he preparation that the prophet goes through is one of the most difficult that any of the ministry offices has to face, bar the apostle. It is an extremely arduous one.

• But why does the prophet have to go through this kind of preparation? Why is it necessary?

• When does it begin? When does it all start to happen for a prophet? When does God start to prepare him or her for the work that He has called them to do?

• And then, how long does it take? Do we go and study for three years, write a few exams, get a qualification and say, "I am now qualified to be a prophet?" How long does it take to prepare for the prophetic ministry?

• And finally, what is involved in the actual training of a prophet? How does God train them? How does He prepare them and how does He equip them?

These are many of the questions that people ask today concerning the prophetic ministry. I am going to answer some of them here, but I am only going to deal specifically with the prophetic preparation. We are going to look later at the training of the prophet, but for now I want to look purely at the preparation of a prophet and what God does to prepare a person and his life for the ministry and the office of the prophet.

We are going to try to understand why it is that you, who have been called to be prophets, have been through some of the things that you have been through. We are going to try to understand some answers to questions like why, and how, and when, and how long. We will try and give some kind of explanation so that we can begin to understand what it is that God is doing in our lives and how He is bringing us to a place where He can use us.

Why the Preparation?

Why does God have to put the prophet through such a difficult time of preparation? Why is it necessary? It is necessary because the prophet is God's spokesman. He is the person who is to speak forth God's word into the earth. Not only to the church, not only to individuals, but to speak and to send forth God's very word into the earth. For God says in the Old Testament that He does nothing except He reveal His secrets to His servants the prophets.

And if God is going to entrust somebody with His secrets and with knowing some of what He is planning to do; if He is going to entrust a human being with the responsibility and the privilege of being a partner with Him in accomplishing what He is going to do in the earth, then that person is going to have to come to a place of being fit for the master’s use. Because a word spoken out of season, spoken incorrectly or spoken badly and in the wrong direction, could change God's purposes in the earth in the entire destiny of lives in the Body of Christ.

It is kind of like those movies that you see about time travel where people travel back in time, and they change an event from the past. And that one little change in the event makes the whole future change. Then when they travel back into the future again, it looks different to what it was before. Why? Because a change was made back there. It is so absolutely vital that what God does in the earth is done with split-second timing, that it is done exactly correctly. Because God moves in situations and in the lives of people in accordance with the plan that He has.

The Scripture says that when Jesus was born, He came in the fullness of time. It says, "God sent forth His son, born of a woman, born under the law." Jesus came at exactly the right time and the right place. God works to a split-second timetable. He has set a plan in motion, in fact many plans in motion. And the operation and the function and setting in motion of those plans rests in the hands and in the mouths of His spokesmen in the earth, the prophets. It is an absolutely vital ministry, and for a person to operate in such a vital ministry they are going to have to come to a place where they are trustworthy. God must be able to trust them with His words, so that they can speak them faithfully into the earth.

To Remove the Taint of the flesh

So God has to deal with the areas of the flesh and the things that stand in the way of each one of us becoming a pure vessel that He can simply flow through, that will obey Him, and will simply say, "Yes, Lord. Where do I start, Lord?" He must walk in tune with Him and in step with Him, in total harmony with Him, so that he can hear His voice, sense a change in the Spirit, and so be sensitive to whatever God is doing in the earth. Such a person is the prophet. And in order to come to that place there are things in the natural that are going to have to get dealt with in the person's life or they will stand in the way of God's purpose, and will hinder Him from accomplishing what He wants to do in the earth.

Fleshly strength and independence

So the prophet has to come to the place where he or she cannot rely on their natural abilities. Fleshly strength and independence have to be removed, have to be dealt with, and have to be brought under control. All the natural intellectual abilities that a person has, have to be dealt with and have to be brought to a place where they do not stand in the way of God's purpose.

We have a tendency to look at a person who is naturally gifted. We look at a person who is brilliant, who has great intelligence and natural capabilities, who can absorb knowledge in a tremendous way and we say, "Wow, that person would sure be a good catch for the Lord if we could get him saved. Man, what God could do with a man or woman like that!"

You know what God is going to do with a man or woman like that? He is going to deal with their strength and bring it under control. He is going to come against that strength and He is going to break it. That is what God is going to do with such a person.

No reliance on natural abilities

Natural intellect

The apostle Paul said, "You see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise. Not many great people are chosen by the Lord, but God has ordained to choose the weak and the foolish, and the despised and the base things of this world in order to confound the wise." God does not need your intellect. He does not need your wisdom. Nor does He need your great brain capacity. He can do without it. And if you have got such a great brain capacity, that is the first thing God is going to have to bring to the cross, to bring it under subjection.

Natural personality skills

A person may have great natural personality skills. They can just walk into a crowd and get on with anybody. They can make friends very easily. They can meet somebody over the phone and start a friendship. They can persuade people. They have people coming to them all the time because they are so approachable.

"Oh, what a person, what a personality, what charisma this man has! Oh man, God could use a person like that."

No He cannot. He cannot use a person like that, because a person like that has so much natural ability that he does not need God's ability. God is going to have to bring that natural ability into subjection to His divine will and purpose. It is going to have to be brought to the cross.

Natural strength of will

We see people that are strong-willed and great leaders. They take the bull by the horns. A problem arises and they just rise up, grab it and take charge. "Come on, boys, follow me."

"Wow, what strength of character. What a strong man. He has such great leadership capability. Oh, what a catch for the Lord! What a quality that God could really use."

No, God does not need that. He does not need that natural ability because there are going to be times when God is going to want that person to show a very different kind of character. He is sometimes going to require him to be meek and submissive, and his natural character is going to fight against the purpose of God in his lives. That character trait is going to have to come to the cross. It is going to have to be brought under subjection and under control before the Lord can do anything with it.

No reliance on natural strengths

The prophet cannot rely on his or her natural physical strengths. Some people are born with good looks. I do not know who they are because most people do not like their looks. But occasionally you get somebody born with good looks. They have got the physical appearance that makes people look up to them and revere them. Movie stars are great on this one. Everybody oohs and aahs over the physical characteristics of a person and they begin to rely on those characteristics. Who is it that becomes famous in the singing and entertainment world? The ugly guy with a good voice? Yes, if you are fortunate enough to only hear his voice. But if he is going to appear in public, going to be seen in the public eye, or going to appear on television, there are physical qualities that the world looks to.

