The Prophetic

Lesson 1

The first thing is to get you receiving from Heaven. That means turning on your receiver set. You’ve got one; it’s called your spirit. You already know this, but there’s more…

You have to locate it for sure, not just have a fuzzy feeling about it or only know the doctrine of it. You received the Lord’s Spirit and that means you have the gift of discerning of spirits. Start by discerning your own.

How can you get centered in your spirit and know for absolutely sure that you’re there? We believe nothing teaches better than actual experience, so we’ll start you off and only later explain the dynamics of what’s going on as you do this, and why, ( i.e., first turn on the Black&Decker and get a feel of it, then look through the manual for all its intricacies ).

Recall a happy experience, a time when you were full of joy. It doesn’t have to be a holy experience, an ordinary one will do, such as the time your team won a game or when you first got to eat all the chocolate you wanted, or when you experienced a big relief. Let the happiness of it linger for a minute. What you’re feeling is like a spark of joy in your heart. There’s a warmth there you can feel.

You just tuned into your spirit. The gift of discernment is doing its stuff for you. ( Most of the power gifts operate this instantly and effortlessly, by the way. Straining, fasting, pleading and yelling for them to kick in, aren’t necessarily needed. )

You were happy about something ordinary, now switch to how happy you are about Jesus. Think of Him, see Him in your mind’s eye for a minute. Feel for that. Notice how much feeling was readily there about Him, without having to pray or praise or read or concentrate first, to work some up ( good as all those things are )? He communicates on the ‘joy bandwidth,’ and is always on line if you will but ‘pick up.’ When you get online, with some joy, you’re dialling up the connection.

All those other practices are good, but speaking/hearing relationships don’t necessarily have to go through all that. Where connection is eternal, connection is always there. He never leaves you or forsakes you and is within, always on hold.

Go further. Do you like Him?

How much?

The glow in your heart should be growing. This means you’re closing in on His frequency and the signal is getting stronger.

Notice that Heaven seems to be zeroing in on you as well. You’re on its frequency and its guidance system is locked on, radioing you in. By this we mean that you’re gaining an excitement or at least a stirring ( for some who find it hard to receive, this shows up as agitation ) about getting in on Heavenly things. Other things around you aren’t registering as much. As the scripture says, “Draw near to God and He will draw near to you.” You are tuning each other in, answering to the call that both of you have got out there.

Again, some folks may have a bit of battling at this point, sort of like attention deficit, wherein they pop in and out of applying themselves to this process. Don’t worry about it. The real truth is that your spirit stays steadily fixed on Jesus all the time - it’s as if your spirit and His exist on the same spiritual bandwidth - you’re only adjusting your soulish dial and some folks have to fiddle around to get it spot on.

Whether you feel very locked on to receive well or not, now comes the little gold key: ASK.

At the bare minimum you’ve located the glow in your heart, now check out how it grows warmer or grows cooler, dimmer, as you check out answers you get to questions you put to the Lord. What questions?

Keep it dead simple. Yes or No, as an answer to whatever you want to know. Train yourself to frame all your questions so that He can give a clear Yes or No; even the most complicated situation can be broken down into parts that can be answered this way. ( Most people wait for desperate circumstances before trying to get a big answer from the Lord, and by then they want to dump it all on Him for Him to answer the whole thing in a big way with a big message or to dole out a lot of specifics. If they’re well into receiving from Him they may even discern a full, clear download, but ordinarily sure answers are most easily perceived when the answer is only a one word yes or no. )

You probably won’t be able to keep to this very well at first, but it will be the key to communicating directly with Him, and you’ll get better at it the more you do it. Remember, your heart glow, not your mental analysis, is your indicator. It’ll register His answers all by itself, instantly.

Here are some stock questions to help you get started. It’s done as a list so you can skim down them, allowing yourself only a split second for an instant reaction – no pondering. What does your heart tell you, Yes or No, to all these questions about Jesus:

He liked Mary’s cooking.

He played fair.

He understands children.

He disliked animals.

He knows what you’re doing now.

He loves His Father.

He can do maths.

He hated His cousins.

He isn’t worried.

He knows about ice cream.

He always hid from visitors.

He saw your furry head while you slept last night.

