The Time I Was Publicly Rebuked by God Over A Homemade Sticker?
Are the Modern Day Prophets Operating Out of Discernment or Presumption?
It was a Sunday morning. The little church was not even half full, with its burnt orange carpet and green plush pews still standing from days long gone by.
It was usual for at least one prophetic messenger to stand up and speak a “thus saith the Lord” on Sunday morning. This day, it was one of the gray haired pillars of the church who stepped forward.
She bellowed from up front. It was a fiery rebuke, calling everyone to repent. God was calling (loudly) for everyone to rush to the altar and grovel because of our lack of purity.
I recall my mother grabbing myself and my sister to each side of herself & ushering us to the ground. We crouched on the orange carpet & listened to the rebuke.
I recall feeling frightened, especially when God began calling out me personally. Then, I was terrified & ashamed. I was called out & the adults in the room were chastised for not teaching the young people better discernment.
No, I wasn’t called by name. But I knew this was about me. Also- while we’re on the paragraph where I break the storytelling to explain stuff: No, I don’t think this is how God speaks to His people. Although, at the time, I did think this was a valid form of revelation.
What did I do to spark this massive rebuke?
Well, at the time, I was a high school kid who happened to bond with my fellow teens at church through music & The Simpsons quotes. A group of us kids used to bring guitars to youth group regularly and jam together in the open air outside of the youth room door.
For context, (and before the rebuke will make sense) I have to leave church for a minute…
Around this time, I was in the habit of bringing my guitar to church as well as to school. I liked to play at lunch & make up funny songs, improvising lyrics about my friends or teachers who were walking by, to make them laugh.
Some friends & I signed up to be student counselors at Outdoor Science School, and I packed my guitar for the trip.
For those who don’t know- Outdoor Science School is a weeklong school program that 6th graders in Oregon participate in each year. They get bused to a camp ground, live in little cabins with their schoolmates for a week, and learn natural science outdoors. A big piece of the experience is Campfire, the nightly ritual where all of the sixth graders sit down for an outdoor assembly, with a large campfire blazing & a stage upfront where they get to see their teachers, Camp staff members, and volunteer high school Camp counselors put on funny skits, lead songs, and make announcements reminding the campers about the rules surrounding camp life.
When I went to camp, I had worked hard to memorize lyrics and chord progressions for a couple of songs that I planned to play at Campfire.
One of the songs that I had learned for this occasion was “Good Riddance” by the band Green Day. Every American kid who went through their teen years in the 90s-2000s knows this song. It’s the one that played over the PA system when you walked across the graduation stage and when you watched a slideshow of memories at the end of the school year during a school assembly.
It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right; I hope you had the time of your life. -Green Day
Naturally, I wanted to play this song on the last night of camp! And, naturally, to emphasize the moment, I wanted to invite all of the other Camp counselors to join me and sing together!
Well, this was a bit of a disaster, because the high school aged counselors were the ones tasked with sitting in the assembly risers with the campers & keeping them in order. After Campfire, my song became a topic of conversation among camp staff, who referred to it as the anarchy song!
Needless to say, my friends & I made some fond memories by volunteering together at camp, including the humorous outcome of playing Good Riddance at the final Campfire session.
Later, when we arrived back to classes as usual, one of my friends used bright orange duct tape and scissors to craft a sticker for me. It was an anarchy symbol, and it lived on my guitar, beside another decal with a heart & a scripture quote on it- until the day of the frightening rebuke that drove us all to face-plant on the orange carpet at church.
The rebuke that day at church was about the need to disciple the youth, and the gray haired pillar who prophesied about this topic, specifically called out a guitar with an anarchy symbol on it. It was deemed demonic, and it was the prophet’s demonstrable, irrefutable evidence that the teens in church weren’t being taught to discern good from evil.
I remember feeling so embarrassed. I removed the sticker later that day, upon arriving home from church.
I can’t help but think back on this situation now and grimace at the stark difference between the supposed evil inherent in my homemade sticker & the all-together wholesome story behind it.
I think a lot of assumption & zeal without wisdom was wrapped up in this moment. I understand it. There is an excitement and a zeal in Charismatic circles that can be really positive & yield great results when harnessed constructively. However, it can also result in unnecessary, melodramatic moments.
This whole terrifying prophetic moment could have been avoided by this woman approaching me & asking me about my sticker. She would have gotten a wholesome story, and then she could have followed up with her concerns about the meaning behind the symbol. To be honest, I probably would have been persuaded to remove the sticker based on this conversation. I mean, I had literally thrown away my secular music CDs by this time in my life. I was a very devout, pious young lady. But the gray haired pillar of the church didn’t know me. She didn’t know my story. She didn’t know my piety. She only knew my sticker, without the context.
The question remains: Are the modern day prophets operating out of discernment or presumption?