Good looks

Sometimes people have an idea of what the prophet of God should look like. He should be a good-looking guy that everybody admires. He has to have that look about him. After all, such a person is going to be God's spokesman. If he is going to represent the Lord surely he must be presentable? I guess most of the Old Testament prophets failed that one didn’t they?

Family heritage

How about family heritage? After all if you come from the slums, from the ghettos, how can God use a person like that? How is a person like that going to stand out and speak for God? Who is going to listen to him with that kind of family background?

"How can he stand up and preach to me with the kind of status where I come from? I am not going to listen to a person like that."

I feel sorry for people who have all of these natural qualities and God calls them to the prophetic ministry.

Popularity

What about popularity? After all if you are going to speak the Word of God surely you must be fairly popular with people? You have to accumulate a circle of friends. You have to get the crowds around you. People must respect you and think a lot of you, otherwise they are not going to accept the words that you speak are they?

Well, Jesus had a problem there. He obviously was not very good looking, He was not very popular, did not have a good family heritage, and came from the poorest home you could imagine. He did not cut it at all. Oh dear. He did not stand a chance did He?

However, today the date that we write down on our calendars is based on His birth. God does not need natural gifts. He does not need your physical strengths or your good looks. He does not need your popularity, social status and your family heritage. God needs none of these things. If anything, they are going to stand in the way of God's purpose for your life if you are going to become His spokesman in the earth.

Fleshly weakness and reticence

You say, "Well, I am fortunate. I do not have that problem. I am just a weak, useless little nobody. Nobody thinks much of me. I will just hide away. I do not even like being in public, do not like meeting people, and do not like being around people. I actually feel quite inferior in a way. I am quite shy. At least I do not have a problem with pride and popularity and all of those things. So God will not have to deal with that in me."

Insecurity

Well, I have some news for you. There is going to have to come a time when God is going to want you, his prophet, to stand up and to boldly proclaim His Word. And there are going to be times when God will require you, as His prophet, to go boldly into public and make a fool of yourself to speak His Word. And your insecurity, your inferiority, and your fear of people are going to stand in the way of God's purpose in your life as much as strength and pride and popularity.

Fear of man

So you see, you cannot escape! If you are insecure, if you are weak, if you are bound by the fear of man, God is going to have to deal with that. I know what I am talking about. I have been there. I did not grow up with all the benefits. I was one of those unlucky guys that got the raw end of the deal. I was the smallest in the class and came last in every race. Nobody wanted to be associated with me. I did not come from the right part of town, nor did I have the right family status. My parents did not have enough money to give to the school and things I was involved in to show how wealthy and well-to-do and what high social status they were. I did not cut it. I did not have it.

As a result I grew up with a fear of man, with insecurity and worrying about what people thought about me. I thought I was so humble. I thought I could just move into the work of the Lord and do what God had called me to do. I could see myself going into ministry and standing behind the pulpit and preaching, and everybody would look at me and say, "Wow, isn’t he wonderful? Man he can preach. He is so anointed!" That would make me feel a little bit better and I would not feel so insecure anymore.

I figured, "Lord, the way I have to do this is build up." But God did not train me that way. You know how God started dealing with my inferiority? He forced me to go into a job selling life assurance. Now there are different ways to sell life assurance. The primitive way of doing it is you go and ask people to buy by knocking on their doors.

Guess which method God chose for me to be trained with? I ended up with a life assurance company where their method was, you go out with a senior consultant, you park your car on the corner of the street, walk down the street and knock on every door. And you ask people to buy something they do not want. You have 99 out of 100 people saying, "No. No. No thanks. Get lost! I am watching TV. You are wasting my time!"

It is wonderful when you have a problem with inferiority and being rejected. It is wonderful to be exposed to that kind of thing. But God has to deal with it, and we are going to see shortly how He does it. He has to deal with your weakness. You may say that God has to break a strong-willed person. God has to break your weaknesses as well, because you have to be available to Him to speak when He says speak, to move when He says move, to stop when He says stop, to march and move exactly in step with Him. You have to do exactly what He tells you to do. And if your character trait is going to stand in the way of that, God is going to have to bring it to the cross and deal with it.

Need for acceptance

You must not need acceptance from people all the time. If you need affirmation all the time and need people to say nice things about you to build you up and lift you up all the time, then you are not qualified to be God's spokesman, and He is going to have to deal with that thing in your life.

Physical inferiority

Bad looks

You say, "Well at least I do not have all those good physical qualities. I do not have a problem. Hey, I do not have all the good luck. You see I am so ugly that I am afraid to stand up and speak what God tells me to speak because people are going to look at me and say, 'Oh man, how can God use somebody who is that ugly? I mean, a guy with a wart on his nose. How can he be a prophet?’ "

You see, it does not make any difference whether you have good or bad looks. If your physical qualities are standing in the way of you being free to be God's spokesman, then those are areas that are going to be a problem and are going to stand in the way. And God is going to have to deal with them.

Bad heritage

How about your family heritage? You say, "Well I do not have a great big heritage. I come from the poor end of town." Yes, but then you are afraid to go and speak to people who are on the rich side of town.

You say, "I come from a racial group that has been suppressed." Then you tend to have a problem relating to the social group that is suppressing you and you cannot be God's spokesman because your words and your attitudes are colored by the inferiority that you have picked up from your race. You are afraid to be bold because of your racial group. You are afraid to speak out. And if you are not afraid to speak out, you swing to the other end of the extreme and you become bitter and twisted about what has been done to you by another racial group. How then can you be God's spokesman to speak His word boldly, without it coming out colored by your prejudice?

Unpopular

There are so many things that stand in the way of us being used effectively by the Lord. If you are an unpopular person the chances are you have developed a persecution complex where you just expect people to pick on you all the time. You expect people to be horrible to you all the time. Where are you going to have the boldness to go forward in love, in faith, and in hope, to speak forth with boldness the prophetic word of God, when you are afraid of what people are going to say or do to you? These things are going to have to be removed from your life before you can be God's spokesman; before you can be His prophet.

When the Preparation?

