“Yahweh is my best friend and my shepherd. I always have more than enough” Psalm 23:1, TPT
The first scripture I ever learned was Psalm 23. And as I sit in a strange season of my life, I keep hearing it echo in my heart: “The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.”
Over the years, I’ve heard this scripture interpreted in many different ways. But today—right here, right now—it has taken on a new and profound meaning for me.
To give a little context, I am a creature of habit. I get very used to the way things are. I notice even the slightest of changes, and if I’m honest, I usually hate any form of change. My natural instinct is to try, with all my might, to get things back to how they were.
This makes me the opposite of easygoing.
I frequently need to be reminded by the Lord to go with the flow and not fight the current.
This season of my life has been marked by change on many levels—relationships shifting, career changes, parental changes, body changes, and so much more. I’ve had to learn how to be okay with adjusting to a new way of doing things, a new rhythm, a new normal.
So when Psalm 23 says, “The Lord is my Shepherd,” and follows it with, “I shall not want,” here’s how I’m hearing it in this season.
If I truly believe He is a good Shepherd, then I have to believe that everything I actually need will be brought to me. If that’s true, then there is no need to live from a place of wanting—striving, grasping, chasing—because what is required for my life will be supplied.
That realization reframes everything.
So take a moment and think about the thing you “want.”
Now consider this: if you truly needed it, you’d have it. And every step you’re taking right now is bringing you closer—not to the wants of a former version of yourself—but to the wants of the healed you, the transformed you, the matured you.
I’ve been seeing this play out lately in my relationships and in other areas of my life. Sometimes I want what a former version of me needed, simply because I don’t like change. But God doesn’t shepherd us backward. He leads us forward—into wholeness.
This truth came to me in the most unexpected—and honestly, the silliest—way. I was watching a movie. Jesus Revolution, to be exact. There’s a scene where a young man is baptized, and something about it gripped me. He didn’t come to the Lord with clenched fists full of assumptions or self-protection. He came with hands wide open.
For weeks, I couldn’t shake that image. Why did it stay with me? Because what I was seeing was the essence of how we must come to the Lord if we ever hope to live in peace.
Open hands. Letting go of what doesn’t align with His heart. Postured to receive everything He longs to pour out. This—this—is humility.
When we come to Him open-handed, He can use us in ways we could never imagine. We are no longer tethered to the weight of this world because we’ve stopped clinging to anything but Him.
When I reflect on my life these past 42 years, I realize something: I have always been a holder. Growing up in chaos, instability, and uncertainty taught me to grip whatever felt safe, even if it wasn’t. I was always searching for stable ground—never realizing the whole time that He was the stable ground I had been seeking.
The truth is, as long as my hands were clenched around something temporal, I was never fully positioned to receive what He had for me in the moment.
This idea pulled my heart back to Isaiah 43:18–19—“Forget the former things; do not remember the things of old.” It doesn’t mean we discard the past. It means we hold it loosely. We keep an open-handed posture that allows God to give and God to take as He leads.
Because the moments I have felt most content, most free, most aligned with Him, were the moments I finally released my grip—and embraced the reality that I am the one being held.
This entire year has been a season of transition for me. A crossing over. A shifting from this to that. And if I’m honest, there were still parts of me that wanted to hold on—to people, to places, to dreams, to familiar rhythms that felt comfortable.
But today… Today I release all of it back to Him.
All the things. All the people. All the places I’ve seen. Every dream. Every joy. Every seed He ever planted in me— Lord, it all goes back to You.
And so I stand here now— On ground You’ve already cultivated, Ground not yet built upon, Ground that is holy because You are in it—
And I say:
Lord, my hands are open, and so is my heart. Here I am, Lord—send me.
This morning while I was praying, I saw something that honestly broke my heart—not just for me, but for the Body of Christ as a whole.
I saw spiritual babies.
Some were aborted before they ever had the chance to form. Others were fully born but left lying unattended. And as I looked at them, I knew exactly what they represented: the gifts, callings, assignments, ministries, dreams, and blueprints God Himself planted inside His people… the very things we were supposed to nurture, carry, and bring into maturity. Yet somewhere along the way, many of them were abandoned.
Not because God changed His mind. Not because the seed was wrong. But because we got discouraged.