If you felt the instant Yes or the No to each of these things, your heart ( spirit ) was talking to you and was confirming truths about the Lord for you. Every good fact likely gave a little boost of joy and warmth in your heart. It is virtually impossible for your spirit not to be edified, built up, as you center it on things of the Lord, and by putting Yes and No questions to yourself about Him, He will answer directly into your spirit with a confirming surge of His joy and love. It’s how it works.

God has come for the heart. It is his instrument of connection to you, the meeting place between Heaven and earth. “Ask much that your joy might be made complete.”

With regard to that scripture, for ‘complete,’ read it as the Hebrew meaning of Shalom – met up, perfectly joined together, settled once and for all, the circuit completed. By your asking much and often in this way, you will be taking up your place to complete the communication loop of the Lord. You will begin to get a lot of answering that will bring a lot of joy. The loop is in place, you have only to go there to complete the circuit, by ‘picking up the phone.’

It couldn’t get much simpler than that.

…………………………….

A First Exercise:

You might want to make your own start right here, and frame a question about Him – his nature, His character, what’s on His mind for you, whatever you want to know from Him, in terms that can be answered by just Yes or No. Be easy on yourself, probably a simple question that isn’t too crucial for you, is best.

Try putting to yourself the answer as a Yes or as a No and see how comfortably it stays in your heart. Give the warmth in your heart a moment to grow. Imagine accepting one answer and then imagine accepting the other. If you do this a few times, one answer will become more comfortable and solid than the other one, and the alternative will seem to weaken and fade out. Then try forcing yourself to accept the one you now feel isn’t right; your spirit rebels against doing so, within you. This way you will arrive at a definite Yes or a definite No. Also, a nervous niggle of joy usually begins to bloom as you accept the right one and come to agree with it. This is more than would happen with just weighing up choices for yourself and settling on one; there is a very real input from outside yourself, of the joy of Heaven. Peace about your decision follows, confidence, surety. It sounds too simple, seems so obvious, but you won’t know the difference from ordinary pondering, until you try it. The Spirit does lead, in this way, with Deep calling unto deep.

You can also read the scriptures this way, pausing to put them to yourself as true or not ( that way you’ll get a big solid confirmation for sure since they’re all true! ), and you can literally feel your heart enlarge with the answer. By doing this you start to get familiar with discerning your spirit and also the Spirit of the Lord that is always there in His word. It is a dynamic that is sure to increase your faith in the presence of the living Lord, and His active power, which are met with in the Bible, as you do so.

The prophetic should grow your spirit, as all the gifts should. It is the way of the Kingdom to expand from small beginnings, for there to be increase within people because of its presence at work, and it categorically wants you making good on all you’ve been given. This way, you are already magnifying the Lord, within yourself, so far as the prophetic is concerned.

And, “To him who has will more be given.” Do these things and you will have started on your path of receiving fresh words from the Lord. Enjoy.

Question and Answer - Your chance to ask about things

Q&A for the Prophetic Session One

Q: Not to be rude but you seem very glib. I think seeking the Lord and fasting are appropriate when trying to hear from the Lord and aren’t to be put aside. If hearing from the Lord was this easy, everybody could do it.

A. Sorry if this seemed glib, but its done as a bit of a breaker – meant to be presented so as to cut across mental and emotional blockages to spiritually hearing, and to doing it easily and fast. People often have considerable struggle with doing this very basic thing. In no way was our approach supposed to be irreverent.

We say ‘ basic thing’ because we’re talking personal relationship here. Most people agree that being talked to is one of the bottom lines for someone relating with us. It is hard to think anyone feels Jesus doesn’t want to do it. He talked all the time to the disciples and told them they were His friends, and not only were they friends but also those people were who would follow later on. Friends talk. Having died for us, it is hard to imagine Him not wanting to talk to us.

At Lazarus’ tomb He reassured the Father that although He’d spoken to Him so loudly in front of everyone, He knew that His Father always heard Him, i.e., He and the Father seemed to have an ongoing dialogue at conversational level. Some of His final instructions were that henceforth we would be granted to talk to the Father ourselves, and also that whatever He, Jesus, had been doing we’d be enabled to do also.

And then there’s the fact this approach works. What can we say? Apart from getting an answer back, you doing all the talking with no response can be like talking to the ceiling – hardly a reward for your faith. And He definitely rewards faith. Get confirmations over what you think you’re hearing, run it past spiritually mature people, make sure what you get tallies with scripture.

