In the time of division between Israel and Judah, the King of Israel called on the King of Judah to see about doing a joint invasion of Ramoth-Gilead. But Jehoshaphat, King of Judah, requested a “prophetic confirmation.” So the King of Israel called in his “gaggle of prophets” to work on it. There were individual prophets back then like Elijah, and there were “gaggles” of prophets - a kind of group thing. Kings usually had the gaggles, specially picked “yes men” who only prophesied good things. Group think has always been dangerous, you know, even today. Even Jezebel had her gaggle of Baal prophets.

After the King of Judah's prophets had their say - in which they stroked his ego and gave victorious proclamations - Jehoshaphat, aware that these were really not prophets from God - said, “Isn't there a prophet of the Lord besides, that we might inquire of him?” (1 Kings 22:7) Apparently, the Baal prophets had been slaughtered, but other questionables had taken their place.

The King of Judah's response was predictable, and telling: “There is yet one man, but I hate him; for he does not prophesy good concerning me, but evil.” (1 K. 22:8) Nevertheless, Micaiah the prophet was summoned. On the way, he was advised to “play nice” and say good things to the kings. But he told them, “What God tells me, that will I speak” - the true mark of a prophet.

Frankly, I understand his reaction. I am at that place with people, for example, who know the truth about things like the occult but still ask, “Is Harry Potter OK?” I want to say, “Sure, go for it. Raise your kids on it. What God says is irrelevant, right?” But I digress…

So he got it. The prophet prophesied failure and defeat. The King's response? “Didn't I tell you? He ALWAYS prophesies evil about me!” Then the King got more than he bargained for, when the prophet told of a “lying spirit” that was sent to speak through the other prophets. I should tell my Charismatic friends not to build a doctrine about “lying spirits” out of this - likely this was a “Drash” or a parable used to make a point.

Our nation is deceived. The proof: Botox. Over everyone, everywhere, looms a certainty; we will all die. And we spend our lives running from it, trying to cheat it, deceive ourselves into thinking it will not come, or we can delay it indefinitely. Youth alone matters in our culture, actual or artificial. Drug companies make billions on near, shoving must-have fountain of youth drugs in our faces during prime time every night. Viagra is the Holy Grail of an impotent culture terrified of its own powerlessness…and of death. The media is the world's gaggle of false prophets saying, “Look and feel years younger! You have the power of CHOICE!”

But, the church needs this message about truth even more. We may be saved, but it takes a lifetime to get un-deceived, and stay that way. Most of New Testament warnings about deception are for BELIEVERS. If not at risk, why so many?

Most Christian stores media is based not on truth but on what people like to hear. And so much of it is so irrelevant. People flock to positive, self-enhancing, lifestyle-centered stuff. Prophetic conferences are filled with gaggles that are eager to prophesy, “You will succeed and prosper! God will give you a position of great power and influence!”

There remain precious few truth tellers who have not taken the church's pulse to find out what they like to eat and then give it to them, but have taken the church's TEMPERATURE to diagnose her illness and come in with a prescription from GOD. And you don't see them much on TV or with full page ads in Christian magazines or invited to crusades to speak. Why? “I hate him. He NEVER says anything positive to me!” So, the western church has been given a full gaggle of prophets to tell them exactly what they want to hear.

One place where we sorely need truth is in relationships in church. This is so hard for us - to learn how to speak the truth in love, not just killing each other with gossip and hate on one extreme, or loving each other into deception on the other. Christian fellowship can be so treacherous. We are one person Sunday morning and another when we leave. We bless the pastor to his face and eat him up over lunch an hour later. We have a problem with someone, and it's “off with their heads”. It's all downhill from there.

Church splits are most often caused by people with unexamined hearts taking a small offense, nurturing it and creating a monster. If only we could learn to deal honestly with out hurts and offences, and quickly. Unfortunately, that requires we let God - and sometimes others - tell us the truth. And then we either break, and weep, and go and mend things, or we become the King in this story: “I hate that guy. He never tells me what I like!” This is why the proverbs say, “The kisses of the enemy are deceitful; but faithful are the wounds of a friend.”

But the key to this is to see our own capacity for self-defensiveness, blind sightedness and pride. We turn a small offense into a righteous cause, tell our friends how wronged we were, and build our strategy for defending our position. And how sad, because if we allowed God to tell us the truth about our own hearts, division and strife would dry up and die. When there is an offence, our FIRST response should be Psalm 139: “Search ME, o God.” God's first concern is not if you were right or wrong. It is always about YOU keeping a pure, humble and loving heart, no matter what the offense. We need God to render powerless our “righteous position.” When I tend to feel justified and right about my own hurt or offense, I remember a man who wrote once, “If those who criticized me knew how much worse and more sinful a person I really was, they would have far more reason for their criticism.” That is a self-examined heart. No matter how right I feel, I know that GOD knows the depraved and selfish heart that resides in me without Jesus, my own sins and failings. How can I ever feel “justified”? It's humble time.

