Being Prophetic, What is That?

 

Being Prophetic, What is That?

Paul taught a lot on the gifts and in One Corinthians 14, Verse 1 he says, “Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts but especially that you may prophesy.” Paul says in another place that a prophecy is the best spiritual gift. Paul also says in another place that you are to covet the gift of prophecy.

So let’s go through these three scriptures. The other two I haven’t got the reference for, but let’s go through these three scriptures and have a look at them in a little bit more detail. “Pursue love and desire spiritual gifts but especially that you may prophesy.” So, Paul says to pursue love. Now, the prophetic is a way of life for some people. The ability to prophesy with the three gifts of the Holy Spirit; prophecy, word of wisdom and word of knowledge really have a shock and awe factor to it. If you can accurately walk up to a stranger and tell them all about their life and their future, you command respect especially when you start going forth it words of knowledge all about them, information that you couldn’t possibly know. You get their attention. They know within thirty seconds of your talking that you’re getting information from somewhere and they’re having a profound encounter. So, Paul starts off that statement or that verse by saying pursue love.

I really have to tell you that over the last twenty years since I’ve been operating in this spirit of prophecy, love is the most important thing. You’ve got to pursue Jesus and you’ve got to pursue love because it’s out of love that you get all the ability and the unction and the motivation to prophesy. Many people will say that a prophecy is like garbage and most prophets give these really bland and generic words that could be for anyone and they don’t really respect the gift of prophecy. They think it’s for crazy lunatics and fringe people and not for the educated and not for the wise among us.

And when they’re talking about bland prophecies, they’re talking a person who has prophesied things over them like you’ve had a very uncomfortable life and you haven’t always fitted in which is true of everyone. And God knows your dreams and He’s going to step forth over the coming years and see your dreams are fulfilled. You can actually get six or eight verses from the Bible and string them all together and make a very generic positive sounding message. But if that prophecy lacks the key element of words of knowledge, supernatural information about the person, it doesn’t ring authentic.

It doesn’t ring a bell with the person because there was nothing in it that proved to them that it was really divine. But if you start out like I started out with a guy tonight at Burger King, things can be quite different. As I left the Lord said speak to him and highlighted the man. I normally say to a total stranger, “Excuse me, I have a gift, and from time to time that gift lets me get a message for a person. Today I’ve got a message for you.” I said that little introduction and I went in to say, “You’re a really kind hearted person. You’ve got a lot of kindness and you’ve got a lot of compassion and you really treat people well. You’re a really good listener and you’re a really good encourager and you’ve got no judgement in you. You treat everyone the same. And you treat people with dignity and respect and I want you to know that God really admires that in you. He really admires you for being the kind and compassionate person you are.

The man said, “That’s a really lovely thing to say about me.”

 I replied, “But its true isn’t it?”

 And he said, “Yeah that is true but thank you so much for that.”  

I said “God bless you. Have a good day.” So all of that prophecy was words of knowledge. And the person knows that this total stranger seems to know all about them.

So the only reason why you’ll get generic prophecies, bland prophecies is because the person prophesying lacks love and the courage to step out and give words of knowledge. They want to be recognized as a prophetic person. They want to have the status of being able to walk up to people and rock people’s world with prophecy. They want to be seen as a superstar moving in gifts of prophecy. But they haven’t got the audacity or the courage to say something that could be wrong on the spot.

What if  I came up to a person and said that they were really humble now but they were not always humble and that the Lord had to put them through a few years of testing and refining  so that now they can be used.

If I share that with a person a prophecy full of word of knowledge, they know straight away that it’s right. But if I shared that with a person and they hadn’t been through that two or three year testing and they weren’t prideful and in fact, they didn’t consider themselves humble, they’d know straight away that I was wrong. And they’d say, can you leave me alone? That’s total garbage that you’re talking about. So, it’s very important to know that the prophet starts with true love because it’s only love for your fellow man that lets you take the risk of getting something wrong.

God is quite able to speak to people and quite able to give a prophet or a prophetic person words of knowledge. But if the prophetic person lacks love, they won’t step out and they won’t say words of knowledge. And they’ll end up just going around being part of the prophetic team, giving bland and generic prophecies. You could stand up in any church that allows prophetic words in the service, in the worship time and you could string together five or six scriptures and no one could say to you that your prophecy wasn’t spiritually and Biblically based. But if the Spirit of the Lord hadn’t moved on you and hadn’t given you the unction to share those scriptures, that’s not a prophecy.

