Wounded by Prophecy: When Prophetic Words Hurt and How to Heal

By Marissa Bornholdt

Ah, the prophetic!  Such a beautiful, powerful, challenging, encouraging, and potentially dangerous gift.

I’ve always been prophetic. It wasn’t something I asked for; it’s just the way God created me. I didn’t grow up in a context that recognized the prophetic.

I learned as a child to keep the things I knew, saw, and experienced to myself, so I didn’t realize there was a word to describe this or that there were other people out there like me.

When I “discovered” the prophetic about a decade ago, it was from a purely innocent place of wanting to learn about this incredible gift. I was deeply grateful to learn that it’s an expression of the Holy Spirit living within us and that there is a wonderful, amazing, sweet purpose – to build up, encourage, and comfort the church (1 Corinthians 14:3).

I eagerly sought out and devoured every teaching, book, community, conference, and school I could find to learn more and connect with other prophetic people.

I had no idea there were problems or issues in the past. When I first heard the stories of abuses in the prophetic, I was shocked and appalled. It never occurred to me that anyone would do anything to pervert or alter the word of the Lord. How could anybody who knows God do that?

I was so consumed by holy fear and reverence for the Lord that the thought of anyone intentionally misrepresenting a prophetic word, stating or implying that it had come from God when they knew it hadn’t, was unimaginable.

When my friend Jeremy asked me to write this blog post, I had a clear idea of what I thought I was going to write about. And then the Lord put an additional dimension on my heart to share, as he often does.

The first two types of prophetic wounding are the ones I’ve heard others talk about, and I’ve experienced a little of this myself, too.  The last type is perhaps a bit out of the box, and it’s a bit more challenging to describe.

But as this idea grew, I realized that it’s every bit as important to recognize as the other types of wounding; it’s just something that’s so internal that it’s easy to keep to ourselves.  More on that later, but first… 

Wounded by the Prophetic 

“Do you know anything about the prophetic?”

I gaped at my friend in shock. We were chatting in a booth at a local restaurant on our dinner break while serving at one of our church’s youth conferences.

“Why do you ask?”

She began to tell me how she had just learned about the prophetic and was looking for others who knew about it, too.

I’ve learned over the years that this is one of the ways the Lord confirms to me that I’m on the right path, that I’ve understood him correctly when he invites me to begin a new thing, especially when it comes to creating communities where he wants to touch and change lives.   

A few weeks later, I began co-leading my first prophetic small group. It was one of my favorite experiences ever!

Each week, our little group worshipped together, watched a video teaching, and sought the Lord for what he might say and how he might teach us to hear his voice better.

I was still very new to the prophetic, so before the group started, I asked my prophet friend to co-lead the group with me and to help keep us on track.

I also felt it was important to let church leadership know that I wanted to lead this group and receive their support before starting it.

I met with the pastor overseeing small groups and showed this person the curriculum I was planning to use and shared my heart for the group.

The response shocked me. I was admonished multiple times to be careful, to submit to the prophet’s oversight, and to “not be weird.”

Weird…? Was the prophetic weird? Was I weird because I was prophetic? 

Months later, I learned that the pastor had been part of a charismatic movement in the past and had been wounded as part of that experience.

As the saying goes, “hurting people hurt people.”

There was an unhealed wound in this person’s heart, and they were adamantly against any open display of the gifts of the Spirit.

As time went on, any visible sign of the presence of the Holy Spirit moving on a person was immediately grounds for being ushered to a private place in the back of the church, out of sight.

I later learned that the experiences I had shared in confidence during the small group gatherings had been shared outside the group and ridiculed. “Don’t be weird” constantly played through my mind on repeat.

Our group continued to grow closer as the Lord knit our hearts together. But wounds began to grow in my own heart.

I received a word from a prophet I held in high regard to stop sharing the insights the Lord was giving me for a season, that God wanted me to learn how to steward his secrets.

So, I retreated inward and entered my first caving season with the Lord. Over time, he began to heal my heart as he led me to ministry schools to receive training for the future calling he began to reveal, one puzzle piece at a time.

In school, I was taught about the history of the prophetic movement. Holy Spirit showed me how people had been hurt in the past and how those hurts were manifesting today.

My heart went out to everyone who had experienced those abuses, and I began to cry out in prayer for the prophetic community to be purified. 

False Prophetic Words 

Accounts of fallen prophetic ministers seem to abound these days. I once asked the Lord to show me what the Bride of Christ looks like.

The English language is woefully inadequate to describe what I saw. Extremely tall, fierce and yet gentle, powerful and kind, clothed in the shiniest, most elaborate silver armor with gold filigree accents all over, she was riding on a gigantic white horse with her face set like flint, racing forward, hair blowing wildly around her in the wind, wielding a huge sword overhead.

I was so in awe! I check in from time to time and ask the Lord to show me how she’s doing. Lately, I’ve been distraught at what I’ve seen.

Battered and bruised, blood oozing out of wounds all over, weeping, cowering, and raging… With every new exposure, every angry, vengeful response, every stone thrown, she gains another gaping wound.   

There’s a vast difference between a prophetic word that’s wrong and a false prophetic word.

A Spirit-filled believer who is genuinely trying to hear the voice of the Lord accurately and who steps out in faith to share what they believe God has invited them to communicate, but misses the mark, is not a false prophet.

The Bible gives us helpful insight to understand this difference. Matthew 7:15-20 describes false prophets as ferocious people who are ravenous wolves/extortioners and who bear bad fruit.