As I sat with this, the Lord began to speak to my heart. He reminded me of the things He has conceived in us—visions, blueprints, songs, books, movements, callings—and how easily we drift from them when the process doesn’t unfold the way we imagined. We don’t walk away because we’re rebellious. Most of the time, we walk away because something felt right in the moment. We told ourselves stories like:
“Maybe I misheard.” “It shouldn’t be this hard.” “This other opportunity seems better.” “I’m probably not qualified for this.” “It’s taking too long.”
And without even realizing it, we step away from what God asked us to steward. We choose movement over maturity, distraction over devotion, momentum over faithfulness. We walk away from a spiritual pregnancy because we didn’t understand the season we were in.
Here’s what the Lord reminded me so clearly: Bringing anything God entrusts to you into maturity requires two seasons—one that feels like movement, and one that feels like stillness.
And we love movement. We thrive on momentum. We like to feel like something is happening.
But when God leads us into a season of divine stillness, we often misinterpret it. Stillness feels like failure. It feels like something died. It feels like God must be shifting us somewhere else. So we walk away. Not because the word changed, but because the silence made us uncomfortable.
And in that misunderstanding, the baby gets left unattended.
What I saw in the Spirit grieved me: assignments crying out with no one to nurture them, callings starving because no one stayed long enough to feed them, foundational works that were started but never finished because the builders walked away before the walls could go up. These weren’t man-made ideas. These were God-breathed destinies—left untouched, uncovered, and unnurtured simply because someone got weary.
Heaven felt the weight of it.
And in the middle of that weight, I heard the Lord ask a simple but deeply personal question:
“If not you, then who?”
If not you, who will bring to pass what I placed inside of you? If not you, who will nurture what I entrusted to your care? If not you, who will protect the very thing I conceived in your spirit?
God is not looking around the room trying to find someone else. He already chose you.
He planted it in your womb. He breathed it into your spirit. He aligned it with your identity and design. He entrusted it to you because it fits you.
No one else can steward what was assigned to your life.
This word is not correction; it’s mercy. It’s invitation. It’s realignment.
The Lord is calling many of us back to the things we left behind—those assignments we thought we weren’t ready for, the visions we thought were too big, the projects we let sit on the shelf, the ministry ideas we set aside because the timing felt off. The truth is, the baby isn’t dead. It’s simply been unattended.
And I hear the Lord saying gently but firmly:
“Return to what I placed in you. Pick it back up. Nurture it again. I have not changed My mind.”
We are in a season where God is restoring foundations. And part of that restoration requires us to go back and tend to what He originally spoke—before disappointment, before delay, before fear, before confusion. Not everything you walked away from was meant to be abandoned. Some things were meant to be carried. Protected. Fed. Raised into maturity.
This is not condemnation. This is awakening.
The Father is saying:
“I am awakening you to what I birthed in you. Tend to the baby. What I conceived in you shall come forth.”
We have reached an extraordinary and holy moment in the Body of Christ—a time where the Prophetic is not being discarded, but being matured. The partial is fading, and the fullness is beginning to break through.
If you had told me one year ago that my prophetic sight was veiled, I would have argued. I would have defended my accuracy, my experiences, my discernment. But this is what children do—they assume the little they know is the whole. And like a child, I did not yet recognize how much of what I perceived in the Spirit was still filtered through a veil.
But now, the Spirit of God is calling to His Bride, His Church, His Ekklesia with the same invitation He gave John in Revelation:
“Come up here, so you can see what must take place after this.”
This is not merely an invitation to see more—it is an invitation to see from a higher place.
We are crossing a threshold. We are leaving an age defined by partial sight through gifts and entering an age defined by clear sight through sonship. This is not the removal of the prophetic; it is the maturing of it.
Let me be clear: I am not saying the prophetic is obsolete. I am saying the prophetic is being transformed.
What Does Maturity Look Like?
When I speak of the prophetic being matured, I’m referring to the veil being lifted—the veil of religion, the veil of fear, the veil of carnality, and the veil of self. What remains is the pure lens of the Father’s love.
The gift has always been present in every person. But the maturing of that gift is what purifies our sight.
Just as children are born with natural sight, I believe we are all born with prophetic sight. Yet like children, our ability to interpret what we see must develop.
Think of a baby. They see you, but they cannot articulate what they behold. Their eyes are functioning, but their cognition lags behind.
Prophetic sight works the same way. We may see accurately, but our understanding is immature. We may hear clearly, but our interpretation is incomplete. We may perceive spiritually, but we do so through a partial lens.