That’s just you pretending to be spiritual. And there are many people that step up and say eloquent things in churches where the Holy Spirit hasn’t inspired them to do it. It’s been them wanting to be someone special and someone spiritual. So, that’s why it says the prophets are subject to the prophets. Let everyone speak one after another and let the prophet’s judge. It’s a prophet who knows the voice of the Lord. I know, I know when someone gets up and shares scripture after scripture in a so called prophetic word, I know when the Holy Spirit inspired it and I know when the person’s own flesh got them out of the seat and had them boasting and trying to bare gifts.

So, bland prophecies without words of knowledge in them come from people who are scared and people that just don’t the love the person they’re affecting. Words of knowledge get the attention of the person you’re speaking to. I normally launch into two or three words of knowledge about a person’s character straight off the bat to get their attention. Then I move into prophecy and words of wisdom once I’ve got their attention and their solidly convinced that something supernatural is happening to them. And then they pay attention to me saying that God wants you to be a teacher and He wants you to be study more and get more information into you. Spend more time in the Word of God because God wants you to teach people in the future. When I give him a directional word like that, the word of wisdom, he’s more inclined to do that because for the first five minutes I have just rocked his world telling him all about himself and I was a total stranger to him. So he’s more inclined to obey the direction of the Lord. So, pursue love. Without love, you won’t take a risk. So it says pursue love, desire spiritual gifts but especially prophecy. So, the Pentecostal Churches in some respects are very immature.

People boast and think someone is lesser of a Christian when they don’t have the tongue’s gift. I’ve got the gift of tongues and I can only speak one sentence in tongues. The gift of tongues is never developed in my life so I’m embarrassed to pray in tongues in front of someone because I’m just saying the same gibberish sentence over and over again. I find power just singing a chorus in a worship song over and over, I get more anointed and more refreshed  just singing the chorus than saying the same one tongues line, but the average Pentecostal thinks that’s they’re supernatural because they speak in tongues. And they’ve got the gift of tongues because they got baptised in the Holy Spirit and it’s the evidence that they’re baptised in the Holy Spirit if they speak in tongues.

Many people, who have tongues, don’t speak in tongues all the time. Many don’t pray in tongues for half an hour. They don’t have a discipline for praying for other people and praying in the Spirit for other people and praying over their life and requesting things for the Holy Spirit and praying these perfect prayers. They have the gift of tongues but they don’t use it like they should.  If you have the gift of tongues you should be able to prophesy. If you have the gift of Jesus’ blood shed for you, you have access to God. Your spirit has been born again and you now got access and ability for the Holy Spirit and Jesus and the Father to speak directly to your spirit. If you can hear Jesus speak to you, you can prophesy.

All you’ve got to do is repeat what He says. Jesus might say, “Tell John that his boss isn’t always going to be there but he’s got to persevere in that job because he’s got to learn what it’s like to be a boss that’s under pressure and he’s got to learn not to act like that boss. So tell him to hold on, his boss isn’t going to be there forever but persevere and learn how to be a better man.”

 If you shared this with John, it would really bless him. And you have to consider that having the ability to hear Jesus say that and then go up and tell John that, you’ve solved his dilemma because he was in the paper looking for other jobs, his marriage is on the rocks a little bit because he’s under stress all the time, and he’s taking it out on his wife. That simple message that Jesus told you to tell John could have massive ramifications on John’s life. So, you don’t have to be Spirit filled to move in the gift of prophecy.

 I was moving in the gift of prophecy and prophesying over people for years before I was baptised in the Holy Spirit. So that’s a fallacy that the gifts of the Holy Spirit can only be in operation when someone’s baptised in the Holy Spirit. People who are not baptised in the Holy Spirit who pray a prayer of faith over someone can actually heal a person. They don’t have to have the gift of healing. Their faith and a prayer and heal a person.

You can certainly repeat what Jesus told you to tell to a person and prophesy. I was prophesying for many years before I knew that I had a gift of prophecy. I grew up as a Baptist and in Baptist Church they don’t believe in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the baptism of the Holy Spirit so I’d never been told about what prophecy is. Jesus used to give me messages to say to people in my taxi. I drove a taxi, and Jesus used to say things like “tell this guy to forgive his mom. His mom was hard on him and didn’t bail him out when he was in jail but she wanted him to learn a lesson and tell him that mom just didn’t understand. It was a lesson in there. People were bashing you up and you really wish your mom could have taught the lesson outside of jail and cut your allowance or something rather than allowing people to beat you up in prison. Forgive your mom.”