When does the preparation begin? When does it all start? If God has called you to be a prophet, when does He start dealing with these things in your life? When does He start preparing you? Is it after you have felt the call of God? Is it from the time you got saved? Does it take years of being in ministry first? Do you have to perhaps qualify by studying and filling your head with knowledge? Do you have to know the Word better? When does God start to prepare you?

From the womb

The answer depends on the person. It depends on the call and on many factors. But, one thing I can tell you is it can start from the womb. Luke 1:15 speaks about John the Baptist, about the word that was spoken concerning him:

For he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and shall drink neither wine nor strong drink. And he shall be filled with the Holy Spirit, right from his mother's womb.

John was called to be a prophet from before he was born. Paul said, "God who separated me from my mother's womb, and ordained me and appointed me to be His servant." Paul was set apart from before he was born. There are many who have been called, and God in His foreknowledge knew you, and He knew your life. And although you may have been born and grown up in an unsaved situation and only come to find the Lord later in life, God in His foreknowledge knew you and called you. He appointed you and set the path for you to become His spokesman, His prophet.

So when does the preparation of the prophet begin? Probably from the time the sperm meets the egg. While you are still there in your mother's womb, already the prophetic preparation has begun. Then, during childhood already God can begin to mould and prepare the life of the child for the call to the prophetic ministry. And one of the first things that the prophetic child often experiences is rejection and loneliness. There is a lot of cruelty in this world. There are a lot of vicious people. There are a lot of people that inflict harm on others. Sometimes the cruelest of all of God's creatures are other children.

During Childhood

Rejection and loneliness

Oh, the pain that children can inflict on their peers and on one another. The pain of rejection that causes a child to feel left out, to be all alone, and not to be accepted by the others; to be considered 'different', and 'not part of the group'. When the child goes to school and gets involved in the school environment and in the play area and in interaction with others, there comes additional pressure. I daresay if God has called you to be a prophet and you look back on your life, you are going to see that way back there in your childhood already, things started to happen that brought you to a place where you could not rely on yourself. You could not be what you wanted to be. You were restricted and prevented from rising up in yourself.

Make believe world

In situations like that the child often begins to move into a make believe world to escape the pressures of life. He moves into a world of fantasy and day-dreaming. He starts visualizing a life that is better, happier and is free from stress. It is a place where he is accepted and loved. He is beautiful, intelligent and has what it takes to fit in, whatever that may be. And right there the child begins to build pictures in his mind. He begins to build fantasies. He starts to think about things that are not real, and begins to look at things symbolically and in pictures.

It is bad, but it is also good, because that is what the prophet is going to do one day. He is going to have to think pictorially. The prophet is going to have to think in symbols because God speaks in the Spirit in symbols and in pictures. The language of the Spirit is the language of pictures. And even back there as that child goes through that loneliness and rejection, and he begins to draw into himself, fantasize and build up pictures in the mind, right there already God is preparing such a one for the prophetic ministry.

Look at your life, prophet, and think back. Is it there? I guarantee it is there. Way back there you had times of loneliness, times of drawing into yourself and times of starting to become aware of God already. You began to wonder about God and think about spiritual things, and you began to build up things in your spirit and in your mind.

Childhood traumas

Then the childhood traumas come. And oh there are always childhood traumas and things that go wrong. They are things that seek to destroy, pressures, pains, so many bad experiences in life, but they all bring him to a greater awareness of the Lord. They cause a greater awareness of care for others, a greater awareness of needs that are all around about him.

They cause him to think, "Hey, when I grow up one day I would like to stop other people from going through what I did. I am going to learn from this experience. I am going to gain from it. I am going to begin to understand God's purpose in these things so that I can speak it forth. I want to speak forth God's Word into the earth to prevent things like this from happening."

It is all part of God's training right from childhood already, for the person who will one day rise up and become His spokesman and prophet in the earth.

During Adolescence

Then there is adolescence, that very painful period, where the child is moving out of childhood and into adulthood. He is no longer a child, and therefore not accepted by the children, but not yet an adult and not accepted by the adults either. He is still partly child, already partly adult, and yet part of neither. I would say it is probably the most traumatic period in the life of any person. It is a very, very difficult period, and a lot of stress and a lot of pressures begin to come, as well as misunderstandings in this period of life. He has an inability to fit in, insecurity, rejection, the need for acceptance, and he is becoming aware of himself to name just a few. There is such a mixture of things that begin to take place in the life of a person right there.

There already in the melting pot, in the crucible of affliction, God begins to prepare His prophet. God spoke to Jeremiah, and Jeremiah felt so insecure. He said, "But Lord, I am just a child. How can I go and speak Your Word? How can I go and do what You want me to do?" Jeremiah had no reliance on self whatsoever.

Think of Moses when God came to him in the burning bush in the backside of the desert where he said, "Lord, I cannot speak. How can you send me to go and be your spokesman?"

These are some of the things that God wants to accomplish to bring a person to that place where they are like clay, like putty in His hands, and can be molded and made into a vessel that is fit for the Master. But it costs. It is painful.

Let me tell you, if God has called you to be a prophet, you have known a life of pain. You have known a life of suffering. Your life has been one of difficulty, of lack, of conflict, and of so many things that have gone wrong. It is so that you may come to a place where you know that you cannot rely on yourself; where you know that your natural capabilities cannot be depended on in any way.

During Adulthood

Failure in relationships

Then even as you come into adulthood the preparation continues. You begin to realize that you cannot succeed even in relationships with others in your own strength. Very often those called to the prophetic ministry have gone through bad relationships. They have had bad marriages, they have known conflict and been divorced, and they have known all sorts of things that have gone wrong that they may not stand up one day and say, "Well, I cannot understand why you are having a problem in your marriage? We are doing fine!"

You are going to know all about it, let me tell you. You are going to know that there is nothing in yourself that you can boast of, so that you cannot say, "I have made a success!" The prophet cannot sing Frank Sinatra's song, "I Did it My Way". You will be out of tune. Sorry, it is not allowed. It is just as well. I never did like that song.

Failure in work, social and church

You are going to fail in the work situation too. You are going to have to learn that your natural capabilities do not count. You are going to fail in social status. You are going to find that you are not going to be in with the 'in' crowd. You are going to try, but it is not going to work.