As we mature in our revelation of Christ—and therefore our revelation of the Father’s love—our sight becomes aligned with His nature. We begin to perceive as He perceives. We begin to see through the lens of His heart.
Seeing Through the Veil
It can be difficult to admit that most of what we see prophetically is viewed through a veil. But the Apostle Paul explains this reality plainly:
“We know in part, and we prophesy in part.”
This means that even when the Spirit reveals something, our cognition—our spiritual understanding—often remains underdeveloped. We perceive the whisper but not the fullness of the heart behind it.
Yet Paul continues:
“When love’s perfection arrives, the partial will fade away.”
There are many depths to this statement, but one truth burns brightly within me:
The more we mature in our awareness of the love of God, the less we depend on the diminished form of prophecy.
Because love is the greater revelation. Love is the maturity of the Body. Love is the fullness to which the gifts have always pointed.
Why I’m Done Building Systems and Only Want to Build People
By Jennifer McPherson
I’ve come to a place in my life where I only want what God wants. I don’t want the system. I don’t want the politics. I don’t want the maneuvering, the image-management, or the subtle manipulation that so often creeps into ministry.
I just want to see what He wants.
A Vision That Reframed Everything
About a year ago, the Lord gave me a picture about building. I saw myself standing in a vast open space in the Spirit. There were bricks. There were tools. And there was land stretching out farther than my eyes could follow.
I asked Him, “Lord, what are You asking me to build?”
He answered, “I want you to build My house.”
At the time, I was still carrying deep rejection, unhealed wounds, and areas of brokenness that shaped how I interpreted His voice. So naturally, I assumed He meant a ministry—something public, visible, structured, and easy for others to applaud.
But the more I sat with Him, the more He began to unravel my assumptions and reveal His heart.
His House Is Not an Institution—It Is People
Scripture says plainly that God’s dwelling place is no longer a building.
We are His house. We are His dwelling place.
His home is not made of brick, stage lights, leadership hierarchies, or ministry logos. His home is made of sons and daughters filled with His Spirit.
The Lord wasn’t asking me to build a ministry. He was asking me to build people.
To build hearts. To build identity. To build sons and daughters who know who they are and who He is.
And that realization wrecked me.
The Kind of Building That Requires Surrender
There has always been a part of me that loves creating, organizing, planning, and bringing things to life. But what He was asking for wasn’t infrastructure.
It was surrender.
This kind of building requires letting go of control. It requires allowing Him to do the forming. It requires loving people enough to not mold them into our image, but into His.
There are countless ways to build people:
through presence
through compassion
through listening
through affirmation
through calling them higher
through seeing what God sees in them
But none of it can be done in our own strength. It all flows from His heart.
The Place I Stand Today
Some days, it feels like ground is being lost. Some days, it feels like the things I fought to hold together are slipping away.
But the Lord has taught me a simple truth:
He is the start and the finish. He is the destination and the journey. He is it.
There is no hidden agenda in me anymore. I’m not maneuvering for position. I’m not strategizing for influence. I’m not building for visibility.
He told me to build His people. And that is enough.
I refuse to build through pressure, politics, performance, or pretense. If it’s not flowing from His heart, I want no part of it.
Reflection
What does “building God’s house” look like in your life right now?
Have you ever mistaken a ministry assignment for a heart assignment?
How might God be inviting you to build people, not projects?
“You also, like living stones, are being built into a spiritual house to be a holy priesthood…” — 1 Peter 2:5
Quite some time ago, I had a dream that has stayed with me ever since. In the dream, I was walking along a path, heading somewhere important. I was running late for an event I needed to attend, and all my focus was fixed on reaching my destination as quickly as possible.
While on this path, a man approached me. He was disheveled—worn down by life—and it was clear he had been through more than most could imagine. He began to speak, sharing his need for help. But the place he needed me to go was in the opposite direction of where I was heading.
I felt the weight of his request. But I was late, and I believed I couldn’t afford to lose time. I told him I couldn’t assist him and turned away, continuing toward where I thought I needed to be. He followed for a short while, then disappeared.
Not long after, another person approached me. This time it was a woman—well-dressed, well-spoken, put together. And yet, her need was the same. She also needed help, and helping her meant turning around.
But again, I repeated my response. I can’t help you. I’m running late. And just like before, I left her behind.
