Our Lord gave us the Holy Spirit to allow us to walk in his power, his boldness to witness and enable us to expand his kingdom. And the Holy Spirit distributed his gifts according to the desire of the Lord to strengthen his church.

The gift of prophecy is one of the most exciting gifts in God’s kingdom, and at the same time one that carries with it so much responsibility. Prophecy is hearing the voice of God and delivering his message to others. Wow! What a privilege. What a responsibility. How can a man or woman put their heart and life in such a place as to be able to actually hear God speak in their hearts and have both the courage and fear of God to deliver those words to others?

Three activities come to mind in order to put your life in a place to hear God and keep your heart right before him. Those character traits are to be

1.     People of humility

To prepare ourselves to receive the gift of prophecy and to walk as God’s prophetic voice before his church, let’s look at these three characteristics of the prophet. Let’s start with humility.

Humility is a hard issue of life because it goes against our very sin nature that all of us have! It goes slaps in the face against our self wants, our self promotion, our self will and desires. 

So what is the enemy of humility in our lives?  Pride. Self-righteousness.   Pride and humility can’t live in the same body at the same time. Each will destroy the other.

Prov 18:12 says:

Before his downfall a man's heart is proud, but humility comes before honor.

God listens to the humble

O LORD, Thou hast heard the desire of the humble;

Thou wilt strengthen their heart,

Thou wilt incline Thine ear. Psalm 10:17

Humility is honestly assessing ourselves in light of God’s holiness and our sinfulness.  True humility comes from encountering God. Humility asks these three questions of God:  We can be humbled in one of three ways:  

There are many scriptures about God humbling men and women, but a quick one that we are all familiar with is in Deut. 8: 2-3.

2 And you shall remember all the way which the LORD your God has led you in the wilderness these forty years, that He might humble you, testing you, to know what was in your heart, whether you would keep His commandments or not. 3 And He humbled you and let you be hungry, and fed you with manna which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that He might make you understand that man does not live by bread alone, BUT man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the LORD.

-         God brings us down to size. He forces us out of “make-believe living.”

-         He strips things away to expose what is in our heart. In the nakedness of our situation, with all stripped away, He reveals to us (and others) our humanity,…. our inability to know and control things that affect us. This humbling that he is initiating with us is to reveal our hearts. It is a type of training to effect change of heart and activity in our lifestyle. This change of thinking and way we live creates a proper awe, respect and reverence for God in our life, our circumstances and our daily activities. If we respond in humility to what crosses our path, blessing follows.

Humility toward God requires Spiritual Warfare.Why?

Satan was kicked out of heaven for his pride which resulted in rebellion. The destroyer of pride is humility.  Satan hates Godly humility.  It goes against everything he stands for.  He can not afford for you to walk in Godly humility toward God.

If you do choose to walk in humility toward God, you will:

Satan can not take that risk. He wants you to walk in macho pride….or he will lose his influence in your life. He will effectively die in his impact against you if you walk in humility toward God and your spouse!

Godly humility results in faith, power, grace, restoration of relationships, and true love.

Let’s read about the Spiritual Battle in James 4: 6-8

6 But He gives a greater grace. Therefore it says, "God is opposed to the proud, but gives grace to the humble." 7 Submit therefore to God. Resist the devil and he will flee from you. 8 Draw near to God and He will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

A prophet can not afford to be proud. He or she cannot act or think more highly of themselves than God wants them to. If they do, they set themselves and ALL who are connected to them, to fail.

Holiness means being set apart from the normal. It also speaks of a purity that allows God to inhabit the temple within us. When a person is saved and filled with the Spirit of God, their life now belongs to God. For the power of God to flow in and through a person, they should walk in a way pleasing to the Lord – holiness. Holiness means my life is to be different after I met Jesus than it was before I met him. Holiness means that what Jesus likes, I like, and what Jesus hates, I hate.

A prophet is a person who chooses to separate themselves from the ways of this fallen world in order to allow God’s world and voice to be seen and heard through them. That separating by your choice sets you in a place of purity to walk according to God’s leadership.

Ps 119:9   “How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word.”    It’s not good enough just to speak the word of God; we must live the word of God. And by living in accordance to the Word, we will stay pure.

Ps 119:11  “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.”   Memorizing the word of God is like having ammunition for a gun. Without the bullets the gun is useless. Without the word memorized in our heart, we become unprotected from the ways and temptation of sin. 

Isa 59:2   “But your iniquities have separated you from your God; your sins have hidden his face from you, so that he will not hear.”

If we allow sin to stay in our lives (by our actions or inactions) then those sins form a barrier between God and us. And a prophet who can’t hear the voice of God means that it is a person who is acting in the flesh – and we know if we live in the flesh and not according to the Spirit it is impossible for us to please God. In fact, if we dare to speak on his behalf when he isn’t giving us something to say, then we will have to answer before our holy God.  You do NOT want that to happen.

God is serious about our holiness as prophets. Sin keeps man out of heaven. Sin breaks the fellowship and communication between God and man. Sin, left undealt with will create horrible effects in our lives and the lives of those around us!

As we enter this time of learning how to prophecy, we must come before our Lord confess each of our sins – we must not allow even the sin which we judge as small to stay alive in us. We must renounce and turn away from that desire to walk in the way not pleasing to God. I am convinced that the cleaner we walk before the Lord, the more capacity we have to receive more of His Spirit.

 

The fear of the Lord

I believe to the level that a person understands and lives in the fear of the Lord, to that level he will be a mighty warrior in advancing the kingdom of God and enjoy the blessing of the King. The person who understands that God is all powerful, all knowing, and able to change any circumstance for better or worse, AND who lives in reverence before this mighty God, that person will walk in amazing power

If we are to prophecy, we must live daily in the fear of the Lord. What does it mean to be in fear of God? Does this mean that we are so fearful of him, we refuse to take risks in serving him, for fear that we might fail? Does it mean that we are afraid of him to the point that we can’t abandon ourselves and our agenda to him because we are not convinced of his love for us? NO. It does not mean any of that!

Our God is a loving heavenly daddy. He cares for us, so much that he sent is only son to die for our sins.

Living in the fear of the Lord means that we have a healthy awe, a true reverence for his power, his position as almighty God and his purposes. Living in the fear of God means that we set our agendas down so we can pick up and do what is important to him.

15 The king of Egypt said to the Hebrew midwives, whose names were Shiphrah and Puah, 16 "When you help the Hebrew women in childbirth and observe them on the delivery stool, if it is a boy, kill him; but if it is a girl, let her live." 17 The midwives, however, feared God and did not do what the king of Egypt had told them to do; they let the boys live. Ex 1:15-18

In this story we see that the fear of God brings courage and advances his kingdom. The kingdom of God is advanced by courageous people who fear God more than the things man might do to them if they don’t follow man’s commands. The enemy of life is forced to us alternate plans when God’s people take a stand, as in verse 22. Fear of God brings courage to come against man’s and satan’s evil plans and emerge victorious. How much more should Holy Spirit gifted prophets walk in the fear of God and watch God’s courage flow on and through them!

Summary:

As the Lord leads a person to serve him through prophecy, it is critical that that person walk in humility (so he is teachable), holiness (so he is usable) and in the fear of God (so he is empowered).

How do you rate in each of these three areas right now? Let’s do business with God in these three areas so we are prepared when he calls us to serve him through prophecy!