Out of the mouth (or keyboard) of the elder teen

Parents are supposed to have all this influence on their kids, and bring blessing into their lives and so on. What I'm thinking about today, though, are a two prophetic pronouncements from the elder teen.

By the way, when I say "prophetic" I don't mean in the sense of "foretelling the future"; rather I mean "bringing a message from God."

That's my short definition of the role of a prophet: one who represents God to Man, typically by bringing a message of some kind. The role of a priest is to represent Man to God, typically by praying for and/or with them. Of course one person can play both roles; Jesus did prophet and priest and king.

The first was some years ago. We'd just had a Bible study with a Japanese couple who were not yet following Christ. We were using the "Glad Tidings Bible Studies" created by our friend Mailis, a Norwegian Lutheran Missionary from Finland whom we'd met in Japan. These are terrific materials -- now you can download them in a bunch of languages other than the original Japanese and English.

Anyway, these folks had been engaged with the study, and I hope with the Holy Spirit, and I was very excited to have been part of that. "At times like this, I feel like I could be a missionary!" I said.

Then came the prophetic statement from the then soon-to-be teenager: "You are a missionary."

Oh, that's right, isn't it? What makes a missionary is acting like one, not a title or a box in an org-chart.

What brought that to mind was something that happened a few days ago. I was IM-ing with the now soon-to-be ex-teen-ager. One of her friends (one of our friends, I should say) had asked me to write a "pastoral recommendation" for a short-term mission opportunity, and it hadn't occurred to me that I would be qualified.

The second prophetic pronouncement (maybe not quite verbatim) came across the wires: "You have been pastoring her, right?"

D'oh! What makes a pastor is acting like one, not a title or a box in an org-chart.