“…in proportion to his faith.”

Romans 12:6 in my NIV reads, “We have different gifts according to the grace given us. If a man’s gift is prophesying, let him use it in proportion to his faith.” I looked at 4 different translations and they all say the same thing, in essence. The basic idea of this particular verse is that the one prophesying should not go any further than the boundry of his faith, i.e. if it hasn’t been made sure in his inner man that he is to issue a word, then he is to go no further than the faith that is given. In another post I talked somewhat extensively about what faith is, so I won’t go into all that again except to briefly say that it is what is given of God to us so that we may know conclusively that He is, or that something is issuing from Him in the moment. So how does this affect the area of prophetic speaking?

Earnestly Contend for The Faith

This phrase keeps running through my head lately. Well, for the last couple of days. I read something someone wrote on a blog about “earnestly contending for the faith” as being a matter of opposing false doctrine. For years I have accepted that indeed this is all there is to contending for the faith, i.e. apologetically accurate arguments against false teaching. But I was listening to Art Katz give a blistering critique of the Toronto Blessing the other night in a sermon called “Holiness or Blessing” and he said something that hit me right in the gut and went into my kidneys. He said, “It’s not the doctrines we have to contend for, it’s the faith.”