I had a quick dream where Bob Jones (a current prophetic voice in the church) was speaking to my family around a round-table and told me that there were 7 things that quenched the prophetic spirit. There were 7 doors around the perimeter of this room and he took me into two of them. (I actually think I went into them all but I only remember 2 of them…sorry)
Door #1 – In this room was a news broadcast and he told me that news programs quench the prophetic spirit.
This sounded far-fetched for me, a news junkie, who always likes to keep up with what is going on around the world. But we read in Philippians 4:8 to “focus your thoughts on what is true, noble righteous, pure, lovable, or admirable, on some virtue or on something praiseworthy.” The news is definitely not any of these!
The news propagates the testimony of the devil and of unrighteous mankind. The essence of the prophetic spirit is the testimony of Jesus! (Rev 19:10). If we fill our minds with the slime that spews forth from humanity’s brokenness and Satan’s raging hatred, we can only expect very little of the testimony of Jesus to flow from us.
I think that it was more of a preoccupation with the news that was being highlighted. I do not think it’s wrong to watch the news, but hey, we’ve got the Holy Spirit. We have access to divine intelligence and He will make sure to tell us what we need to know. I don’t want to know any more than I have to.
Door #2 - In this room was a bunch of violent video games.
In the same way, we fill our minds with violence and the spirit of murder (anger) in the name of entertainment and venting aggression. What about those certain systems that have come out now that actually require that the player move their bodies and wave their hands to make their characters on the screen respond? Now we have an entire generation that is learning the actual movements of the hands that it takes to sneak up from behind somebody and break their neck! One more step between virtuality and reality…broken down.
Well, sorry to rain on people’s parades. I personally like the news and video games. But I have been much more careful about what I fill myself with after I had this dream.
Living the fasted lifestyle is always about what God gives you the grace to give up. Like Misty’s song says, “How far will You let me go? How abandoned will You let me be?” I think it’s great when He shows us the next step.
As a young adult who enjoys video games on occasion, I agree with your statement about violence and the spirit of murder. But just as a side-note: If you mean the Wii, then it’s controller is more like a pointer, not a motion sensor. If you mean camera-controlled games, they are all dancing and sports games. I don’t think anyone is learning the mechanics of fighting or breaking a neck by playing video games… yet.
I agree with your Phil 4 statement. That chapter can go a long way in helping us chose how we spend our time.
-J
By: Josiah on August 21, 2008
at 6:21 pm