Shallow but Deep

The prophetic is really a funny realm and office. You literally have to see it and recognize it. It comes in all forms; God can prophesy through a joke, a book, an advert, a song, someone’s whatsapp status, a cloth label, a billboard sign and possibly anything.

A close friend of mine has a one-year-old son. The other day, he was literally holding a bottle tightly, a new discovered toy. For hours, the baby did not let it go; whether breastfeeding, playing, crawling, sleeping. His mom’s eyes saw something; in a joke she said, ‘Oh if we only held onto God’s word that tightly, every hour of every day!’ and just like that, that became a mighty sermon that we always talk about when we meet, daily waking grasping God’s word with all fingers.

Talking about that family, that boy was born in Canada. His grandfather, on his one-year anniversary, joked; ‘My grandson was born in Canada, and I went to Kings College Budo, where which I was assigned to be in the house called Canada.’

His son too went to the same house. Now that his grandson was born in Canada, I wasn’t shocked. It was all in the shadows, and we could only tell after years. It wasn’t a straightforward ‘prophecy’. Maybe the Canada prophecy is even still in play, and maybe it has a huge role to play in the child’s life, or the other way round…

My mom always says that when she gave birth to me, I appeared on Uganda Television, which by then was almost the only TV station in Uganda. UTV was carrying out a survey on health centres, and so my mom was being interviewed about how she found the services at that centre after delivery.

The interviewer obviously goofed around with baby me, and days later, the community kept smiling at my mom saying, ‘look, the baby who appeared on TV’ It’s no biggie that I run a gospel TV show now. All media will be airing the gospel that I preach pretty soon, and the books I write will be adapted into movies as well. UTV was there to play a role in telling how I’d reign in the mountain of media.

Moving on, I recall my best friend, Sam. Last year we signed up for a leadership course. We graduated in December and he died in April. The course required all of us to write a book as a graduation requirement. The book he wrote is a piece of him that he left.

My mind remembered what he said after we had prayed one time in 2019. He said ‘If we do not do this course next year, there will be no other year.’ And indeed, there was no other year for him. Had he not attended the course last year, we would have had no book from him.

In April last year, as I prayed for him, I remember coming out the prayer closet all pumped up with a word, ‘It all ends with 30. Your disease will not go beyond your 30th.’ In September 2020, he turned 30, and yes, I only realized after his burial that that prophecy was open ended. It said the disease would end…but I didn’t know it would end with his life.

I at once loathed prophecy. And yet Paul said we should all desire to prophesy. Looking through the scriptures though, not every prophecy was nice.

Abraham himself, after being told he’d have a son, God told him how his descendants would be enslaved. Maybe it is to help you be in the know, and not pray against a thing which was intended to be (as for Abraham’s descendants)

In the end I realized that this gift is not just about receiving the good thing coming in the future, but eliminating all manner of unsurety. Prophecy is to make you certain that your future isn’t a mystery so that you don’t waste your prayer time bothering God to show what is coming, but to spend that present pouring out your love on Him, and He embracing and increasing your revelation of Him.

Anyhow, bits and pieces of your future (or a friend’s) are going to be all over the place depending on which avenue God wishes to use, but I pray that when He uses the easiest or silliest or shallowest means like a baby grasping a bottle tight, or a friend joking about something, that your spiritual antennae be in tune and perfect synchrony to notice His deep calling unto the deep He placed in you!