Advice For Kings
[ Become inedible. ]
…the Romans did what all wise rulers must:cope not only with present troubles but also with ones likely to arise in future, and assiduously forestall them. When trouble is sensed well in advance it can easily be remedied; if you wait for it to show itself any medicine will be too late because the disease will have become incurable.
—The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli
How many times have you waited for an issue to “show itself” only for it to be too difficult to be easily dealt with by the time that you arrived to challenge it? A lot of health issues go like this. People act like they were healthy, then suddenly something changed, and now they are sick. I hate to be rude, but this story that we tell ourselves almost never happens. Often times, our bodies show signs of what is coming against it ahead of time, but we don't respond. By the time we respond, the issue has escalated to extreme illness, and we face uncomfortable solution sets to resolve the issues.
Father God has made me aware of this as of late. He has shown me that I shouldn't procrastinate in my intensity to resolve issues in my life. He has made being “prophetic” much more pragmatic to me. Many people see prophecy as mystical, but God has been working in me to get me to understand that it is practical and technical, NEVER mystical. For example, why wait before you have a financial bottleneck before you address your financial issues? Why wait? Why not address your finances now (with a budget and savings) before any bottlenecks appear or before the adversary launches his attacks on your God-given supply?
Instead of waiting for a problem to arise, if you know that your enemy is roaming to and fro, looking for whom he may devour (1 Peter 5:8), make yourself unable to be devoured. It's difficult to devour a Christian financially who has paid off their debts and has set aside savings for a rainy day, but it's easy to devour a Christian who lives paycheck to paycheck. The enemy is looking for easy targets. He doesn't want an intense battle. He wants to chew someone up and find the next victim. Being prophetic is as simple as understanding biblical principles and implementing them in your life. It's prophetic to read something in God’s word and implement it in your life because you are strengthening your Ephesians 6 armor against what the devils intend to throw at you in the future. If the evil one is always looking to devour someone, make sure you are hard to devour. Make sure you have your armor on.
One of my favorite leaders right now says it this way, “don't be edible.” Make yourself inedible. This is the Spirit of prophecy. I paid off my car in advance this year using this principle and utilizing Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University ($100 for at least 8+ hours of content on becoming debt-free—a wonderful deal if you ask me).
If you don't want to go through a bad breakup, don't date that knucklehead hoping that it works out. If you don't want trouble in your workplace, show up on time, follow all the rules and policies, and meet your metrics. It's prophetic because it stops you from enduring bad situations before you encounter them, sometimes you never encounter them because of implementing the Word in your life. Jesus wants you to walk around the avoidable difficult circumstances in your life. If you don't want health problems, lose weight and switch to a mostly whole foods diet before the health problems develop. Start getting adequate exercise as simple as walking 30 mins to 1 hour for 3 or 4 days a week. Since the beginning of this year, I've lost 30 lbs. because I don't want to wait until I develop a health problem before I try and address bad habits in my life. I want to defeat unnecessary bodily illnesses now before the enemy uses my complacency to try and take me out with one of them.
Why not address them before a problem even develops?
That is the most basic level of the prophetic, but I have really struggled to grasp this. God has been shaking me for the last 5 years trying to get me to absorb this information. If I build my house on rock ahead of time, then when the shaking comes, my house will stand.
24 “Anyone who listens to my teaching and follows it is wise, like a person who builds a house on solid rock. 25 Though the rain comes in torrents and the floodwaters rise and the winds beat against that house, it won’t collapse because it is built on bedrock. 26 But anyone who hears my teaching and doesn’t obey it is foolish, like a person who builds a house on sand. 27 When the rains and floods come and the winds beat against that house, it will collapse with a mighty crash.”
If I can know from worldly understanding that my weight and eating habits will cause health issues in the future, why not strategize and lean on God to overcome those bad habits now? Why wait until I get a bad report from a doctor before I consider the way that I eat and exercise?
You can be prophetic and never directly hear the voice of God. Does Jesus really need to give you a word that if you keep eating that way and not getting enough exercise that you will develop health issues over time? Or can you just figure that out now and work with Him now to overcome what the enemy is trying to setup in your life? Can you go ahead and defeat the enemy and stop his plans ahead of schedule?
