How Personal Prophecy is Useful

Let us talk a little bit about personal prophecy. One of the best ways to explain what personal prophecy is, is that it’s a simple or more complex message from the Spirit of God, from the heart of God, to you. So God wants to speak to His people. God desires to speak heart to heart with you and communicate His thoughts and His feelings and His directions with you.

So, one of the primary things that a person should concentrate on in their life as a Christian is to develop the ability to hear God speak or to hear Jesus speak to them heart to heart. Jesus taught a parable, the parable of the Good Shepherd and in that parable He said that the sheep hear His voice and He calls them by name and they listen to Him. And He goes on to say that the sheep won’t listen to the voice of a stranger. And it’s very interesting but there’s a large portion, more than half of the church have not got the ability to actually hear Jesus speak to their spirit.

It’s very important that we learn to hear the voice of Jesus that we learn to hear the voice of the Holy Spirit in our Christian lives. It’s more important that we develop the ability to hear from Jesus then it is for us to receive personal prophecies. So, I want to underline this subject and say it’s very important that you develop the ability to hear from God personally one on one. And so, when personal prophecies come along in your life, when you start to hear personal prophecies spoken over your life, many of the things that are spoken will be confirmations of what God has already directed you or shared with you about your life and about your future.

So, how is personal prophecy useful? Personal prophecy can be useful for you to get a very true representation of what your identity in Christ really is. God is very good at telling a person positive, character attributes that are good about a person. God is very good at revealing to a person that for instance that they’re very humble or they’re very teachable or they’ve got a child-like faith. Or any number of things. So, if for instance you’ve been a person who, went into things intellectually with your mind and you are passionate and you are driven and you are somewhat insecure and so therefore you came across in a boastful sort of way, in a prideful sort of way. Then it’s very encouraging when you have done a lot of work in your life and God has done a lot of work in your life, that prophecies start to come true with God saying that you’re humble, that you’re very humble and He’s pleased with your humility.

When people have an argument on Facebook , I personally  try to bow out of them these days but it seems that when you disagree with a Christian on Facebook or YouTube, or in some public forum, if you present an argument that may be hard for them to argue often I’ve been called prideful by these people that are arguing with me. When Jesus started to tell many times that I’m humble it helped me a lot . I started and managed a prophetic website that did email prophecies for people and I built a team of about six people and there was always people requesting for me to pray for them to have the gift of prophecy. So I prayed for them and I asked them to prophesy over me as a test case that they’ve got the gift of prophecy and I’d give them feedback. Well, two thirds of the prophecies I received from the people new to the gift of prophecy said that God loved me and Jesus loved me and he was proud of me .About fifty people out of the three hundred people  said that I was humble. It’s re-assuring to you when you’re living a life, a Christian life and you’re developing day by day in the Christian walk to be reminded by God about something that you’ve done work on.

So for God to say to me that I was humble is very encouraging, edifying, and it challenges me to become more and more humble as the days go on. So, when I exercise my faith, I often interact with angels and saints from Heaven and God and Jesus in visions. And many people have prophesied over my life that I’ve got child-like faith. And it’s true. I’m like a child. I’ve just got this innocence that just believes that God is love and God loves me and God wants to show me things and for me to experience His Kingdom in a greater measure than most other people. So when someone prophesies and says that you’ve got child-like faith, it’s very encouraging because Jesus actually said unless you enter the kingdom such as a child, you’ll by no means enter the Kingdom. So, it’s very encouraging to know that my faith is like that of a child and I’m in that perfect sweet spot which will allow greater revelation and a greater experience of the Christian faith because of my stance, my faith stance that I have. So, one important thing that most Christians need is a sense of their identity in Christ, who they really are. Who does God say you are? What does God say about you? What does God like about you?

What are the qualities that God sees are beneficial and beautiful in your life? Now, I know that God could speak to me for a hundred hours straight. I know I asked some people in a prophetic exercise I did on a prophetic group that I ran called Prophetic Training Group. I asked people to list two qualities that they see in a certain person and get those qualities from God as a prophetic word and I asked someone for two qualities and they said, just two?  She said, “God could speak for hours about the things he likes about you Matthew,” and it’s true. God could really speak for hours about the things that He likes about you, dear reader. He loves so many things.

God isn’t one that points fingers at the things you’re not good at. He just elevates and encourages you in the gifts that you have and encourages you to move into certain things that you find a challenge. So prophecy, through words of knowledge, talking about character traits in a person’s life can be very encouraging for a person,   and very uplifting for a person to hear and for them to understand these things about themselves. There may be things that the person hasn’t really seen about themselves. There may be things that are revelations to the person. A person may not think that they’re too patient or a person may not think that they’re called to be a writer but when five people in a row in the course of a year have said that the person is called to be writer and they’re meant to write books, the person starts to get the information and the message that God is calling them to write. So God can see things in us that we can’t ourselves.

We’re so judgemental about ourselves. We’re so bound up with guilt and condemnation and insecurities that we have in our lives that we can’t see how good we really are and God is able to see past the clutter. He’s able to see past the mess. He’s about to look past the sin that you’re in, and He can look right down into who you are and speak out the gold that’s in you. He can draw out the gold and the beautiful things about who you are and what makes you such a wonderful person. And so prophecy is able to help a person identify who they are in Christ. It helps people to come to grips with the beautiful person that they are.

Prophecy can also encourage a person to grow in intimacy with Jesus intimacy and with the Father, and that is very important for the Christian faith. A lot of the gifts of the spirit and the a lot of the power in the anointing in the Holy Spirit come from a developed sense of intimacy with Jesus and intimacy with the Father. It’s out of relationship that we develop strength and we develop the ability to minister to other people and so through personal prophecy, a person can grow in intimacy with Jesus.

When people are hearing time and time again that Jesus loves us and Jesus is proud of us and the the things that Jesus loves it’s only natural for us to respond in intimacy. It’s only natural as God draws close to us through personal prophecy. It’s only natural for us to feel better and draw closer to God because of the exchange, because of the information flowing from God’s heart to us. It encourages us to draw closer to him and have a more intimate relationship with him. So prophecy is useful in developing our sense of our identity in Christ. Prophecy is also useful when it comes to us developing intimacy with Jesus Christ.

Prophecy is useful also in identifying gifts in the people, talents in the people, and the callings that people have in their life. So a prophet or someone who is prophetic can call out gifts that are in a person so often I see in people when I prophesy that they’re called to write, that they’re called to write a book. Often you’ll see things in people that are already in you. So, you’ll often see words of knowledge in people that are similar traits that you have so you can call them out in people because it resonates intuitively through the gift of prophecy with your spirit that these people in that aspect are the same as you. And so I often prophesied over people that they’re called to write and now I’ve, now I’ve written a book called Writing and Self-Publishing Christian Non-Fiction and that’s available on Amazon now. I’ve written a book on how to write a book and how to go about writing a book because there are so many people that I prophesy over that have got a gift and God wants to use them to write. So that’s just one instance. Writing is something that fulfils your life and something that I’m called to do.

I’ve seen a vision in Heaven of fifty books in a bookcase and the Lord Jesus told me that those fifty books were fifty books that I’d written in my life. I tried to sneak in and have a look at the titles of the books because I would have known what to write if I had have known the titles of the books but I couldn’t see the titles. So that was pretty funny that I tried. So, writing is a really fulfilling thing that I do. It’s the main focus of my life and I get a lot of personal satisfaction out of writing and having people read what I write and write reviews and write to me and ask me questions and thank me for writing books. So it’s a major part of who I am and so having people call that out in me that I’ve got more books to write and God is really pleased with my writing is encouraging to me . One person said, Don’t worry about the negative reviews you get. God has called you to write certain things and He was speaking forth your words through you when you wrote the books that you did and so don’t be afraid of what people say.”

