The Prophetic Anointing
Les D. Crause
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Two Kinds of Anointings

e saw in our study on Understanding the Anointing that there are essentially two aspects, or two kinds of anointing – an external anointing and an internal anointing. We saw that there is basically one difference between the two. The internal anointing is something that is permanently within. If you like, it is the anointing on tap. The external anointing is something that comes under God’s timing at God’s choice, spontaneously and sovereignly as the Spirit of God moves upon us. It is not under our control until God moves upon us.

We saw that the two flow together. I would like to look at that more here as we consider using the prophetic anointing. We have spoken in the Prophetic School concerning prophetic gifts; concerning prophetic listening; concerning prophetic utterance. There are a lot of different subjects that we have covered concerning the use of the prophetic ministry. Now I want to see how we can apply this concept of the external and the internal anointing specifically to the ministry of the prophet, to see how it functions and how it operates.

Old and New Testament Anointings

In the Old Testament

We see that the internal and external anointings on the prophet flow together. In the Old Testament the prophet did not have the internal anointing. They only had the external anointing. So they were totally reliant on God moving upon them and giving them a word. If the word did not come they could not do anything. The prophet had to sit and wait. The Scriptures say, "And the Word of the Lord came to the prophet (so and so)," and God spoke.

We read at times of prophets like Elijah and Elisha who make statements like, "The Lord has hidden this thing from me, that I do not know what is happening." If God did not give the revelation they would not know what was going on. They were totally reliant on the Spirit of God coming upon them spontaneously at the right time for a specific season and for a purpose.

In the New Testament

Now in the New Testament it still works the same. The external anointing still functions the same way that it always does. The external anointing comes spontaneously upon the prophet in God’s sovereign will, in His timing, in the right place, at the right time. It is a ministry of God. It is produced by the Spirit of God. It is not something that comes from the spirit of man. It is not something we produce ourselves. It is gift ministry and the Holy Spirit is in control of that ministry.

External Anointing – Like a Rainstorm

But the external anointing, when it comes in a New Testament prophet - not only a prophet, but a New Testament believer – when the external anointing comes it creates something else. It causes a surge to take place in the internal anointing. It is like a rainstorm suddenly coming upon a river that has a slow flowing stream or even a dry riverbed. And there comes this sudden rainstorm and it produces what they call a flash flood. Suddenly out of nowhere this dry riverbed becomes a gushing, fast flowing river. The water pours down and causes the river to gush forth.

So you are walking down this dry riverbed minding your own business, and suddenly you see a wall of water coming towards you. It is a flash flood. There has come a build up further down the river of all the waters that were collected from the rain, and suddenly the river gushes back to life and it pours forth. It travels all the

 way down the channel that it has cut, down to the sea. It pours its water forth.

Now that is what happens with the anointing. When the external anointing comes upon a person it causes a surge to take place within. That is why usually when the anointing comes upon you, you can feel it tangibly. You can feel it physically. But what you feel more than anything else, is something coming out of your gut. Jesus said, "Out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water."

When the anointing comes upon you, you feel your river starting to fill up. It wants to pour out and your stomach wants to burst. Well, it is not really in your tummy. It just feels like it is coming from there. It is coming from the deep recesses of your heart and your spirit. It is coming from deep within. There is a gush taking place within, and it is going to pour forth.

When I first moved into the prophetic anointing and the prophetic ministry the Lord taught me some things about how to use the anointing; about how to bring myself to a place where the anointing could flow.

You see, it is not good enough to have a rainstorm come down and the water to gush forth if there is not a river bed, a channel for the river to flow in. The river must have a place to flow to, otherwise you have floods taking place in the community. You have homes being destroyed. You have cars being washed away. There needs to be a place for the water to go to when it comes.

The Underground Stream

The Lord began to teach me how to go down to that underground stream that flows within our spirits, which is where the inner anointing is. It is like an underground stream. You do not see it from the outside, but people know who know about these things, that if you dig in the right place and you go down deep enough into the earth, you are going to hit a gusher. There is water down there.

If you know the right place to dig, you can get down there and tap an underground stream, and tap into the water that is flowing under there, continuously all the time. You can reach in and draw out from that underground stream. And you can obtain water in the midst of what may be a desert, where there is no water anywhere; where there is no municipal water supply. You may be able to sink down into the ground and tap water out of an underground stream.

The Lord showed me that the Spirit of God within us, the inner anointing, is like an underground stream. We need to learn to tap into that. I am going to be dealing with that a little bit in this study, and I am going to show you how to tap down into that underground stream and how to set it up.

Questions on Using the Anointing

As God taught me how to tap down into that underground stream and to have it come gushing up, I began to wonder how I was going to use this when ministering to others. I knew what it was like to flow in the anointing. I knew how it felt. I knew the effects that it had on me. I knew that if I was in the Spirit and there was somebody here right now, I could minister to them because the anointing was on me, and it was great. If I could stand up and preach, the anointing was on me, and I could call people forward for ministry while the anointing was flowing; while the wind was blowing; while the Spirit was moving.

But I began to say to myself and to the Lord, "Lord, what happens if I’m going out there into the world in my day to day life and experience? What happens if I am rubbing shoulders with people? What happens if somebody is visiting me or I am visiting them and there is a need for the anointing. How am I going to go about getting in the Spirit; getting into the anointing; getting the flow to take place like You did when You walked down the streets and healed people? Like Peter and John did at the Beautiful Gate with the lame man and they reached out, and just lifted him up and spoke life into his body?"

Set Up Your Windmill

The Lord gave me a very simple picture. I have shared it before, and I want to go into more detail here. He said, "All you need to do is sink a pipe down into your underground stream and set up a channel for the water to flow. Then put a windmill on top."

What does a windmill do? All a windmill is, is a mechanically operated pump that pumps when the wind blows. And as the wind blows upon the blades and the blades turn, it causes the pump to move and suck the water out of the pipe. No wind blows, no water is sucked. That was my problem. I could see me there with my pipe sunk down all great. And I would be standing there and somebody would be coming and saying, "Okay, I want some water."

I would be saying, "Well, there’s plenty down there. If we just knew how to take it out I could let you have some."

The Lord Provides the Wind

The Lord said, "You set up your windmill and I’ll provide the wind. All you need to do is set up the windmill, and when it is time for the water to come out, I will provide the wind. And when I blow My wind on your windmill and it begins to turn, the water will come out, provided the pipe is there; provided the pump is attached to the pipe. The water will come out."

Well, I knew what the wind was. The wind is a picture of the Spirit isn’t it? You see, what the Lord was saying is, "If you set up the internal anointing correctly, when the time is right I’ll blow the external anointing on you. And when I blow the external anointing on you, the internal anointing will come gushing forth and the power will be there."

Example – The Day of Pentecost

We saw it on the Day of Pentecost, how the Spirit came down on them – the cloven tongues of fire – and it says, "And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began to speak in tongues." As the anointing came on it gushed forth and they spoke in tongues. And you see it again and again in the Scriptures. As the anointing comes upon people, it rises up and pours out. People are filled with the Spirit.

Practical Application

I would like to have a look in this message firstly at how we can set up our windmill, and once we have looked at that we are going to find out what to do with our windmill. And we are going to find out how to go about getting water up, and what we are going to do with the water when it comes out. Because it is no good having the windmill set up and the wind is blowing, the windmill is turning and the water is gushing and it is flowing everywhere and making mud. It doesn’t help anybody!

Sink Your Pipe In

Well, if you are going to put up a windmill, the first thing you are going to have to do is you are going to have to sink a pipe into that underground stream. The Scripture says, "First comes the natural and then the spiritual," so let’s look at what happens in the natural if you do that, and give it a spiritual application.

Effort is Needed

When is the last time you took out your shovel, went into your back yard and dug yourself a borehole? It takes effort. It takes a lot of effort to drill down into an underground stream. If you are going to dig a big hole then you are going to make a well. And it is going to take a lot of effort to dig a well. It is easier to sink a pipe.

Well, depending on how big a pipe you are going to sink down it is going to determine what type of water supply you are going to have. We are going to look at that shortly. But you are going to have to sink a pipe down into the underground, and that is going to take a bit of digging. It is going to take a bit of removal of the dirt. It is going to take building a channel from ground floor to basement.

Spiritual Application

How are we going to do that in the Spirit? We spoke about how what we call the baptism of the Spirit is when the Spirit comes upon a person and what takes place is a link is produced between the spirit within, the Holy Spirit dwelling in your human spirit. Now that the external anointing of the Holy Spirit comes upon the body, there needs to come a breakthrough in between. When a channel is created between the spirit and the body the spirit begins to pray.

Pray in Tongues

How does the Spirit begin to pray? In other tongues. Paul said, "When I speak in tongues my spirit prays, but my understanding is unfruitful." It is your spirit linking directly with your body. It comes when you reach that point of breakthrough.

