The prophet's handbook

You can see now how and why more than talent and gifting are necessary for official functions. Professional entities require skill, experience, training and education, aptitude, and the proper attitude for their positions. They want more than a person who can or will do the job. They want the one who can be relied on time after time to do it well, according to their standards and to the protection and promotion of their best interests. Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ wants the very same thing from His prophets. He spoke repeatedly about getting the right people for the right tasks and using them according to their abilities. That is what the parables of the talents and the mina stress, as does His admonition to first count the cost of an endeavor to assure that what one starts one is well able to complete. When it comes to being God’s voice, these standards could not be more important. Spiritual gifts, like natural gifts, rely on offices; giftings rely on officials for validity. Because validity comes with privilege and power, the responsibilities that counterbalance them are great. To qualify for the opportunity or right to affect others with your gift in the name of an agency, you must be qualified by more than your talents. You must meet the criteria of the office. In this manner, the office must regulate the gift; otherwise, how can its existence and effectiveness be assured? What other means does an office have to guarantee that what it was created to accomplish for its creator can and will be done by the best person for the job? Therefore, the office itself discerns whether or not a gift is compatible with its own charge. It is the office that decides who is able to withstand its rigors and when a candidate is ready to perform effectively as a qualified representative of the agency it serves. The office determines and dictates the agent’s schedule, readiness, behavior, conduct, measurements and standards, latitude, rank, and authority. Gifts, by themselves, need none of this kind of oversight. Based on these principles, the office invariably conforms or evicts its gifted entrants. Apart from the office, the gifting, on its own, only scarcely affects the world outside of its immediate admirers. It is not until the officials of its field of endeavor recognize and engage its services that the gift can perform in an official capacity. That is how it is with the prophetic. The reason prophetic ministry has been so disturbing up to now is because the gift has been too often elevated, used, and exercised apart from (and above) the office. That left the prophetic gifting to operate with no guidelines, oversight, standards, entry criteria, or evaluative measurements. It also had no remedy or recourse for any damage it caused. Nothing really existed to assure accuracy,