You are going to fail in the church situation. You are not going to rise up and be the blue-eyed boy that everybody thinks is so wonderful, that gets elected to all the counsels, that gets a chance to preach all the time, and that everyone thinks is such a wonderful man or woman of God. You are not going to be there if God has called you to be a prophet. I am sorry, but you are not going to be there, because God is never going to permit you to come to a place of self-reliance. He is going to have to deal with every single area in your life where you can rely on yourself or your natural abilities and on your natural strengths.

Length of the Preparation

You say, "Well how long does this preparation take?" It varies. It could be between 10 and 30 years. It depends when God started. It depends how strong you are. It varies from person to person. But one thing I can tell you, is it does not happen overnight. It takes time. I will tell you what the problems are that are involved. You see, God sometimes has to deal in two different ways. If you face early rejection it may deal with the self and the strength in you, but it causes some people to swing to the opposite extent and they become insecure and weak.

Insecurity must be dealt with

The first part of your life may have been a time of being dealt with where your natural strengths have been brought to nothing. And after you have been through that you have to go through another training phase where your weaknesses now have to get broken. It is tough being a prophet let me tell you. It does not matter if you are strong, it does not matter if you are weak, you are going to have to learn to be what He wants you to be. And you are going to have to learn to come to the place where there is no reliance or restriction from the flesh.

Then follows pride

It is difficult, where a person is weak and insecure and wanting to be used by God. He rises up in the power of God as He gives him the strength and confidence. He becomes popular and gets lifted up in pride, and then God has to deal with him all over again to deal with the pride and bring him low again. Sometimes it goes like a pendulum, and you swing from one side to the other, but both ends of the pendulum are bad! You are going to have to learn to stabilize.

If you are one of those people that likes to swing from one end of the pendulum to the other, I have some news for you! You may swing to the one side and you think your preparation is over and you say, "That is wonderful. It is over, here I go!" I have news for you. There is another one starting there, because you are at the other end of the pendulum now, and God is going to deal with you in a completely different way on that end of the pendulum because it is the opposite of what you have been.

Both ends mean you are out of control. God cannot use you because your own natural abilities, desires and feelings are standing in the way of you being that spokesman to speak forth His pure word. You are going to have to be a pure vessel, a transparent glass bottle that everybody can see through. Everybody is going to have to be able to look right through you and see what is inside.

If you are used to covering up and not letting people see what is inside, there is going to come a bit of a grinding against that bottle. If you want to put a piece of label over the bottle so people cannot see inside, there is going to come a bit of scraping! The label is going to start getting scraped off because God wants people to see inside. He wants you to shine forth what is in, and not to cover it up and hide it. Oh, it is tough being a prophet let me tell you. God is going to deal with every area of your life.

How the Preparation?

I want to show now from the Word exactly the phases that He takes you through in your preparation. I am going to use 2 Corinthians 4. This is one of the best passages that I have found that actually describes this. This is a large subject, but I am going to cover it in detail, because if there is nothing else that you get in this whole series on the prophetic, it is this subject. It is vitally important.

2 Corinthians 4:5

For we do not preach ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord, and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

But we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellence of the power may be of God and not of us.

Okay here we go!

We are hard pressed on every side, yet not crushed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed - always carrying about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body. For we who live are always delivered to death for Jesus' sake, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal flesh. So then death is working in us, but life in you.

Verse 16 says:

Therefore we do not lose heart, even though our outward man is perishing, yet the inward man is being renewed day by day. For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory.

The Spirit is the Source

What is it that stands in the way of a person being effective as a prophet of God, and as God's spokesman to speak forth His Word into the earth? When God speaks in and through His prophet, He is going to impart by His Holy Spirit His Word, His decree, His declaration or His revelation into that person's spirit. Whatever God is going to do He is going to impart into the spirit of the person. God works that way in all of us.

Whatever God does in and through us is done through the Spirit. We have looked at it in a lot of detail in our Way of Blessing series. It is imparted in the spirit. What comes out has to come out of the spirit. In order for it to come out of the spirit, it has to come out via the soul, and from the soul it comes out via the body and into the earth.

Releasing Through Actions and Words

There are only two ways that information can come out of a person's spirit and pass into this world. That is through physical bodily action and spoken words. If a person stands still and does not speak you cannot tell by looking at them or the natural senses, what is going on in their spirits. You can only tell by the gift of discerning of spirits and gifts of revelation. But until a person speaks forth and acts out what is in their spirits, it cannot be communicated outwards.

If you go back into the Old Testament and see how God began to work and to move in the Old Testament prophets they always did two things - they acted and they spoke. Are not you glad that the New Testament prophets do not seem to act as much? Some of the prophets in the Acts of the Apostles still did the same. We read of Agabus, how he came and he took Paul's girdle off and tied himself up with it and said, "Thus says the Holy Spirit, this is what is going to happen to the guy who owns this."

The Old Testament prophets very often had to act things out. They had to put a yoke on their back and walk around and around until people said, "What are you doing?" And they would say, "Okay, this is a picture of what God wants to say." God told someone to go and lie on his side with a brick in front of him. They had to do some silly things at times, but they had to communicate what was in their spirits.

They had to communicate that outwardly. That is done by action and by words. The prophet of God is going to have to be open to do both. He is going to have to be open to go where God tells him to go, to do what God tells him to do, and to speak what God tells him to speak. If anything stands in the way of that then he cannot be effective as God's prophet, because all of those things have to be involved in effectively discharging the duties of a prophet.

Dealings With the Soul

God has to deal with the things that stand in the way. So what stands in the way? Firstly, the natural faculties of the soul. Unless the soul is fully submitted to the spirit, the spirit cannot flow out through the body. And unless the body is fully submitted and under the control of the soul, which is under the control of the spirit, there cannot be an outward communication from the spirit, into the soul, and into the body, and into the earth, in order that God's word may go forth. Until God's Word goes forth into the earth through human lips, and action through the human body, it cannot accomplish anything.

In Isaiah 55:11 God said:

So shall be My Word which goes forth into the earth; it shall not return to Me void, but will accomplish that for which I send it.

