When God first calls you to the prophetic ministry, it’s exciting, humbling, and terrifying. It’s an awe-inspiring mission, almost overwhelming when you grasp the responsibility of serving in the end times as the spokesperson for the God of the universe. The prophetic call brings with it the temptation of pride for some and the true fear of the Lord for others.

If your pride outweighs your patience, you will rush headlong into prophetic ministry without having received a clear mission from God. If you are not sensitive to His ways, you may stray from His timing. Understand this: there is a period of time between the calling and the mission.

This period can be long or short. Either way, what some call the “process of creation” of a prophet doesn’t end when you are commissioned for service. It never really ends. You will always gain a deeper revelation of who God is and how He wants to use you.

In general, God will begin by using you modestly before launching you into a more visible prophetic ministry. This is for your own safety while you learn and grow in the gifts and in your character. Think about it for a minute. The enemy opposes God’s will.

Prophets express God’s will. That puts a target on your back. If you move ahead of God’s grace, you expose yourself to more warfare and will see many battles without inviting the enemy to fire at you.

Responding to the Prophetic Call

So, how should you respond to the prophetic call? Whether you received a prophetic word in a public prayer line or heard God’s still small voice in your secret place of prayer, the proper response can be summed up in one word: humility.

Immediately begin cultivating humility in your heart and combine your budding humility with willingness and obedience, which will carry you with integrity to the finish line of your prophetic race.

When my prophetic calling was revealed, a mature prophet in my local church asked my best friend how I was “taking it.” She was concerned for me. She had seen too many people respond the wrong way to the prophetic call and go down the wrong path. The wrong way is anything that resembles pride or arrogance.

Prophets are not more important than other members of the Body of Christ; they simply have a different gift. But it’s a gift that seems more exciting to some and can lead to pride. Sometimes, it seems like half of the Body of Christ desires to be a prophet, and the other half wants to receive prophetic words.

In other words, there is a thirst for prophecy, but true prophecy brings war. So when a young person tells me they’ve just received a call to the prophetic ministry, I want to grab them, hug them, and say: “It will be okay!” If people knew what they were getting into when they accepted this call, they might stop to count the cost before printing business cards announcing their ministry.

True prophetic ministry isn’t as sensational as many claim. Most of the real work happens in the prayer closet. If you’ve been called as a prophet, decide in your heart to align your character with that of Christ. Commit to consecrate yourself to God at a deeper level, realizing there’s a price to pay for walking in a true prophetic ministry.

Set yourself apart to worship, pray, and study the Word more so that God can equip you and impart to your heart the revelation of who He is. The revelation of His beauty and the grace of the Holy Spirit will give you the strength to walk the difficult path ahead. Decide once and for all that you are ready to do whatever He asks of you and to obey His Word. Let your heart say:

“Here I am, Lord! Send me” (see Isaiah 6:8).

Accepting the Responsibility

When you read the prophetic calls of Moses, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and others, you’ll notice the common theme of humility. When God called Moses to deliver Israel from Egypt’s slavery, he said:

“Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” (Exodus 3:11).

When God called Isaiah, he considered himself “a man of unclean lips” (Isaiah 6:5). When God called Jeremiah, he said:

“Ah, Sovereign Lord! I do not know how to speak; I am too young” (Jeremiah 1:6).

Honestly, if you’re not shaken by God’s call, you probably have too high an opinion of yourself. As I mentioned earlier, it should be somewhat overwhelming to consider the responsibility of standing in the office of a prophet. God is entrusting you with His secrets (see Amos 3:7).

Shortly after God called me to the prophetic ministry, He told me to read Ezekiel 3 and Ezekiel 33. I will never forget it. I was sitting on a bunk bed one night in an open-air dorm in Latin America. It was hot, and mosquitoes were buzzing all around. Everyone was asleep, so I pulled out my mini flashlight to read the Word. Here’s what I read:

“Son of man, I have made you a watchman for the people of Israel; so hear the word I speak and give them warning from me. When I say to a wicked person, ‘You will surely die,’ and you do not warn them or speak out to dissuade them from their evil ways in order to save their life, that wicked person will die for their sin, and I will hold you accountable for their blood. But if you do warn the wicked person and they do not turn from their wickedness or from their evil ways, they will die for their sin; but you will have saved yourself” (Ezekiel 3:17-19).

Ezekiel 33 gave a similar message, that of blowing the trumpet to warn the people. If I didn’t, I would have blood on my hands. It was a moment of reflection. I realized that God was calling me to the unpopular ministry of “prophetic warning,” which is part of the watchman aspect of prophetic ministry.

Many people don’t listen to watchmen—and if they do, they don’t necessarily like what they hear. God may not be calling you to a vigorous watchman ministry. While this manifestation is part of the prophet’s call, God steers some prophets toward it more than others. He may entrust you with a different mission with prophetic declarations that are warmly welcomed by the masses.

But this is usually not the case with true prophetic ministry. True prophets don’t tend to win the appreciation of the masses but rather that of the remnant…

This text is an excerpt from the book The Making of a Prophet written by Jennifer LeClaire.

We invite you to read the following article “ARE YOU READY TO PAY THE PRICE?”

I AM CALLED.