 For him to communicate that to me took a lot of pressure off me and took a lot of worries and anxieties away from me because I was getting a few negative reviews on one of my books.

So prophecy can identify a person’s calling or a person’s gifting. I’m also called to be a prophet and I’m called to be a prophetic evangelist, a teaching prophet, a prophet that equips people. And so having people prophesy that I’m called to equip people, having people prophesy that I’m called to evangelise people, having people prophesy that I’m called to write on the three aspects of the prophetic that I’m gifted in, and this really encourages me and edifies me and confirms with me that my life is on the right track and I really am doing what God has called me to do.

So prophecy can call out the gift in a person, it can call out the calling in a person, and this can be further confirmed as people move into the gifts and start to operate in the gifts. As they start to find that they truly are gifted in the way they are told in prophecy, they find a reason to live and a purpose for living in operating in the gifting and the calling that has been prophesied over them. If you start to move out in the gifting that has been prophesied, you’ll find that God has given you the grace or will give you the grace to move in that gifting, to move and operate in that gifting. You’ll find it comes easier to you than it comes to other people and God will specially grace you the ability to do a certain thing.

So prophecy can call out the gifting in a person, it can call out the callings in a person; a person can be told what ministry office that they’re called to be in and that can be prophesied. The person can also know that in their spirit that that’s what they’re called to do but having people come alongside them and prophesy that over their life is very useful to a person and it also helps them get over the trepidation and the fear and the panic that sets into a person when they’re called to do something. After they hear their calling prophesied they are able to get the courage to go ahead and leave their place of work or change their life in a drastic way to fulfil the calling that’s on their life.

So many people need that encouragement to step out and learn or start to practice the gifting or the calling and prophecy is very useful to do that in a person’s life. So, what else is prophecy useful for?

Prophecy is useful to give a person direction. A person can be given direction like for instance I was given direction to operate in prophecy and offer prophecy through a prophetic website. So asked for a donation for prophecy and a prophecy was given to me that I have a way of earning an income that would lead me to be able to finance things I wanted to do in the Kingdom. So I moved out and did that has paid for a few books to be edited and self-published so far in a couple of months and I have a backlog of books that have been written but I didn’t have the money to have them edited or have them published.

This new website has opened up an income stream that allows me to publish my books and this has been very helpful. All of that happening and all the money coming in from that has been because of a prophecy that gave me direction to step out in a business way to earn an income for myself. Before that prophecy I had never considered going into business for myself and doing something. I was on a disability pension. And I was quite happy with the income although I wished there was somewhere I could earn more money but I just didn’t want to go and wash dishes like I used to because I’m sick of washing dishes. So I hoped that I could come across a way of earning money that was enjoyable for me to publish more books.

So it’s enjoyable for me to prophesy. It was very helpful for the people that get a prophecy over their life and people are very encouraged by it. And so it’s become a good source of income. I’ve had other directions by Jeremy Lopez through his prophetic words on my life and I pay attention to the prophetic words and I pay attention to the word of wisdom, what he directs me to do through the utterance of the Lord. And so should you. So should you listen to the words of wisdom and words of direction that the Lord gives through a prophetic utterance from someone.  

So there are many good things that prophecy can do. It can build you up, encourage you, edify you, exhort you; it can inspire you, it can do all these things.

There are many things that could be listed in a book, useful things that prophecy can do but there I’ve mentioned a few key elements that prophecy is useful for other people. Prophecy also is a really good thing to do. Delivering personal prophecies to people really gives you over time a real sense of who God is gives you a real good understanding of the type of person, the type of entity that God really is.

Prophecy gives you a good understanding of the type of person that Jesus is and through delivering prophetic words, you get a sense of His love and you get a sense of His mercy and the compassion. Soon enough you start to develop the mind of Christ and you start to think like Christ. You start to get revelations from Jesus and from the Holy Spirit. You start to get the heart of God in your heart. You start to feel compassionate and loved for people just as God loves people and has compassion for people. The more you move in prophetic circles, the more you move in your gifting in the prophetic, the more you’ll start to take on the heart and the mind of Christ. And grow in your relationship with Christ in intimacy and you’ll have a passion for God the more that you move in the prophetic.

The prophetic is very useful to the people who are receiving it and its very edifying and encouraging for the person giving the prophecies. It’s always encouraging to give a prophecy to a person by email, by video, on Facebook.  It is also good to receive someone’s feedback, a couple of paragraphs of them writing feedback on the prophecy and how it blessed them and how specific points were so dead on and so exact and so right. You find out how your personal prophecy encouraged them and it’s very interesting and encouraging to get such feedback from people. It’s useful in the ways that I’ve shared and it’s useful in other ways that I haven’t shared yet. I encourage you to buy books on the prophetic and learn all you can on the prophetic because you’ll have many years between when you’re called to be a prophet and when you’re actually walking in the office. God bless.

For a personal prophecy off Matthew Robert Payne see http://personal-prophecy-today.com

How Do I Know I am Called to be a Prophet ?

 

That’s a very interesting question and I’m glad you asked. It’s not always easy to tell that you’re called to be a prophet. The process of understanding and coming to grips with the fact you’re called to be a prophet can be a long and arduous process. Or it can be short. You can have someone speak to you prophetically one time and say that you’re called to be a prophet, but on reflection and understanding that I’ve got from other people who were called to be prophets I am going to share.

Not just one person is enough to convince a person that they’re called to be a prophet. Not just one person prophesying over your life and saying you’re called to be a prophet will often be enough to convince you that you’re called to be a prophet. God speaks to a prophet when you’re growing up, you’ll learn to hear from Jesus. You’ll learn to hear from God. You’ll learn to hear from the Holy Spirit and hopefully you’ll develop a relationship with the three people of the trinity, God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit.

In my life, I had an angry father which caused me to have some trepidation when it came to God.  I had a fear of God and I felt that God was an angry God just much like my father and I had trepidation and fear in approaching Him because I believed He was like my father. I had a friend who said to me at one stage that God loved me and he’s not like my father, he’s not angry, and you can approach Him and he’ll love you and embrace you. As my fiend aid that to m he was crying and I started to cry also because the message was very touching to me. So some people have grown up with a not so good relationship with their father. This is all known by Satan and Satan allows these things to happen or causes these things to happen to cause a rift between a person and their God. Satan certainly knew that I was called to be a prophet and he made sure that my relationship with my father wasn’t a good one. And so it caused me some difficulty drawing close to God. I initially got close to the father through being close to his son Jesus. Jesus was no threat to me. Jesus was a friend of mine and proved himself to be a loyal and loving friend of mine and over time with a little healing in my heart I became so close to Jesus that he personally walked me into the throne room and introduced me to his Father and over time my relationship with the Father has increased.

As a person who is called to prophesy which most prophets are, it’s very interesting life. Often when I prophesy Jesus speaking through me, but many times its also God the Father speaking through me, to a person, or to a church or to a country. When we learn to speak on behalf of God, we learn to understand His ways and understand His love and understand His character and the more we understand the character of God and the grace of God, the more we can truly represent Him in a wonderful way.

So, first of all, how would you know that you’re called to be a prophet? Many times a person who sees things wrong with the church, a person who sees things wrong with the world and sees injustice in the world and sees the church falling short of the calling has the calling of a prophet. Jesus told us to go out into all the world and make disciples and baptise them and teach them everything that He commanded his disciples to do and sometimes when you see that great commission and you see how the church is operating, sometimes when you’re called to be a prophet, you can see a disconnect. You can see where Jesus’ commandment and Jesus’ commission to His believers is falling short in the church.

