“The Lord is not slack
[“not using due diligence, care or dispatch”] concerning His promise. . .” (II Peter 3:9a) Any promise God has given you, including a bona fide prophetic word will come to
pass. This promise-keeping quality
extends to His children in prayer: “Now this is the confidence that we have in
Him, that if we ask anything according to His will, He hears us.
And if we know that He hears us, whatever we ask, we know that we have
the petitions that we have asked of Him” (I John 5:14&15).
Then the critical thing for the “believer” is to discern
whether or not a thing being asked of God is according to His will.
It’s critical a “believer” learn to “ask” and “receive”
because many of those things which God wants to usher in as we come to the end
of the age will require some of His children somewhere asking, believing and “receiving”
them. Illustrative of this principle is
Amos 3:7—“Surely the Lord God does
nothing, unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.” This way the prophets would know how to
pray and what to declare.
This principle of informational-forewarning is covered
exhaustively in the writings of the prophets relative to the coming of Jesus. Because of the abundance of such prophetic
information King Herod, the Roman Client King of Judea at the time of the birth
of Jesus, was enabled to tap into this pool of information in an attempt to
find and kill the Christ child. “And when he (Herod) gathered all the chief priests and scribes
of the people together, he inquired of them where the Christ was to be born. So they said to him, ‘In Bethlehem of Judea,
for thus it is written by the prophet: But you, Bethlehem, in the land
of Judah, are not the least among the rulers of Judah; for out of you shall
come a Ruler who will shepherd My people Israel’” (Matthew 5&6).
The information given Herod was correct but he was
frustrated in his attempt to kill the Christ child because “an angel of the Lord appeared to Joseph in a dream saying, ‘Arise,
take the young Child and His mother, flee to Egypt, and stay there until I
bring you word; for Herod will seek the young Child to destroy Him” (Matthew
2:13).
The prophet Daniel, himself, tapped into the prophetic word
to learn how he should pray, “in
the first year of his reign (Darius, the son of Ahasuerus) I, Daniel understood by the books the
number of the years specified by the word of the Lord, given through
Jeremiah the prophet, that He would accomplish seventy years in the
desolations of Jerusalem. Then I set my
face toward the Lord God to make request by prayer and supplications, with
fasting, sackcloth, and ashes” (Daniel 9:2&3).
Daniel learned the time of Judah’s captivity in Babylon was
70 years and that now they should be set free to return to the land. The prophetic word supplied Daniel with the
information and he prayed accordingly.
Judah was released to go back and build again the walls of
Jerusalem. All of it done according to
the “word of the Lord”.
Certainly, there are those personal and family matters God
would have you ask of Him. But having
learned to trust Him for these personal matters, it’s time you took the stance
of Daniel and began inquiring of God those things that must happen on behalf of
Israel and, by extension, the rest of the world.
That’s a large part of why you have been permitted to live
at such a time as this.
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