God has to send His Word into the earth, but in order for Him to do it, He has to have a human channel to send it through, because God sends His Word into the earth through human agency. When the prophets spoke the Word of God, they were sending His very Word into the earth. It was not their words nor was it God giving them a little idea and them giving their opinion. It was God imparting something into their spirit, and that which was placed into their spirit flowed out into their soul, and into their body, and passed out into the earth. It was God’s very voice, words and influence, the very essence of God going forth in those words into the earth.

God's Order of Spirit, Soul, Body

The soul has three main functions - as everybody knows by now, it has been taught for so long - and that is the mind, the emotions and the will. That means that all three areas are going to have to learn to be subject to the spirit within, because God's order is always spirit, soul and body. Paul writing in Thessalonians says, "I pray God that your whole spirit, and soul, and body, be preserved blameless unto the coming of the Lord." We usually get it back to front and you hear people praying, "Lord bless him, body, soul and spirit."

I have heard that so many times. We are so taken up with our bodies that we always put that first. You find people most frequently when they refer to the three parts of man, give it in that order of body, soul and spirit. God's order is always spirit, soul and body, because the spirit is the most important. That is the part that is united with God. That is the part that came from Him. The soul is the next most important because it is your control tower. And the body is the least important so that must always come last.

So if God is going to deal with you in order to prepare you to be an effective prophet, He is going to deal with it in that order. He is going to start with your spirit, then work with your soul, and He is going to deal with your body. He is going to restore His order of spirit, and soul, and body. And when that order is restored then the spirit, which is under God's control, is going to be the highest part of your being. It is going to be the part of you that is in control, that is dominating and influencing. The soul then will be in subjection to the spirit, and therefore the soul will do what the spirit says. When that happens, the body is also then brought into subjection. And it will be like the pecking order in the army where the General barks, and in the end the Private jumps, because it goes right down the line.

Getting the Spirit to Dominate

God will speak into your spirit, and your spirit will say, "Attention, soul!" And your soul will say, "Sir! Pass the order down." The soul passes the order down and says, "Body!" And the body says, "Sergeant, do this!" Poor Private. But that is the order. It is going to have to be established. It is going to have to be that way. That is what the preparation of a prophet is about. And that is what God is trying to accomplish in your life. He is trying to bring you to a place where you learn to walk in the Spirit.

That is all that walking in the Spirit is. It is learning to let your spirit dominate your life and control it so that it flows outwards in an even flow. So here in 2 Corinthians 4, Paul says:

We are troubled (we are hard-pressed) on every side.

Crunch No 1 – The Emotions

Have you ever been hard-pressed on every side? I shared in my testimony on the prophetic ministry how when God first led us to move into another country south of us, everything went wrong in our lives. I sat down the one day and made a list of everything that went wrong and everything that went right. I made two columns on a page: Things That Have Gone Wrong Since We Got Here, and Things That Have Gone Right Since We Got Here. And the one column was empty. There was nothing in it! Absolutely nothing had gone right. I could not find one thing that had gone right for us since we had arrived. It had all gone wrong.

Do you know what it is like when everything goes wrong, when everybody is against you and your family is against you? You get up in the morning and your spouse is against you, and your kids are against you. You go to work and the traffic cops are against you. And at work your boss is against you. It does not matter where you go, everybody is against you! You go to church finally on the weekend and the church people are against you.

You are troubled on every side! Things start to go wrong. Finances start to go wrong. Anything that can go wrong goes wrong. You know that feeling? There is trouble on every side and you are hard-pressed on every side. I will tell you what happens to you when you get hard-pressed on every side. You start to feel very low. You start to feel discouraged. You become depressed. Your emotions go totally out of control. You cannot rely on your feelings anymore. Your desires are thwarted.

Everything about your emotions comes to a grinding halt. You feel so low and so heavy that you just do not feel like doing anything anymore, and God puts your emotions out of action. It is an awful situation to be in, isn’t it?

Crunch No 2 - The Mind

Paul says: We are perplexed.

What happens when you are perplexed? Perplexed means, "I cannot figure it out. I do not know the solution to this problem." If you are one of those analytical people that always likes to know the answers and has to have the whole picture; that wants to gather all the facts first before making a move and making a decision, then perplexed is going to be hell on earth. For all of us perplexed is not a nice situation to be in, because we like to have a solution. When problems come your way you try to figure it out. If there is less money at the end of the month, you take out your calculator and work out your budget, saying, "Who is going into the hat this month?"

When there is a situation that arrives that you have to make a decision on, you have to use your mind and your thinking capability to figure it out. You try and solve the problem and try and organize how you are going to get out of the situation. But God is going to bring you to a place where nothing works, where the solutions that worked before do not work anymore. The thing that you are trying to figure out does not work and does not make sense. No matter how you try, you are caught in a maze, and whichever route you take through the maze, it does not matter, you end up at Dead End Street. There is no way out of this maze. You are caught, you are perplexed. Your mind has become absolutely no use at all.

Crunch No 3 - The Will

Now your emotions are out of action and God has also put your mind out of action, and you cannot figure your way out of this one. What a situation to be in! But you know what happens to some people when they are in a situation like that? They grit their teeth and they say, "I am just going to push my way through. I will bash my way through this thing. I am going to put my head down like a bull and run, and I will hit it and hit it until I break through. I do not care if I cannot solve it, I will just keep hitting until … I break through." You see, your will is still active. In fact it becomes very active when your mind and emotions are out of action.

So, Paul says: We are persecuted

Do you know what happens when you are persecuted? It means other people stop you from doing what you want to do. Persecuted means other people make you do what they want you to do. You are not able to do what you want. It means that you do not have the liberty to exercise your own will the way you choose to exercise it. You do not have the liberty to do as you please.

So there you have it. First the emotions, then the mind, and then the will. All three of them come to a grinding halt. They are out of action. You cannot rely on the natural qualities of your soul, your soul that so likes to be in control of all things.

We love to live by our plans, and our ideas, and our concepts. We love to live by the strength of our own willpower. But if you are going to be a prophet of God, I assure you, you cannot rely on your emotions because your emotions are unstable. You cannot rely on your thinking processes, because the Word of God comes from a deeper source than your mind. And if you are relying on your mind you are going to be open to deception. Satan will put thoughts in your mind, and what you speak forth is not going to be the pure Word of God. It is either going to be other thoughts, your own thoughts, or the thoughts of the evil one, and you are going to miss it. God is going to have to deal with it and bring it to a halt.

