Once you stop seeking potential and focus upon purpose, the filtering system of your revelation process will reach greater purity.
The nebulous context of potential will leave you pursuing delusions more than destiny. The prophetic process requires interpretation, and the framework of the prophetic is purpose. The context of potential works against purity of perception in the prophetic.
You will make bad decisions about the future because you include in the future something out of step with purpose that seems perfectly feasible in potential. You will think God is going to connect you with a distant mountain by a miracle, but the context of potential has little perspective for the distance between you and that mountain. It seems much closer than it really is.
You think that is just your prophetic nature, but it is actually the wrong context for interpretation.
Prophetic Perspective
Teaching people to hear or see spiritually is easy. Training them to follow prophetic process takes time, deeper submission, flashes of humility that strike the altars of pride like lightning, and accepting the flight risk that seers and prophets develop when they grasp hold of the alluring sights and sounds of potential.
When you see in spiritual reality, you see the vast ocean of potential through which increasingly deeper submission to the process of passionate pursuit cuts a specific path, cutting the waves of resistance by a head-on forward pattern. Like Simon Peter, walking until he sees the waves and wind, the open-eyed wonder of the revelatory believer requires a steadfast focus upon the One who calls them to Himself in the midst of the deep darkness above and beneath the surface.
That is, prophetic people should be able to see and hear so they can boldly go where purpose directs them, but the allure of the potential often – yes, I say, “Often” – captures their imaginations as the Tempter points out the distant “what if’s” of potential and reminds them of all the possibilities.
It is because the eyes and ears of the spirit are open that these temptations become so dangerous. Not that revelation in dangerous, per se, but that spirit and flesh war over greater risks, where flights of imagination may lead to shipwrecks.
Paul says this is the reality of revelatory experiences, and submission to greater grace flows and acceptance of emptied energies are the norm for the prophetically gifted.
Potential Allures
Temptation comes to spotlight potential at the expense of purpose. The “turn these stones into bread” and “jump down and let angels carry You” and “I’ll give you all these kingdoms” part of the temptations of Jesus appeal to His potential perfectly. They allure on the basis of partial Truth. He is Son of God. The Bible does say. His inheritance is the nations.
However, potential as context interprets without purity. His answers point to purpose: “By every word coming out of God’s mouth, I eat; Do not test the Lord your God; Worship God exclusively.”
In other words, the temptation appeal to His potential. He can turn stones in to bread. He would be carried by angels. He will rule all the nations. But the context of potential the graveyard of angels: a third of them pursued potential at the expense of purpose and fell and kept on falling.
Submission to Purpose
The tests press like Gethsemane. The oil of purpose flows from the inner core at the expense of appearance. The potential of the olive is lost in purpose. “This olive will produce oil, not become a fine specimen for display in a solution of vinegar or garnish a piece of bread.”
Potential appears to have nothing to criticize, so it appears to say, “All is right. Nothing is wrong. God created potential so you make up your own mind about your destiny.” That appeals to the flesh! That allures the mind! That pulls on your creativity, to produce the painting of your own “what is possible!”
It is wickedness.
No, that is not an exaggeration. The concept that witches with long noses and warts, screaming incantations with blurry eyes and wisps of wolf fur and crow feathers in their dried out hair represents “wicked” is another part of the delusion. Wicked is missing the mark to which the arrow flies. Wicked is driving into potential on expedition to discover when purpose is one step ahead in obedience.
Missing the mark is as simply as seeking potential instead of purpose. And, it makes perfect sense to the natural mind!
So, God breaks into the natural with eternal revelation, from the One who created with a blueprint of Father’s purpose, and Light shines the way in the vast ocean of potential, a beacon to follow, a welcome home from the Intercessor, a way through the rocks. Turning toward purpose means you live with the Rock in view and enter the deep only because the Deep of God calls to the deep in you.
Prophetic Process
The safety of counsel is often seen as piling up enough counselors that you find you who agrees with you. That is exactly opposite what is wise. Oddly, prophetically inclined people find help in peer level input by intentionally looking for confirmations in the all the wrong places. The prophetic process designed to prevent these fatal errors in navigation give way to tinkling bells and sincere sirens, voices that speak from the context of potential, alluring the prophetic person to launch out when they should be anchored fast to pillars on shore.
If you do not have a council for counsel that burst your bubbles, you are in grave, immediate danger of sailing into a horizon that invites you to distant delusions. You are about to sail away on humanistic winds that push you quickly out to sea.
