Last week was reading week for my students. It was also my chance to do some preparation for upcoming courses. Today I met with one of my former theology professors to chat about a course on Revelation and Faith I'm delivering in the Winter semester. I must confess that I've wanted his job for years now. He is responsible for introducing me to the work of Jurgen Moltmann as well as helping me understand that it is the questions we ask that matter. As I'm beginning to lay out the course I wanted to benefit from his many years of experience teaching the course (he is retiring). This course has been a bit of an obsession the last week and I need to put it aside while I get back to weekly lesson prep. Hence my post is late.

But before I put it aside, I wanted to share some of what I've been reflecting on.

Finding faith in the Pentecostal church revelation was a tricky subject. Much of what we related to as being God's revelation was taken as an all or nothing proposition. This was very clear in the way we looked at receiving personal prophecies. We mostly believed that it was either completely on (usually the way we initially received it) or it was off the mark. So if someone gave me a word then it was mediated (interpreted) in the moment, often by them but sometimes by myself as well, and it was taken as gospel truth. That is until it was brought into question then usually the whole word was thrown out as being of the flesh, pizza, or sometimes even of the devil (thankfully not often). The problem with this schema is that it misses the role that we play in how revelation actually works.

I remember distinctly pacing in the school's atrium and thinking about how we play a role in mediating revelation. Meaning not so much that we can get it wrong (although we sometimes do) but that we limit the meaning because we are human and God is not. Theologians put it this way, every revealing of God is also a concealing, we always know in part this side of the veil. So we shouldn't expect to not have had a role in the interpretation (meaning making) that went on in our experience. This does not mean it wasn't God. And even better, it means that God is not done with the revelation given in that moment.

I remember pacing in that atrium thinking about the words that had been spoken over my life. Words that came up over and over again. And what started to happen was that the meaning of those words began to increase. They became even more meaningful. They also began to wrap around the journey that I'd been on and give me a glimpse of what God had been doing all along. It is not lost on me that several years later, in that same auditorium, I had an elder of a church meeting in my school prophecy many of the same words over me yet again - cool story, I'll share it some time.

So I want to encourage you. Revelation is God's self-communication to us. We should expect that it will keep speaking and not limit the meaning to the interpretations of the moment. We should also expect that as we mature our understandings of God's revelation will mature. That we can expect the prophetic word of God to become more sure.

Remember the words God has spoken over you. Ask the Spirit to continue to reveal more of Jesus through those words. Be encouraged - God always has more in store for us.

Frank Emanuel - Freedom Vineyard