The Pride

With your mind, emotions and will all brought to a halt you say, "Wow, now my soul is out of action." No, not yet. The soul contains something else. It contains 'self'. It contains the big I. You know, the great I am. I am the greatest! I this, and I will do that, and I will do the other thing? And me? And what does everybody think about me? It is the pride, and God has to deal with it.

Paul says: We are cast down

Do you know what that means? It means humiliation. It means opening your big mouth and putting both feet in it at the same time. It means saying something out of turn. It means making a fool of yourself and doing something that you regret afterwards. It means coming to a place where you are so low that, as I said before, you can crawl out under the door without opening it. That is how low you are going to have to be. The pride in you is going to have to be dealt a deathblow. And you are going to come to the place where your soul is now totally out of action. Now God can start to do something with you.

The Soul Not Destroyed

You say, "Wow, that is what is been happening to me. That is why so many things have been going wrong. To bring me to that place?" Yes, to bring your soul to a place where God can do something with it. But I want to tell you something. God does not want your soul to be in that condition of helplessness and hopelessness, because your soul has to be actively involved in communicating forth what is in your spirit. He does not want to destroy you. He does not want to crunch you, make you into nothing and leave you there. He simply wants to get your attention. He wants to bring you that place where He can then build you up.

You will see that every one of those statements that Paul made he made a positive statement with it. He said:

We are troubled on every side (He gave a positive statement). We are perplexed, but not in despair; we are cast down, but not destroyed.

God does not want to destroy you. Do not ever think that He just wants to break you and destroy you all the time. Do not think that the dealings of God in your life and the preparation for prophetic ministry is to nail you at every count and for you to be a total nothing all the time. Do not ever think that God wants to continually crunch you, that the whole of the rest of your life is going to be like this. That is not what it is about. You are not going to reach sinless perfection this side of the grave and before Jesus comes. God simply wants to get your attention and He wants to mould you and make you into something that is a bit more efficient.

So when God deals with your soul He is not destroying it. He is going to break it down, and then He is going to build it up. He is going to break it down, and then He is going to rebuild it up, so that the situation that you are going to come into that Paul is speaking about here, is not a permanent situation. And when it occurs it is going to go through phases or stages. God is going to deal with it, and then He is going to build it up. Then a little later He is going to deal with it some more, and then He is going to build it up once more.

Refining Like Gold

There is going to be a process like the refining of gold. Because every time gold goes through the fire it comes out a bit purer. It is not there yet. It has to go through the fire again and again. And as you begin to progress in your prophetic ministry and God begins to use you, He will deal with you and bring you to a position where He can begin to use you.

As He begins to use you, and you begin to excel and move more effectively into the prophetic ministry, sooner or later those stumbling blocks, those selfish sinful things that are in you begin to manifest themselves, and come up and stand in the way of what God has called you to do. Then you will go through another phase just like this, where God is going to deal with you again and He is going to crunch you. He is going to bring you to a point of despair and to a point of humiliation. He will deal with you all over again, then He will build you up again. And you will rise to a higher level than what you were before.

When Does It End?

So the process goes on. It is a continual process. It does not end. It depends on how effective you want to be for the Lord. It depends on what kind of prophet you want to be and on your commitment to Him. Are you happy just to be an ordinary little person who speaks a Word of the Lord a little bit every now and then, or do you want to go on for God and excel in the call? Do you want to be effective for Him? You ought to be able to speak His Word with such purity that you know that most of what you speak is the Lord, and very little of that is you.

You see, it is not going to start out that way. It is probably going to start out 50/50, maybe not even that much. And as God deals with that area of you, then you are going to go to 60/40, and 70/30, and 80/20. It is a process that God is going to continually work in you, and it is up to you! Every time you come to the Lord in submission and commitment to Him and say, "Lord, I want to be more effective. Lord, I want to be a greater prophet for You. I want to speak better. I want to speak purer. I want You to give me greater revelation. Lord, I want to speak deeper, I want to speak stronger into the lives of people. Take me into that place where I am more effective, where I am more powerful in the Spirit." Do you know what is coming? 2 Corinthians 4 is what is coming!

New Level, New Devil

You say, "But Lord, I have just committed myself to You, now everything goes wrong. I know what it is. It is the devil. Satan is coming in here and trying to destroy my commitment." Yes, it is the devil, sure he is there. Yes, it is the devil. He is the one who destroys. God does not destroy. But do you know what happened? God just sent you out against the new devil, some stronger powers.

God just sent you out into a situation where you became predisposed to a higher level of demonic attack than what you had before, that is all. Why? Because you are growing now in your ministry. You are growing in your spirituality, and you are growing into a higher status in the Lord, and a greater level of ministry. And you are going to be dealing with higher levels of demonic power. You are going to be dealing with deeper levels of ministry. And it is going to take a greater preparation for you to get there.

Aspiring to Greater Things

You say, "But, I went through these 30 years of training already. I thought I was qualified to be a prophet now." Yes, you are qualified to be a prophet if you just want to be that kind of prophet. Do you want to stay the way you are, or do you want to go on for God? Do you want to progress? Do you want to have a greater capacity? Do you want to have a greater anointing, a greater power? Do you want to come to the place in intercession where you know that all of the prayers that you pray, every single word, every declaration that you speak forth into the earth is answered every time?

Do you want to come to the place where you can call somebody up and say, "Do you know what? God got me to pray for you last night. Get ready, it is coming! God told me to speak blessing on your finances last night. It is coming. I am telling you it is coming. I know it is coming because my prayer is always answered! When God tells me to pray my prayer is answered, so you can take it from me, it is coming!"

Do you want to get to that place? Or do you want to come and say, "Well, I was led to pray for you last night. We are standing with you in prayer, brother." I do not know about you. I want to be the first one. But it is going to cost you. There are going to come more dealings. There is going to come a greater level of submission to the Spirit of God that is within. And that is not all. Paul goes on and he says: ...always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus.

