Pray the Word with David Platte is a resource from radical.net.

First Kings, chapter 22, verse 8. And the king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat,

There is yet one man by whom we may inquire of the Lord, Makaya, the son of Imla, but I hate him,

for he never prophesies good concerning me, but evil.

I want you to think about that statement that the King of Israel makes about

Micaiah, he never prophesies good concerning me but evil.

In other words, the King of Israel wants prophets who will tell him what he wants to hear.

And isn't that true, in a sense, of all of us? Like, we want people to tell us what we want to hear oftentimes more than we want people to tell us what God has said.

And we are so foolish to think that our ways are better than God's ways, that we will look for justification for our

ways in all kinds of places, in an attempt to not hear what God is saying to us.

After all, this is why false prophets are so prevalent in the church, right? Because they say

what people want to hear, even though what they are saying goes against God's word. And we don't

have time to go into all the details here in First King's chapter 22,

including a variety of questions that come from this chapter.

But the clear reality of First Kings 22 is that we must be careful to test what is told us

according to God's word in God's spirit.

And it's not just here in 1st Kings 22, it's all over the New Testament.

It's teachings and exhortations and warnings all over the New Testament to make sure

that we are not carried away by deceitfulness, by deceitful doctrine,

by deceptive teaching, by false prophets who tell us what we want to hear instead of what God's

word has said. We must always test our thoughts, test our desires, our words,

what we teach, and we must test what we hear with God's Word. Otherwise, we will follow deception to our detriment.

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