Being prophetic and grounded!
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Whilst reading the Bible today, I felt the Holy Spirit lead me to Ezekiel Chapter 1. In my NIV Bible the title of this chapter is ‘The Living Creatures and the Glory of the Lord.’ For those of you familiar with this passage, this is a much loved example of some truly prophetic encounters that are really ‘out there’. Just to give you a bit of a summary, this is a sort of introduction to Ezekiel’s calling as a prophet - and what a calling it is. This is one of the most dramatic encounters in the whole of scripture, involving angels, lightning, fire and the throne of God!
To give you a little bit of context, Ezekiel is by the river when suddenly the heavens are literally opened and he sees ‘visions of God’. This involves a windstorm, an immense cloud with flashing lightning surrounded by brilliant light, a fire with glowing metal and in the fire, what looked like four living creatures. By all accounts, not a normal day! Ezekiel goes on to describe these four living creatures, which of course, show up again around the throne of God in Revelation Chapter 4. But Ezekiel’s account gives us a little more detail about these awesome creatures. They have wings and hands and each one has four faces. Their wings touch each other and they seem to be in complete unity. Ezekiel is careful to let us know that they only go where the Spirit leads them. The appearance of the living creatures is like fire, and burning coals and they speed back and forth like flashes of lightning. Wow - what an encounter, I’ll confess, I’m a little jealous for an encounter like this. To see the Holy Spirit, to see angelic beings and most of all to see, above their heads, a figure that ‘looks like a man’ sat on a throne, a man who also looks like fire, surrounded by light and the radiance of a rainbow. Ezekiel encounters the throne of God, he sees the resurrected Jesus enthroned on high and he watches the four living creatures move like lightning.
I know many prophetic people who love this passage and for good reasons. We can hold it up as justification for dreams, visions and encounters and feel very safe in our longing for the dramatic, the deep, for the prophetic encounters that lead us into a fuller revelation of the person and purpose of Christ; and that’s truly wonderful. But as I meditated on this passage, something hit me and I felt the freshness of the Holy Spirit breathing on the word to make it alive to me personally.
This is what I felt the Lord saying. All of that spiritual activity, the dramatic prophetic encounters and the revelation that Ezekiel was experiencing were connected to something very surprising but very specific. The prophet sees a wheel. Actually he sees four wheels, one for each of the living creatures. Here’s the thing, the wheels are on the ground...Did you catch that? Well, just in case, let me say it this way - even the living creatures that surround the throne of God are ‘grounded’.
Now before all my prophetic friends run away, let me be clear - the fact that the living creatures are grounded does not detract from their glory or proximity to the throne of God. In fact, they are intricately connected to the moving of the Spirit through the wheels, but the wheels are on the ground! I have a question - do you have dreams and visions, do you encounter the throne of God, are you filled with the Spirit? Yes I hear you say! That’s awesome, here’s my next question: are you grounded, for that matter, am I?
Let me take this a step further. Not only are the wheels on the ground, but Ezekiel explains that they have a ‘structure’ (Ezekiel 1:16). These angelic beings are infinitely spiritual but they’re connected to something that has a structure. I’ve grown up in a prophetic culture that at times, I have to be honest, has almost equated structure with the antichrist! Okay - I’m exaggerating but my point is this, heaven has a structure (in fact, heaven even has elders!). There is a connection between heaven and earth and the ‘wheels on the ground’ create a structure for the power and glory of God to invade the earth.
So what about these wheels? Ezekiel tells us they have an appearance and a structure, to me this means the wheels are both visible and touchable. When God moves, the results should be visible and touchable, I want to see what God is doing and I want to touch it. Why? Because God is real. The greatest move of God in history will always be the incarnation of Christ, God made flesh. He appeared, he was visible and men and women laid hold of him, he was touchable, he had a ‘structure’ (1 John 1:1).
What else do we learn about these wheels? Well, they each look alike and sparkle like chrysolite. That also catches my attention, the wheels sparkle like chrysolite. This is a gemstone that also appears in the book of Revelation, it is the seventh foundation of the New Jerusalem (Rev 21:20) that comes down ‘out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride, beautifully dressed for her husband.’ We also learn that each wheel has a wheel intersecting it and the rims are ‘high and awesome and all four rims were full of eyes.’ I would like to suggest that the structure that moves with the living creatures, the wheels that are on the ground represent the church. Sparkling like chrysolite, grounded on the earth but connected to heaven and ‘full of eyes’.
You see, the church is God’s structure and yes, it sits on the ground, but it’s led by the Spirit. It’s not bound only to the earth, it interacts between heaven and earth and ‘when the creatures rose from the ground the wheels rose along with them.’ God’s plan to reach the earth has always been the Church. It is the body of Christ and it is a prophetic body. Like those wheels it’s able to be grounded and elevated, it interacts in the heavenly realms to bring about earthly changes. This is why Jesus taught the disciples that whatever they bound on earth would be bound in heaven (Matt 16:19). It’s also at the heart of Paul’s message to the Ephesian church, that God’s intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms (Eph 3:10). I think we need to understand the importance of both angelic activity and wheels on the ground. We need to be led by the Spirit and planted in the Church (Psalm 92:13).
We’re called to be like those wheels that Ezekiel sees in his visions of God. We must be attentive to heaven, where God sits enthroned in majesty surrounded by angels and we must be active in the earth, where hunger and hatred, disease and injustice are stark realities. A truly prophetic people have eyes to see and I want the church, in that sense, to be covered with eyes. So to all my prophetic friends out there, maybe you’ve been hurt by the church, maybe you’ve been misunderstood, rejected or even ridiculed. But, maybe you also need to be grounded, maybe you need to be visible, maybe you need to be present, maybe you need to be part of the structure. Maybe, if you can receive this message, like Ezekiel, you’ll experience the realities of the Kingdom like never before.
