In recent days, when controversy in the prophetic movement has surfaced, we need to understand what happened along the way that led us to this place. It’s not a complicated issue if we understand what happened to those involved.  It’s also a safeguard for the rest of us who are equally capable of similar actions.

The larger a ministry becomes, whether individually or corporately, the greater the chance it will compromise its most important principles in an attempt to keep a ministry growing. The wider our influence becomes, the easier it will be to compromise our ethics by taking spiritual shortcuts or making assumptions that will undermine our integrity.

None of us has been created to handle the challenges of praise and adoration. Those things belong to God alone because they are acts of worship. As tempting as it is to accept praise or offer adulation to another human, it’s never the way forward. Those choices take our eyes off Jesus and put them on a person or an institution. We need to be careful in what we seek or who we choose to adulate. Only God can hold that position in our lives. 

We are living in a continual process of purification in our thinking, where hopefully, at the end of our lives, our testimony of how we lived will reflect that it was Jesus, not our successes or what other people thought of us, that mattered most. 

John the Baptist referred to that kind of testimony as a disappearing act of sorts, that will keep our pride in check, when he said, “He must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30). 

Whenever we put the focus on us and our gifting, we will reverse John’s equation. We have been called to demonstrate the increasing presence of Jesus in our lives. John used the word “must” because there is no other way to live a righteous life. Only then can God keep us spiritually safe and use us in ways that will please Him and advance His Kingdom.