Love and Humility: Keys to Living a Prophetic Life

By John Paul Jackson

God does amazing things all the time. Some of them are large enough to catch our attention; some seem small, but even so, they are equally amazing, simply because it’s God who does them.

Any time God does anything, no matter how small it seems in the moment, it changes the world, all of the world; because God had to do so many other things in order to do that one small thing that we may or may not have even noticed.

But here’s the deal: Prophecy, dreams and visions, all God says and all God does both in the future and the past, everything about our existence, everything that God caused and created and will cause and will create — all of it can be summed up in a single, simple phrase that we may be so familiar with that it’s lost its uniqueness: For God so loved the world.

Life is all about intimacy with God. We were created for that. Everything we do should be done with that in mind. If it’s not, we’ll find ourselves burned out, broken, lonely and empty — because it’s not good for man to be alone. We were created for relationship, specifically with our heavenly Father. Nothing in this world, or in the next one, is as important as our relationship with God.

So whenever you dream, remember that it happened because God loves you. Perhaps there’s something specific God is trying to tell you in the dream — but He’s trying to tell you it because He loves you. Dreams are first and foremost about that.

In the same way, whenever you study prophecy and are awed by God’s power and might and the way He speaks, remember that prophecy happens because God loves you. And He loves your neighbor. And He loves the drug dealer down the street.

Keep the heart of God in mind when you study Scripture. Keep it in mind when you seek to interpret your dreams and the weird, bizarre spiritual experiences you may have during the day. Without that understanding, nothing else about life will make sense.

Two Become One
Love enables us to be humble people. It automatically does this because true love erases individuality. Two hearts become one in a marriage; being an individual and keeping yourself protected are no longer important. Instead, all that matters is the happiness of the other person, because then both are happy.

If we don’t have an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, one that unites two hearts and continually works to knit two individuals into one, humility will be the last virtue we see. Without love, we become self-important, revelatory-gifted people who grow more and more like each other and less and less like Jesus.