The best way to route the enemy is to anticipate his attacks decades before they happen and address them now.
Even Macchiavelli understood that if you enter a new territory to occupy and if you're not there as a ruler to see problems as they develop, then when you find out (via letters) you will be too late to respond. Even in the business world, the best people, like Peter Thiel, always talk about “getting ahead” of future issues in their industries. If the business world understands and the political and media world understands (manufactured consent), then why can't the body of Christ get this?
If you knew that you would be in a car accident later today, you would just stay home today, wouldn't you? Well, a lot of financial and health issues begin 20 to 30 years before the accident occurs, why not remedy them now?
There are times when you need to hear from God and get a Word, but that should really only be reserved for situations so large and impactful that they change things in a massive way. Do you really need a word from God to figure out that an area of your life isn't going well and needs to be put back on track?
Jesus makes things very simple. The most rudimentary level of the prophetic is this: anticipate what the attack the enemy is setting up in your life ahead of time and come against it now. Wage war against the gates of hell and conquer your enemy before he has a foothold. Humble yourself now so that God does not have to humble you later. You never have to hear a word directly from God to be prophetic. Being wise and utilizing wisdom as a preparatory weapon is prophetic. If you see an area of your life or your heart go astray, address it in the Spirit now.
Ask God to reveal what you can't see in yourself that is harming you.
In Genesis 3, God announced the seed war between the woman's seed (you, me, and Jesus—humanity plus the Son of God) and the seed of the serpent (the enemy's seed—all the things under the earth). The Word says,
14 And the Lord God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:
15 And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel.
This created a dynamic where the adversary always comes to attack the weak spot in you that you are blind to: your heel. This comes up in pagan literature as well with Achilles' heel, where Achilles is struck in the only part of himself not covered in armor, his weak point, his heel and perishes. We understand the heel to be the weakest parts of yourself, the edible parts of yourself, the parts of yourself that the adversary finds easiest to devour you. Shore up those parts of yourself before he comes to devour you. If pagans and the world can get this, you can get this as well.
Crush the head of the snake before he has the chance to attack. This is being prophetic.
If you use the Word of God as your instruction manual for life, you will find many areas that you were once weak in suddenly disappearing in the face of perfected biblical adherence. In other words, the manual for life, the Bible, reveals how to act to become inedible. There are other situations that you must seek God for direction. In those situations, you must go directly to His throne in prayer for guidance and understanding (Hebrews 4:6), but much of what you encounter in life can be overcome with what you read in God’s Word and apply to your life (the vast majority). The Spirit can lead you directly through the difficult and unusual parts of life as well. Why do you need to receive power through Holy Spirit indwelling in you if you didn't need a dynamic and responsive helper? He is needed to assist us in our walk.
I know that I am perhaps late to the party of understanding the most practical aspect of the prophetic: getting a strategy ahead of time to overcome issues in the future. That is its entire purpose. This is why the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10). He died for your sins before you ever sinned. God knows what will happen in the future. He wants you to adjust yourself dynamically to the future, as a spirit who is subject to time, because it allows you to become more victorious and prosperous for His Kingdom in all areas of your life so that His name can receive the glory.
He has not abandoned you.
18 No, I will not abandon you as orphans—I will come to you.
If you ask God in prayer to reveal to you your heel(s), he will over time. He wants to adjust you before you have a problem because He loves you. He will then walk you through overcoming them. Health and finance are the two most common heels that people can begin working on today. There may be others more personal to you or relating to your family line that need to be addressed as well.
Last year, I noticed a disturbing trend. When I went to church, I realized that most of what we do on Sunday is hearing a message that is meant to gas us up to actually begin to do God’s word. God sends our spiritual authority with messages to literally convince us to believe and to do what he has commanded us to believe and to do in His Word. When I became aware of this, I became embarrassed, embarrassed for myself and the body of Christ, because we are still struggling to believe and obey his words while claiming to follow Him. Sunday meetings are hype services focused on God exhorting and encouraging us to do what He has already commanded us to do in His written Word. I had been wondering what hindered the body of Christ. I realized that what hinders us is that we hear, but we do not obey. We all are double-minded and (frankly) lukewarm.