Now there are a lot of people who do not understand this. They say, "Well, I have the Spirit of God when I was saved. Why must I receive the baptism of the Spirit?" There are others who say, "You don’t get the Spirit until the anointing has come upon you." We have these two extremes. But you have the Spirit. You had the inner anointing from the moment you were born again. You had your underground stream. But there needs to come a channel that is created. That channel that is created is the ability to speak with other tongues.

If you want to be a prophet and you do not want to speak in other tongues, then you might as well go home. I mean it. You can have a degree of revelation, but if you want the anointing to gush forth; if you want to enter into New Testament prophetic power that goes beyond what the Old Testament guys had, you are going to have to learn to cause the flow to take place, so that when the anointing comes upon you there comes a gushing forth from within that you can speak forth the power of God.

Create a Channel

That is all that speaking in tongues is. It is a channel. It is when you have your pipe sunk down. And until your pipe is sunk down, you do not have the ability to tap into that internal resource that is sitting in your spirit. It comes out through speech. And yes, you can get a degree out through speech in English. But God has given tongues so that the mind does not stand in the way, because tongues transcends the mind.

It is amazing, but when I started this prophetic series I ended up harping on tongues, and I am doing it again. Could it be God is trying to say something here? Tongues is important. In the very first assignment we gave in the Prophetic School you were told to go and pray in tongues for an hour. Some people did this successfully and many complained. Many battled. Many even argued and said, "It is stupid. I don’t like it. Why should we do it?" Well if you just want to have a trickle out of your windmill it is up to you. But you need to sink down into the underground stream and you need to set a firm channel into that underground stream if you want the power to gush forth.

Increase Your Capacity

Then if you want to increase the capacity of water that is going to come out of that pipe, you are going to have to have a bigger pipe. You can have a thin little pipe, but there is only a certain volume of water that can come through a thin pipe, per minute, per hour. It is going to take you a lot longer to fill a bucket up with a thin pipe than it is going to take with a broad pipe. That is why the water supplies to our cities are not sent to us in thin pipes. The thin pipe may supply your house good enough, but if they had that thin pipe supplying everybody down the road you will have what we have here in Mexico where the water supply drops right down and just trickles out of the tap.

Use the Word

You need a broader pipe. How do you broaden the pipe? Well, the pipe is the Word. Why? Because what you receive out of your spirit can only be interpreted by the Word. It can only be understood by the Word, because your spirit speaks in impressions and in pictures. We dealt with it in Prophetic Listening, how to receive the impulses that come up out of your spirit. If you see a picture coming up into your mind out of your spirit, how do you know what it means unless you know the Word of God? Unless you know the symbols that are used in the Scriptures concerning spiritual things, how will you understand?

It is the same as interpreting dreams. It is symbolic; it is pictures. You can only understand the impressions that come up out of your spirit by the Word. And because they are impressions that come to your mind, that do not come out of your spirit but come from the enemy attacking from without, how can you know what comes from within and what is coming from the enemy?

We are going to deal with this in quite a lot of detail when we look at Prophetic Deception, so I am not going to go into it much here. You are going to have to be filled with the Word. But prophets don’t like to do that.

"Well, I’m not a Teacher, I’m a Prophet. We will leave it to the Teachers to go and study all the doctrines and study all the Scriptures."

Be Filled With the Word

It gets to the point where I hear some Prophets saying, "What do we need the Bible for? I will just wait on the Lord and He’ll give me a prophetic word?" You are treading on dangerous territory. You are going to have one thin little clogged pipe that is not going to give out much water let me tell you. You are going to have to be filled with the Word, Prophet of God, if you want to function in the anointing, and if you want the prophetic anointing to pour forth. You are going to have to be filled with the Word.

It is not enough just to learn about the prophetic ministry. It is not enough just to learn about the gifts of the Spirit. It is not enough just to learn about the anointing. You had better be filled with the Word, otherwise the anointing cannot flow, because the Spirit works through the Word. I will look at it more as we go on.

You Can’t Hide It

Well now, you have sunk your pipe down. You have widened your pipe to increase the flow. Now you had better put your windmill in place. You had better stick it where the wind is. You do not put it down on the ground where the wind is blocked by the trees and the buildings. You do not put it hidden away inside a building, inside a wall somewhere where nobody can see it.

You cannot hide a windmill. If you ride down the countryside you will see them. You will see them standing proud and high in the sky. You cannot hide it. If you want to be used by God and minister forth His power, you cannot do it in hiding. You are going to have to come out into the open and make yourself available to the Lord. You are going to have to say, "Okay, Lord, I’ll do it. I am prepared to stand firm, to stand bold, to stand out and be available for You to blow Your wind on me when You choose to use me."

Yes, God trained His prophets in secret, and yes He has called you to a time of hiding and waiting on Him. That was the time you learned to sink the pipe down. That was the time you did all your construction work, widened the pipe and had it all set up. Now you had better put your windmill in place, and you had better wave it high in the sky for the whole world to see.

You had better be available for God to use otherwise He is not going to use you. How can He use you if you are hidden away? Nobody knows you are there. You are going to have to be where God can put you in a situation where He can bring people across your path that you can minister to. You are going to have to be available to the Lord. You are going to have to be able to say, "Father, do with me as You please. Lord, use me as and when You want to use me."

Keep It Primed and Full

Once you have done that you need to keep your pipe primed and full of water. You have to keep it that way. Most windmills and boreholes have a tank. The windmill blows and it fills the tank first, and when you draw water you draw it from the tank. As soon as the level of the water in the tank begins to fall the windmill kicks in again. When the tank becomes full the windmill engages a clutch assembly, which causes the pump to stop turning. Then the wind can blow but the pump stops turning.

You have to be primed. You have to be filled up. Well you know that being filled with the Spirit is great, but it does not last. You have barely arrived home after the meeting and it can be gone. Try it. Just go and get into a fight with your husband or wife and it is gone. You have lost it. It is like somebody burst the balloon. Somebody just opened the faucet and let all the water out. It is gone. You are going to have to keep it filled up.

How are you going to do that? You are going to have to pray in tongues daily. You are going to have to go in there and maintain that channel and get the water coming and free, otherwise it goes stagnant in the pipe. Then when it comes time for the Spirit of God to move on you what comes out is dirty rotten water for a while before it comes pure. You have some poor thirsty person coming along for water, and you give them this gungy, horrible, smelly water. They do not want to come near you again. They do not want to receive your ministry. You open your mouth to speak the prophetic word and what comes out is all the junk that is in your mind, instead of what the Spirit of God wants to say.

You need to spend time in the presence of the Lord praying in tongues. You need to spend time in the presence of the Lord in praise and worship.

"Oh, Hallelujah, thank you Jesus. Praise you Lord," and you just let it flow. You let your pipe get filled up. You let your pump be primed and ready to go. You are ready now for the wind to blow.

Getting to Where God Can Use You.

Now, how do we come to the place where God is going to use us? There are a lot of windmills out there. Is God going to blow on yours? When is He going to blow on yours? And why should He blow on yours? Well, we have this great big windmill set up here in the desert. There isn’t anybody living within 100 miles. Nobody ever goes that way because it is a horrible place. And most of the time when you go there that horrible smelly water comes out and you have to wait days for it to come out because it is never used. Do you reckon anybody is ever going to come and visit? Is anybody going to try and come and get water from there? Not unless there are none in another 1000 miles. Not unless they are really hard up.

Expect God to use you.

Listen, if you want God to use you, you are going to have to start desiring and expecting Him to use you. You cannot go and arrange the circumstances. You do not run around with your windmill trying to find a wind. Can you imagine that?

"Well, I have my windmill in the back of the truck."

"Where are you going?"

"Well, we are going out looking for a wind."

"Huh?"

There are a lot of people doing that. They are travelling thousands of miles to go and find the wind. When you do that you have to connect your windmill to somebody else’s pipe and pump some of their water out. You do not have your own.

God will arrange the circumstances for ministry. You do not have to worry about that. You know I have found that as I have desired to be used by the Lord I have cried out to Him and said, "Lord, I have to be like Rachel was when she came to Jacob and said, ‘Give me children or I die.’ Lord give me people to minister to. Father use me. Lord use me to speak to the broken hearted, to the down trodden, to the discouraged. Lord use me to speak forth healing to those that are sick and suffering. Use me to speak forth deliverance to the captives. Oh Lord, please use me! Lord, there are people out there that hurting. Oh Lord, I want to minister to them!" It must burn in you.

Desire to be Used

You say, "But what is the use? There’s nobody for me to minister to. I am not in ministry. They never give me a chance to preach in church."

You do not have to go to church to find people in need. They are all around you. I have found so often as I have cried out to the Lord; whether it be for the lost; whether it be for Christians with problems; whether it be for those that are sick; as my heart burns and I cry out, suddenly I find one day when I least expect it I bump into somebody with a need. Suddenly I find myself speaking to somebody and the subject switches to salvation, and I end up sharing the gospel with them. Suddenly I meet somebody, who needs a word of encouragement. God rises up in me and the wind begins to blow and the water begins to gush forth, and God gives me an opportunity.

