Women, prophecy and the church

A white-and-gray, short-haired cat sits atop a small cardboard box, its eyes wide, its tongue touching its nose.

Early in my adult life, I heard the subject of spiritual gifts taught in a way that resonated with me.

It didn’t happen at my church. Other than the occasional (and vehement) railing against the Pentecostals, things related to the Holy Spirit typically weren’t even mentioned in my church culture.

And yet, the Spirit and his gifts are definitely mentioned in Scripture, and I was eager to learn.

So I listened intently the day I heard a teaching on Romans 12:4-8, and the seven gifts mentioned there.

Each of us has one body with many members,
and these members do not all have the same function.
So in Christ we, though many, form one body,
and each member belongs to all the others.

We have different gifts,
according to the grace given to each of us.

If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith;
if it is serving, then serve;
if it is teaching, then teach;
if it is to encourage, then give encouragement;
if it is giving, then give generously;
if it is to lead, do it diligently;
if it is to show mercy, do it cheerfully.

What was suggested to me that day reflects what the passage itself suggests: God has designed each person with an inward bent toward, and increased capacity for, one of these seven gifts.¹

What’s more, the Spirit of God seemed intent on showing me that he had “bent” me toward prophecy.

I had grown up loving the Word of God. So I had seen how the Lord directed the people in Scripture who prophesied:

See and hear whatever aspects of truth I show you – both welcome truth and hard truth.
Deliver whatever messages I give to you for others – regardless the response.

I had also seen how often in Scripture God sent his prophets to his own people – and how often God’s people rejected both the message and the one who brought it.

And yet, bent toward seeing and speaking, I was blind to so much.

Naively, I started trying to live out what the Lord had put within me. Repeatedly, I slammed into walls that were invisible to me. They were the walls of a box that I did not know held me fast – a box designed to keep everyone “in their place.”

As obvious as it seems now, I did not realize then that I was trying to follow God and to abide by the rule-bound system my denomination had mislabeled “God.”

In that system, legitimate prophecy “doesn’t happen today.” And even if it did, women most certainly could not speak out that way.

A woman with the gift of prophecy

It took a lot of years, and a lot of pain, before I began to see the straitjacket that held me. I had finally reached a key turning point in my life when I heard a sermon that seemed at first to challenge the status quo – but then only reinforced it.

That time, when I heard, I saw.

The sermon focused on Romans 12:4-8. As the preacher listed the seven gifts and described each briefly, he defined prophecy with these two words: “Speaking out.”

Though he presented the other six gifts in a positive light, he painted prophecy as a gift to avoid, if at all possible. “We need prophets in the church. But we don’t need many of them,” he joked.

How many times, by then, had I heard church leaders use innuendo and aggressive humor to silence truth-telling and to label truth-tellers as troublemakers?

I was already grieving when the preacher said:

“A woman can have the gift of prophecy. But a woman with the gift of prophecy has to be very careful. Very careful. What she hears from God, she is generally not supposed to speak but to take into her prayer closet.”

What!? God gives women the gift of speaking out – and forbids them to speak out? No! He does not!

Already crying out within, I wanted to jump up and shout, “That’s not true!” Instead, I looked all around that auditorium at the women and men sitting, listening, taking notes. Unflinching. Not questioning.

I marveled. We had all been taught to live with the cognitive dissonance of a constant bait-and-switch: Offering us God – then substituting the box. God – box.

And there it was again.

A pastor in my denomination had dared to preach, from the Bible, on spiritual gifts. What’s more, he had acknowledged: God gives all the gifts, including prophecy, to men and women. He had read aloud:

If your gift is prophesying, then prophesy in accordance with your faith.

And then … he had discouraged anyone from prophesying. And he had issued a gag order barring women from operating in that gift.

Who have you made me to be?

As I said, it was a turning time for me.

One night just before hearing that sermon, I sat in the overstuffed chair in my family room, crying out to God.

For years, the Lord had been stripping me of beliefs and practices that are religious and labeled “Christian,” yet are toxic and not of God. In particular, he had stripped away false beliefs about my identity in him.

That night I pleaded, “Lord, you’ve rid me of so many falsehoods that kept me from being who you created me to be. So what is true? Who am I? Who have you made me to be?”

The next day, God pointed me to another teaching, a lengthy teaching, on the seven gifts in Romans 12.²

Listening to that description of the gift of prophecy, I saw myself in the picture – as I had for the first time so many years before, and again, so many other times since.

Knowing my Lord was answering my cry, I laughed and wept, shouted and applauded – and received what he had put inside me all along.

If I have the gift of prophecy

Any spiritual gift becomes most honoring to God and most life-giving to others, as we surrender to the Lord Jesus, yield to the Holy Spirit and delight in hallowing our Father’s name.

That’s not a setup for drivenness, or arrogance, or self-shaming. Rather, by grace, we seek to know God himself and to remain teachable before him.

On the flip side:

Any spiritual gift can be exercised in the flesh and used for selfish purposes, and thus become more negative than positive.

Any spiritual gift can be hijacked by illusionists who know how to seem quite godly. They exploit what God has given to benefit his church, in order to promote themselves. In one way or another, they use their giftedness to control.

