God and you are not. Let’s listen to God speak through a leader who boldly calls you out of the cave to whisper a reset of your submission, heart, and leadership.