Make Yourself Available

You do not have to go and look for opportunities for ministry. The Lord will arrange them. All you need to do is make yourself available. All you need to do is desire, desire, desire! Grow hungry. Somebody has said, "Hunger for the Lord and for His power and for His glory and for His anointing to be upon you."

The Anointing is For Others

Then make yourself available to pour that forth, because He is not going to give you the anointing so you can fill up your own little tank; to go and have a look at it every day and say, "Wow, our tank is looking good. Man our tank is really full. Hey, we have even more water in it. Our tank is full! In fact, yesterday our tank became so full it started to overflow. We had water all over the ground, there is so much water there. We’re loaded."

There are people all around you who are dying of thirst. The anointing is for us to give out. And unless you have that burning desire in your heart you are not putting your windmill in place where people can come to draw water.

Love is the Key

The Scripture says that "love is the key to all ministry." Why are you wanting the Lord to use you? So that you can be announced to the community? So that everybody can be talking about you? So they can be writing in their emails to one another about this wonderful prophet who has such revelation from the Lord? So they can be inviting you to come and preach in their churches? Is that your motivation? Then you are missing it.

"For God so loved the world," the Scripture says, "that He gave His only begotten Son

Why? So that He could show them what a big deal He was? No. Because He loved them. Love is always the motivation. The Scripture says, "Follow after love and desire spiritual gifts." If that motivation is not there, forget it. You are in it for the wrong reason.

Be Sensitive to Others’ Needs

To put yourself in a position where God can use you, you need to be sensitive to the needs of others. I see so often, where you begin to chat with people, you meet people and you share with them in conversation, and people just want to talk about themselves. Somebody said, quite aptly, "Speak to somebody about himself and he will listen for hours."Well, if you are a prophet and you want to be used by God, you are going to have to learn to speak to somebody about himself. You are going to have to shut your mouth about what a wonderful prophet you are. You are going to have to shut your mouth about how much Scripture you know; about all your qualifications and your experiences; and you are going to have to just be sensitive to the needs of other people. You are going to have to dare to ask somebody, "So how are you feeling today?" at the risk that they are going to give you an organ recital.Do you know what an organ recital is?"Well you know (sob, sniff) I’m so sick. Please pray for me." (;-(

You Need to Care

We hate hypochondriacs. Sometimes a hypochondriac is just a person who suffers a lot because they do not know how to trust God, because nobody has pointed them in the right direction. Are you sensitive to the needs of other people? Do you care enough to involve yourself in somebody else’s problems? How can you be used to speak a prophetic word to that person if you do not care about their situation? How can you speak a word of upliftment and encouragement if you do not care if they are in trouble? How can you speak a word of prosperity and provision if you do not care that they are starving?You had better start becoming sensitive to the needs of other people. That is how you put your windmill up. You are going to have to put it up there where people can see it; where people are going to come running to you and saying, "I need … I need … I need." It is horrible isn’t it, when people always need. Nobody ever wants to give back to you again.

Be Other Oriented

Listen, you are getting from your underground stream. Forget about getting from other people. Forget about going to have ministry from other people. You are getting it from your underground stream. You are getting it from the Spirit of God, and He is giving it to you so that you can pour it out to others. So take your eyes off yourself now, and become sensitive to the needs of other people, and stop talking about yourself. Talk to somebody else about himself. Then you will be in a position where your windmill is of some use.

Speak the Word

Then if you want the Lord to use you, you had better learn to speak the Word. The Scripture says that "the Spirit confirms the Word with signs following." When Jesus sent His disciples out He told them to go into all the world and preach the good news, not the bad news. Not the bad news which says, "You’re going to hell you miserable rotten sinner!"Preach the good news that says, "You do not have to go to hell anymore. You don’t have to be sick anymore. You don’t have to battle in poverty anymore. You do not have to be broken down and loaded down with mental illness (whatever that is) anymore. You don’t have to be plagued by the guilt of the past anymore."

Preach Under the Anointing

That is good news. That is the Word. Haven’t you noticed that after the Word has been preached in church, that is when they begin to pray for people, and the Spirit of God begins to move? Why? Because the Word has penetrated. As the Word has gone forth, and as the preacher has spoken forth the Word, he has poured out the anointing through the words that have been spoken. The anointing has gone out and has begun to touch the people, and their hearts are ready and prepared, and the power of God is there. And when people come to the front they come, and God meets them because the preacher has been pouring out water all the time that he has been preaching. Man, the place is a lake at the front. Come and jump in! Do you want the river to flow in your church? Preach the Word under the anointing.

Respond to the Spirit

You are going to have to learn to respond to the Spirit. When the wind begins to blow upon you; when you set up your windmill, you are going to have to learn to respond to that move of the Spirit of God. Because when God moves upon you, He moves upon you suddenly and unexpectedly at times. The wind begins to blow. The windmill begins to turn. The water begins to gush.Suddenly panic hits you. It comes unexpectedly. You were sitting there minding your own business and God gives you a prophetic word, and your heart begins to go ‘doof, doof, doof’. Suddenly a picture comes to your mind that you did not expect, a prophetic word for somebody that you didn’t expect. And God is saying, "There it is. Give it out. Minister it forth." Oh dear! You are going to have to learn to respond to that revelation.I remember when God first began to use me, it was easy when I was praying by myself. It was easy to get revelations that I knew concerned me and concerned others in prayer. But now suddenly you are in a meeting, you are sitting praying and sharing together or you are praying with somebody and suddenly God gives you a revelation for that person.

A Personal Example

I remember one time we were praying for some people, a couple, and suddenly I saw a womb with a baby in it. It was full term, getting ready to be born. I knew it was a little baby boy. I was praying for this sister and suddenly I saw the baby. Now, what do you do? What do you do when it comes suddenly? It would be different if I was praying for her to fall pregnant. There was no talk about babies. Yes, I knew she hadn’t had a baby and she had desired one. But suddenly I saw the picture.I stood there and I waited and the picture just came back. I stood there and waited some more and said, "Lord, what do I do now?" And the picture came back. I was waiting for someone else to give confirmation maybe, waiting for somebody to pray something or say something, maybe a word of prophecy. There was just dead silence. I was it!The Lord said, "Go and tell her what you saw.""What if I am wrong?""Go and tell her what you saw.""But Lord, it may be my imagination."Have you ever imagined a full term baby in the womb? Try it. Close your eyes and see if you can see it. The best you can do is try and remember a picture you saw somewhere in a book or in a movie.So I went to her and I said, "This is what the Lord shows me."She looked at me and her eyes went big. And she said, "How did you know, I’ve been crying out to the Lord every day about that?"Well I learned a lesson. You see, I could have sat there and kept it to myself and told her later, but you see she was not pregnant yet. God wanted me to give the word to say, "The Lord has heard your prayer and He is going to answer your prayer and give you your heart’s desire." And He did – a baby boy, just like I saw. It was exactly correct.

Faith is Needed

I found this happening a lot when God first began to use me. I would be praying with people or would be sitting in a group praying, and I would get an impression or a picture or just a sense that I need to pray for a certain person. You know what you do? You sit and wait for more. It is like the first time God gave you a word of prophecy and He gave you a couple of words. You want Him to give you the whole prophecy before you open your mouth in case you mess it up. It has to be a step of faith. When the Spirit of God moves upon you, you have to respond. When the wind begins to blow on your windmill, you had better engage the clutch, or disengage it as the case may be. Start the pump turning. You are going to have to take action.So I learned that when God began to do that, usually when He showed me that I needed to minister to somebody, it did not work until I actually went to them; sometimes not until I actually put my hand on them. Then it would gush. Sometimes I would just go so far as putting my hand on them. I didn’t know what I was going to say. The Lord said, "Go and minister.""But Lord, what do I say?""Go and minister.""What is their need?""Go and minister. I will show you when you get there.""What am I going to do when I get there?""Go and do it, and I’ll show you."Now I do not know what is going to happen when I arrive there. As I lay my hands on a person and begin to pray I may have a vision. I may have a discernment in the Spirit. I may get a word of prophecy. It does not matter. As I move and act on the move of the Spirit of God, something happens.So sometimes I will just go and as I begin, "Thus saith the Lord …", off it goes. You just don’t know what is going to happen. Sorry, that is the external anointing type. You have no control over that. All you have to do is put your windmill in order and ready to pump. And when God moves you, you just go there and you do what He tells you to do. When you do what He tells you to do He will give you more. That is the faith part. That is the part you are going to have to do yourself.Now when the water begins to gush forth, God begins to give you things in the Spirit. We have looked at it in Prophetic Listening. We have looked at it in Prophetic Gifts, on how to flow in the gifts and how different people receive revelation in different ways, so I am not going to duplicate that. Whether God gives it to you by various different senses – by pictures, by prophecy, by an audible voice – however you are receiving from the Lord, you are beginning to let that water gush forth. There is somebody there in need that needs to be ministered to.

