ANNA

"And there was one Anna, a prophetess... a widow eighty-four years old, who never left the Temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day (Luke 2:36,37)."

We know very little about Anna. She was the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Asher, and lived with her husband only seven years before she became a widow. Now she is eighty-four years old. Perhaps the experience of losing her husband after such a brief time together helped forge the character of this prophetess. We have no way of knowing.

We have no record of any prophetic words or visions or dreams. How can you have a prophet who does not prophesy? Quite simply, because the prophetic ministry is something more vast than being able to give out a few "words" from God. The only thing we know about Anna's ministry is that it is primarily devoted to ministering to the Lord with unceasing fastings and prayers. We might consider this monastic, yet the Bible considers this prophetic. We are not suggesting that to minister to the Lord means to neglect people altogether. There is no need to force such an unnecessary dichotomy. But we maintain that there can be no real Spirit-and-Truth ministry to people until and unless we have first ministered to the Lord. For one thing, we cannot be motivated by man's need, but by God's Need, because often the two are in conflict. And, we cannot speak Life except by revelation, and this we can only receive from God. Unless we have invested a great deal of time in our secret ministry to the Lord then the shallowness of our public ministry will be very evident. Today it is abundantly clear that not enough time is spent ministering to the Lord, and way too much time is spent ministering to people; hence, most of what is done in the name of ministry is performed in a fleshly, human way which never bears any lasting fruit.

There in the Temple, Anna ministered to the Lord. She never wrote a book, never had a website, never conducted a meeting that we can tell. All in all it seems to be a very passive existence, the sort of "waste" that makes us want to criticize her for not being more useful. Anna the prophetess should be "doing" something. But how many of us consider prayer and fasting to be serving God? We cannot repeat often enough that for too many people, prayer and fasting is a way to serve THEMSELVES, or to get God involved in THEIR cause. We have a need, so we pray, and if the need is critical and we become desperate, then we will fast. This may be appropriate in some situations, but it is not serving the LORD. It may be done to bring about OUR will, but it is not necessarily motivated by a desire to minister to the Lord, to see His heart satisfied, and to see His Need met.

Now it is no coincidence that, in verse 38, Anna came "in that instant" and met Simeon, Joseph, Mary, and the baby Jesus in the Temple, and recognized Him to be the Christ. In response, she "gave thanks to the Lord and spoke of Him to all that looked for redemption in Jerusalem." Jesus is only a few days old here. There are no angelic choirs singing Hosannas, no shepherds bowing down to worship, no star blazing overhead. All the outward signs have disappeared, and this Baby seems to be no different in outward appearance than the dozens of other Jewish babies being dedicated in the Temple that day. But Anna knew the difference because she devoted her life to ministering to the Lord. What seems like a waste turns out to be the very thing that put her in the right place at the right time, while the more useful busybodies missed the entire event. We find that prophetic things, revelatory things, are inescapably linked to ministering to the Lord. No relationship, no revelation.