The Struggle to Keep Up
As I sit here reflecting on that dream, it brings me back to a season where I constantly felt like I was running behind—like no matter how hard I tried, I was never quite “on time.” It felt as though there was an invisible finish line I had to reach before it was too late.
All my energy, time, and focus went toward pursuing a destination I truly believed God wanted me to reach. But in truth, that dream wasn’t about being late for an event. It was a call—a gentle but firm invitation—to pause and reconsider what matters most.
The Ministry of the One
This message is not about titles, platforms, or positions. It is about something far simpler—and far more profound:
The ministry of loving the one.
Jesus told us He leaves the ninety-nine to go after the one. That is the heart of God. He values every person so deeply that He would set aside everything else to rescue just one soul.
And I believe He calls us to do the same.
Yet when I look back over my own life, I can see how often I’ve done the opposite. For years, I ignored the needs of “the one”—whether that one was my children, my boss, my friends, or even a stranger on the street. They all came second to my pursuit of reaching what I thought was the goal.
I wasn’t intentionally cold or uncaring… I was simply fixated on getting somewhere God was not actually asking me to go.
Restoring the Heart of Ministry
I believe God is restoring something vital within His church: the true heart of ministry.
He is raising up leaders who understand that people are not tools to be used to fulfill our callings. People are the calling.
They are the very expression of God’s heart.
The success of ministry is not measured by how many events we host, how many people sit in our buildings, how many views we get, or how impressive our achievements look.
The real measure of ministry is found in how well we love the one.
Love Never Fails
Everything else will fade. Every accomplishment, every milestone, every notable moment—none of it lasts forever.
But love? Love never fails.
The love we give…the time we take…the compassion we show…the willingness to stop our busy pace and truly see someone—that is what makes an eternal mark.
If we want to reflect God’s heart, we must be willing to lay down our own pursuits and ambitions long enough to embrace the ministry of loving the one right in front of us.
So let me ask you: Who is the one in your life right now? Who is God asking you to slow down for—to see, to hear, to help, to love?
The ministry of the one isn’t glamorous. It’s rarely convenient. It’s often uncomfortable.
But it is the very heartbeat of God.
Let’s return to the ministry of loving the one. Not someday. Not when life slows down. Not when the “important things” are finished.
In November of 2023, I had a dream that stayed with me long after I woke up. To be honest, it concerned me then—and it still lingers in my spirit now. Not in fear, but with a weight that tells me the dream was more than an experience. It was a wake-up call.
In the dream, I was standing in a room, and of all people, Justin Abraham was standing there with me. I looked around and saw thick fog covering everything. The atmosphere felt dense and muted. It was difficult to hear; difficult to see. As I tried to get my bearings, I whispered almost under my breath, “Is this the glory of God?”
Justin turned toward me and said with absolute clarity, “This is not the glory of God. It is a Baphomet spirit—and you must pray against it.”
I began to pray. And as I prayed, I felt something physically separate from me. I could feel it move—crawling upward, lifting off my body—and suddenly I could breathe again. But only for a moment.
The next instant, it attacked me violently. I honestly thought it was going to kill me. The terror was real, and the dream felt more vivid than anything I had experienced in a long time.
There is still much I don’t fully understand about this dream, but one thing has become clear over time: the Baphomet spirit is often represented by the head of a goat, which immediately brings my mind to Matthew 25:31–46—the separation of the sheep and the goats. Baphomet is connected to dualism, idolatry, false enlightenment, and counterfeit spirituality. It is a spirit that mimics revelation while lacking the power of transformation. It lulls, sedates, and deceives.
And in the dream, that fog—thick, disorienting, numbing—had settled over the entire room.
As I continued to pray, the spirit finally left. The fog began to lift, and that’s when I saw them: people lying on the ground, asleep. Motionless. Completely unaware of what had been influencing the atmosphere around them.
But as the fog cleared, they began to stir. They stood. They awakened.
And in that moment, I understood something deeply personal:
I had to be awakened before I could ever hope to awaken them.
Counterfeit Glory and the Sedation of the Church
Glory is the nature and likeness of God—His radiant expression. But there is also a counterfeit glory, a false light that masquerades as the real thing. It looks spiritual. It feels mystical. It sounds profound. But it carries no power.
This is the fog that has lulled the Body of Christ to sleep.