Use Wisdom

How are you going to give out the water? You do not just turn it up and let it flow. You are going to have to put it in the right place. You are going to have to channel it to where the garden is. You are going to have to move the hose to where the bucket is. You are going to have to apply that anointing. You are going to have to apply that revelation. You are going to have to apply that ministry in the Spirit specifically in the right way. To do that you are going to have to use wisdom. That is another reason why you need to know the Word.

Mentoring is Good

It is another reason why you need to be mentored, so that you can let somebody else learn and make the mistakes and you can learn from theirs, instead of opening your big mouth and putting both feet in it. It is sometimes the best way to learn, but it is a lot easier when somebody else has been there. And as you open your mouth and put your foot in they can say, "Uh uh uh! Foot out!" It helps. If you want to be stubborn and do it your own way, go ahead and do it yourself. It is much easier to learn from somebody else who has been there. It took them twenty years of toenail biting. Hey, you could learn it in months. It is up to you. That is by the by.You need to use wisdom when God gives you a revelation. You need to know what to do with that revelation. Sometimes it will come at an inopportune time. It will come in a way that you are just not quite sure what to do with it.

When I Met Daphne

I want to share this one. When I found myself divorced and without a wife I sought God for a new one and He gave me Daphne. Our meeting was miraculous and we have told our story in other places. The night that Daphne and I met I knew that I was going to minister to her. Whether she was the right one for me or not I did not know. But I knew God had put us together that night and I made myself available. I put my windmill up. I said, "Okay, Lord, I’m going to minister to this woman, whether she is my wife or not. I am not going to waste this evening. If she is my wife, that’s going to be wonderful. If she is not, she is going to have prophetic ministry even if she hasn’t had it before.So, after we had been out to a church service and we’d come home we began to wait on the Lord and we began to pray. And as we began to pray God began to show me things. He gave me a word of prophecy for her. I knew what He was saying, but I had to put it in such a way that it didn’t sound too obvious. He was effectively saying, "Okay, this is the guy, this is the woman, this is it! I have put you together." You do not prophesy that, "Thus saith the Lord, ‘You shall be my wife and you shall marry me.’ " You cannot do that.But the Lord gave me a Scripture from the book of Esther where Mordecai said to Esther, "How do you know that God has not brought you to the Kingdom for such a time as this? Esther you are in the right place at the right time. This is it. I’ve put it together." So God gave me a prophetic word which said just that. Well, I hoped she understood what I was saying. I knew what I was saying. The Lord gave me wisdom to present it in a way that was not imposing.She had told me during the evening as we had talked about ourselves and our lives, that her previous late husband had been unable to have children so she had never had a child before. They had wanted to adopt a child and that never came through. That is all that she said. And as we began to pray I saw her holding a baby in her arms.Well now, the Lord had told me a good time before that, and I had already shared it with my children, that I knew that my new wife was going to be young enough to want a child and that we must be prepared and open to receive another member in the family once I remarried. I knew it. I was ready for it. I saw her holding a baby. I knew it was going to be my baby. So what do I tell her? "Thus saith the Lord, ‘This man shall be the father of your child …’ ". You cannot do it. You have to use wisdom.In my mind I was saying, "Lord, that’s all very well. I have three daughters that I have custody of. Is this woman going to be able to handle them? She has never even had kids before." And I saw the Lord giving her something, as I often see Him doing in the Spirit, giving somebody something. I don’t even remember what it was, but I knew what the Lord was saying. It was, "I will give her the grace and the ability to do what needs to be done and to handle the responsibility."

Putting it Together

So I am walking up and down and I do not know what I am going to do with this knowledge. I said to her, "The Lord’s showing me things and I cannot tell you now." I had never had this happen to me before.I said, "Lord, what do I do with this?"He said, "Tell her what you saw."I walked up to her and said, "Tell me, do you still have a deep desire to have a child?"She took one look at me and she just broke out into tears. She said, "How did you know?"Well, I did not know, but God knew. I could not tell her it was going to be my child. I said, "The Lord’s going to give you the desires of your heart. You will have a child. I see you holding a baby in your arms." I could not tell her the other part. It was not the time yet.You are going to have to use wisdom with the knowledge of the revelation that God has going to give you as a Prophet. Do not just open your big mouth and don’t jump to conclusions. Rather hold back. We will share more on that as we go on.

How To Deliver a Revelation in The Public Meeting

If God gives you a word in the church in a public meeting, specially if it is not your church, and even more so if it is your church; if God gives you a word that perhaps relates to the body, to the church generally, you had better be careful opening your mouth and giving forth a word without finding out whether it sits well with the leadership of the church. This is a difficult one. A lot of prophets have erred on this one, and Pastors as a result have put the squeeze on them. They have said, "Okay, you don’t prophesy anything without putting it through me first, or putting it through somebody in the Church who is authorized to check prophesies out before they are spoken."It is not the Scriptural pattern. The Scriptural pattern is that a person will stand up to speak and the others shall judge publicly. It is because of abuse; because of the fact that these days there are more Prophets than others – we have more Chiefs than Indians sometimes – because people have not learned to use wisdom. A lot of the time it is because people have not been trained how to use the prophetic ministry. That is why we have this Prophetic School, to teach you how to do these things right. That is why we are speaking about this.

Prophesy at right time

You need to use wisdom. It has nothing to do with the fact that the Pastor lords it over you and that you have to be under his authority. It does not give him the right to reject a word that God has given you, that is a genuine word from Him. But there could be a time and a place to speak that word, and you need to give the leadership the right to reject the word before you speak it forth. If they do choose to reject the word they take the consequences of rejecting it. I have had that very thing happen to me very early in my experience. I perhaps did not use wisdom at that time either. I tried to stand up and speak a word in a public meeting and I was told to sit down and shut up.

Be Orderly

Use wisdom. If God gives you a revelation He intends you to do something about it, but He does not necessarily intend you to do it now! If God gives you a prophetic word in the middle of the preacher’s sermon you do not interrupt him."Just hold it, I have a word from the Lord. Shut up, please! Thus saith the Lord …" You don’t do that. I would not try and do that.Sometimes people break out in a message in tongues in the middle of a sermon. No. "God is not the God of disorder," Paul says. Use wisdom, Prophet. And if you are an emotionally expressive Prophet as most Prophets are, you had better learn to control your emotions.

Don’t Force Your Ministry

Make sure that when you are going to minister to somebody that the person wants to be ministered to. I have seen people in meetings, especially when you have small meetings like home meetings. You have the prophetic types. They have itchy fingers."Who can I lay my hands on tonight? Who can I prophesy over? Oh, yes, we have that new guy sitting there," and you eye him the whole night."Lord, give me a word for him."You just cannot wait to get your hands on him. You just can’t wait to go over and say, "Thus saith the Lord …" and if you do not have the guts or opportunity to go over to him personally, then you are going to give a public prophecy to speak it to him.The Holy Spirit is pictured in various symbols, and the Lord is pictured in various symbols. The Holy Spirit came down on Jesus as a dove, and a dove is often the symbol of the Holy Spirit. A dove is a very tender, gentle, and easily frightened bird. It is not aggressive. It is not a vulture. If you want to be anointed by the Spirit of God, the anointing is not the anointing of a vulture.He is as meek as a lamb, gentle as a dove. He leads as the Shepherd. He is not the butcher that drives the sheep to the slaughterhouse. As the Shepherd, He goes before the sheep and He woos in love. He does not hammer in condemnation. Don’t you dare take the prophetic ministry and use it as a whip against others, especially to cover the sin in your own life. It is so easy to speak judgement and condemnation on others and make yourself look good. You are going to have to use wisdom with the prophetic anointing when it comes upon you.

Don’t Act Under Pressure

You must not act impulsively, and you must never act under pressure. The Holy Spirit will never pressure you to do anything. He will tug at you. He will woo you. He will gently tug at you. The Spirit of God will move upon you, and He will nudge you gently again and again and again. It is a gentle nudge that says, "Speak it forth, speak it forth. Do this. Do that."I have heard prophets say, "But God told me to say it. I had to do it! I knew the Pastor was going to oppose me. I knew the people wouldn’t like it. I knew they would hate me for it. But I had to do it. I would have disobeyed the Lord if I didn’t do it."

Nonsense. The Lord never forces you to do anything. The Scripture says in 1 Corinthians 14:32:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"And the spirits of the Prophets are subject to the Prophets, for God is not the author of confusion, but of peace."

Yes, you need to obey what God has given you to speak. You need to obey in a spirit of gentleness and meekness, and love and wisdom. And you need to know how to minister forth what God has given you. Do not take your own aggression and your own impulsiveness and use the Holy Spirit as an excuse to do what you wanted to do. You just could not wait for the Lord to give you that word for this miserable, rotten church.You see, that is why Pastors have to put the squeeze on Prophets. I am afraid it is true. You are going to have to learn wisdom before God is going to trust you to pour forth His water.

