06/04/2026
While on vacation a couple weeks ago I had a dream. I was walking through a large, multi-level shopping mall โ and as I moved through it, I watched different men step onto escalators. As they rose from one level to the next, something strange began to happen. They started to change. Not just in size, but in presence. What had looked normal, even likeable, at ground level was morphing โ growing โ into something giant-sized. Like the escalator was peeling back a mask and revealing who they actually were underneath.
When I woke up, I immediately began to pray over it. And the Lord began to walk me through it piece by piece.The mall represents the marketplace of influence โ a place of choice, of exchange, of people putting themselves and their gifts on display for others to follow and invest in. We live in that culture right now. On social media, in ministry, in business โ everywhere you look, someone is being elevated, platformed, promoted.
The escalator is significant because it moves you passively. You step on and it carries you. You don't have to climb. You don't have to press. You don't have to be refined. The platform comes and it takes you up โ whether you're ready for it or not.
The multiple levels represent degrees of authority and influence. This isn't about one person in one season. This is systemic. Layered. A pattern playing out across many leaders, many voices, many platforms at once.
And then the morphing โ this is what perplexed me.As they rose, they didn't grow in anointing. They grew in size of self. Here's what the Holy Spirit showed me: elevation didn't create the giant. It exposed him. What was already in the heart โ the pride, the ego, the control, the hunger for recognition โ was simply too small to see at ground level. But height changes what's visible. Promotion has a way of making big what was always there but hidden.
Giants in Scripture are never the heroes. Goliath was large and terrifying, but he was not sent by God. He was sent to be defeated โ by a young man who stayed small in ego and large in surrender. The prophetic interpretation of this dream is not complicated, but it is sobering: We are in a season where elevation is revealing identity.
Not everyone who is rising is rising in God. Some are rising in gifting. Some are rising in personality. Some are rising in algorithm. And what rises with them is not always the fruit of the Spirit. This is not a call to suspicion. This is a call to discernment.
Ask the hard analytical questions: Who is growing in humility as they grow in platform? Whose character is keeping pace with their influence? Whose fruit โ not following, not charisma, not content โ but fruit โ is evidence of genuine transformation? Because the measuring stick was never size. It was always character.
"Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." โ Proverbs 16:18