This is the mixture that has slipped into the prophetic, charismatic, and mystical movements—where language is lofty, revelation sounds deep, but transformation is shallow. Where people chase experiences instead of union. Where atmospheres feel supernatural, yet lack the weight of holiness.
And it takes Reformers—those who love the Father, honor the Spirit, and refuse mixture—to call it out.
This is why Justin Abraham appeared in the dream. Not because the dream was about him—but because it was about what he represents: clarity, reform, purity of revelation, and the unveiling of true glory.
This dream was not a warning. It was a commissioning.
A Prophetic Word for the Reformers
As I’ve prayed into this dream, I hear the Spirit saying:
“Arise, Reformers. Now is the time to expose the counterfeit glory— the fog that dulls discernment and lulls My people into slumber. I am clearing atmospheres of mixture. I am separating soul from spirit, light from shadow. Those who carry My sword will bring clarity in this hour. Do not be impressed by eloquent words or mystical fog. See beyond the noise. Discern the age. Awaken My people, for the sons of God must rise in purity, power, and truth.”
This is not a season for sleepwalking Christianity. This is not a time for borrowed revelation. This is the hour for clarity, discernment, and awakening.
We are being called to rise up in splendor. We are being called to separate the true from the counterfeit. We are being called to lift the fog and awaken the sleepers.
Reformers, the time is now. The glory of the Lord is rising upon His people—and He is clearing the atmosphere for His sons to stand radiant, alert, and fully alive.
“Rise up in splendor and be radiant, for your light has dawned, and YAHWEH’S glory now streams from you!” — Isaiah 60:1
Last summer marked a turning point in my spiritual walk—one of deep transformation, where God began unveiling not only where He is taking me, but where He is leading the Body of Christ as a whole. And it all began with a dream that has never left me.
The Dream: A Fire on the Freeway
In the dream, I was driving toward a major intersection—one of those defining moments where direction becomes destiny. But before I could reach that point of decision, a massive fire erupted directly in front of me.
My first instinct was to avoid it. I looked to the left—cars were pouring into that lane. I looked to the right—the same. I checked the rearview mirror—countless vehicles behind me.
Everyone was avoiding the fire.
In that moment, it became clear:
I had no choice but to go through it.
What I didn’t yet understand was that the fire wasn’t an obstacle—it was a threshold. It was the gateway to where God desired for me to abide. Avoiding it would have meant forfeiting the place He was calling me into.
So I steadied myself and drove straight into the flames.
Instantly—without pain, without loss, without even a moment of damage—I emerged on the other side completely intact. My car was untouched. I was unharmed.
The Realm of Glory
Suddenly, I found myself in an open field, completely alone yet deeply aware that others would arrive later. While still sitting in the car, I noticed that it was raining. But this wasn’t ordinary rain—it was like tiny diamonds falling from the sky.
When I stepped out:
✨ the rain didn’t touch the ground ✨ it didn’t cling to my clothes ✨ it didn’t soak into the car
Instead, every drop that touched my skin caused me to shimmer.
For a long time, I didn’t understand what I had seen. But the moment I asked God, His answer was immediate:
“You were in a realm of glory.”
This realm wasn’t unfamiliar. I had tasted it in worship, in times of deep encounter—but God wasn’t inviting me into visitation.
He was calling me into permanence.
This is what He is doing in the Body of Christ today—lifting us out of the cycles of striving and into the realm where we become radiant. Where we burn with a fire that cannot be quenched. Where we reflect His light as a way of life, not a momentary experience.
Everything Will Be Accomplished From This Realm
During the time of this dream, I was wrestling deeply with identity. How could the person I believed myself to be walk out what God was showing me?
But the true impartation of that season was this:
Everything God has called me to do will be birthed from this realm of glory.
Ministry may be the vehicle, but we are the carriers of His nature. His glory is not something we perform—it’s something we become.
Isaiah 60:1 calls us to be radiant. This isn’t a description; it’s an action. It means to reflect His light—to burn with His very nature.
This is how His light will be released into the world… not through striving, not through copying, not through noise— but through radiance.
The Freeway of Ministry
One thing I’ve learned navigating ministry circles is this:
Voices are everywhere—but very few reflect His nature.
Many are simply echoing what they’ve heard. Many are repeating what they’ve seen. Many are stuck in the traffic of ministry— moving with the flow but losing authenticity in the process.
This is why God showed me the freeway in the dream.
Everywhere you look, there are ministries. But we are being called to rise from the familiar roads into the vast, open realm of glory where we can co-create with Him.
