The Emerging Prophet

"Therefore become imitators of God, copy Him and follow His example, as well-beloved children imitate their father; and walk continually in love, that is, value one another—practice empathy and compassion, unselfishly seeking the best for others, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God, slain for you, so that it became a sweet fragrance."

In Chapter Four of The Prophetic Path, I told you about the circle of life, nine biblical principles that were built into my life as an emerging prophet. The character and function of the prophet is pretty much summarized in the fifth principle: Be imitators of God.

Imitation is not impersonation.

"Beware of the false prophets, teachers who come to you dressed as sheep, appearing gentle and innocent, but inwardly are ravenous wolves. By their fruit you will recognize them, that is, by their contrived doctrine and self-focus."

Prophets focus on loving God, revealing him to his people and building and maintaining his kingdom. False prophets focus on impressing people, being revered by them and building and maintaining their kingdom.

To imitate Jesus, we need to be able to see him. And since he no longer walks where we are, we have to hang out where he is. His voice has to become so familiar to us that we can distinguish it from all others, and we have to know him so intimately that we recognize anything that is outside his character and nature.

It's a little like a husband and wife. When she calls on the phone, he doesn't have to ask who it is (he'd better not). He'd know the voice of his beloved anywhere.

To imitate God, we have to be able to see him, to observe him. And the only place we can do that is in Scripture. We can never let ourselves be deceived into believing that, once we've read the gospels and epistles, we know them. The Bible is unlike any other book ever written or ever to be written, because it is the only book written by God about God. If you are seeking God, you can read the same chapter in the same gospel over and over again and learn something new about God every time.

For many, he does this "light thing." You're reading along, and all of a sudden a word or sentence or paragraph seems to light up or pop off the page or grab your eyes so you can't move on. It's one of God's ways of saying, "Let's hang out here a while. I want to show you something you've never seen or known before."

The Bible is less of something we read to learn about God and more of a place we hang out with him. Beneath every word, every sentence, is a deeper word or sentence and another and another. It's all there. How much we receive depends on how long we hang out and how deep we dig.

To imitate God, we have to search for him, to see what he looks like and recognize what he's doing.

And he's everywhere! There is no place you can stand that you can't see God. If you're looking up at the sky, you can see him in the clouds, sun, moon and stars. If you want to see even more, you can look through a Hubble telescope and see "about 400 billion stars like our sun and at least 100 billion planets. And this massive display of stars and planets is one of between 100 billion and 200 billion galaxies" visible through its lenses. And our loving God imagined, created and purposefully positioned every unique one of them.