[vc_row][vc_column][vc_empty_space][vc_single_image image=”2235″ img_size=”full”][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text]Back in 1996, Tom Hanks wrote, directed and starred in a hilarious comedy called That Thing You Do, about a one-hit rock band that topped the charts, then faded into anonymity.
Mr. White: It’s a very common tale.
Jimmy: Well, maybe for you, but I was in a band, and we still have a hit record.
Mr. White: Yeah, you do. One-hit wonders. It’s a very common tale.
Some of God’s prophets minister on glittering sound stages. Others are sent to members of their church. Still others, share a prophetic word only once in their lifetime, like handing somebody a note on a scrap of paper and moving on. But all of them are specially chosen by God and hear his voice.
Eldad and Medad were a couple of “one-hit wonders.”
The Israelites were on their way to the promised land, their sins keeping them in the desert a lot longer than necessary.[1]
A couple months after they left Egypt, they ran out of food and complained to Moses. And Moses complained to God.
Why pick on me, to give me the burden of a people like this? Are they my children? Am I their father? Is that why you have given me the job of nursing them along like babies until we get to the land you promised their ancestors? Where am I supposed to get meat for all these people? I can’t carry this nation by myself! If you are going to treat me like this, please kill me right now; it will be a kindness!
We need to be careful. If we keep nagging God, he sometimes gives us what we ask for.
“The Lord is going to give you meat,” God said, “You shall eat it, not for just a day or two, or five or ten or even twenty! For one whole month you will have meat until you vomit it from your noses; for you have rejected the Lord who is here among you, and you have wept for Egypt.”[2]
Then God told Moses to gather up seventy elders and bring them to the Tabernacle, and “the Lord took of the Spirit that was upon Moses and put it upon the seventy elders; and when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied for some time.”
But there were actually only sixty-eight elders. “Eldad and Medad were still in the camp, and when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied there.” And when Joshua told Moses to make them stop, Moses said, “I only wish that all of the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit upon them all.”
The point of prophecy is not how often we prophesy or to how many. The point is that the Creator of the universe, who is Love, singles us out, puts his Spirit upon us and trusts us to share a real-time supernatural message with someone else that he loves.
_____________________
[1] You can drive from Cairo to Jerusalem, at 70 mph, in 25 hours. It would certainly have taken longer, without cars and highways, for thousands of men, women, children and livestock on foot, but not 40 years.
[2] Numbers 11, TLB.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