Many desire this… but once they see the fire, they retreat. Once they feel the cost of pioneering, they return to the well-traveled road.
The Call to the Radiant Ones
If you desire to be radiant—to shine with the light of Heaven— you must be willing to step off the familiar road.
Sometimes the traffic is the distraction. Sometimes the crowd is the noise. Sometimes the well-worn paths bury the uniqueness God placed inside you.
But when we allow the Holy Spirit to transport us into the realm where we were designed to dwell, everything changes.
We stop looking left and right for what to do. We stop seeking templates. We stop borrowing language.
We release what He placed inside us— purely, authentically, fearlessly.
Be Radiant. Burn With His Nature. Release His Light.
So today, whether you’re in a 9–5 job or leading a ministry, know this: you have been equipped to impact those around you—not just through words, but through the radiance of who you are in Him.
Take what’s inside you and let it shine. Not as a reflection of culture, tradition, or trend— but as a reflection of Heaven.
This is how creation will be transformed—through those who will answer the call to rise, burn, and reflect the nature of the One who sends them.
“For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son…” — Romans 8:29
There are truths so beautiful they almost feel impossible to believe. And for many of us, being created in the image of God is one of them.
Especially when your life has told you a very different story.
Most of us grew up hearing more about what is wrong with us than what is right with us. Whether through trauma, family patterns, rejection, or the loud voices of culture, many of us were shaped by narratives that didn’t look anything like the identity God spoke over us before the foundation of the world.
I don’t know your story, but I know mine. And nothing about where I came from or what I endured resembled the story of someone created to bear the image of the Father.
Yet Scripture is unwavering: We were made to carry His likeness. We were formed to reflect His glory. We were predestined to bear the image of the Son.
This truth—once it gets inside of us—changes everything.
Image-Bearing: The Doorway Into Rest
In recent years, the Holy Spirit has been drawing me into a deeper understanding of what it truly means to be an image bearer. And in that place, I realized something profound:
Identity is the doorway to rest.
When you spend your whole life being told what needs to be fixed, healed, corrected, or earned, you begin to think that the Christian life is about constant repair. Unfortunately, that is the message many encounter in the modern Western church— a striving gospel, not a resting one.
But the true Gospel begins with a different message: You were created in His image before you were broken by the world. You were loved before you were wounded. You were chosen before you were rejected. You were designed before you were damaged.
Once this becomes the anchor of your heart, something shifts. You stop trying to earn acceptance and begin living from it. You stop striving to become something and start resting in who you already are. You stop believing the world’s version of you and return to the Father’s version.
And from that place, being an image bearer stops being a doctrine and becomes a lived reality.
A Generation Awakening to Who They Are
I believe we are living in a divine moment in history—a moment where God is raising up a generation who no longer wants imitation Christianity. They don’t want to be carbon copies of what they’ve seen. They don’t want the performance-based religion of the old systems. They don’t want borrowed identities or recycled language.
They want the real thing. They want Him. And they want to live as the ones He created them to be.
This generation is rising with a hunger to reflect the image of the Father—to walk not in striving, but in sonship; not in fear, but in freedom; not in the pressure to conform, but in the call to reflect.
They want authenticity over applause. Identity over image. Glory over glamour.
These are the Image Bearers— the ones God is awakening to carry His nature, His character, His love, His radiance into the world.
And their rise is not just coming—it’s already happening.
You Were Created for This
If your life has told you that you are less than what God says… If circumstances have tried to rewrite your identity… If you have felt small, unseen, inadequate, or unworthy…
Hear this:
You were created to bear His image. Not one day. Not when you “get better.” Not after you heal enough.
Now. Today. Because it’s who you’ve always been in Him.
You are accepted. You are loved. You are chosen. You are carrying the imprint of the One who made you.
How to Steward God’s Plan When It’s Not What You Expected
By Jennifer McPherson
I don’t often teach about the deeper, messier side of prophetic calling. Honestly, I rarely talk about this at all. But the Lord has been stirring something in me, and when He won’t let a thing go, I know it’s because He is asking me to release it.
Anyone who has walked with God for any length of time knows this: He will never ask you to teach what He hasn’t required you to walk through first.
And today’s message comes from one of the most painful yet transformative things He has ever taught me. It is the question that eventually burns in the soul of every prophetic person:
How do you steward the word of the Lord when the outcome God reveals is not the outcome you hoped for?