Acts 13:6-12 describes an encounter Barnabas and Saul had with a false prophet in Paphos. This person opposed their ministry, was full of deceit and trickery, and tried to turn people from the faith, perverting the ways of God.

In Deuteronomy 18:20, a false prophet is described as someone who rebelliously speaks anything in God’s name that he has not commanded or someone who speaks in the name of other gods.   

It grieves me to reflect on how much of this kind of behavior has been coming to light recently.

Oftentimes, when you receive one of these false prophetic words, there will be a spirit of “yuck” that goes along with that word; it will make you feel icky.

The words spoken could be accurate, but if the spirit behind them is ferocious, full of deceit and trickery, an attempt to turn people away from God, and/or something the person knows the Lord has not given them to say, it’s a false prophetic word.

If the prophetic word is used to manipulate someone to behave a certain way, especially if that behavior is for the benefit of the person speaking the words and/or it leads the hearer to act in a way that is anti-biblical, it’s coming from a wrong spirit, perverting the ways of God, and is a false prophetic word.

If the prophetic word contains information that the person researched and discovered in the natural but is presented as insight from God, it’s a deceitful, false prophetic word.

If you are coerced into spending money to receive the word, it’s a false prophetic word. These are just a few examples, and all are false prophetic utterances that are not to be entertained.   

As I write this, the Church is in an hour of purification. The Lord is dismantling ministries that are built on deceit, trickery, abuse, and all other forms of evil.

The nondenominational variety of churches does not have a formal regulatory body, council, or other form of governance that can adjudicate these matters the same way that our Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Protestant brothers and sisters do.

I’m not entirely sure that’s the solution either.  However, I do hope that these exposures will open a dialogue about how to hold people accountable when they harm the body of Christ on a large scale, beyond what the local church should handle.

I hope these conversations include an exploration of what bringing accusations to light should look like and what a restoration process should and should not involve.

Sanity, safety, and the laws of the land should not be discarded or disregarded; neither should slander, judgmentalism, and accusation run rampant, pouring out from every social media outlet, fueled by people with no personal relationship with the accused.

This is such a sad and divisive subject. I’m examining my heart posture through all of this and trying to work through what I believe should and shouldn’t be done, as so many are today. 

Once more, as before, these exposures and all the events surrounding them have stirred me to pray even more fervently for God’s help and for prophetic purity. 

Aborted Prophetic Words 

It’s difficult to talk about disappointments regarding events that no one knew you were anticipating.

The Lord reveals his secrets to his servants the prophets before he does anything (Amos 3:7).

This means many of the things he shows us are secrets we keep to ourselves. (Who would want to share secrets with someone who always blabs about them to others?) 

Part of guarding the secrets of the Lord includes seeing what could be and watching in silence as events unfold.

When the plans and promises God intended are thwarted, no one even knows what could have been. Everyone moves on with their lives as if nothing happened. 

But you know what could have been and now never will be. When this happens for others, I feel the Lord’s grief over lost opportunities and ways that he wanted to bring blessings into their lives. 

And when this happens in my life, I feel the grief over what I knew was going to be, and was excited to experience, that now will never be. 

These aborted plans occur when people exercise the free will God has so graciously given them to make choices that go against what the Lord has invited them into, thereby changing what could have been. 

I heard one prophet describe this in a vision where he saw angels weeping as they ripped pages out of books in heaven containing God’s plans that people had rejected.   

Healing from Prophetic Wounds 

What do you do when you experience wounding from the prophetic?

It’s okay to allow yourself to feel and grieve. I think sometimes we denigrate emotions and tell people to “suck it up” and move on.

That’s not healthy. God created us in his image with emotions. Jesus wept when his heart was hurt (John 11:35). 

However, don’t stay in the place of pain and become a “hurting person who hurts people.”

Go to the Lord and ask him what to do.

While in God’s presence, ask him questions like the ones below to help you work through your feelings and see this event from his perspective. 

Consider asking him: 

• What’s rising up in me?  Why am I feeling this way?   

• What in me needs to be refined?  How can this experience help me to become more like you, Jesus? 

• What’s happening for the other person/people?  Why might they have responded this way?   

• Where might this person be expressing an unhealed wound?  How can I lift them up before you, Lord, and partner with you in your desire to heal them? 

 Invite the Lord to help you process the pain you’re feeling and ask him to bring healing to everyone involved.

Pray for yourself. Pray for the other person/people. 

Extend the grace, mercy, and kindness to them that you would want extended to you.

And don’t let this situation sow a seed of bitterness in your heart, which will harm many (Hebrews 12:14-15). 

Keep moving forward with what the Lord has called you to do, turning the other cheek (Matthew 5:39), and blessing the people who hurt you (Romans 12:14).

Wounded By Prophecy: When Prophetic Words Hurt and How to Heal

One of my mentors describes the prophetic as hearing the voice of God for others. 

There are so many people who need to hear a word of encouragement from our loving Father!

I exhort you, please don’t turn away from the prophetic!  How can they hear if no one is willing to speak?

Let’s be the light and share the word of God that is alive and active, sharper than a double-edged sword, to help discern the true thoughts and intentions of the heart from the false (Hebrews 4:12).

And as we teach people to hear the voice of God for themselves, let’s educate them on the wounds the Church has incurred in the past and the lessons we’ve learned from them.

Let’s give them the tools to prophesy correctly and in the right spirit.

May God heal us, restore us, and rebuild us as we continue to walk out this journey every day.