 

You may open your Bible and read certain passages in your Bible and compare the church that you attend to, what it said Biblically in the Bible and you may find a disconnect, you may find that your church that you’re attending isn’t measuring up to the standards of the Bible. You may find that your church may seem to be off track and not align to the scriptures and not align to what it says in the Bible. So, the calling of a prophet is almost like stirring in your heart, in your inner-being, that’s saying that things aren’t right and someone’s got to speak and someone’s got to put these things right.

So I find personally that I get a personal burden for the church. I get a personal discomfort and feeling in my spirit that things aren’t right and things have to be spoken and things have to be changed.  It’s that burden that propels me to spend the time to make videos and publish them on YouTube. It’s that burden allows me to start Facebook groups and equip people. And it’s that burden that allows me to take the time to write books and publish books that will change the hearts of people.

I had a watershed moment; I had a moment that really changed my life in the last few months when I was talking to Jesus about my reputation and not being known very well in the world. I personally have a message that I’d like to share with the world and yet haven’t got an audience that allows me to share that message on. I haven’t got a world audience and I’ve got a message that I’d like to share with the world and Jesus said to me that He also has a message that He’d like to share with the world and He also is limited in being able to share that message with the world that He wants to share with the world. He says that He has to pick selected prophets and selected teachers and preachers to share His message but in order for Him to give the same message to the whole world, He’d have to pick hundreds of people and they’d have to give the exact same message to the people in their languages for him to have one fluent message going out to the whole world.  So when we think about it, when I thought about it, I found that Jesus also finds himself in a position where He wants to speak to the world and yet He’s limited to the people on the ground, He’s limited to the people that love him and listen to Him and will carry His message to the people. So as a prophet, you will have a burden on your heart for the people. You’ll have something on your heart that you’ve got to share.

Jeremiah summed it up and said that he had a fire shut within his bones and he was weary from holding it in. He had a burden on his heart that was inflamed like a fire and it wearied him to keep the message in.  So what will happen is that God will place a burden on your heart and it will grow and grow and grow and start to catch fire in your heart until you actually form the words and deliver the message. Only when you share the message the burden will be released from you for a season anyway.  Some people who are intercessors will understand that God will place a burden on their heart and they’ll get a burden to pray for a person, an individual, or a country, or a church. They’ll get their burden on their heart to pray for this individual or body of believers and when they pray, they’ll continue praying until the burden actually lifts and they’ll feel that the message has been communicated properly to the Lord. When and the Lord has heard their prayer the burden will lift off them. When they feel the heaviness of heart, the burden lift off them they will know that they no longer need to have to pray. Well when you’re called to be a prophet, you’ll get a burden on your heart to share with certain people and you’ll get a message that is just burning within you to share.

 I had a prophecy that I was given about a month ago saying that the burden that the Lord has placed on my heart will never lift off me.  And I will never be relieved of the burden and it will continue to press me in and press me closer and closer to the Lord Jesus and will encourage me to walk in an intimate relationship with Jesus. It was prophesied that I will cry Jesus’ tears and commune with God and Jesus in a fellowship of tears together as we care and love the world that I’ve been placed upon. So, you first may get the understanding that you have a calling to the church. You’ll have a message that you want to share with the church.

You might look at the five-fold ministry and you may see that you’re not necessarily called as a teacher.  You may look that you’re not necessarily called as a pastor. You may see that you haven’t got a gift in evangelism but you’ve got a calling to give the church a message and you may not be an apostle so you may work out that you’re called to be a prophet to give personal prophecies and share messages with the church that God wants the church to hear. Its one thing to have an understanding that you’re called to be a prophet and its one thing to have a message that you have a burden on your heart to share with the church. -- it’s quite another thing to have an opportunity or a platform to speak those words to your church or speak those words to the community or to the nation that you live in.

So, it comes in three parts. First part becomes the burden that you carry; the second part may be developing the message that you want to share, and the third part which is totally up to God is for Him to allow you to have that platform or the opportunity to speak that message. Many prophets or developing prophets or people that are in training and being trained to be a prophet over many years carry these burdens and it makes them sort of judgemental. It makes them cold-hearted. It makes them temperamental. It makes them intense. They can be very difficult sorts of people to get on to get on with. They can be very frustrated people.

It’s just like a person having to go up a long hill with a big load on his back, it’s not terribly exciting.  If you asked a person with a big load going up the hill if they’re enjoying themselves, they probably wouldn’t be enjoying themselves and they probably wouldn’t answer in such a cordial and beautiful way saying they’re having a lovely time. So being groomed and trained to become a prophet is a long and arduous process and it’s a process where things are stripped off you and your character is fashioned.  You’re trained to submit to God and to be humble and to be meek and to be subservient and to be obedient and to be many other character traits that the Lord will bring out and manifest in your life.

When you feel that you’re called to be a prophet, you only have to ask the Lord for confirmation and if you hang around prophetic groups or you hang around prophetic people, God will use a prophet or someone who’s gifted in the gift of prophecy to prophesy over your life and tell you that you’re called to be a prophet.  They’ll say God has got a calling on your life for you to be a prophet.

 I have a major warning here, there’s a big difference between being called to the office of prophet and actually being a prophet. There can be anywhere between a ten to twenty-five  year gap in between the time when you’re aware that you’re called to be a prophet and when you’re actually working in the office and sitting in the office of a prophet. Similar to a person who is let’s say, becoming a brain surgeon, someone who becomes a brain surgeon has to spend six years in medical school learning to be trained as a doctor and then they go through another extensive amount of training to become a brain surgeon and then they go through extensive training in a hospital to have the practical experience of a brain surgeon. So it’s many years between when they decide that they want to be a brain surgeon to the time when they’re actually left alone in a surgery and not monitored by a superior and they can do their first brain surgery.

And so if you want to learn all about that, you can watch the show called Grey’s Anatomy which I learned that information on. So, comparing the prophetic office, the prophet’s office to that of a brain surgeon, someone would have to spend at least twelve years in training before they’re in the actual practice, probably more like twenty years. I’m not sure if it’s twelve or twenty. But nonetheless it is many years between when they decide that they want to be a brain surgeon at school and when they’re actually operating. So the same is true for someone called to be a prophet. You may get the calling where people prophesy that you’re called to be a prophet, but it takes many years of training and humility and obedience and walking in the ways of the Lord and practice in prophecy until you’re situated and promoted into the office of being a prophet.

When you are a prophet, your words have more authority. You have more authority in the things that you say and the things that you do. There’s a certain favor that comes upon your life. You have a favor that comes into your life like Psalm 1:3 says everything that he does prospers. And you’ll have favor in your life. You’ll have authority in your life. You’ll have the ability to speak a prophetic word so a long prophetic word like a fifteen minute or twenty minute prophetic word to a person and you’ll have the ability to not only speak for twenty  minutes but have that prophecy confirmed many prophecies that a person has got beforehand. Your prophecy is like a summation of all the prophecies they’ve had in their life And when you’re in the office of prophets, you’ll have such a  clarity and strength and grace upon your prophetic words that you’ll have people stand up and listen.

There are many people who offer free prophetic words on the internet and on Facebook. There’s many groups that are training people how do prophetic words and there’s many people practicing the gift in the gift of prophecy and these are all good things and we all need these places. These people new to prophecy  prophesy over our life and it’s especially good that people are called to start these Facebook groups and internet sites that train people how to prophesy and yet with many of these groups, the people that prophesy in these groups don’t prophesy with a lot of depth and a lot of strength and a lot of authority in the prophetic word.  

I know especially that every couple of months I approach a person called Jeremy Lopez and he prophesies over my life and he does really accurate prophetic words that really guide me and impact me and make a huge difference in my life when it comes to making decisions and coping with the life that I have.