Be Sure of What You’ve Seen

And if you are not sure what the Lord has shown you, don’t wing it. If you are not sure of what God showed you; if you have a picture and you are not sure what the picture means, do not go and do an impromptu interpretation on the run and hope it is right. You might get away with that in dream interpretation, but you are not going to get away with it in a prophetic word.I am sure you have heard cases of Prophets who saw a picture as they looked on somebody and misinterpreted the picture. They gave a prophetic word and said, "The Lord says this and that …" and it was wrong. If you are not sure what the picture means rather share the picture. Maybe the person understands what the picture means even though you don’t. Receive confirmation first if you are not sure. Just share."Brother as I’ve been standing here I see this bag hanging over your head. Now I am not sure what it means. Perhaps you know what it means, but I just want to share that with you. God wants to minister to you, and He wants to meet your need. And if you need special ministry I will pray with you afterwards, or you can come forward now …" whatever you want to do. But if you are not sure, do not open your mouth and put your foot in it again, because you could destroy somebody’s life.

Use Boldness

Apart from using wisdom in what to do with this water, you need to use boldness. There are a lot of Gideons out there. The Lord tells them what to do and their knees start to shake."Oh Lord, I will do it if you give me confirmation. Lord, make the fleece wet and the ground dry and I’ll do it Lord.""Okay, make the fleece wet and the ground dry.""Well, that could have been a coincidence, Lord. Um, make the ground wet and the fleece dry.""Okay, give it to the guy!""Um, well Lord, can’t you give me one more?"Do you know people like that? They are too scared to make decisions. They are too scared to speak out. They are sitting with the revelation and God said, "Go," and they sit there the whole night trying to pluck up enough courage. They go home that night and feel depressed and discouraged and know they have disobeyed God, because they did not speak what God wanted them to speak because they were afraid of what people would think. Hey, you are going to have to be bold."But what if they throw stones at me?"Then you are stoned."What if they say nasty things about me?"Then you are criticized. Hey, you should have made that choice before you started on this thing.

Every Ministry Operates By Faith

You need to take a step of faith. You are going to have to faith this thing, because every gift and every ministry that God has given operates by faith. And if you have not learned faith as a Prophet you are not going to excel in your prophetic ministry. That is why part of the prophetic preparation and part of the prophetic training often will mean that God will lead you into situations where things that always just panned out nicely before do not work anymore. Where finances just flowed easily before, suddenly they are blocked. Where everything fell into place and you never had problems, suddenly your whole life goes wrong."Oh, what is going on? Lord what are you trying to do? Are you punishing me because I was a sinner?"No, He is teaching you faith. He is teaching you to exercise and to develop the faith that is within you. He is teaching you to learn to use your faith, because it is going to take faith to stand up and say, "Thus saith the Lord …" Maybe you are going to stand and prophesy over somebody and God is going to say, "Thus saith the Lord, ‘I have called you from when you were a child. I have prepared you and I have raised you up. And you will do signs and wonders, and you will heal the sick, and you will raise the dead, and you will go to places you have never gone to before.’ ""What if I’m wrong?"Well you had better learn. You had better learn to step out in faith and give weaker prophecies than that first before you can give stronger ones. You had better learn to give the nicer ones that just say, "Thus saith the Lord, ‘I have seen your heart, and I care.’ " If you do not have the faith to give those ones you are not going to have the big ones."Oh but it’s not fair. The Lord gives that person such wonderful prophecies. I would love to prophesy like Sister So-and-So."You can. She has just more guts. She doesn’t care what anybody thinks. She is like a child that learns to walk, and stumbles and falls and gets bruises, but stands up and goes again. You are going to have to be bold if you want God to use you. You are going to have to have the audacity to believe that the water that is pouring forth from you, somebody else is going to need and want, and it is going to help them and quench their thirst. You are going to have to be bold enough to actually believe that.

Believe in Yourself

You are going to have to bold enough to believe that when you preach somebody is going to want to borrow the tape or even buy it, and pay money for it to listen to it."Who would buy something that I preached?"You had better be bold enough to believe that somebody will. You had better be bold enough to offer it for sale. I know that one. It is going to take boldness. You are going to have to believe in what God has put in you. You are going to have to believe in the anointing of God that is in you, because if you do not believe in it, do you think the other people are going to? If you do not believe that God is using you, do you think you are going to fool anybody else?"I don’t want what you have if you don’t even have confidence in yourself. You can keep it. Hey, if you don’t even want to drink your own water, do not come and palm it off on me."

Don’t Apologize for Yourself

Don’t apologize for your presence or for the revelation that you receive. Do not ever apologize for being God’s spokesman. Don’t ever stand up and say, "Well, I’m so useless, but I will just give this forth."Everybody is going to say, "We agree, you are useless. Shut up!"Be bold. I stand here in humility, but I speak for the King of Kings, "Thus saith the Lord God Jehovah Himself …" It is His word. You are speaking for the King of Kings. You do not have to apologize for Him, because you carry the insignia of His authority. He chose you and He called you, and He trained you and prepared you to set you up as a windmill. He is not afraid to stick you out there for the whole world to ride by and say, "There is a water source. I am going to go get some water there." You had better be confident enough and bold enough to lift up high and show yourself to the world and say, "I may just be an ugly old windmill, but we have some water here."

Handling Negative Responses

Now here is a difficult one. What happens when you try and pour forth the water and people won’t drink it? What happens when somebody responds negatively to your revelation? That is a tough one. Has it ever happened to you? You are praying with somebody and God gives you a picture. He gives you a revelation and you are sure of it. You know that this is of God and you share it with the person. You say, "God shows me this. Can you identify with that?" and they say, "No, I don’t think so. No, I do not know what you’re talking about. No that has never happened to me."You could have been wrong, yes. You have to be prepared for that possibility. And if you are wrong you can retract gently and apologize and say, "Well I saw this. Perhaps I misinterpreted it. I’m sorry, but this is what God showed me. Can you make anything of it?" It could be that what you really touched on is a sore point in the person’s life.I remember once praying for somebody. He was supposed to be sick. I did not know what was wrong with him. I began to pray and I saw this blood vessel and it was blocked. There was a clot in a vein, and it was quite clear. I stopped and I said, "What is wrong with you, brother?""Oh," he said, "Yes I’ve had trouble at times with my heart and whatever, and …"I looked at him and I thought, "Wow, I must have missed that one. I never saw his heart."Then his daughter said to me, "What did you see?"I said, "I saw a blocked blood vessel."She said, "You’re perfectly correct!"He had a blocked blood vessel in his leg or something. Now I do not know why he did not want to talk about it. Maybe he had been trusting God for healing and he did not want some prophet coming, I don’t know. But it threw me for a moment. I thought I had missed it, but I had not missed it. I had seen correctly. And only as I shared that picture of what I had seen did it come out.Listen, do not be swayed by negative responses to revelations. But by the same token, don’t be so arrogant as to say, "Well, I know I was right. You had better acknowledge it." Be bold and confident enough to stick with it if you know that God gave it to you, and confident enough to withdraw and give the person a bit of breathing room if they don’t want to acknowledge it. But don’t let it knock you off to the point where you begin to lose confidence or you are afraid to open your mouth next time you have a revelation in case you are wrong again. You are going to have those kinds of responses if you have not had them already. It is going to be part of your training, you will see.

Handling Rejection

Sometimes you have outright rejection. You want to start ministering inner healing to somebody and they do not believe in inner healing. Hey, I used to preach against inner healing. I guess if somebody had come to try and minister inner healing to me and said, "I see you have some hurts there and God wants to minister inner healing to you," I would have said, "Baloney, that’s psychological garbage!"So the Lord used guile on me. He sent some guy to me who did not even know what inner healing was. He just knew how to flow in the Spirit, and he said, "I don’t know what is going on, but I have this glowing heat in my hand here, and I want to pray for you."I said, "Well, okay, go pray for me."He prayed for me and the power of God hit me. Something happened and I started laughing. I did not understand what had happened and he didn’t understand what had happened. None of us knew what had happened, but something had happened.He said, "I don’t know what happened, but God said He has taken a weakness out of you and He has put a strength back in its place."I said, "What are you talking about?"He said, "I haven’t a clue."Well, we both learned what inner healing was because it happened. You know what it is like when you have to go tearing all the pages out of your notes; you know all the ones that are wrong? It really messes your theology up, I tell you, it really does. You are going to have people like that. They are not going to believe in what you have to minister, and yet God has given you revelation.Again, use wisdom and be bold and just go ahead. Just share the pictures that God gives you. Just speak the word; touch the person at the point of their need. Stay away from doctrines they are going to stumble over. Just offer somebody a ministry in love. They will receive it, and they will be ministered to. And when the Spirit of God comes upon them and the anointing hits them they will change their tune. They will start to rethink and they will start to click, "Now hold it. Maybe what I believe isn’t right after all. Maybe what I believed all my life was wrong." Let God do that. Do not try and do it in one little ministry session.