As to prophecy in particular, apart from the Spirit it can become a means to appear holier than, or greater than, others. It can be a tool for wielding power over – to beat people down, to puff them up, to tell them what they want to hear, to stoke their greed or resentment or fear.

The hijacking of prophecy has been happening as long as God has had a people. The Lord knows when those who prophesy in his name are, instead, speaking “visions from their own minds” (Jer. 23:16).

Further, he knows when those who are falsely prophesying are “godless,” i.e. determined to “follow an evil course and to use their power unjustly” (Jer. 23:11, 10). Vehemently, he sets himself against them. (See Jeremiah 23:9-40.)

God also knows when those who are falsely prophesying are trying to follow him, but not acting in his strength or his wisdom or his ways. He confronts that behavior too.

Are you so foolish?
Although you began with the Spirit,
are you now trying to finish by human effort?
(Gal. 3:3 NET)

I confess. I’m that foolish sometimes.

And I’ve learned firsthand: As we remain open to the Lord and his reproof, he is well able – and very intent – to show us when our attempts at speaking out have veered off course. What’s more, he also gives us grace to own our wrongdoing and return to walking, and speaking, by the Spirit.

The God who is spirit
soundly condemns false prophecy.
But he profoundly affirms –
and patiently guides –
those who seek to walk in the real thing.

The Spirit of our Father has named prophecy as one of the foundational gifts he distributes among his people.

The Spirit of truth gives us desire and power to live out what he has put within us. He urges: Keep looking, keep listening and keep walking humbly with me.

For we know in part
and we prophesy in part.

The Spirit of Christ also teaches us to walk in love. “Love never fails.” On the other hand:

If I have the gift of prophecy
and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,
and if I have a faith that can move mountains,
but do not have love,
I am nothing.
(1 Cor. 13:9, 8, 2)

As we press in day by day, to live by the Spirit, we learn to speak out what is profoundly good.

As we keep being filled with the Breath of God, we learn: To hear what the Lord chooses to tell us. To see what the Lord chooses to show us. And also, to know when and to whom to speak, as well as what to say.

As we walk by the Breath of God, we learn: To live what we’ve seen and heard. To tell what we’ve seen and heard. And also, to speak humbly, in love.

Love does not seek to control others, nor does it settle for appeasing others. Love cares enough to grieve, to expose and to confront what is dangerous and deadly. It cries out passionately, “Choose life!”

Humility leaves the responsibility for discerning, and for choosing, with those who hear.

By the Spirit, we who prophesy may describe what hasn’t happened yet – even when we don’t have a clue that’s what we’re doing. By the Spirit, we learn to recognize and refuse the counterfeit foretelling that amounts to fortune-telling in Jesus’ name.

By the Spirit, we may sound warnings – even when they are not well-received and we are rejected for speaking them.

By the Spirit, we not only expose what is dangerous and deadly – but also affirm the choices that lead to life. In all these ways, and others:

The one who prophesies
speaks to people for their strengthening, encouraging and comfort.
(1 Cor. 14:3)

We prophecy by the Spirit.

Even if we’re women.

Coming out of the prayer closet

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament tell us of women who spoke out prophetically. They include:

Moses’ sister, “Miriam the prophet” (Ex. 15:20-21);
the judge “Deborah, a prophet” (Judges 4-5);
“the prophet Huldah” (2 Ki. 22:14-20; 2 Chron. 34:22-30);
Isaiah’s wife, “the prophetess” (Isa. 8:3);
“a prophet, Anna” (Luke 2:36-38);
“four unmarried daughters [of Philip the evangelist] who prophesied” (Acts 21:8-9).

Surely, each of these women spent time “in the prayer closet.” As they listened to God, he told them what to say, when to say it and to whom.

To obey him, they had to speak. They had to speak to people. Further:

In every instance where Scripture records a woman prophet’s words,
God commissioned her to speak to men,
or to an audience that included men and women.

Beware the older NIV rendering of Romans 12:6: “If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it …” Translators arbitrarily inserted the word man. In the Greek, it does not appear anywhere in this passage.

You who know Jesus as Lord, regardless your gender, hear the word of the Lord:

If your gift is prophesying,
then prophesy.

My first attempt to write this post was published Dec. 13, 2012. It was titled, “What’s a woman to do?” Primarily, it quoted a brief excerpt from the e-book I was then writing, What About Women? A Spirit-to-spirit Exposé. The e-book was published in 2013 and updated in 2021. Now, I’ve completely reworked and renamed this post. It is still anchored in chapter 6 of What About Women.

Image by Tran Mau Tri Tam from Pixabay

More about women and the church

Footnotes

As we come to know Christ and to grow in him, the Spirit gives us other gifts too – to be used, always, to serve the Lord and to serve others, in love. See, for example, 1 Corinthians 12 and Ephesians 4:1-16. ↩︎
The 8-CD set by Arthur Burk is titled, “The Redemptive Gifts of Individuals.” See also my post, The people I quote. ↩︎

Healing from toxic church – Knowing and going with God