So I go to an experienced prophet, someone who’s in the office, a prophet who’s mature, whose words are resounding with authority and with accuracy. And this is what you’ll get from someone who’s in a prophetic office. Up until a person is in a prophetic office, their prophecies may be correct and may be true, it’s just they lack the authority and the depth and the clarity that someone who is in a prophetic office may have. So, first of all you may work out that you’re called to speak to the church. Secondly, you may get many confirmations through prophetic people that you’re called into the office of prophet. Thirdly, you have to go through the transition and the time and all the processes of developing a character to become a prophet.

Now I would envision that many people start the process of refining and start the process of being a champion and changed and their character tested to become a prophet and give up. I would be quite certain that many people called as a prophet of God actually walk away from God and walk into the world and go back into the lust of the world and fellowshipping with the things of the world rather than pursuing their Christian faith. The calling of a prophet and the maturing into the prophetic office is extreme hardship.

It’s extremely difficult and it’s a life and a calling that is very hard. I’m a person who walked in that calling and has been called into the office of prophet and walk through the training and I’m still getting trained even though I’m in the office now. I’m still getting trained and equipped and prepared for what God has got in front of me and what God wants me to do in the future. So I can testify that there’s many hardships, there’s many persecutions, there’s many afflictions, there’s many time where you actually suffer to become the person that God has called you to be. It’s difficult. It’s hard. It’s treacherous. It’s a narrow road that you actually walk on and Jesus said that wide is the way that leads to death and destruction and narrow is the path that leads to life and if you find it and I can tell you that I’d say about  fifty percent of the people that are called into the office of prophet might never make it simply because of the hardship and the years that go in to preparing a person to walk in the office.  So even all of those years that they walk, they may not get an opportunity to walk in the office and they may not get an opportunity to preach in pulpits. They may not get an opportunity to open their mouth and speak and let things out of their mouth that God has put on their heart for people. They may not get the opportunity to speak to a conference. They may not get an opportunity to have what they have spoken over a nation or a city to be read by any people. They may publish a prophetic word over a nation on their own blog and fifty people may read it but it’s not millions of people reading it. They have this message in their heart for many years, maybe more than even ten years in their heart and not have the opportunity to share the message and this will frustrate them and test them and try them and it’ll be used to annoy them.  They’ll be put through all sorts of tests and supremely a test of patience. God wants someone who doesn’t call down fire on the people He loves.

God wants people who are full of grace and love and mercy and compassion and are slow to anger. He wants people who will respond to criticism with turning the other cheek and forgiveness. He wants people that will move in love. He wants a person who can prophetically see an error in someone’s life and speak life to the person, not call out the error in front of other people or even to the person in private. God wants people to be able to correct errors by prophetically announcing, prophetically decreeing and declaring positive things over a person’s life so that they can walk in freedom from their sin or from their error. He wants someone to be mature enough to confront a church or to confront a country with grace and bring correction with humility and love to people and to the body of Christ, rather than with a spirit of anger and fear and judgement and retaliation for all the hurts that they’ve been through that the body of Christ just caused him. If you have been rejected, if you’ve been misunderstood, if you have been called weird you may be called to be a prophet. If all you can think about is Jesus, all you can talk about is Jesus, if the world holds no allure for you, no attraction for you, if you’re totally set apart and feel called to be a prophet, there’s a good chance you are called to be a prophet. There are many characteristics. There are many prophetic books to read about this subject to learn more about it. I don’t envisage that this book will cover a lot.

You want to check out some books on the prophetic and the prophetic office by more experienced prophets who have a lot more to say on the subject. Suffice to say now that if God has told you you’re called to be a prophet, if people have prophesied that you’re called to be a prophet, if your life sucks and you’ve had a really hard life and you’re misunderstood and you’ve been rejected most of your life and you’re really passionate for Jesus, there’s a very good chance you’re called to be a prophet. And if you’re called to be a prophet, you’ve just got to hold on and go through the processes and go through the time and be obedient and do everything the Lord calls you to do until you make it to the point where God is really using you and everything you turn your hand to will  be prospering. You have to wait till you’ve got God’s  favor in your life and you’ve got authority in your life,  and  that you’ll reach a stage where you’ll say things and people will take notice.

It will reach a stage where just like Jesus; the people will be astonished at your words like they were when Jesus spoke to the sermon on the mountain.

Matthew 7: 28—29 NLT

When Jesus was finished saying these things, the crowds were amazed at his teaching for he taught with real authority, quite unlike the teachers of religious law.

The people were astonished it says in the new King James Version

So, when you’re in the office of prophet, you’ll be able to speak words and you’ll be able to give direction and do prophetic teaching and people will stand up and take notice of what you say. So now is the time that you’re called to be a prophet. Now is the time to obey and one of my tips that I can give you is learn to hear the voice of the Lord. Learn to hear Jesus or God or the Holy Spirit speaking to you and learn to jump when they say jump. Learn to obey when they say to do things Do you know you can’t get the gift of patience? You have to have the fruit of patience and the sad thing about a fruit is it’s got to grow and it’s got to be developed.

And so through the ten to twenty five years it takes between being called to the prophetic and being in the office of the prophet, you’ll actually learn patience and you’ll be a very patient person by the end.

 

 

 

 

 

What are Some Keys to a Prophets Life

This is an interesting subject. What are some of the keys to the life that I live? One important key to a prophetic life is intimacy, to have an intimate relationship with Jesus Christ, the Father and the Holy Spirit. As a prophet, you should have a relationship with God the Father, you should have a relationship with Jesus Christ his Son, and you should have a relationship with the Holy Spirit.

The whole three persons of the God head, the whole three members of the trinity should be personal friends of yours. They should be not only subjects, not only things that you understand, and know about, they shouldn’t be just people that you’ve heard about in the Bible. They should be friends of yours. They should be interactions that you’ve had with each of them that you can use in stories and illustrations. For instance, I was talking to the Holy Spirit and I asked him “Can you tell me when it’s going to rain and can you tell me when you take my umbrella out”, and from that day on, the Holy Spirit would be quick to tell me to take my umbrella out on every day that it was going to rain on me. If it was going to rain during the day and I was inside a building and it wasn’t going to rain when I’m actually walking from place to place, the Holy Spirit wouldn’t tell me but on the days that I would be walking from the station to another place, the Holy Spirit would tell me take your umbrella today and sure enough, if I ignored the Holy Spirit, and didn’t go with my umbrella, I got wet. And that was the case. So that’s an example of a time I’ve talked to the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit has responded and continued to remind me when it’s going to rain when I was going out into a day and leaving my house on a day it was going to rain.

So there are many interactions that I’ve had with Jesus. They can’t be summarized or detailed here. You’d have to have like a hundred hour video to explain all the interactions I’ve had with Jesus. One interaction at the same place that I had the interaction with the Holy Spirit that time, I was walking out of my house and I noticed blowing in the wind was the cloak of Jesus. I normally notice Him, by that way, by his cloak blowing in the wind and I said to him, “I’m seeing you now every second day”. And it’d been a while, it’d been going on for weeks where I was having a vision of Jesus every second day.

To which Jesus responded to me and said, “I’m with you every day”.

And quick enough, I replied to him,” Where is that in the Bible?”

Jesus said, “lo I am with you always to the end of the age”. And that means that Jesus is with us all the time and whether we know it or not, He actually is and it’s amazing that really had an impact on me that Jesus was always with me and it really meant a lot to me and now I know whether I see Him or not, He’s walking with me and He’s with me.

I’ve had interactions with the Father. One time I was taken on a vision to Heaven and the Father had me sit next to him in Jesus’ throne and the Father opened up the Heavens and I could see stars and planets and all sorts of things. I could see the stars up really close, you know if Heaven had gravity they would be crashing down into Heaven, some of the planets or stars were so close that they would seem like a thousand miles from Heaven. I could really see them moving really close and I could see all the stars far away, it was the most amazing view of the solar system and the universe that I’ve ever seen and the Father said to me, “Can you see all of that?”