Be Humble

You must be bold as a Prophet, but you must also be humble. Do not ever claim to be infallible. I have seen Prophets that want to stick with their revelations and they are so full of obvious deception that it is so glaringly obvious and is sticking out like a sore thumb. But they will stick to the revelation."God showed me that. I know it was God. I heard this voice booming out of the sky. It was the Lord, I knew it was. I was driving along in my car and the Lord said, ‘Go to the Mall.’ When I arrived at the Mall God said, ‘Go buy a new TV.’ I knew it was God. I don’t know why He wanted me to buy a TV. I didn’t need one. I already had one. It was expensive, but I knew it was God. I had to obey."

Old and New Testament Prophets Different

Have you heard those before? I have. No, you are not infallible as a Prophet. We have looked at that in deception. Realize that you are going to make mistakes. There is a difference here, between the Old Testament Prophet and the New Testament Prophet. The Old Testament Prophet did not make mistakes, except deliberately. The reason being that the Old Testament Prophet only operated under the external anointing. And when the external anointing came it was controlled by God and by God alone. All the Prophet was, was the delivery boy. He just spoke forth what God gave him.

So, when you had false Prophets in the Old Testament they were Prophets who spoke deliberate prophetic words that they knew would tickle the ears of the hearer, and they knew that the anointing of God was not on them. But when the anointing of God came on them they would speak by the Spirit of God, and what they spoke was of God. And if what they spoke did not come to pass and was not true, you could tell straight away it was not of God, and therefore that person was classed as a false Prophet.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

People are mixing up Old and New Testament Prophets. I still want to get to dealing with that subject, and God has prevented me from dealing with it until right at the end. I have had to lay so much groundwork for all you Prophets out there who think you are called to be an Elijah; who think that you are called to be an Old Testament Prophet; to speak judgment; to try and act like an Old Testament Prophet. You know about the external anointing, but you do not know anything about the internal anointing. You have never learned to tap what is in your spirit, to pour out love and grace as Jesus intends the New Testament Prophet to do. We will deal with that later.

When you come to minister as a Prophet do not try and exalt yourself. Exalt the Lord that is in you. You are not there to make a name for yourself. That is true humility. True humility is not the opposite of boldness. You need to understand that true boldness can only come from true humility. True humility is a total confidence in yourself in the Lord; a total confidence to the point where if you make a mistake it is very easy to say, "I’m sorry. I was wrong." Total confidence to the point where if you do not make a mistake you can say, "I’m sorry. I was right." But it does not affect you, you see, because it is not you. It is the Lord in you. You are simply His spokesman. You are simply speaking forth His words.

Ministering the Anointing

Now I want to look at how we minister forth the anointing. We have looked at general principles. You can minister forth the anointing to a crowd or to a group, or you can minister forth the prophetic anointing to an individual. Unfortunately today’s churches have been built up in such a way that the emphasis has always been on the public meeting. So the idea and the aspirations we all have, is to stand up there behind the pulpit.

"I am tired of sitting in the pews. I’m tired of being a little nobody in church. Every now and then God gives me a prophetic word then I have to go and write it out and give it to somebody else to approve. And if I’m lucky and they like the word, maybe I will be able to read it out."

Ministering in Public

There has been too much emphasis on the public meeting, and it is only the big names who make it to the pulpit. It is only the big names who can travel around and preach to the crowds that are considered true Prophets of God and moving in the ministry. Let me tell you, the majority of your ministry as a Prophet is not going to be in the public meeting, it is going to be to individuals. I am going to look at both of those before we finish this message. In fact I am going to look more at the individual than I am at the crowd, but let’s look at the crowd ministry very quickly.

Perhaps many of you reading this cannot identify this because you have not stood behind a pulpit yet to preach. Maybe you have hardly even had any opportunity to speak publicly. Perhaps if you are a lady you have spoken at some ladies meetings. If you are a guy perhaps you have spoken at a youth meeting or at a home meeting or something like that. Perhaps you cannot fully identify, so I am just giving you a couple of principles to identify with when you have the opportunity, because you are going to have it if you want it.

If you are going to move into the prophetic office that God has called you to, you are going to have the opportunity to stand up and speak to a group. And you need to picture it and visualize it and desire it until God fulfills it in your life. You need to use the anointing in preaching.

Prophetic Preaching

What is preaching? That is when somebody stands up and gives a sermon, right; reads it off their notes? Did you know that preaching can be prophetic? The Lord taught me this very early in my experience. I started out my ministry as a Teacher. I was a very successful Teacher. Wherever I went my ministry was successful and people invited me back. I prepared my messages all nicely and homiletically. I need to teach some of you Prophets a bit of homiletics because you need to have a track to run on if you are going to teach in any way. But there are times that God will say, "I want you to preach prophetically tonight." That is one of those times that are like when the Lord says, "Go and speak a word of prophecy. Go and pray for that person. Open your mouth and speak and I will fill it."

You say, "Well, what must I speak on," and He says, "I’ll tell you when you open your mouth." Or He will tell you what to speak on and He will not tell you what to say about it until you open your mouth. Well, sometimes that is going to happen when you preach.

You say, "Well, I can go about five minutes in prophecy." If you are an expressive you can talk. You can talk your way round. You can flower it, paint the pictures, add Scriptures. You can stretch it out. You can give a good long prophecy there. Try standing up behind the pulpit and doing that. Hey, how do you think I manage to go for an hour or two at a time? It does not come from my notes, let me tell you. Why? Because you need to speak by the Spirit. You need to speak out what rises up out of your spirit as a Prophet.

Personal Experience

I remember the first time that God began to do this to me. It was in fact the last church that I pastored, or propheted. It turned out I was not really much of a Pastor because I was already flowing right in the prophetic ministry. God gave me the opportunity to minister as a Prophet. So when it came to Sunday meetings and I had to preach, I just wanted to prepare those good old homoletical teaching messages. And I said, "Lord, give me a word and He said, "Okay," and He gave me a Scripture reference.

I said, "Lord, I want a word."

He said, "That’s your word. Take that Scripture and preach on it."

"But Lord, what do I preach on it?"

He said, "You will know when you stand up."

Well you know, people are used to you preaching for at least thirty minutes. Have you ever tried preaching for thirty minutes on one verse? You have to do a lot of talking. You tend to be a bit repetitive and say the same things over and over again in different words to make the time stretch. But I learned to stand up and open my mouth and He fulfilled that Scripture that says, "Open your mouth wide and I will fill it."

Why? I will tell you why. Because I had already been in the ministry for many years. I had already studied the Word. I was already full of the Word. I was already full of the knowledge of the Spirit and of the things of the Lord and the spiritual life. How long does it take you to prepare a message? Not ten minutes, but ten years. Not twenty minutes, but twenty years. That is why I can preach for so long now. I have lots of years. You are having all of them loaded out on you now.

I learned to open my mouth, taking the track. All He gave me was a Scripture or a principle or a topic and He said, "There’s your road. Go and walk on it." And as I would walk He would give me the next step. It would be like walking down a road where you can only see a couple of feet in front of you. Now you just walk towards how far you can see, and as you get there you see the next few feet that are in front of you. You keep walking until you hit a wall and you stop. It is that simple, really.

Prophecy

That is how you prophesy isn’t it? It is the way I prophesy. I start speaking, "Thus saith the Lord …" and here we go, and off we go, and then (stop). That’s it. Shut up. Some people try and smash through the wall at the end and start talking nonsense, and you hear that their prophecy has gone beyond what God intended. They start climbing the wall, man. And you feel like climbing the wall because they are talking rubbish. You had better learn to step out when God tells you to step out and shut up when He says, "It’s over."

Follow the Rabbit

Well, that is how you are going to have to learn to preach as a Prophet. You are going to have to learn to speak. And if you are going to be tied to your notes what is going to happen is while you are preaching, while you are walking down this road, you are just going to see this rabbit running across the road and the Lord is going to say, "Chase it." And you are going to dash off after the rabbit, and the rabbit is going to here and he is going to go there, and you are going to follow the rabbit. Suddenly you are going to wonder where the road is and try and go back to it. Forget it, the Lord told you to follow the rabbit.

This goes against homoletics. They tell you not to follow the rabbits. If you are going to be a Prophet, the homoletics do not work. Follow the rabbit. He is leading you to the burrow where the Lord wanted you to be, because there is somebody sitting in the meeting now that has a problem; that has a need, that was not in your sermon.

Meeting Potential Needs

That is how you minister as a prophet when you are preaching. And if you are going to minister to people publicly, if you have a hundred people out there you are ministering to, you have a hundred potential needs you are going to minister to. You are not going to have time to deal in detail with every single need. So God is going to bring needs to your mind, to your spirit and to your heart as you are ministering. And it is possible that God will give you revelation. You are probably not going to have time to call everybody forward.