God designed and defined kingdom relationships based upon expertise and experience. He has not left us to peer level confirmations. Being called of God requires you to have some voices in your life that can tell you “No” and slap their palms on the table top when they say it. If you are singing in the shower, prophetically speaking, and your mother is telling you to try out for American Idol, you might want to find someone who can tell you how flat the third and fifth and ninth notes you are singing are first. Your mother thinks you sing like an angel when leaders with expertise and experience will ask you to take up underwater swimming just to get you to shut up.
Revelation arrives pure but immediately enters into the process of the human mind. Revelation meets communication. Communication begins within the person who receives. Without training, that person will allow the self-talk to contextualize the God-talk to the point that revelation gets muddied up with flesh before it gets into interpretation. Communication is essential to interpretation, but the communication step is usually so poor that interpretation causes a chicken egg to hatch a horse.
Only after interpretation can the prophetic person apply and implement, then measure progress against the backdrop of the revelation with addition insight flowing into the process as each step is taken.
Some people are like the man who read Jesus saying, “The kingdom of heaven is like a man who took a long journey.” He loaded up the car and started driving to nowhere – and got there fast! Jesus did say that. The communication of that revelation within the man through delusional self-talk reveals a person without leadership in his life.
Potential and Promise
God never promises from potential. We often look at David, Gideon, Elijah, Paul, Simon Peter, and Matthew – along with countless others – and realize that God likes to choose unlikely people from unlikely places to do unlikely things at unlikely times. In reality, God never promises from potential.
He chooses a man to birth nation who requires a century to produce a child! “Abraham, you are a father of nations,” God announces. Abraham will wonder about this for a century: why did God choose someone with no potential for that purpose?!
Here’s the point: the vast majority of people with a promise as big as Abraham’s will never hold their promised purpose because they cannot submit to the preparation process that positions them to be the person who can receive the promise. And, the main reason they fail in the process will always be the attraction of potential in the face of the obvious failure of purpose. At some point, they will eject from the jet that is running out of fuel, jump ship for a more favorable yacht, fall off the train to find gold in a desert, or climb a mountain when the promise awaits them in a valley.
That is, people become enamored with potential because the promises costs more than they want to pay in waiting (time), happiness (fulfillment of expectations), reputation (pride of life), and stuff (demanding desires of flesh and eyes). Having begun with revelation in the spirit, they wish to finish with potential in the flesh.
The Providential Pathway to Purpose
The revelation of purpose will put you on an increasingly more narrow pathway. If you pathway doesn’t lead you to bleed at the sweat glands, you might be sleeping when you should be surrendering. You will betray purpose when the enemy arrives. You will deny Jesus before others to preserve potential, even curse Him when a little maid says you should die like He is dying. That is, you will not be willing to pay the price for purpose and potential offers you nearly limitless ways forward to mysterious possibilities without a cross on your back!
The providential pathway to purpose throws the best riders from their horses. They walk a little while and begin looking for another steed. God reminds them that the pathway before them is increasingly more and more narrow, so specific at times that the soul cries out, “God, surely there is another way,” because the flesh is eager to find another way through. God says, “No, this is the way. Walk in it.”
Humanism offers the vast ocean of potential with flashing signs and full-color glossy paged brochures: “Everyone is having a great time here on the broad way! Join in today for the ride of your life! Potential is limitless! You, too, can be rich, happy, accepted, and comfortable. Don’t waste another moment of your one life on that narrow way! Come on down!” The allure of potential is a lie. That hasn’t stopped billions from walking the broad way, however, and the blindness can only be broken by the light that leads to the narrow path.
God will walk the righteous down hidden paths. The solitude and dangerous risk taken to maintain that direction are not for the faint of heart but the strong in faith. There be giants on these roads! There be monsters waiting at these turns! There be cliffs with only “forward march” alternatives on these trails. Keep on walking.
Joseph is an example of purpose. Glimpses of his power reveal purpose, but potential could never position him to stand before the Pharaoh. He can produce! He has potential! But, there he lies in that filthy prison with the worst of the rejected and hopeless.
The allure of potential will immediately follow the question: “God would never ask me to do that, right?” And the faithful answer, “Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him.” The overcomer says, “All or nothing.” The person of purpose says, “Only through my deeper submission to this process will I become the ultimate person of purpose. Potential removes the cross from my life, but only in the Cross can my purpose be fulfilled!”
