Yesterday at lunch, the Lord gave me a prophetic word for our waitress that gave us both goosebumps!  This week my family and I have been in Chicago.  Ostensibly we are here for a conference for my daughter, but as usual, wherever we are, we are really here for God’s purposes.

So yesterday we had lunch at an old-school Chicago restaurant.  The food was good, the ambience was nice enough, but the wait-staff had been there a looonngg time and everyone seemed quite grumpy and set in their ways.  Yet, to me, a light seemed to shine on our waitress.  So I prayed and asked the Lord if there was anything He wanted to say to her.

Immediately I felt that our waitress was noble or a noble.  The story/myth of Anastasia, the Russian princess who is said to have somehow escaped the firing squad that killed all of her immediate royal-family members came to mind.  In the story, Anastasia escaped and lived under an assumed name, possibly in America.  All the while knowing her royal status, but living as a “normal” person.

The Lord was showing me that our waitress appeared to be a “normal “person, but in His sight she walks in the nobility of being His child in the world around her that does not recognize her nobility.  He knows who she really is and sees her graciousness toward others.  Every seemingly little act of kindness she does in the course of her day is set apart as special because of the noble and gracious heart that offers it.

So, at the right time, I thanked her for her service to us and told her I had prayed for her and then, I told her what the Father had said about her.  Half-way through she said, “OMG, that is so weird because my friends shared a personality test with me on Facebook and my results said that I was “too kind.”  She showed me her phone and there it was, the “official pronouncement” from Facebook that she was “too kind”.  All her friends agreed that she went out of her way for so many people and for strangers.  They agreed that she probably gets taken advantage of on a regular basis.  They tried to tell her that she really shouldn’t be so kind.

So I smiled at her and finished the word the Lord had given.  He reminded me how the word gracious was used to describe Jesus.  I showed her the simple definition from the dictionary that said that graciousness is “having compassion and respect for others, especially those of a lower status.”  I told her that she was just like Jesus, the King, who came down to serve the lowly. Right then we both got goosebumps, as Holy Spirit confirmed the word to her!

Do you see how sharing this word was how Jesus chose to encourage his daughter to keep going in the right path when all her friends were telling her the opposite?!  This is the gift of prophecy in its simplest form.  It is a gift that is intended to strengthen and encourage the church.  I heard from the Lord and shared what he said to me for her.

I could not have known about her Facebook test results or what her personal friends had been telling her, but Jesus did and he did not allow His daughter to be taken out by the words of people who don’t agree with Him.  Our simple willingness to share what we hear from the Lord, though it often feels awkward, can reap much for the Kingdom, with or without the goosebumps.