Isn't it disturbing that Jesus said when you bring your gift to the altar, and remember that someone has something against YOU, you should drop everything and go fix it? Shouldn't it be up to the OFFENDER to fix it? I mean, they have something against ME - why should I have to fix it? But unity is precious to God. And we must do what we can to fix it even if we are right. You know. Love is ALWAYS having to say “I'm sorry!” When you get past the little god of what you “deserve” or “don't deserve”, you can get to the heart of what matters to God, and in terms of broken relationships among us, hurt, offenses and church division, very little matters except healing the matter.

Frankly we aren't very good individually or corporately at honesty in these things. For example, if a pastor or youth pastor is caught in sin, or slaughtered in a bloodbath of a board meeting, their sudden absence on Sunday is explained like this from the pulpit: “The Lord has moved brother Jones on” or, “Brother Frank felt led by God into another ministry.” (Yes - witnessing in the unemployment line!) It is terribly dishonest, and terribly hurtful. The people who loved them need more than a cover-up slight of hand. Truth may be more painful but if rightly handled with healing in mind, it beats the sense of non-permanence and non-caring abandonment so often seen in church ministry.

I've seen and been through a lot of heartache over broken relationships over the years. It has always taken my breath away how quickly swords are drawn and sides are taken, and how quickly the “enemy” ceases to matter, ceases to exist. For goodness sakes, folks; Even David, whom Saul sought to kill, loved him so much he could only speak of that love, even when his life was at stake. With us, so quickly, once precious fellowship is burned on the ash heap of church politics or real or imagined hurts. You get the sense sometimes that people are just cogs in the machine of church life, and when they break down or become a problem, we just REPLACE them. Is that really fellowship? Absolutely not! But it takes a whole lot of humility, and a whole lot of pride pulverizing, to realize that whatever issues we may have are not worth sacrificing others over. But until we are willing to let God show us the TRUTH about the prideful condition of our own hearts, we will not make that bridge back to the ones we are estranged from.

I learned a different way. Years ago, my friends and I met and prayed with a lady who had been a hard core sinner and singer in Las Vegas, marvelously saved, as they say. We all bonded. She was my big sister and I was, according to her, her “father and teacher” even though we were 15 years apart!

She became ill. I moved to where she lived to become her attendant because she was almost completely disabled for a time. And we fought horribly and loudly. I was a “spoiled brat.” She was “demanding and selfish.” She fired me. I was right, she was wrong. (Reverse that from her perspective.) We split in anger.

We both seethed, then we remembered, and we wept. We knew that this separation from what was once pure, godly fellowship was WRONG. I asked God to reveal the truth to MY heart. And…he showed me, I was a spoiled brat. And I asked God to forgive me…and suddenly, I barely remembered what the offense was! I just longed to have my sister back…

And my friend prayed, and God showed her she was…demanding and selfish. And she repented, and called me. We met, both defensive, afraid…and reached for each other's hands across the table, and cried like babies. Love was restored. And our hearts were made whole.

How it grieves me that we do not have that in fellowship much anymore. The kind of love that, in the case of my high school “blood brother”, my David's Jonathan, we disagreed, fought horribly. Accused each other. Bled. For months. Until he came to my house weeping. And I wept and we healed the wound, not CARING what the issue was. Why don't we have that, friends?

The deception is almost always that the offences are important enough to build a crusade around, one in which we build the wall high enough around our hearts that we cannot even see the one we loved, but only an “enemy.” Truth about our own heart alone can shatter that, bring us into utter broken humility, and lets us hurt over the loss of precious fellowship. “Let brotherly love continue.” That's the heart of the matter.

In terms of the Scripture, truth CANNOT be compromised for unity. But I have RARELY found broken fellowship or church splits to be the product of deception and people having to leave - though it seems to be happening more these days - but it is more often because of unresolved issues of the heart, caused by hurt, competition, disagreement, misunderstanding. Let God destroy our prideful position of unbending rightness, of hiding behind our anger and calling it “Holy anger” or “righteous indignation”, of letting our bitterness turn our loved brothers and sisters into “the enemy.” Let God speak truth TO you, ABOUT you, and go, and mend the wound. Then and only then will we understand what it is to “love one another with a pure heart fervently.”