 And I said, “Yeah”

He said “I control all of that. He said, “One of those stars I could send to Earth and that would be the end of Earth. I control it all. He said, don’t you think if I can control all of that, I can control your life?”

 And I was really emotional and I said, “Yes”.

 He said, “Let me control your life.” So that was an interaction I had with God had an indelible impact on my life. So intimacy is one of the keys to a prophet’s life. A prophet has to have an intimate relationship with the God head. He’s got to be intimate with Jesus.

Now, intimacy comes from a number of things. There are a number of things that make up intimacy. First of all, you’ve got to understand who God is and you find that understanding of who God is and who Jesus is through the Bible. That’s one way to get to know God. So, one of the keys, we’ll count this as a key too, one of the keys to a prophet’s life is to have a knowledge of the Word of God. Now, many people have a knowledge of the Word of God but some of the verses they believe in, they’ve got the wrong meaning to, and they’ve got the wrong understanding.

So you’ve got to understand that your relationship with God is ever-changing and your beliefs and your theologies have to be open to change. So you can understand the Bible and understand Bible verses in the Bible that help you to understand who God is and who Jesus is.

You can really find out a lot about Jesus by reading the four Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And if you spend time reading those Gospels, trying to understand or seeking Jesus to explain why He did certain things and why He said certain things and what He actually meant when He said certain things. If you go into a process of years of discovery of what Jesus meant by all these parables and what are the deep meanings behind all of His commandments and if you study all of that out and spend time seeking the Lord with the help of the Holy Spirit, you’ll come to know Jesus very well. If you read the prophets in the Old Testament and read all of the prophets, you’ll come to know God very well. So, that’s one way.

Another way, another key to intimacy and another key for a prophet’s life, talking to God, talking to Jesus, and having conversations with Jesus and God and you may not have two-way conversations with God but I’d hope that if you’re called to be a prophet that God would speak to you and Jesus would speak to you. You’ve got to reach a stage if you’re called to the prophetic, if you’re called to be a prophet, you’ve got to reach a stage where your spiritual ears are open and you can actually hear God speak and you can actually hear Jesus speak and you can actually hear the Holy Spirit speak. You’ve got to get to a stage where you can hear them and one good way to really get to know Jesus and God and the Holy Spirit is to ask Jesus questions, to ask the God head questions.

You can ask Jesus questions about anything and He will answer you. He may say you’re not ready to hear the answer to that. That may be his answer sometimes. But most of the time, it’s the Holy Spirit that’s moving on your life to encourage you to ask a certain question and if the Holy Spirit inspires you to ask questions, then Jesus is going to give you the answer – I’ve spent hundreds and thousands of hours speaking to Jesus and having two-way conversations. I do pray sometimes like a normal person and pray a prayer that people hear in churches and people hear ministers pray, but it’s pretty rare that I pray a prayer like that. It’s only when someone asks me to pray for them that and they’re standing there and they want you to pray in person to pray a prayer like that.

Most other times, times of what you would call prayer, is me just communicating back and forth with Jesus, having conversations, and Jesus talks back to me and we have conversations and one major key like I’ve just mentioned, is to ask Jesus questions and you can ask Jesus questions about His life on Earth, you can ask Him questions about anything, about anyone and about Jesus only has good things to say about people most of the time. He’ll call out the gold in people. He’ll call out the good things in people. You can discuss the bad things that someone like Obama is doing if you are interested in politics and you’re in America. You might be interested in hearing Jesus’ perspective on Obama. You might be into the New World Order and the Illuminati and you might want to know information about that. Jesus can answer you and set your mind at ease in that situation and on that subject matter. You can ask Jesus questions on anything. And it’s really one of the best keys; one of the best secrets that I have to developing a very deep and emotional relationship with Jesus Christ is to spend time asking questions.

When you go out dating, when you go out on a date with a girl or if you go out with a guy, much of the conversation that’s in the initial stages of a relationship is based on questions. You ask question after question to find out more information about a person and slowly you fall in love with the person based on all the information, based on who you’ve come to see that they are based on the answers of the questions, that they come to answer you. Well, the same is true with Jesus. You can get to know so much of Jesus’ personality and so much about Him simply by asking Him questions. And people would wonder why would you ask Jesus questions?

Well, the same reasons why you’d ask a date questions, to get to know them better. And Jesus has real answers and He has real emotions. And you’re able to talk to Jesus. You can hear Him cry. You can hear Him get emotional. You can hear Him get passionate. You can hear Him get intense about certain subjects.

Jesus is an amazing person and He really isn’t understood and known very well by the average Christian. The average Christian doesn’t spend a lot of time talking to Jesus and asking Him questions. But as a prophet, you’re called to represent Jesus. You’re called to represent God and the more you know Him, the more you know his characteristics and what makes Him up, the more you can speak His voice when He tells you to say things to a person or He tells you to say things to a church. You’ve got a better understanding of who Jesus is and you can carry His words in a better format. You can carry His words in a better way because you understand the Source, you understand where He’s coming from, and it’s not new to you so people who don’t have a good understanding of God they only have an Old Testament understanding of an angry God, they’ll speak on behalf of what the God that they think they know But if they spoke to God and communicated with God, they’d understand God for who He is. He isn’t just some old fella sitting on a throne with thunderbolts and lightning ready to strike people dead and ready to throw judgement at any time. He’s a God of mercy, love and compassion and it says in 1 John that God is love and you highly question that God is a God of love based on some of the things that some prophets have to say that God and how they communicate God to other people.

So it’s very important to know God. It’s very important to know Jesus and know their personalities and know what makes them up and what makes Them laugh and what makes Them upset and what makes Them urgent for things and it’s good to know that Jesus and God have their limitations and that even though they’re all powerful, they’re limited by man on Earth and they can only move through men on Earth and so there’s a lot of injustice being done that could be stopped by the Christians of the world or alleviated by the Christians of the world. There’s a lot of suffering in the world that could be slowed down or stopped if the Christians of the world acted and moved and weren’t selfish and weren’t spending money on themselves and living up a lifestyle of fleshly pursuits.

A lot of work can be done in the third world nations and a lot of suffering could be alleviated if people actually cared and one day I’ll have my stage, you can see some of my personality coming out that I’m concerned too and you can talk to God and you Jesus about the concerned and co-labor with them. Once you get to know Jesus on an intimate level, you know that every person is important to Him and when you know Him for who He is you’ll realise that the prostitute  the pimp, the slave trafficker,  the paedophile and the homosexual - all these people in the world looked down upon that Jesus loves intimately and He’s got a tremendous love for. And it changes your attitude and the way that you treat people and you correspond with people and you interact with people online and face to face.

So, asking Jesus questions will get you to this place. Reading the Word of God and spending hours and even years in the Gospels will get you to a place to understand who Jesus is. Asking Him questions about the Gospels and what He was thinking and what He was meaning when He talked will get you even into a closer space.

Another key to a prophet’s life is a life of obedience. God has called you as a prophet to be his representative and that means that you should be going about your life listening to the commands of the Holy Spirit, commands of Jesus and the things that God tells you to do and actually doing them. I just produced a book called Great Cloud of Witnesses Speak and it’s of interviews with 19 saints from Heaven and what they had to say about this life and this Earth and advice that they have for people on Earth. It was a very hard to publish. I come under a lot of criticism by many well-meaning Christians saying that I was practicing necromancy talking to the dead and we know that everyone is alive in Christ and they’re alive in Heaven so I’m not speaking to dead people. But I come under tremendous criticisms but Jesus called me to write that book.