And note something else. Image often determines action, meaning that if you have no concept of quick and ready hearing from Jesus you can’t easily move out on doing it. We humans tend to need to be able to perceive of the thing we’re about to do, before we do it. These lessons help you do that.

Q. What if it isn’t real? I could be talking to myself and making it all up.

A. You know that scripture everybody quotes - “You will know them by their fruits”? A lot of times people apply this to checking out a new person for trustworthiness, or to tell whether a project was of God or not. That’s probably sound, but it actually was specifically meant as the test of prophecy.

God usually works in multiples; when He’s getting your attention He invariably displays His message to you in a number of ways. You say, have a scripture that He’s highlighted to you, then something on the TV mirrors it, then it crops up all by itself as the topic during lunch. In these ways your personal word gets proved true. That’s one definition of ‘fruit.’ Take a word to heart that you feel He’s told you, and He sends in the proof via proliferating it in your life. Where you started off with only an impression, He adds more. He’ll do that for prophetic words you get.

Then there’s the fact it does you good. You hear something from Him and it sorts you out, builds you up, makes you nicer, brings you further along in your trusting in Him. It produces good fruit in your life.

Also, if what He’s said foretells anything, it comes true. That word you got produces results like an apple tree produces apples.

Probably weightier than all that is someone else’s take on this question; loosely quoted, ‘Believe more in God’s ability to protect you than the devil’s ability to harm you.’ You’re a royal child of the King, you hearing correctly from Him is His keen concern. Take it is as a confirmation of how important it is, and possible, and wanted for you by your Father, that the devil would even try to counterfeit it in the first place. As someone else said, nobody fakes small change, only the big notes.

Q. Is this joy thing really going to turn into accurate hearing? How? And when?

A. Come and see!

Q.How do we know we’re supposed to prophesy? Not everyone is called to.

A. Paul tells us to earnestly desire the higher gifts, “especially prophecy.” Even if you thought that was only meant for the people of his day, it was an exhorting to all the ones listening to him at the time, who were average Joes, and not to an elite. That seems to be the way of it: in the time of Moses, seemingly just about everybody in the camp – which would have numbered around a million - could do it. And even corrupt Abel heard God talk to him directly and answered Him back as if it was the norm, and that’s as primordial and unrestricted a permission as it gets. Prophecy isn’t rare or exalted, a marker of excellence, something only for the few.

In fact, if you’re being inspired by the word of God as you read it, it’s lighting you up in your ‘Knower,’ literally your spirit. Someone without the Spirit of God, looking at the same scriptures, doesn’t see as much in them, i.e., the Holy Spirit is communicating with you and you’re ‘getting it.’ When you go to let someone in on the great inspiration you’ve just had, that’s elementary prophecy. You’re letting them in on what you just got sent from Heaven.

Isabel and Ivan Alum, who have an internationally recognized prophetic ministry, define the prophetic as witnessing and attesting about God – with your whole life, so that it makes for a testimony about Him. Everything you do is literally telling about Him to others. Since being given this viewpoint by the Lord and putting it into practice, it opened them up to love everyone even more than before and their ministry took a quantum leap in power and effectiveness. ( Ivan, by the way, started out with no gifting for prophecy and then intentionally developed it. His accuracy is in depth, and astounding. Nice folks. Blessing multitudes. )

Then there’s always the fact anyone can do it at all. If a radio can receive, it’s sort of proof it was meant to. Nobody can prophecy without having the basic equipment and spiritual mechanisms to do so. Which God designed, and built in to the standard human model.

But you’re right about not everyone being called to do it, as per “Do all prophesy?” That passage refers to function amongst the body of Christ, pointing out that the different parts do different jobs. Put it this way, I can take down dictation but I never just break out into it in someone’s office, and even if the whole office building is full of people who can do it, only the ones with that job will be doing it any at any one time. But on my own I’m perfectly able to suit myself and type out something I’m hearing. Probably everyone in the office building could do likewise, some better at it than others. It isn’t taboo. And that’s the way it is with prophesying – the majority can do it, but only a few do it in meetings as part of the job of meeting together. No group I know of all start doing everything at the same time all over the place anyway – congregations don’t all stand in their pews pouring out coffee or simultaneously arranging flowers or delivering sermons to one another.

I hope this helps. Something to think about.

Below is another ‘get you started’ video of the late John Wimber, discussing the gifts of the Spirit. Be blessed.