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.