He brought the saints down. The Holy Spirit brought the saints down to be interviewed, and He was with me every step of the way but I could have refused to do this book. Jesus told me that two people before me had started the project and then stopped because the criticism and they backed out of it because of the pressure that was came upon their life because of it. So I was determined not to back out but I had a lot of pressure and there was a lot of reason not go through with the project but I persisted and I just published the book a couple of days ago. So it’s important to obey Jesus. The disciples not only walked with Jesus but when Jesus left they obeyed the Holy Spirit and did things which all accept John, they ended up getting killed for.  They obeyed Jesus right into death. They didn’t consider their lives were more important than the call of Jesus on their life and we’re called to obey Jesus, to obey the Holy Spirit, and to obey God in what he’s called us to do and you really can only get so far.

You can’t get really close to God without a life of obedience and you certainly can’t become a beloved friend of God if you’re not obedient, if you’re not walking with Him and doing what He calls you to do. One explanation of a prophet’s life can be found in Isaiah 42 and it says in Isaiah 42 Verse 6,

I the Lord have called you in righteousness and I’ll hold your hand. I’ll keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison. Those who sit in darkness from the prison house. I’m the Lord. That is my name and my glory I will not give to another. Nor my praise to carved images. Behold! The former things have come to pass. And new things I declare. Before they spring forth I tell you of them.

So he says I’m the Lord. I’ve called you in righteousness and I’ll hold your hand. That’s a very close relationship, a hand in hand, talking hand in hand with God, and you walk hand in hand with God when you obey him, when you’re walking in obedience and fellowship with him. And, behold the former things have come to pass and new things I declare. Before they spring forth I tell you of them. A prophet is in constant communion with God and He tells you things and explains what’s going on in your life and he declares new things as they come about, he’ll declare the new things to you.

So it’s important that you read the Word. It’s important that you talk to God and have time in prayer. It’s important that you ask Jesus questions and ask God questions and it’s important that you obey. It’s important that you live a life set apart for God, it’s time for the world to live in a way that is different. It’s time for a prophet to live life in a way that is set apart. I’m just looking up a scripture for us because it describes it good. In 1 John 2:15 ( NLT)  goes on and says,

Do not love the world. Do not love the world nor the things it offers you for when you love the world, you do not have the love of the Father in you. For the world offers only a craving for physical pleasure, a craving for everything we see and a pride in our achievements and possessions. These are not from the Father but from the world. And this world is fading away along with everything that people crave but anyone who does what pleases God will live forever.

That is calling people who read that and meditate on that and obey that to come out the world. That’s calling people to live a life separate from the world and there isn’t a lot of teaching out there that will teach a person how to live separate from the world.

It’s one thing for me to say live a life set apart and live a life that’s holy and set apart for God. It’s another thing for people to actually work out how to do that. James  4:3 , says:

You ask and do not receive because you ask amiss, that you may spend it on your pleasures.

So many people do that that they’re living a life of pleasure and lust.

James 4:4 says, adulterers and adulteresses do not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God. Whoever therefore wants to be a friend with the world makes himself an enemy of God.

So there we go. To live the life of a prophet, one of the keys to living the life of a prophet is to live a life that is set apart, a life that doesn’t necessarily have to have the best that the world offers. Of course, a prophet visiting churches needs to be dressed nicely, and sometimes a prophet will need a car or sometimes you’ll need a house and he’ll need the things of the world but it’s not consumed by the things of the world, it’s not sitting down on TV watching TV and having to buy everything as they come about. A prophet that’s truly called by the Lord will use his smartphone to post Facebook updates that will challenge people. He’ll use his computer to make videos and to write letters and to write books. He’ll be using his TV to relax and see about the things of the world that he can speak into. Everything that’s in a prophet’s life that he owns will be a Kingdom asset, it will be Kingdom tool, and it will be something that he used for the Kingdom. He just doesn’t use it for his needs and lust and desires.

One day I’ll write a book, I’ll have to write a short explanation on how to live set apart. A part of the holiness is to be set apart, a part is a definition of holiness rather than just living a righteous life is to live a life consecrated to the Lord.. Part of holiness is to be set apart and there are not a lot of people preaching that we need to be set apart. Of course John preached it and shared it there. We heard it from John there that not to love the things of world. We heard it from James saying that if you’re a friend of the world then you’re an enemy of God.

There are just not a lot of people out there preaching in pulpits and showing the people of God to be set apart. Of course if the people of God were set apart and they were faithful to God and concerned about God and His interests, they’d be collecting together and they’d be being used more powerfully and the world would be a better place. It’s just that Christians seem to be just as big a consumer as is everyone else and they seemed to be turned on by the things of the world. They love to do the things of the world and like I said in a previous chapter, they like to talk about sports and they like to talk about TV shows and they like to talk about everything outside of God. There doesn’t seem to be many people that can discuss Jesus and discuss the Kingdom for hours.

Many Christians would recoil at what I just said. One of the things about being a prophet is that your whole life will be focused on God and his Kingdom and anything that takes you away from that, you’ll quickly dismiss and come back to it. A prophet for instance, one of the keys to having a proper prophetic life, another key is to be set apart with people. You can’t have people in your life that are draining you. You can’t have people in your life that are pulling the anointing out of you. You can’t have people in your life who have got Jezebel spirits.

You’ve got to separate yourself from those people and sometimes those people will draw really close to you and become a very close friend until the Holy Spirit shows you through discernment that that person has got a Jezebel spirit. You have to cut those people off and tell them you can’t have anything to do with them whilst they’ve got that spirit. I have found that 90% of people with a Jezebel spirit will say that they haven’t got that spirit when you confront them. That’s just sad and unfortunate that they can’t become set free of something they don’t agree that they’ve got.

 So it will come at the price of separation.  Being set apart also is having friends that are helpful to you and having friends add to you and God would prefer that you be friendless than have friends that are dragging you back into the world.

If you’ve got to be a friend simply by talking about things of the world with someone and that’s the price you pay for having the friend, is the friend really worth it for you? Isn’t it better that you commune with God and commune with Jesus and commune with the saints of Heaven and have the saints of Heaven as friends and have God as your friend, rather than have to demean yourself and lower your standards to have conversations that are meaningless and full of the world and full of flesh? So I’m glad I’m talking to people who are called to be prophets because the average person listening to this would say this guy is too intense. He’s just too full on.

There are some of the keys to the prophetic life. So we’ve covered quite a few of them, and I hope there’d be many more. Another key to a prophet’s is a life of worship and worship isn’t just listening to worship music and singing but worship is a life dedicated to Jesus and you’re whole life and everything you do are focused on the Kingdom.  Worshiping God calls for obedience and you live this life that is set apart and through living a set apart life in obedience every day in constant communion with God, you live a lifestyle of worship that your life is an everlasting and fragrance to God.  God can look down upon you as He looked down upon Job and brag to Satan, “have you ever seen someone so beautiful? Have you ever seen someone so obedient?”

Living a life in constant obedience and constant devotion to God is a life of worship and you can learn to worship and play worship music and have worship music playing in your house all the time. You need to keep yourself uplifted and in the Spirit and anointed and worship music is a wonderful thing. There’s more to worship than simply listening and singing music. There’s a lifestyle that you can live and so I hope this video has encouraged you and I hope as you read the book that you’ll be encouraged by what I’ve had to share and I hope you can transform your life into developing these characteristics into your life. God bless.

 

 

 

 

What is a Prophetic Person and What is a Prophet

There’s a difference between a prophetic person and a prophet. A prophetic person as we discussed is someone who can flow in the gift of prophecy and move in the gift of prophecy. There are many Christians who have the ability to prophesy. It doesn’t necessarily make them a prophet. I did read in a book that was written by an Indian apostle on the gifts of the spirit and the offices of the five-fold ministry. He said in that book, I’m pretty sure he said everyone who prophesies one day will become a prophet. There would be a lot of people that would disagree with that statement though.