I’ve been driving a taxi and talking to this young twenty-two year old who’s rough around the edges who’s just come out of a pub and Jesus will say to me, tell him this. And the next thing I know is he’s crying. I didn’t lead him to the Lord. I didn’t say a sinner’s prayer. But I touched him where he needed to be touched. And he found the grace to go home and forgive his mom that she just didn’t know better. A lot of people are making mistakes in this world because they simply don’t know better. They’re doing the best that they can. And mom thought not bailing him out and leaving him in prison for a month until he’s court hearing and was arraigned was going to teach him a lesson and discipline him but he actually got beat up in prison and he got really hurt.

He felt really betrayed by his mother that she would leave him in prison.  So that really touched the guy. So that’s just an example of Jesus talking to you and then you passing that on. So, when Paul says pursue love, desire the spiritual gifts, he’s saying, don’t stop at tongues, but learn to prophesy. In the whole of 1 Corinthians Chapter 14, Paul is talking about how much better prophecy is than the gift of tongues. If you read the whole of Chapter 14, he’s just saying that the gift of prophecy just rocks all over tongues. He’s got an argument and if we had an hour and a half I’d go through the scriptures one by one and you probably would get the message.

So you are to desire the gift of prophecy. If you desire the gift of prophecy, God will grant it to you and God will let you move in it. And desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy. So he starts the chapter on comparing tongues and prophecy by saying especially to desire prophecy. Desire spiritual gifts but especially prophecy; so everyone can prophesy – the second thing is Paul said, is that prophecy is the best gift and I haven’t got the reference for that but I know he said it. That means that signs and wonders and healing, miracles, the gift of miracles, the gift of healings, they’re not as good as prophecy. That’s what Paul’s saying. He’s saying prophecy is the best gift. If he’s saying desire to spiritual gifts but especially prophecy, why is he saying that?

Because through prophecy we learned in the first video or the first chapter of the book if you’re going to be reading the book now, through prophecy you get to know how God feels about you. You get to know all of God’s emotions towards you. You get to know who you really are. You get to know who you were created to be and that you’re special and you’re dynamic and you’re unique and you’ve got all these talents and abilities in you and prophecy just revolutionizes your life.

After a lot of prophecy and a lot of edification and building up and encouragement by God through the mouths of other people, you can go out and move in the gifts of healing really powerfully. But you wouldn’t have got there in many cases if you hadn’t had a lot of prophecies saying that you’re going to be a powerful healer. So prophecy is amazing. Prophecy is the best gift.

I said we’re going to cover the three scriptures, Paul says to covet the gift of prophecy. Now in the Old Testament it says in the Ten Commandments you’re not to covet your neighbor’s wife, you’re not to covet your neighbor’s oxen; you’re not to covet your neighbor’s possessions.  

You’re not to covet your neighbor’s donkey, in today’s terms that means don’t covet what your neighbor has, don’t covet his car, his sense of transportation. Don’t see a car that you really like that your neighbor has got or someone has got, a friend of yours has got and don’t get jealous and want his car or want a car like that. But it’s so important not to be jealous and covet that it’s one of the Ten Commandments but Paul says to covet the gift of prophecy, to go after it, to want it, to desire it with all that you have.

I must imagine that Paul prophesied a lot and built a lot of people up just like me.  I’ve done thousands of prophesies to strangers, I’m sure Paul was always using his prophetic gift in conversations with people to open them up and prophecy really opens people up and gets conversation going. So, we’re going to get to it before we’re finished, Being Prophetic, What is That? Well, if you move in the gifts of prophecy then you’re prophetic. That’s what it is. If you’re able to move in the gift of word of knowledge, word of wisdom, and prophecy. If you pray a prayer and you have the gifts of prophecy imparted to you, then you’re prophetic.

Now, many people have got the gifts of prophecy but aren’t prophets and we’re going to deal with that in the next chapter or the next video. But if you can move powerfully in the gifts of prophecy, then you’re prophetic. Now, Moses wished that all men were prophets it says in the Bible. Moses wished that all men were prophetic. Moses was a prophet. God didn’t talk to everyone in the Old Testament. Only kings, priests, and prophets could hear from God on a regular basis and so Moses was wishing that everyone could hear from God. Well now we’ve got the Holy Spirit that comes into us and makes us into a new creation and opens up our spirits to have the frequency tuned to God.

Now we’ve all got the capacity and the ability to hear from God and when you’ve got the ability to and capacity to hear from God, then you can pass on His messages to other people. So Moses back in his day was looking forward to the modern day when everyone who is a Christian can hear from God.