We are the hard-of-hearing Israelites that want to flee back into captivity to Egypt whenever a minor inconvenience arises in us. I realized that I was like this. That any time anything difficult happened in life that I would flee back to demonic and sinful coping mechanisms to try and soothe myself instead of relying on God and fleeing to him. Jesus’ death, resurrection, and ascension empowered us, but by not obeying him, we prevent his power from flowing through us to address issues in our lives and from stopping Jesus from using us to be Him to other people.
We are in our own way.
Jesus is a King, Priest, and Prophet, the embodiment therein, and as those that follow after him, we are supposed to display these traits. We are supposed to be kingly (but we flee from the battle whenever trouble arises), priestly (but we cover and hide sin instead of applying Jesus’ blood to erase it), and prophetic (but we ignore God’s written Word and the leading and discernment of Holy Spirit). We are supposed to be like him, but we refuse to crossover due to our lack of simple obedience. I am heartbroken over this because I desperately want to be like Him and overcome in His name and for His name's sake.
So Jesus explained, “I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself. He does only what he sees the Father doing. Whatever the Father does, the Son also does.
Jesus showed me why His name has power and why our names lack power. He showed me that by only doing what the Father was doing, Jesus exemplified the perfect walk with the Father. His Word shows that even everything He spoke was what the Father was saying. He was doing exactly what Father God wanted Him to do and say. He went only where the Father sent Him. He even said to the disciples when Philip asked to see the Father, “…Anyone who has seen me has seen the Father…” (John 14:9 NLT). He walked perfectly with Father God empowered by Holy Spirit as He commands that we all walk.
God showed me that His name has power because there is no deviation between His walk, His talk, and His name. Jesus never had a moment where he was confused or double-minded or lukewarm or lost. He knew exactly what the Father wanted Him to do, where the Father wanted Him to go, and what the Father wanted Him to say. He was a complete and perfect being who says to us “But you are to be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect” (Matthew 5:48 NLT).
There was no discrepancy within Him. He was and is perfectly consolidated in His identity. There is no deviation within Him.
In our case, we talk one way and do another thing. We do a thing and talk another way. We talk to understand and grasp our identities, so we waver in our walk. Our names lack power. The demons knew Paul’s name because Paul became like Jesus in this (Acts 19:15). There was no deviation between his name (“Saul” to “Paul”), his walk, and his talk. Thus, God was able to use him to write most of the New Testament, the divinely inspired Word passed through him to paper even though he is made just like us because there was no deviation within him. After God arrested him on the road to Damascus, he was changed (Acts 9:3-20). He became someone who terrified demons/unclean spirits enough that they knew his name because he walked like Jesus walked.
Paul only did what the Father told him to do, only what the Father wanted him to say, and only went where the Father told him to go just like Jesus.
Walking prophetically is walking through your life in Faith and clarity of how God is leading you, and it begins very simply: just do what God has directed you to do with His written Word. If you have an obvious problem or even hidden weaknesses, address them with the written Word and/or with wisdom from Holy Spirit. Get rid of the compromised parts of yourself by addressing them completely with God as much as you can so that you can stand in the evil day.
Therefore, put on every piece of God’s armor so you will be able to resist the enemy in the time of evil. Then after the battle you will still be standing firm.
I am not done losing weight or paying off debt, but I've begun the journey earlier than many people begin. There is much more to do. Why not get started today before you have a problem so that you can live like Jesus lived… or walk how Paul walked…Or how Noah walked…Or how Enoch walked such that God wanted him to be with Him so much that he was no longer found because God had taken him (Genesis 5:24, Hebrews 11:5).
Cultivate power in your own authority in the Spirit by working with Father God to apply the blood of Jesus to your imperfections for the removal of your deviations from God's Word such that there is no deviation between your walk, your talk, and your name, so that God can receive ALL the glory and honor for how you walked in this life.
Become inedible.
For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.—1 Corinthians 2:2 KJV