I’m pretty sure that’s what he said. It’s coming after twenty years of prophesying myself – I seem to find that it’s an easy thing to do to prophesy and for that reason I encourage everyone I meet to get the gift of prophecy and start to move in the gift of prophecy. Prophecy is such a wonderful gift and it’s such a encouraging thing to do to speak life over people, to call the gold out in people, to recognize the beautiful things in a person and call them out and let a person know what God specifically thinks of them and reasons why God admires them.

I find many of my prophecies that I do have the different characteristics of a person in them and what God admires about those different characteristics. My prophecies can be very encouraging. Sometimes my prophecies lack in direction, in giving people direction, that’s something I’m working on but I do pass on everything that I feel the Lord gives to pass on to people. Part of my prophetic gifting is growing so in saying that I find it easy to prophesy, I still am growing in the prophetic gift and I don’t think anyone even if they’ve been prophesying for forty years would say that they’re not growing in their gift all the time so to be a prophetic person is essentially moving in the prophetic gifts and a prophetic person is a wonderful person to have in your church.

I feel that many people in churches should be prophetic and it’s my aim one day to go from church to church and do seminars and teach everyone in the church to move prophetically. I know that would be very encouraging for the flock and very encouraging for every individual that visits the church to have people in the church that can tell them things about their life and about what God feels about them and about their future. A prophet is called from his birth, he may not know at birth, it may take many years before he realises there’s a call on his life.

In my life for instance, I didn’t know I was called to be a prophet until I heard someone preach on the five-fold ministry. He went through each of the five-fold ministry apostle, prophet, evangelists, pastors and teachers and went through each of them and described what each of them does. At the end of that teaching I realised that I was called to more than a stranger and called to more than non-Christians but I was essentially called to people in the church also and so I decided I must be a prophet and I must have been called to be a prophet.

I was deciding to start to  learn what a prophet is and  what is required in the office of prophet and start to move towards working towards what I’m meant to do as a prophet and I was a chat site. I was on a forum on the computer when they used to have forums and you could go in and chat to people, it was a Christian chat site, and I called myself prophetic. I had this girl who came online and asked for a prophecy off me and I gave her a prophecy and she said this is really amazing and I said what? She said, “I was just upstairs with my sick mother in hospital and I said to myself that I really to need to speak to a prophet.” Lord, she prayed to the Lord and asked the Lord could she speak to a prophet and she said, “ I came online and you’re online. Are you a prophet?” And it was at that time that I typed back, “Yes I believe that am called to be one.

Now, many people feel that when they’ve got the gift of prophecy and they’re called to be a prophet, many people mistakenly assume that they’re already a prophet. That’s like someone in the first class of medical school or in the first month of six years study, that’s like someone in the first month of medical school calling themselves a doctor. You know, when you get the gift of prophecy, it takes many years, sometimes ten to twenty-five years to develop in character and to develop in skill and abilities to become a prophet in their office. So one of the mistakes of the Kingdom and one of the big mistakes that young prophets make is going around telling everybody that they are a prophet. It may have been prophesied over them by a prophet that they’re called to be a prophet and God’s calling on their life and they’re a prophet but it doesn’t seem to be much sound teaching around that says to these people that it’s going to take ten to twenty-five years for you to develop into the office of prophet.  They go around and can do a lot of damage in their pride telling people that they’re a prophet and people assuming that they’ve got the experience of a prophet and finding that they come well short of having the experience and the character of a prophet.

In his book The Seer James Goll mentions that there is up to twelve types of prophets. The last three he mentioned covered me. They were prophetic, writers, prophetic equippers, and prophetic evangelists.

I’ve written 7 books and I am pretty gifted in teaching people things and this will be the focus of another book. This will turn into a book, these videos; will be part of a short book on the prophetic. So I’m a prophetic teacher and equipper but prophets can be very emotional about issues. They want to come into a situation and preach on an issue that’s wrong. A prophet will see what’s wrong in a congregation or what’s wrong in a city or what’s wrong in a country, and will preach the truth according to that era. A prophet most of the time, very emotional, prophets can be very lonely, they have an intimate friendship with the Lord and they can be very intense people.

And so for that reason because they’re so passionate for Jesus and very intense, this can stop them from having many friends. It’s not as though they don’t desire friends. It’s just that they don’t want anything to do with the world and lust of the flesh and they live a life that separate world and the fact of the matter is many Christians love to live with one foot in the world and one foot in God’s Kingdom and a prophet just can’t stand that. And so he won’t lower himself or herself to that standard to talk all day about the football or talk all day about a current TV show on TV. A prophet in many instances can’t relate to people who are in the world and are living a really fleshy lifestyle.

So prophets have a mandate from God that some prophet’s are called to the nation to prophesy over the nation and have an impact on the nation; some other prophets are called just to be a prophet in their church and be available for people in the church. Some prophets are called to an itinerate ministry where they travel from church to church and place to place and nation to nation.

There’s many different flavours of a prophet but a prophet speaks on behalf of God and not only speaks when he’s saying prophetic words but often when a prophet is preaching, there’s a prophetic edge to what he’s teaching. On many occasions it’s not a prepared message but the Holy Spirit speaks through a prophet and the prophet delivers a now-word for the congregation that he’s in, a word that’s applicable right now the people. It’s not a message that’s two-thousand years old. It’s not a message that’s five years old. A prophet will deliver a message that is due to be delivered that day.   Even the sermon in that church the week before, was preparation for everything that the prophet has to say. All that has happened in the week before and the weeks and months before the prophet appears in that church was preparing the church for the prophets message.. So, a prophet would do well to listen to God and deliver only what God wants said. Many prophets may have an agenda.

Many prophets may have a pet peeve or a pet interest that they want to get out there. One of my things that I’m very passionate about is the sheep and the goat’s parable; that I was hungry, I was thirsty, I was naked, a stranger, I was in prison, and you didn’t help me. That’s a very message that’s very dear to my heart and one that I would share often but I’ve got to be careful as I start to preach in churches that I don’t preach on that one all the time but I allow the spirit of God to be open with me and direct me to preach exactly what the Spirit of God wants so a prophet out of everyone should be directed by God and led by God to say what they say in every situation.

Many prophets are called on for personal prophecy and they’re accurate in personal prophecy. Accuracy is something that grows like, it’s just like someone learning a game of tennis. They can start a game of tennis as a young child and know the fundamentals of tennis, know how to serve and how to return a ball and how to do a slice and how to do a drop shot and they can know the fundamentals of tennis but a young child who’s ten years of age doesn’t play at Wimbledon. You can watch a young child play tennis and know that they can play tennis but the child isn’t invited out to play at Wimbledon. Well, that’s like someone starting with the gift of prophecy. They’ve got the fundamentals right but can’t be compared to a prophet who’s at Wimbledon, who’s on the world stage and is highly competitive and highly accurate and very good at his craft which is giving personal prophecy.

So accuracy is something that grows in a person. If you’re new to the prophetic, don’t be too concerned that you may miss and hear things that turn out to be wrong. I still hear things that are missed from time to time and even with a high level of accuracy I can be wrong and that just keeps your humble. That lets you know that you’re dependant on the Holy Spirit and it’s not just your own ego and your own personal strength that allows you to prophesy but you’re always dependant on the Holy Spirit to give you the words to fill your mouth.  It’s very interesting that someone with twenty years of experience prophesying can still get things wrong but I thoroughly admit to you that from time to time I say a word of knowledge that isn’t correct and I’m told that that wasn’t correct and that’s just something that keeps you humble. I’m not endorsing people getting things wrong but in a prophetic game, in a ministry of the prophetic, people have to have the assurance that getting something wrong isn’t the end of the ministry.