In the future I’ll be teaching whole congregations how to prophesy and taking them out into the streets to prophesy to strangers. Then we’ll come back from the streets and debrief and I will be equipping them and building them up and getting them better and better though training. I will be teaching all of the people in the church to be a prophetic and mentoring the people who are to be powerful prophets. And I’ll be just going from church to church equipping people and putting people through courses to develop in their spiritual gifts.

So, prophecy is amazing. And to be able to move in prophecy effectively you’re a prophetic person. So that essentially covers what this chapter was meant to be about.

If you want the gift of prophecy and you’re watching this video, a prophet, someone who’s a prophet can pray a prayer for you and impart the gift. Paul said; don’t neglect the gift Timothy that was imparted upon you by the laying on of hands. And you know, just like Jesus healed the Centurion servant, you know, by saying your boy is well, He healed through the ether. He healed just from the spoken word. The commander said  “I tell my men to go and I say go here and they go here. Just say the word.” and Jesus said no one had more faith than this guy.

This guy had more faith than the Jews. And so Jesus healed through the ether so I can just raise my hand and just pray for you and the spirit of prophecy, the gift of prophecy shall come upon your life. So if you want to move in the gifts of prophecy, if you’re watching this video or reading this book and you want to move in the gifts of prophecy, put out your hands that you’re going to receive and pray this prayer after me and then under the bottom of this video in the description tag I’ll have my email address and you can write to my email address and prophesy over me to test your gifts. So pray this prayer and then I’ll teach you how to get into the anointing to prophesy and then you can write to me and prophesy over me.

Then I’ll give you feedback and tell you how well you went and confirm with you that you truly have got the gift of prophecy. So put your hands up and pray this prayer.

Dear father, I recognize that Paul said that I’m to covet to the gift of prophecy. I recognize that Paul said that I’m to pursue love, desire the spiritual gifts, but especially that I prophesy. I’ve always want to prophesy and so dear Father, I pray that you would give me the gift of word of knowledge, the gift of word of wisdom, and the gift of prophecy.

And I accept that every good gift comes down from you and that you only give perfect gifts to your children. So what father, if his son asks for a stone or asks for some bread, would the father give him a stone? Or what father would give a bad gift to the child. I know you’re a good Father and you only give good gifts and so I thank you for the gift of prophecy, gift of word of knowledge, and gift of word of wisdom, and I’ll start to practice my gift and prophesy over everyone you’ll lead me to from this day on in Jesus name, I thank you. Amen.

 So you can go in and put some worship music on and start to worship the Lord. When you feel the presence of God come upon you, like it does at church on a Sunday when you feel the joy and the peace of the Lord and the presence of the Lord come upon you, open your email.

Type in my email address and simply type this out to me, Dear Matthew; I’ve got a prophetic word for you. Matthew, the Lord wants you to know and then say the sentence that comes to your mind after you say the Lord wants you to know. As soon as you type, “The Lord wants you to know”, a sentence will appear in your mind. Just type that sentence and then as you’re finishing that sentence, the next sentence will appear in your mind. Type that sentence and as you finish a next sentence will appear in your mind, type that sentence and around about the third or fourth sentence, you may get a thought in your mind that says I’m just making this up. This is just me.

Well that thought in your mind isn’t you’re thought, that’s Satan trying to stop you from prophesying. And just know that I’m a prophet and I know when God’s speaking and even if you’re just saying God really admires you and God really loves you and respects you, and if it sounds really simple and generic, don’t stop typing until you’ve got a couple of paragraphs of sentences because I’m the judge of whether God’s speaking and I’ve never got a prophecy that Jesus said I love you and I’m proud of you that I didn’t cry. They’re just simple words but they mean so much when the Spirit of God is on them. So, type those two paragraphs and send it to me. And title them Personal Prophecy Practice so the title of your email is Personal Prophecy Practice and type that email and send it to me.

And you’ll find that my email address in the description tag underneath this video or at the end of the chapter in the book. If you’ve watched this video and you’ve got the gift of prophecy, you can prophesy over me too by saying in the beginning of the email, I already have the gift of prophecy but I want to practice and prophesy over you and I’ll give you detailed feedback on your prophecy too. So we’ve covered everything now. And look forward to the next chapter or the next video which is “What is a Prophetic Person and a Prophet?” So, God bless you and keep you and I look forward from hearing from you.

My email for your practice is survivors.sanctuary@gmail.com