Good prophecy will help guide you toward your purposes in God, it will give you hope for a future and when it’s done right, and truly anointed, it will give you a great confidence in the grace of God to fulfill that call. Great confidence and great humility can coexist, but for many of us that takes seasons of testing and preparation.

A prophetic word handled right will work humility in your life, and humility is the launching pad for its fulfillment. A perfect example of this is a contrast of the life of the Old Testament Joseph and the New Testament Mary, Jesus mother. Both received incredible, high level promises from God, but both handled their prophetic words in entirely different ways.

In Genesis 37 Joseph receives a dream of greatness. This is a communication from heaven expressing God’s plans for his life and from what we discover as we read on is that every promise eventually comes to fulfillment. I have often wondered if Joseph really had to go through the testing he did, and if all of that really necessary. It showed the integrity of the man’s heart, and how he would stand for God even after the pit, slavery and jail, but was it possible he could have bypassed the many trials?

Another servant of God, Mary the mother of Jesus, received a prophetic word from Gabriel. After she sees the promises begin to take place the Bible says she simply “ kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19) “ In opposition to Joseph’s response, boasting to his father and brothers, she internalizes the promises of God.

Mary was a part of the greatest move of God ever known to man. In giving birth to the Savior of the world, I can’t think of anyone who can say they had a greater manifestation of the presence of God in their life. If we want to talk about vessels of God and birthing something from Him that discussion has got to include Mary.

Now if Mary were to live in our day, and some of the people in the Church heard of what was happening in and through her, we surely would have encouraged her to handle things differently than just “pondering it in her heart.”   We would have Mary write a book, appear on Christian television, start her ministry along with her own website. We would encourage Mary to take donations whenever she could, put a Paypal icon on her website and maybe even a gofundme account. We would tell her; “This ministry is not going to fund itself, you know.” Not all of these things are done out of self-promotion, but all too often they are.

But Mary didn’t carry that same spirit as the Old Testament Joseph. She seemed to have a heart that was so right before God that all that testing that Joseph went through wasn’t even necessary for her. If I have a choice to have a heart like either of these individuals, I choose Mary.

So how do we properly receive a prophetic word, especially a destiny level prophetic word like the words given to Mary and Old Testament Joseph? You ponder it in your heart. Like Mary, when God says move, you move, when He says stay you stay. We have to believe that what God says He will bring to pass. When we receive prophecy often times the temptation is too great to “Help God” . The only thing God requires of us is our obedience, He will watch over His word to perform it; He will cause it all to come to pass in His perfect timing.