Many people quit the prophetic pursuit and quit prophesying because they get a couple of prophecies wrong and the only one that wins in that scenario is Satan. Satan shuts down really good people, people that are going to be used to give thousands of prophecies in the future, he shuts them down by them getting a string of wrongs prophecies and they totally give up on prophesying. Satan is very happy with that. The Kingdom of God, God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit are saddened by that and sometimes they can resurrect that person and encourage that person to start again. Sometimes they can’t and that’s a shame and Satan is really against the prophetic. He hates it with a vengeance and he’ll use a person’s lack of feedback to really harass you and harass your mind. You may prophesy over someone and they don’t give you feedback and suddenly your mind is thinking you’ve got it wrong, they’re not replying, they’re not responding because you got it so wrong and how could you do that?

Your mind runs off with all these sorts that Satan places in it and gets into worry. So it takes an amazing strength to pursue and to continue to pursue the Lord and prophesy. It takes amazing courage to prophesy over a nation or prophesy over a church. Some churches in their worship time allow a prophetic person to get up and prophesy over the church and that takes courage to that. It certainly is a privilege that the Lord affords certain prophets and prophetic people to do.

Some people move in the flesh. Some people get up at church and feel that God wants to say something but it’s actually them and their own agenda that want to say something and those people get up and put words in God’s mouth and do prophecies that aren’t necessarily from God. And this is why in scripture it says that prophets are subject to the prophets and in those circumstances, if you had a properly healthy church, the pastor and one of the prophets in the church might take that person aside and say that that prophecy wasn’t from God. “You made that up and that came from your flesh. In future, you come and speak to me before you deliver a prophecy and I’ll tell you whether you can deliver it or not.”

Sometimes a prophetic person or a prophet or the pastor of the church and step in after the prophecy and tell the church that that wasn’t a word from the Lord but that would be highly embarrassing for the person.

You can learn a lot from a prophet. They say that a prophet will often live out his message and will have lived out his message before he brings the message to a people. So he doesn’t preach out of other people’s books. He doesn’t look at other people’s books and other people’s revelation and then write a book about the same subject himself. He actually lives out what he’s going to preach. His preaching is most times from experience. I found in the seven books I’ve written, I’ve done no research for the books. I didn’t spend time reading other people’s books to do research.

I just sat down and made videos about the different subjects and different chapter headings that I made out to be part of the book. So I didn’t research other books. I didn’t go to other places to research my books. I just simply spoke my books or wrote my books according to the knowledge that I possessed and a prophet should be able to speak from the things that he knows so he shouldn’t be presumptuous, he shouldn’t be speaking things that God hasn’t placed on his heart. He shouldn’t be speaking his opinions. He should be speaking on behalf of God. Of course you’re allowed as anyone in the body of Christ, you’re allowed to speak you opinions. You can have opinions.

 

That’s what life is all about. But when it comes to other people, you should be speaking your convictions and the things that God has laid on your heart. Are all prophets right? No, not all prophets are right. Prophets are always on a journey of discovery of Biblical truths and theologies. Some prophets have wrong theology. Some prophets, for instance, believe in a judgemental God and an angry God and believe in the God of the Old Testament and don’t factor in the fact that we’re in a New Covenant and God is best represented through Jesus Christ and the love of Jesus. Some prophets are stuck in that Old Covenant doctrine and that Old Covenant relationship with God and these prophets are more angry individuals and speak of judgement and doom and all sorts of things.

These prophets are very big on preaching holiness and yet their own attitude sometimes can be unholy. And then there’s prophets that know the grace message and have got a proper understanding of grace and they come across a whole lot differently. There’s two ways you can share un-holiness. You can be a person who preaches gloom and doom and fear and the fact that if you’re not holy you’re not going to see God like it says in Hebrews. You can preach this scary message or you can preach a message of grace to say that God loves you and he wants everyone to go to Heaven that’s saved and his blood covers a multitude of sins and encourage people to live a holy life, to live a life separated to God. There’s two ways you can do everything. You can threaten people or you can encourage people. And that would be the difference between the two prophets that are out there in the world.

There are many prophets out there in the world speaking of judgement and End Times and holiness that God is an angry god. He’s angry with abortions. He’s angry with this. He’s angry with marriage equality and America. He’s angry with this. He’s angry, angry, angry, and it just seems that those prophets themselves are angry and don’t seem to have a lot of peace. I understand these prophets that are angry and preach judgement and the woes of God; simply because I was one of them in years’ past before I came into the understanding of the message of grace.

It says in scripture in the book of Revelation that a great Angel will go and preach the everlasting Gospel to the whole world. And I believe that everlasting Gospel that the angel preaches is the Gospel of grace, the same Gospel of grace that Paul taught and I believe that it’s not until the Gospel of grace has been shown and delivered to the whole world that Jesus will come back. So I hope I’ve given you some insights. There are many characteristics of a prophet. But a prophet will find it very hard not to be intense. I can be down to earth and talk to people about their TV shows and talk to people about their sport, but it’s just like talking about the weather to me.  It’s like a real, low surface sort of conversation. It just seems to be able to have good friends these days. as a prophet you’ve got to lower your standards and lower what you’re talking about. The majority of Christians can’t endure talking about Christian things for more than half an hour at a time and that’s just the way I find people. I’m a very close to Jesus, a prophet will be a friend of God and literally be a friend of God and God will speak to the prophet and look after the prophet and be the prophet’s friend.

I heard one teacher; I think it was Thomas Kempis from the Catholic tradition. I think he said that if God really loves you, you won’t have any friends and only God will be your friend. And I feel that that is how it is for me. I’ve got a couple of friends but that’s pretty true for my life.  I have Jesus as a friend and saints from Heaven as my friends and angels as my friends. It is an enjoyable but lonely life. Prophets are rejected by many people. It’s easy for a person who disagrees with you to call you a false prophet because you claim to be a prophet. It’s easy to be rejected when you’re talking about issues like feeding the hungry and feeding the homeless and giving justice to people who are lacking in justice. It is easy to be rejected when you’re talking about righteousness and Kingdom principles to people who are lukewarm and people who are just treat their faith with God as an accessory like a handbag that it’s just one of the things in their life. When you’re talking about righteousness and a Kingdom principles and justice to people who don’t want to know about that, you can be easily rejected. Prophets can be perceived as weird but the church vitally needs prophets. A prophet in the Old Testament time used to turn a whole nation toward God when they were sinning and far from God.

Prophets today can come into a church and speak at a church at a week and totally address every problem that’s affecting that church and they can speak with authority which will have an impact on the church. This will greatly please the pastor because the pastor can continue to be the loving pastor to the church and he can use a prophet to come in and speak the hard words that the church needs to hear. So, that’s one characteristic of a prophet that they speak the Word of God. They answer problems. They give direction. They give vision to a church. They refresh pastors. They co-labour with pastors.

Any prophet that comes into a church and embarrasses a pastor and abuses his authority is a prophet abuses his authority is a prophet that won’t be invited back to that church but he’s actually walked out of alignment with God. That a prophet should be respectful to any pastor whose church he’s invited to. Sometimes God may call the prophet to speak to the church in a way that will have him not invited back but a prophet has got to be very sure that God saying that and got to be very sure his message will affect enough people to warrant the fact that he might not be invited by the pastor again.

I enjoy my life as a prophet. I am someone who dearly loves the Lord and I’m still finding my feet in the prophetic office. I am in the office now but I’m still finding my feet. I think everyone in the Christian life is always going to be learning more about God and more about their purpose every day they live. I’m growing into my purpose but a prophet is a full on calling and one that can be a lot grief in a prophet’s life, a lot of rejection, misunderstanding, and suffering. There can be many years where a prophet is in a refiner’s fire and getting refined and persecuted by people but also going through personal traumas and sufferings and it’s only on the other end of all that refining that you can be used faithfully as a prophet. God knows what He’s doing and if you’re suffering, you’re rejected, you’re misunderstood, you’re lonely, you’re sad, and God is your only source, there’s a good chance that you’re being called to be a prophet and prepared for that.