The Body

What does that Scripture mean, that you are going to be sick? No, sickness and disease is the curse. God does not want us to be under a curse. But I will tell you what, if you are going to start moving into a ministry that is going to come against dealing with sicknesses and diseases, you had better get ready to fight sickness and disease because Satan is going to try and put it on you. If you are going to be effective for the Lord you had better start getting ready to face an attack on your body. If you are going to be that effective for the Lord, your body had better be a willing vessel at all times.

When God says at 4.00 o'clock in the morning, "I want you to get up and pray and speak a word of intercession and a decree into the earth," your body must not say, "But we got to bed late last night. I am tired." No, your body is going to have to come into subjection. It is going to have to learn to obey. It is going to have to learn to be a willing servant, to say, "Yes, sir! What next? Okay boss." It is tough. It is going to take some dealings in your body.

Bodily Exercise

Maybe your body needs some physical exercise. I personally hate exercise. I know some people who love it. But if your body is going to be physically fit perhaps exercise is needed. If it is going to be physically well, maybe you are going to have to change your diet and cut out certain foods. That may be required of you. If you are going to be effective for the Lord, it may require a bit of discipline. You see, if you are going to be all that God wants you to be, you have a spirit, a soul and a body, and all three of them are designed to work together at peak efficiency and in harmony, the way God intended it.

Becoming Efficient

Now from the little bit that I learned about Science I have learned that machinery and equipment are often given an efficiency rating. You see, if you have got a motor that is turning there is a certain amount of friction that takes place in the moving parts as they move. And although there may be power that is causing the movement, this friction is a resistance against that power. So you can work it out and say, "I am passing electricity through this electric motor, and therefore theoretically, according to the amount of power that is going through it, this is the amount of power and energy that that motor should put out."

But when you come to actually testing the thing and benchmarking it, you find that the power is actually less than what you worked out it should be. Do you know why? Because there are resistances. There are things in the mechanics, in the parts, that are preventing it from going that way.

It is like driving your car with the brakes on. Have you ever driven a car with the handbrake on? You try driving your car with the handbrake on and you cannot understand what is wrong with this stupid car today! It does not want to go. It has lost efficiency and is not working the way it should. Maybe the bearings have not been greased for a while too. Whatever it is, every moving part needs to be functioning to the peak of its capability before you can reach the point of maximum efficiency of that engine.

You know the way God has made us, we are His creation and are a machine. We are designed to function efficiently. And unless our spirit, soul and body are all functioning to the greatest of their capacity, we are not going to be as effective for the Lord as we had liked to be.

Learning to Excel

So if you are a prophet and you want to be a greater prophet; if you want to excel, this is what Paul speaks about when he speaks about not only having gifts and ministries, but excelling in them. "It is not enough to be a prophet, but I want to be an excellent prophet."

You say, "But is that my choice? What about these great prophets that God is using? These men who hit the public eye who give their prophecies, and they give it on national television, "Thus says the Lord, 'In 1999, God is going to bless, God is going to do this, and this is the word for the church in 1999…' "?

"Wow, I wish I could prophecy like that."

You can. Do you suppose that guy got there overnight? Do you suppose it fell in his lap? Some people have just got it, hey, they are just lucky. They are God's favorites. Do you think He just dropped it on them?

A Price to Pay

You look at some of the great healing evangelists that are used so mightily by God in healing, and you say, "Oh, I wish God could use me like that." And you find that most of them were on their deathbed before God began to use them. There is a price to pay. There is always a price to pay, but if you are prepared to pay that price then you can go on and enter into all that the Lord has for you.

So the process continues and continues. I am never satisfied to be in one place. I was not even satisfied to stay as a prophet. It is up to you. You can be a mediocre prophet. You can be like the sons of the prophets in the time of Elijah who were ordinary little guys. They got the revelation, they got the Word, yes, they were prophets. But they did not get the mantle of Elijah. It took a man with greater commitment than that to get the mantle of Elijah. If you want that, then you are going to pay the price, and the price is going to be God's preparation in your life.

You say, "But everybody has rejected me and I have had such a tough time." I have seen so many prophets with persecution complexes. You are going to have to get beyond that. You are going to have to move beyond that, because if you are going to move deeper with God you are going to get some more persecution, so you had better get ready for it. You are going to go through the process again.

Developing the Spirit

God is going to deal with your spirit, your soul and your body, and is going to cause each of them to become efficient. And you are going to have to work on each one yourself, to cause them to become efficient. You are going to have to develop your spiritual capacity. The easiest way to do that is to pray in tongues all the time as much as you can, because when you pray in tongues you exercise your spirit. Paul says that if you pray with your spirit you build yourself up. Praying in tongues builds you up and edifies you.

How does it work? I do not know or care. I just pray in tongues and pray in tongues, and keep on praying in tongues.

You say, "And what do you feel?"

I do not care! I keep on praying in tongues and praying more in tongues. What is going to happen is your spirit is going to start getting built up, and it is going to get stronger.

Developing the Soul

Then if you are going to deal with your soul, take the Word of God. Paul speaks about the renewing of the mind. How do you renew your mind? You start to fill your mind with the Word of God. We spoke in the Way of Blessing series about building spiritual templates. Do you want to be effective and want the Spirit of God to flow out of you in prophetic power and anointing? Start exercising your soul. Start exercising your mind on the Word of God. Start exercising your desires and your feelings in accordance with the Word of God. Start speaking and using your will to speak the Word of God. Exercise your soul.

Developing the Body

You need to also teach your body to submit. If you have to modify your diet and do exercise to make your body more effective, then do that too. It is not a major thing. A lot of people major on it, though.

"Well, healthy body, healthy mind."

Have you heard that one? I have not found it in the bible yet, but it is supposed to work. I know the Bible says, "Bodily exercise profiteth little, but godliness is profitable for all things." So let us not major on the bodily exercise. Just teach your body to be in subjection and to submit.

As you do these things and move into it, what is going to happen is more and more you are going to come to the place where the prophetic word that God places in your spirit will have a clear channel to flow out and to pour forth. Then God begins to apply to you the cross.

Death by Crucifixion

Paul said, "I have been crucified with Christ. Nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me."

I want to end on this now, applying the cross.

Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him."

