{"id":23248,"date":"2023-12-29T10:45:09","date_gmt":"2023-12-29T15:45:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23248"},"modified":"2023-12-29T10:47:26","modified_gmt":"2023-12-29T15:47:26","slug":"a-full-prophet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=23248","title":{"rendered":"A Full Prophet"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-4-3 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"&quot;Keep Changing The World&quot; by Mikeschair w\/lyrics\" width=\"500\" height=\"375\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/AyTJTkUTvpc?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>As we draw this year\u2019s meditations on The Prophetic Path to a close,<strong> Richard Rohr reminds us of the loving heart of the prophets:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>We need the wisdom of a \u201cfull prophet,\u201d one who can love and yet criticize, one who can speak their words of correction out of an experience of gratitude, not anger. <\/strong>We have to pray to God to teach us that. I don\u2019t know how else we learn it. We can\u2019t learn it in our minds rationally. God has to soothe our angry hearts and spirits. <strong>God has to allow us to come to a place of freedom, a place of peace, and a place of fullness before we can speak as a prophet. <\/strong>[1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>A prophet must hold on to the truth of their anger, especially as it is directed toward injustice\u2014but the danger of the anger is that when we let it control us, we\u2019re not a help anymore.<\/strong> That\u2019s why we have so many false prophets in America and in the world today. They are so angry. <strong>I want to sit there and say, \u201cI agree with you. That situation deserves anger, but you\u2019re not a good messenger because you\u2019re only making me more angry. You\u2019re feeding your anger by letting it become your ego.\u201d <\/strong>Of course, in my early life that was me. I think what we see in the Hebrew prophets is autobiographical. My early social justice sermons at New Jerusalem just edged people out of the room. I\u2019m sure many of them thought, \u201cI don\u2019t think we want to hear Richard today. He\u2019s on one of his tirades.\u201d <strong>They saw me at my angriest when I had just come back from Latin America and Africa. Anger is usually a necessary starting place, but it is never the full message. [2]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>That\u2019s why I always go back to prayer. It\u2019s the only way for me. I rest in God, let God massage my heart for a while, cool me down and say, \u201cI love you. You don\u2019t have to save the world, Richard. You don\u2019t have to \u2018play\u2019 the prophet and you don\u2019t have to do anything except what I tell you to do.\u201d The more I rest there with God, the next time the words come out so differently.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>We\u2019ve got to learn how to discern the Spirit. We have to listen to our own hearts and discern where the voices are coming from. <\/strong>Are they harsh, angry, hurtful, resentful, cynical voices telling us we\u2019ve got to go out and do some righteous thing? Or <strong>are they coming from a place of freedom and a place of peace?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The prophet is the one who can be a faithful lover, who is truly seeking the whole and seeking the good, and not just seeking the self. We can tell after a while the difference between someone who is operating out of their own anger and compulsions, and someone who is operating out of the heart of God. [3]<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>________________________________________<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Jesus Gets Us&#8230;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jesus Responded to the ever increasing volume of hate with quiet and deliberate acts of Love&#8230;.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Listening to the world around us, we couldn\u2019t help but come to the conclusion that the volume is rising day by day. If you listen to the news, you hear louder voices, stronger opinions, and harsher disagreements. If you scroll through your social feeds, you see arguments in the comment section of the most benign posts. <strong>Everyone wants to be heard, and collectively, we seem to be going to greater and greater lengths to be the one voice loud enough to be made out above the din<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But as we listened, we noticed that <strong>most of what gets amplified \u2014 most of the stuff loud enough to be heard \u2014 is rife with hate, anger, and discontentment. And when hate gets amplified, too often, we try to drown it out with even louder hate from a different perspective. It\u2019s a vicious cycle, and it\u2019s one Jesus dealt with 2,000 years ago.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Everywhere he went, he was met with dissenting opinions, trap questions, and directed hatred. People were constantly trying to silence him, discredit him, or hijack his platform to amplify their own voices.<\/strong> It must have been infuriating, but he didn\u2019t give in and add to the noise. <strong>Jesus used his voice, but he didn\u2019t shout. He not only stayed on the path of preaching patience, selflessness, and love but more importantly, he also demonstrated them. He responded to the ever-increasing volume of hate with quiet and deliberate acts of love. And the result is evident in the fact that we\u2019re still talking about it 2,000 years later: his love was louder, and it still is.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h1 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Proverbs 3:5-6New International Version<\/h1>\n\n\n\n<p><sup>5&nbsp;<\/sup>Trust in the&nbsp;Lord&nbsp;with all your heart<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;and lean not on your own understanding;<br><sup>6&nbsp;<\/sup>in all your ways submit to him,<br>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;and he will make your paths&nbsp;straight.<sup>[<a href=\"https:\/\/www.biblegateway.com\/passage\/?search=Proverbs%203:5-6&amp;version=NIV#fen-NIV-16462a\">a<\/a>]<\/sup><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As we draw this year\u2019s meditations on The Prophetic Path to a close, Richard Rohr reminds us of the loving heart of the prophets: We need the wisdom of a \u201cfull prophet,\u201d one who can love and yet criticize, one who can speak their words of correction out of an experience of gratitude, not anger. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23248"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23248"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23250,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23248\/revisions\/23250"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}