So, it’s month 3, and I am in Ethiopia!
We are staying with a host family. The dad, Tesfa, owns a construction company, and the mom, Beti, is a bank manager. They have a daughter named Rakeb, who is 3, and a 10-month-old son named Eldat. The house where we are staying is super nice – we have two bedroom (with crown molding…are you serious?), three bathrooms (with two showerheads and three Western toilets), a living room (with a TV), a kitchen (with a stove, oven, and refrigerator), dining room, a rooftop, and two maids.
This, I guess, is sometimes The World Race!
Our neighborhood looks like the set of Divergent or something. It’s all under construction, so it’s just half-completed gray cinderblock buildings, building frames made of long wooden poles, donkeys, horses, and poop. It definitely has a post-apocolyptic vibe.
We are basically in an up-and-coming suburb of Addis Ababa. It takes about half an hour to get to the main part of the city using public transportation – buses, cars, and little blue bajajes.
Ethiopia is a very unique place. I’ve posted some “Fun Facts” on my Kid Blog, www.aroundtheworldwithmissjacobs.com, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.
Beti has some spiritual gifts that I do not have a lot of experience with – speaking in tongues and prophesying. She has already prophesied over each of us. It went something like this:
Beti is reading aloud the story of Joseph from the Bible, the part where he resists Potiphar’s wife. Suddenly she stops reading, and starts pacing while speaking in tongues. Then just as suddenly, she stops, points at me, and declares, “You will be married.” I say, “What?” and she repeats, “You will be married.”
“Well, that is a surprise,” I say under my breath.
She continues. She says things to me like, “You are not an ordinary person,” “You willsave many lives,” “May I see your hand? No, your other hand…in this hand you hold a key for extending boundaries,” “You have a very clean heart,” “God will never leave you,” “…children’s ministries,” “You have a mother’s heart.” I’m not freaked out exactly, just mostly confused, and trying to remember everything she says to me. This is different,but it’s not bad; it’s unsettling, but I have no desire to leave.
Throughout the next couple of hours, Beti prophesies over each of us. She says things about the past she could never have known. She hits on areas of struggle and makes comments about the future. Sometimes she’s surprisingly specific, sometimes she’s a little more vague. But everything she says makes sense.
Around 11:00 we call it a night and retreat to my room, where we stare at each other, stupefied. We try to help one another remember everything Beti said. We processwhat we have heard and we wonder…we wonder about what our futures hold.
I’ve never been prophesied over before, so I’ve never had to think much about the gift of prophecy, about whether or not it is real. So I went to the Bible for some guidance. 1 Corinthians chapter 14 talks all about the gifts of prophecy and tongues. In verse 1 Paul writes, “Follow the way of love and eagerly desire spiritual gifts, especially the gift of prophecy.” And what exactly did Paul consider “prophecy”? In verse 3, he writes, “Everyone who prophesies speaks to men for their strengthening, encouragement, and comfort.”
The Bible also warns against false prophets. I know false prophets are a problem in this very religious culture. At church on Sunday, the pastor said as much. But the fact that there are false prophets must also mean that there are true ones.
There’s a little article in my study Bible that asks, “When godly people make predictions, should we listen?” Here is what it says:
One way to know whether a person is a true prophet is to see if their words are fulfilled over time (Deut. 18:21-22).
A prophet’s truthfulness can also be determined by whether he or she prophesies in the name of God or something else (Deut. 13:1-5). Is this “godly” person always looking for something new in his religious experience? Is she getting a lot of attention for her predictions?
Another consideration is the value of a prediction. Will it deepen your walk with the Lord, or is it just vain speculation? Does it build up the church or call into question someone else’s spirituality? Most important, does this prediction align itself with Scripture?
Quest Study Bible, p. 1045
So I think the gift of prophecy is “real.” I just think we need to be very discerning when it comes to who and what we believe. I guess the honest truth is that I’ve thought of people who easily believe the predictions of “prophets” to be the same kind of people who are easily hypnotized. But that view makes me feel a little guilty, too. I know I put God in a box, because I need him to be my safe place, because everything else always changes. I need him to be my familiar friend, my Father, my brother. I need to have peace…but I also need to have Truth, and excitement, and Mystery. My prayer this morning was, “I need You to be You, and I need to be brave enough to let You be You, even the parts of You I don’t understand. Especially the parts of You I don’t understand.”
Beti also gave me Isaiah chapter 54, especially verse 2, which reads, “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.” After reading this verse, Beti said to me, “expand your scope in everything.” Kind of sounds like not putting God in a box. Interestingly, this is the second time recently that the word “enlarge” has popped up. Back in Rwanda, Pastor Fred prayed a prayer that included the phrase “that we may enlarge the borders of Your Kingdom.” This phrase struck me to such an extent that I wrote it in the back of my Bible and wrote it on a piece of paper and taped it to the wall – all before Beti’s prophecy. Enlarge. I will be pondering this word.
This year is all about going further up and further in. Living with Beti for the month, I think I will be exposed to many new things that will get me thinking more deeply about my faith.
And to my future husband, if he’s reading this: Congratulations, you may actually exist.