We talk a lot about prophetic obedience— Obedience to deliver a hard word. Obedience to speak truth in intimidating places. Obedience to stand before leaders, pastors, politicians, and say what God has told you to say.
That type of obedience is real. It carries weight. It costs something.
But there is another kind of obedience that costs even more:
Obedience when God’s plan breaks your heart.
When Samuel’s Prophetic Picture Unfolded Differently
Let’s look at Samuel.
Samuel was not growing in accuracy. He wasn’t in training. Scripture says:
“None of his words fell to the ground.” —1 Samuel 3:19
Every word Samuel delivered carried the weight of heaven’s authority.
So when Samuel anointed Saul as king, he did it at the direct instruction of the Lord. No error. No presumption. No guesswork.
Samuel obeyed God perfectly—yet the picture still unfolded differently than he imagined. Saul disobeyed the Lord, and the kingdom was taken from him.
Here’s the part we often overlook:
Samuel grieved.
Not because he missed God. Not because he misheard. Not because he prophesied incorrectly.
He grieved because he had a picture in his heart of what Saul’s reign was supposed to look like. He had invested hope, expectation, and emotional energy into that picture.
And now God was revealing something entirely different.
Has that ever happened to you?
When you believed you saw the outcome… When you prayed into it… When you prepared for it… When you felt certain that this was the plan…
And then God revealed something else?
That is prophetic grief. And yes—it is real.
The Hardest Question God Ever Asked a Prophet
The most jarring moment in Samuel’s story is God’s question:
“How long will you mourn for Saul?” —1 Samuel 16:1
It sounds harsh until you understand:
This wasn’t a rebuke. It was a reminder.
A reminder that while Samuel was grieving the picture he held in his heart… he still had an assignment.
There was still a David to anoint. Still oil to pour. Still a nation to shepherd into its next chapter.
Prophets cannot pause the story because they’re hurting. The assignment doesn’t stop because the picture changed.
God’s plan didn’t shift suddenly— He simply revealed more of it. And Samuel had to align with the new revelation.
Your Calling Isn’t Dependent on Agreement
This is where prophetic maturity forms:
You do not have to agree with God’s plan to obey it.
You don’t have to prefer it. You don’t have to understand it. You don’t even have to like it.
Your emotions do not have veto power over heaven’s agenda.
Obedience is easy when you enjoy the word. Obedience is easy when the outcome matches your hope. Obedience is easy when the picture aligns with your expectation.
But true obedience— prophetic obedience— is tested when the word costs you something.
Even Paul Had to Release His Picture
This isn’t just Samuel’s story. It’s Paul’s too.
Before his encounter with Jesus on the Damascus road, Paul was convinced he was living the right picture. He was zealous, passionate, and absolutely certain.
But when God revealed the fuller picture, Paul had to let go of everything he thought he knew—his training, his religious framework, his imagined outcome.
God didn’t suddenly change His plan. He revealed the parts Paul had never seen.
So if you’re in a season where God is unveiling a different dimension of His plan— one that doesn’t look like what you prepared for— you are in good company.
This is not a detour. This is formation.
When God Asks You to Fill Your Horn With Oil Again
After asking Samuel how long he would mourn, God immediately said:
“Fill your horn with oil, and go.”
This is the moment every prophetic person faces:
Will you stay grieving the picture you created? Or will you rise and carry the oil into the next chapter?
You cannot anoint David while holding onto Saul. You cannot step into the new while mourning the old. You cannot carry fresh oil while clinging to yesterday’s grief.
And here is the truth:
You are not permitted to remain where God has moved on.
A Word for the One Who Is Here Right Now
To the prophet who is reading this… To the seer whose heart is aching… To the intercessor who feels blindsided… To the reformer who is still weeping over Saul while heaven is already speaking David’s name…
Hear the word of the Lord:
Gird up your loins. Stand flat-footed. Strengthen yourself in the Lord. Lift your head. Honor your yes.
You were not chosen for convenience. You were chosen for courage. You were chosen for faithfulness. You were chosen because God can trust you to declare His heart— even when the declaration breaks yours.
All things— not just the beautiful things— all things work together for the good of those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.
So rise, prophet of God. There is still oil in your horn. There is still an assignment before you. There is still a word in your mouth. There is still a David waiting in the field.
In The Heart Of The Father 