Have you ever tried praying for a healing line of a hundred people? I have never prayed for that many people, but I have dealt with at least twenty or thirty at a time and it takes a while, and it drains you and you are exhausted – if you minister prophetically that is. It is easy to do the evangelistic thing. Just (pop, pop, pop) and see them all fall. Then you can walk out and think you have done your job.

Personal Ministry Needed

If you are going to minister as a Prophet you are going to have to spend a few minutes with that person to get revelation for them; to speak healing; to speak revelation; to speak a word of direction; to give them something specific from the Lord. You cannot do that in a public meeting. That is why the public meeting cannot be the main thrust of your ministry, because you are not going to give the right amount of attention to a person.

Call Out the Pictures

The easiest thing to do if you are ministering publicly is to learn to identify the pictures that God gives you and to call them out. A lot of the great healing evangelists like Kathryn Kuhlman started that kind of thing, where they would just stand up in the meeting and say, "God is healing somebody of cancer over there. Somebody over there, a blind eye is opening," and she would just call it forth.

Well, the Lord can do the same for you as a Prophet. It is possible for you to call out the people that God is ministering to. It is possible for you to speak out prophetic words over individuals while they are out there. Just a word of warning – do not ever embarrass somebody in a public meeting.

Individual Ministry in a Public Meeting

I remember the first time I went into a public meeting and saw a Prophet calling people out. I had a mixture of emotions. On the one hand there was the kind of feeling that said, "Ooh, I wish he would call me out and tell me that God’s called me." Nobody ever did. I used to fight with the Lord about this one. I said, "Lord if you have called me to such a big ministry, surely you can get this Prophet to call me out?"

The Lord said, "What do I have to make the Prophet call you out for? I have already told you. Are you deaf?"

Don’t Reveal People’s Sins

I was trying to be like a Gideon, you see. If you are going to call somebody out, you had better call them out to minister to them, not to condemn them or to embarrass them or humiliate them in a public meeting. When God starts to reveal to you the sins of people and some of the secrets in their lives, God has entrusted you with somebody else’s secrets. You had better not be a gossip. If you are a gossiping kind of person, you had better deal with that before God is going to tell you His secrets as a Prophet. You had better not try and use those revelations to make yourself look good in a public meeting by exposing other people’s sins.

If God reveals to you something that needs to come out, call the person forward and speak to them by themselves, or generalize it and say, "God shows me there is somebody here tonight. You are involved in an adulterous affair and God says you must break it off." By all means speak that word, but don’t point out and say, "You there, lady with the hat on. You are involved in an affair with a guy at work and you’d better sort it out." I don’t care if God showed you that. Do not do it!

An Example from Jesus

You use wisdom in a public meeting. The Lord Jesus never did that to people. He condemned those self-righteous hypocritical Pharisees who were standing up and trying to do that; the ones who threw the woman in adultery at His feet in the public place and said, "She’s an adulteress. She needs to be stoned." And instead of humiliating her, the Lord humiliated them by writing in the sand and saying, "Okay wise guys. You super-spiritual heroes. The first one of you that is without sin, come on, throw the stone."

You know what, He publicly revealed their sin, and even then how did He do it? Well I heard somebody suggest this once. I thought it was a good idea. When Jesus sat down and He wrote in the sand, what did He write? Somebody suggested that Jesus actually wrote in the sand and He wrote, "Adultery – November 25^th 1954." And the guy who did it took one look and said, "I am out of here." It is just a fancy thought.

Jesus did not publicly reveal their sin, but yet He did. You see, God wants you to expose sin. God has revealed it to you for a purpose, and the purpose is to minister to that person to bring them to a point of repentance. Again it is a matter of using wisdom, especially in the public meeting.

Private Exposure of Sin

Now, if you are dealing with a person in private, that is different, but the Lord may actually want you to say that. You know what the Lord is usually going to say? He is going to say, "You’re caught in this adulterous relationship and I understand, and I care, and I love you both. But it is going to destroy you. I want you to be free."

It is going to minister in grace and in love and He is going to bring the person out of that sin. I know because I have dealt with that kind of situation. I have dealt with that exact kind of situation. And when I have shared with the person the love of the Lord and said, "The Lord understands. He doesn’t condemn you," the person’s eyes nearly popped out of his head.

He said, "How can you say that?"

I said, "Because Jesus says so."

It had an effect, let me tell you. He was waiting for me to slap him. "You miserable, rotten sinner! How can you do that to your wife?"

Use wisdom and love, and especially in a public meeting, be very careful about exposing other people’s sins.

Individual Ministry

Let’s go on to the individual before we end. You can use the prophetic ministry to minister to unbelievers and you can use it to minister to Christians. You can minister prophetically to an unbeliever. The prophetic ministry is not for the world. It is not for unbelievers. The prophetic ministry is not meant to predict who is going to be the next president. It is not going to predict which country is going to invade which country and what war there is going to be. I am not saying God cannot reveal that. If God reveals that He reveals it so that the Prophet can tell the church to pray, not so they can publicize it in the latest newspaper and be known as this great Prophet who predicted the downfall of the Government.

Ministry to Unbelievers

But God can use you, through the prophetic ministry, to minister to unbelievers. And God can reveal to you a person’s sin and their involvement with Satan, either to bring about a conviction of that sin or to show the person, "God knows about your sin and He still loves you and He still cares. He died for you on the cross of Calvary to purge you of that sin and to forgive you." It is so easy to condemn.

I remember reading recently about a famous convicted murderer that was in prison, who came to know the Lord. Now he preaches and says, "If God can forgive me, who’s a murderer, He can forgive you." It is easy to condemn. If God gives you revelation of a person’s life it is to minister His grace, not condemnation. There is a whole world out there ready to condemn and stab you in the back. You do not need to add to that. People have seen enough of that. They have had it wherever they have gone. They want somebody who says, "I can see your sin. I can see what a miserable rotten sinner you are. But I love you." There is nobody else out there that is telling them that.

Ministering to Sickness in Unbelievers

God can give you a revelation of sickness and disease in that person to show that He cares. I remember fairly recently speaking to a man who had been suffering with his heart. He kept having tests and they could not find out what was wrong. He kept having problems with his heart. And my heart burned. I said, "Lord, I want to minister to this guy."

The next time He came around the Lord said, "I want you to pray for him. I want you to pray for his heart." Well, I was not sure if he was going to be open to that or not. I had made it clear to him what I was and what I believed. I said to him, "I’d like to do something with you before you go today. I would like to pray for you that God would touch your heart."

He said, "Sure."

So we bowed our heads and I just put my hand on him and man the anointing came. The wind blew. I began to pray and the Lord showed me his heart. I could see it so clearly. I could see that the one main blood vessel coming out of the heart was kind of crimped and semi-blocked so that the blood would not flow out clearly.

I said to him, "I can tell you what’s wrong with your heart." I said, "One of the main blood vessels coming out of your heart is constricted and blocked. I am going to pray for you that God is going to sort that out."

I saw him a while later and he said to me, "You know what? You were right." He said, "They went and gave me some more tests and they discovered one of the blood vessels in my heart has been clogged."

Well I do not know what effect I had on him spiritually or his commitment to the Lord. But I ministered forth and reached out and touched him with the love of the Lord. God can use you to minister to unbelievers as well as to Christians as a Prophet.

Revelation of the Future

God can give you revelation concerning the future for an unbeliever. As you are beginning to minister to them God can give a revelation. He can give a promise to show that they are on a path to destruction. He can give a revelation that says, "If you will turn from that path of destruction, this is what God has for you. You can be blessed and you can make it through." God can do that for an unbeliever because He cares for every single person, believers and unbelievers alike. So as a Prophet you can minister even in evangelism. Use the prophetic anointing and bring people to the Lord.

Ministering in Counseling

But of course the main part of your ministry is going to be to the believer. One of the most effective ministries of the Prophet to the believer is in counseling.

You say, "But yes, for me to counsel surely I am going to have to go to University and earn a degree in Psychology. I’m going to have to get a Doctorate, surely in Psychiatry, before I can mess with people’s lives and try and counsel them on their severe problems with mental illness?"

Well I am going to bite my tongue here because I am going to deal with this in a lot of detail in our Counseling School, so I am going to skim through very quickly here. And I am going to show you that as a Prophet you can minister to any problem; to any need; to any situation; to any so-called mental illness; to any kind of psychological problem. The Psychiatrist and the Psychologist will spend months digging to find a problem that the person does not know and the Psychiatrist does not know, and nobody knows, but God alone.

If you want to counsel that way you will spend the same time digging, digging, digging; looking for you do not know what. But when something comes out you say, "Well maybe this is what we are looking for. Maybe it’s not. Keep digging in case." When you come as a Prophet to minister and to counsel somebody with a need you do not need the shovel. You just stop and say, "Okay, Lord, you know where the problem is. Father we give it to you. Lord, I’m putting my windmill up. Blow the wind."

The Lord says, "Take your water hose and beam it right there."