Paul said, "Reckon yourselves to be dead." Apply it to yourselves. Let the Holy Spirit take it and apply it to you. Be identified with Jesus in His death, and His burial and resurrection. This is something that you as a prophet are going to face again and again and again, the concept that is known as death of a vision. It is where you are going to have to take your very desire, and your very call, and everything that God has placed within you, and sacrifice it to Him, and put it on the cross. Dying is one of the most difficult things to do. And yet it is such an easy thing to do too.

No Suicide by Crucifixion

Do you know that death by crucifixion is something that you cannot do? I have not yet heard of anybody who has ever committed suicide by crucifixion. It just cannot be done. You could probably crucify half of yourself. You could take a hammer in one hand and put a nail in the other hand, and maybe even in your foot, if you have got the courage to do that.

But if you are going to get fully crucified, somebody else is going to have to do the job. And the only one who can do that is the Lord. All you can do is to lift your hands and stand against the cross and say, "Okay, Father, do it to me. I am ready for it. You deal with these things in my life, and you bring to death in me everything that stands in the way of me being used by You."

So He starts to hit the nail. At that point, what are you going to do?

"Oh, but Lord that hurt!"

"Well, what did you think? Crucifixion is supposed to hurt!"

"But I did not think it was going to be like that. Lord, I thought you were just going to breathe on me in revival power, the anointing was going to come on me, I was going to fall under the power, and I was going to get up and it was going to be over and done."

No, that is the resurrection part. You have got to die first, and death is always painful. When God begins to bring you into some of these situations, He brings you to the end of yourself and you keep fighting it, and you keep fighting it. You keep rebuking the devil. You keep saying, "I am not going to accept this!" Be careful. It may be God bringing you to that death on the cross.

Death by Suffocation

You know the other thing about death on the cross? Death on the cross occurs by suffocation. It actually occurs when the person eventually tires themselves out to the point where they collapse. And when they collapse their bodies pull down and cause their lungs to close up and they actually asphyxiate to death. That is how people died on the cross in those days. It was a painful horrible death. And the person that was on the cross would push down with their feet and push up against the stake so that they could breathe.

They would push up, lift themselves up and breathe and then they would collapse again. And eventually they would have to push themselves up again to breathe. That is the only way they could stay alive. If you were strong and you could push up, you could hold out a long time. You could have hung on that cross a couple of days before you died from thirst or hunger or just plain tiredness, weariness and suffocation.

The Necessity for Leg-Breaking

Jesus did not take that long to die. He hung on the cross and He said, "Father, into your hands I commit My spirit." And the Scripture says that He yielded up His spirit and He died. The thieves that were crucified on the cross with Him did not do that. They struggled and they battled, and because the sun was going down and they did not want to leave the bodies on the cross on the Sabbath, the Scripture says that the guards came to break their legs.

Why did they break their legs? I always used to wonder about this. That is really mean of them. I mean, as if the guys have not suffered enough, they still want to come and smash their legs? It was so they could not push up on the cross, so they could not push up and keep breathing because as soon as their legs were broken they would just have to hang there and suffocate to death and they would die.

Learning to Die Like Jesus

Jesus did not have to do it. When they came to Him they saw that He was already dead, so they did not break His legs. They just put a spear in His side to make sure that He was already dead. When God begins to move upon you and bring to death in you all of these things of the flesh that stand in the way of you being used as a prophet, you have a choice. You can struggle, you can fight, you can kick. You can push up against it and moan and groan and bewail your situation. Or you can say, "Hold it! I think I am being crucified here. I think the reason for this is so I can die."

How to Respond to Dealings

I know what it is like to struggle and I know what it is like to go for weeks and months. The situation just seemed to get worse instead of better. Until one day the penny dropped and I said, "Hold it! Why am I being so stupid?" Now I have learned.

When I see it and I see what God is doing and I know what is happening, I do not get all discouraged and depressed and say, "Oh, Lord, I do not know why you are doing this to me again." I say, "Hey, promotion is coming. Let me go die quickly!" And it takes minutes just to let it go and stop fighting.

When people start picking on you and start putting you down, start saying ugly things about you, start accusing you of things you did not do, do not rise up on your high horse filling your mouth with arguments. Do not lie awake at night thinking, "I know what I am going to say to them the next time I see them. I am going to write them a letter and I am going to say this and I am going to say that because they are wrong, and it is not fair!" Let it go. Just die.

You say, "But they are wrong. What they are saying is not true."

Let it die! You see, you have to get to the place where what they say about you does not matter anymore. It is what God says about you that matters. And sometimes God will bring you through test after test like that to see whether you are prepared to say, "Okay, Lord, they are saying ugly things about me, but what do you want me to do, Lord? Where is it at?" Do you know what a victory it is? Do you know what a wonderful victory it is when you can just die and let go of that thing.

You see, all that is happening is you are moving through a preparation which is not only bringing you into a greater capacity for ministry, but is bringing you to become more and more like Jesus. It is an application of salvation in your life as God is dealing with the power of sin in you and making you more and more into the image of Jesus.

We saw that the preparation can begin right from before birth. How will you know when the preparation is complete? Well, in one sense it is never finished. But yes, there comes an initial time of preparation, an initial period of your life where God is building you up and preparing you for the time when He is actually going to call you and move you into the prophetic ministry. Once you have gone through that preparation, which is the longest part and can take years and years, there will come a point in time where God will now give the prophetic call and lead you into your training phase.

Training At the End of Preparation

When your training phase starts, that is the end of your initial preparation. So that is when it ends, when God calls you to the prophetic ministry and begins to train you and prepare you practically to move into the prophetic ministry. It means God considers you to have been dealt with enough to have come to a sufficient level of trustworthiness. He can now begin to trust you enough to place His anointing on you, to put His words in you, and to cause you to become His spokesman in the earth.

Then all He needs to do is to train you, but training is another kind of preparation, and we have reserved separate teaching for that. So I am going to end now on the preparation of a prophet, and then we will look at the training of a prophet and all the other things that are involved in a prophetic ministry.

So now as you look at your life, look right back to the beginning and just look over the whole span of your life. If you are a prophet of God I will guarantee that as I have shared I have touched on things here and there along the way where you can say, "Yes that is me. I have been there. Yeah, I know all about that. Been there, done that."

All of these are a good sign that God has already taken you through most of the preparation that is needed to prepare and mould you and to bring you to that place where you can become His prophet, His spokesman.