Natalie McClatchey
Prophetic ministry - an amazing opportunity! What a delight to hear God’s voice and have the responsibility of sharing messages with God’s people and the world at large. It is a calling we as Christians are all called to in diverse ways.
We have been learning about Ezekiel at church, but we haven’t touched on the impact his ministry had on him personally. Here’s a summary:
Ezekiel 1:3: Born into the priesthood with a holy calling to serve in God’s temple. Exiled in Babylon, he would be unable to fulfil this role – no doubt a great source of disappointment.
Ezekiel 2:7: Given a new ministry – pronouncing judgment on God’s people. His unwelcome message of destruction cost him friendships and made him a shunned person within the exiled Jewish community (Ezekiel 3:25). This was a very lonely ministry.
Ezekiel 4:4: Called to act out the coming desolation of Judah in an audio-visual display of God’s displeasure towards His unrepentant people. Required to lie on his side for about 14 months – one day for every year of Israel and Judah’s collective rebellion. I can’t even lie on one side for a whole night, so I can only speculate how painful and uncomfortable this would have been!
Ezekiel 4:13: Required to cook all his meals using manure, to represent the defilement of Israel’s exile. Just the smell would be enough to put me on a long-term fast! This was even more horrific for Ezekiel – priests spent a lifetime giving meticulous consideration to everything they consumed, to maintain holiness before the Lord.
Ezekiel 24:25: Lost the love of his life, his wife, in a stunning metaphor for God’s people about the final destruction of Jerusalem – “I will take away their stronghold, their joy and glory, the delight of their eyes, their heart’s desire”.
Wow, that’s rough! Anyone else ready to sign up with me for a prophetic ministry?! And yet, while perhaps not as extreme as this, we are ALL called as Christians to make sacrifices for the advancement of God’s kingdom.
Jesus told us in the Ts & Cs of a life committed to Him, that: “If anyone would come after me, he must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” (Matthew 16:24-25).
Each of us is charged with the prophetic ministry of reminding our dying world that Jesus died for their sins. That message will cost some of us jobs, comfortable lifestyles and friendships. It will bring us under scrutiny and make us objects of ridicule. For our brothers and sisters in oppressed countries, it will cost their lives.
Why would we do this?! Paul sums it up like this: “I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ." (Philippians 3:8)
Can I challenge you this week to put your life under the lens of the worth of knowing Jesus and being fully obedient to Him? It is my prayer and hope that I would, like Ezekiel, Paul and the numerous examples of apostles and saints to be able to “Consider it pure joy…whenever you face trials of many kinds.” (James 1:2)