God reaches in and He puts His finger exactly on where the problem is. If you take your water hose and you beam the water right there, the problem can be solved in minutes and it takes Psychiatry years. But the Spirit of God will do what man cannot do.

Prophetic Counseling

How are you going to do it? You can do it by identifying hurts from the past; hurts from the past that the person has forgotten or has so blocked out from their memory that they cannot even remember it, or do not want to remember it. But God will reveal to you as a Prophet and He will reach in and put His hand and His finger right there. And He will go back and show you a scene. And as you are praying for a person you will have a picture maybe. You will see the person at a certain age. You may see the clothes they are wearing. You may see the circumstances they are in. You may see the people that they are with. But God will show you.

All you need to do is reach in and say, "I see you about the age of six. You are sitting crying. You have a rag doll in your hand. You’re wearing a little blue dress. Can you remember that?"

Pow! You will find the person suddenly break down and start to cry. "Yes, I remember that. This is what happened. It still hurts when I think about it."

Transforming Hurtful Memories

God reaches in by His Spirit and He goes into that memory and transforms it and takes the pain out of it. And in minutes the person is set free of a problem that has plagued them all their lives. Is it that simple? Can it be that simple? Yes it can be that simple. But there are a lot of problems perhaps that need to be uncovered. There may be a lot of hurts that need to be uncovered. And it may take different times of praying with the person to uncover different ones.

I am not saying it is all instant. We all like ‘instant’ these days. You are going to have to use wisdom, and you are going to have to again know how to use the revelation that God has given you. That is why we want to train you in counseling, not just to counsel with counseling methods, but to learn as Prophets how to take the revelation that God gives you and to use it to minister to needs by the prophetic gifts and by the prophetic anointing.

You need to identify templates and triggers. We covered it in this course and in other places. Sometimes God will reveal to you the exact template in the person that needs to be dealt with, and a trigger that is causing them to feel the way that they are.

Minister to the Child

You are going to minister to the child within, not to the adult. The counselors and the Psychologists are trying to minister to the adult. The adult is grown up and thinks as an adult. This woman is thinking as an adult woman. She is thinking as a mature woman, but she was abused as a child. It is not the adult woman that is thinking of abuse. It is the child. It is the confused little child who was abused that is still hurting as a child. You cannot reach the adult mind because it is the child that is hurting. It is going to take the Spirit of God; it is going to take a revelation to go in and touch that little child and heal it. And when that little child is healed the adult will be healed too.

You cannot do that with Psychology and Psychiatry. Psychology says once the character is set it cannot be changed. Psychology says once the past has taken place and the scar has been left, it cannot be healed. It is with you forever. The best we can do is help you forget it.

God says, "You can change. I will help you change. I’ll cause you to change." God says, "You can get rid of that memory. You can get rid of the pain of the memory. I’ll take the sting out of it."

You can do that as a Prophet, because God is going to reveal to you exactly where the problem started and you are going to speak forth a prophetic anointing, and you are going to speak forth a prophetic word to that little child. And that little child is going to be healed and set free.

Dealing with Bitterness

You may need to speak healing and forgiveness. Do you know what is the root cause of most problems in the spiritual life? Bitterness - in every single one of us. There are actually three roots (we have covered that in Counseling) but the tap root is bitterness. If you want to start ministering to a person with spiritual problems, you are going to find bitterness. I have found very often that I have dealt with people who have problems with lust. Sigmund Freud goes and digs in the past sexual experiences. When I counsel with a person, the Spirit of God moves and I say to them, "Have you forgiven your father yet for what he did?"

"Well what has that got to do with lust?"

"That’s where your problem started. You are bitter against your father."

"Huh? Where did you suck that from?"

"Out of my spirit."

God knows exactly where the source of the problem is. And very often you will reach in by the Spirit and you will solve and minister to a need that will solve other needs and problems, because you do not have to think in your mind. All you need to do is speak forth what God reveals to you, nothing more. You do not have to sit down with a person, put them on the couch and let them go through their whole life of woe. I did that once and it nearly killed me. I sat listening for hours to a guy’s woes and it did nothing until the Lord just went and put His finger right on the problem. He had not even covered it in his hours of woe. You can do that as a Prophet.

Dealing with Guilt

You need to deal with guilt and condemnation. Condemnation is the greatest strength that Satan has against us. And if he can keep you in guilt, usually false guilt, it takes away your faith and prevents you from entering into all that the Lord has for you.

Dealing with the Law of Judgment

You need to deal with the law of judgment. And God is going to reveal to you as a Prophet where judgments have been made that are affecting the life of this person. I am not going to deal with that in detail, because we have also dealt with it elsewhere.

Spiritual Imprisonment

You are going to have to deal with spiritual imprisonment. This is a big one. This is something that you are not going to be able to do with ordinary counseling, because the person, through bad experiences in life, has built walls around them and have put themselves in a spiritual prison. They have built gates and walls around themselves to prevent anybody from getting in and causing further hurts. And they are sitting there in their self-made prison, afraid to go outside; sitting in the dark; sitting all alone and weeping inside. They are lonely and crying out.

Only a Prophet is going to be able to go there in that prison. Only as a Prophet is God going to show you that little child there in the prison. God is going to show you, as a Prophet, how to walk into that prison. He is going to show you the light shining in that prison. God is going to show you the Lord Jesus taking that little child and picking him up in His arms and holding him close, carrying him out of the prison, and shutting the door behind so he never needs to go back. He is taking him out into the sunlight. Only a Prophet can minister to a person that way, because only a Prophet can have that kind of revelation that can reach in and touch the hurts that have been in a person’s life for so many years.

Ministering Deliverance

As a Prophet you are going to minister deliverance to the captives. How are you going to identify the curses that exist in the life of a person? Because God is going to reveal it to you. God is going to show you curses that are caused by their association with other people. God is going to show you curses that are caused by objects that are in their home. God is going to show you curses that have come down through family generations.

Curse on My Ministry

I had a problem very early in ministry where it seemed that every time I tried to do something it went wrong. People would turn against me. Part of it was prophetic preparation. But as I cried out to the Lord I said, "Lord, what’s going on?" God showed me a man from way back. I could see by the way he was dressed. He looked like an old time preacher in his suit. And I heard Him speak the words, "You are cursed with a curse, because you have disobeyed the Lord your God." He was speaking to some woman. And I saw through the generations of family and I heard the voice echo through the generations like an echo and a reverberation taking place in an open canyon. I heard those words coming down on me. "You are cursed with a curse."

I do not know who he was. I have not been able to find out much about that far back in my family generations, because it is quite a few. God showed us. Way back there, there was a man of God who spoke a curse, perhaps on one of his daughters, I do not know. Whoever she was she was one of my ancestors. It was a curse that was spoken and was carried down through the family generations. God revealed it prophetically, and I broke the effect of those words and disassociated myself with those words, and broke free to walk in the blessing of the Lord.

Family Generational Curses

You are going to have a lot of that sort of thing. Do I sound paranoid, way out? Well, perhaps it does to somebody who is not a Prophet. If you have had prophetic revelation perhaps you will know what I am talking about. If you haven’t you are going to get it, because God is going to reveal things to you. You are going to be ministering to people, and at times as you minister to them you may see several people standing behind that person as though going back in generations. At times God will show perhaps this person with their mother and their father, and you will see it going back behind one parent, and you will know which of the two parents the family generation bondage or curse came from.

God can show you those things as a Prophet. God will show you sinful templates that demons have had control over, and you are going to be able to set people free from demonic bondage.

This has been a long message but I had a lot of ground to cover. So I just want to end by asking you a couple of simple questions. You are a Prophet. That is why you are on this course. You have the potential to flow in the anointing and to minister effectively. You are going to be able to do that wherever you are, whether you are in church, whether you are at home, whether you are at work, whether you are at the shops, whether you are walking down the streets. Your windmill is set up. It is ready to go.

Be Available Always

Be ready. Be available to minister to the Lord wherever you. You are going to be able to minister to the Lord at any time. If somebody wakes you up in the middle of the night and you are half asleep you should be able to wake up and set up your windmill and say, "Okay, Lord, blow. I’m ready." And when the Lord blows on you, the anointing will come forth and you will be able to minister. You will be able to minister to anyone.

A Personal Experience

I just want to share one final experience of my own in closing. I found a telephone number in my Bible the one night, and I was not sure who it was so I phoned it. It turned out it was a Pastor who used to be my Senior Pastor, a man who I really respected and revered. I felt God wanted me to make contact with him again, because perhaps God had something to minister for me from this man of God. I had not seen him in a long time. As I looked to the Lord He said, "No. I want you to go and minister to him."

Now as a Prophet, you have the ability to minister to anyone. You need to be open to it. You need to realize that the big name out there in the public eye, who is so famous, is not exempt from needing ministry. Of course it is going to be a lot more difficult to write him an email, if he will ever notice it, if God gave you a word for him. But be open and ready to minister to anybody, anywhere, at any time. Because as a Prophet of God you have that ability. Now go do it!