The prophet's handbook

have marked his or her existence from childhood. What determines this is the dynamics of the ministry call. The rule is, the more dynamic the call, the more fiery and intense the severing process. It can seem to the future servant that everything is against him or her. Every major aspect of prospective messengers’ worlds can be turned upside down to equip them for the demands and backlash of the call. Such people become familiar with struggles, defeat, suffering, and hardship during youth or adolescence. This method has a goal for God, one that ensures the one divinely appointed will, at the appropriate time, answer God’s call and take his or her place among the ranks of His laborers. Chosen before the foundation of the world, many of these people take up God’s challenge at a young age. However, the actual service may come years later. From the moment they hear about God in truth and understand what they have heard, the mechanisms placed in them for that very purpose at conception are activated. It is as though they awake out of a slumber-like state and begin to follow the Lord’s voice to enter the position of their call. Throughout the making and shaping process, His induction can demand—and in the end achieves—a complete about-face in life. The servant jumps off the treadmill of life and onto the course set by the Creator almost rashly, impulsively. Appearing unreasonable in their resolve, future prophets stymie their friends and associates. They frustrate employers and confuse, and often alienate, relatives for reasons even the called ones are unsure of at the time. All they know is that an urgent prodding within insists they abandon all and follow Jesus. So they resolutely go about the business of cutting cords, breaking ties, and disengaging themselves from the world. Selling off property, settling accounts, closing comfortable and convenient doors forever, these people take up their crosses to follow Jesus. To where they do not always know. Why? Because it is what they must do. The time has come for them to enter into the reason they were born, to fulfill the purposes for which they were saved: to present themselves as living sacrifices for the Lord’s service. The next stage following this is getting ready for the Master’s use. Here is where God’s shredding and shedding takes place. Hearts aflame with devotion and hungry for the fullness of God, they go through the strenuous, stinging process of letting go of the world and the flesh. God appears to be in hot pursuit of everything that makes them, them. He is on their case relentlessly, and they don’t know why. Now separated from family and friends, the trainee servants go