You Can Prophesy: Supernatural - Simple - Safe

By Nick Watson

You Can Prophesy is written to equip the next generation in prophetic ministry and edify those who practice this important gift. Packed full of original, practical and biblical teaching which has taken the author a lifetime to glean, You Can Prophesy gives you a strong foundation and deep insight into prophetic ministry.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9781483530079

Book preview

ministry.

Introduction

Two purposes and two Scripture verses have inspired me to write this book. The first is about giving God glory by sharing testimonies of his prophetic revelation and power.

The voice of the Lord strikes with

flashes of lightning.

PSALM 29:7

What God has said in the past is recorded in the Bible. The voice of the Lord did not go silent after the Bible was written. His voice is still heard today through prophetic ministry. When it is heard, the voice of God still sheds light and releases divine power that hits the target for which God sends it.

My second purpose is to multiply ministry by empowering the next generation of supernatural prophetic ministers.

Even when I am old and gray, do not forsake me, my God, till I declare your power to the next generation, your mighty acts to all who are to come.

PSALM 71:18

I do not consider myself to be old, because I inspire so many people; but I have to admit that my hair is gray. I regard this book as my legacy to my family, my church and the generations of Christians to come who will earnestly desire to go forward in prophetic ministry.

To fulfil these twin purposes and verses, I have written a book that has three components Revelatory Teaching, because all ministry must be Bible-based. The Holy Spirit has given me great insights to share in this book.

Real-life Testimonies, because as I give glory to God, it releases him to do the same for others. It was the teaching and testimonies of Bishop Dr. Bill Hamon that inspired me to pursue more of the supernatural in my prophetic ministry.

Reproducible Training, because people must be taught the how-to dimensions of the ways of God in order to fulfil their prophetic destiny. Psalm 103:7 says that Moses understood the ways of God. My prayer and belief is that you will too, after you read this book.

As my title indicates I am sharing the knowledge and experience God has given me in prophetic ministry to achieve three goals. I intend to make New Testament prophecy:

Safe, because as Col Stringer bears witness to in his endorsement, too many mistakes have been made by both prophesiers and those who have received prophecies. My goal is to help people minister prophetically in love, humility and wisdom, with accountability

Simple, because the Lord wants all his people to be equipped to share his word with others through prophetic ministry. Therefore, this book is designed to make prophecy accessible and reproducible. I am delighted by the number of my endorsers who commented on the practicality of my book. That tells me I have achieved this goal.

Supernatural, because one word from God can change your life forever. One word from God started creation. One word from God can set miracles into motion in your life and through you to impact others. I believe that God intends for prophetic people to minister supernatural words of revelation that release supernatural power that is directed towards a divinely appointed target person or purpose. That is what the analogy of lightning in Psalm 29:7 represents.

My simple definition of prophecy is receiving a message from the Lord and sharing it with others, for their benefit.

With that in mind, this book is about learning to hear the voice of God and then sharing what the Lord says with someone else. When you do that you will have the beginnings of a ministry of prophecy.

I share practical guidelines about the two steps of prophecy, which are, firstly, how to recognise that you have received a message from God, which you understand; and, secondly, knowing to whom the prophecy should be ministered.

It is my prayer that the Lord will use this book to empower you, my reader, into prophetic ministry. I pray Holy Spirit will take of the anointing that is on me and impart it to you, as He did to the seventy elders in Numbers 11:25.

This is the age in which the prophetic is once more bursting outside the walls of the church into the streets in powerful prophetic evangelism. Like never before, this is God’s time for all his people to prophesy, with signs following, to the glory of God and for the building of his kingdom in the hearts of people of every generation, in every nation.

So, now it’s over to you to step into your prophetic ministry inheritance by faith.

Hearing and Sharing

the Voice of Our Shepherd

Sometime ago, I learned about a praying woman’s testimony. During her regular prayer time, this Christian intercessor would pray for her neighbours. The Holy Spirit impressed upon her to tell a lady across the road to not be afraid. She did not know that neighbour very well. She continued to pray and decided to bake a cake for the neighbour. When she delivered it, she told the lady that she had been praying for her and she felt the Lord wanted to tell her that it was not his will for her to be afraid. The lady broke down in tears on her front doorstep. She was facing an imminent serious medical operation about which she had a lot of fear.

WHAT PROPHECY IS

This is a book about prophecy. My simple definition of prophecy is receiving a message from the Lord and sharing it with others for their benefit. With that in mind, this book is about learning to hear the voice of God and then sharing what the Lord says with someone else. When you do that you will have the beginnings of a ministry of prophecy.

The New Testament uses the Greek word prophetes¹ 186 times. It means to speak; to declare; to make known. I researched this word, which is derived from the two Greek words.

1. pro² meaning before, earlier than. Pro was used in Latin to mean on behalf of; and

2. phēmi³ to say, to declare, to bring forth into the light, to make known one’s thoughts, to spread a report.

Putting these root words together demonstrates that prophetes can be given the literal meaning: to speak for or on behalf of another (the Lord) to make known his thoughts before something happens.

Vine’s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words (online) says the noun propheteia⁴ signifies the speaking forth of the mind and counsel of God.

Over the years of my ministry, I have discovered six general ways through which God prophetically reveals himself and gets his plans into motion.

The first and most basic of the six ways to experience God in prophetic ministry is founded on the shepherd-sheep love-relationship we have with the Lord. This is the beginning of the friendship and sonship dimensions of relationship that our identity in Christ makes available to us.

This first chapter will explain how we receive prophetic revelation through intimacy with God. Chapters 2 to 6 are each devoted to one of the other ways.

ALL GOD’S SHEEP KNOW HIS VOICE

Jesus said that his sheep know the voice of their shepherd (John 10:4) and they hear His voice (v.27). In verse 27, the Greek word akouó may also be translated: my sheep listen to my voice. Therefore Jesus taught that every Christian can and will hear the voice of our Lord when he listens.

The most basic and most common way Christians hear the voice of the Lord is by reading their Bible. Therefore, the most basic form of prophecy occurs when a Christian gets a blessing or an insight from the Word of God that he believes will be as much of a blessing to others as it was to him. Therefore he intentionally shares it with another person, who is blessed by the revelation. This qualifies as prophecy because it is an insight from the Lord that has been shared with someone else for their benefit.

If any Christian says I can’t hear God’s voice or the Lord never speaks to me he is very wrong. If you can read the Bible, you can hear from God. The words of Jesus do not allow for any sheep of his pasture to be exempt from the privilege and responsibility of listening to and hearing what God is saying.

There are reasons why a Christian could feel that way.

i. Ignorance

He is ignorant as to how God speaks, and the particular ways in which God speaks to the individual. In other words, he does not yet recognise his shepherd’s voice;

ii. Not Listening

He is not listening to his shepherd’s voice; or he lacks the faith to accept that God wants to communicate with him and is actually speaking to him;

iii Deception

He is afraid of being deceived or he is actually deceived. The deception could be because of demonic deception. The devil sows an outright lie into his mind such as: You can’t hear from God or You are not important enough for God to bother speaking to you.

It could be due to wrong teaching from others or a self-generated deception that is rooted in low self-esteem or unbelief. Let me be loud and clear about this: no normal Christian is so special, so different, so lowly, or so outcast from the flock of God that the Lord refuses to speak to him.

There is no hierarchy among his sheep that elevates one Christian above others, or that demotes a Christian to second-class status. We are all one in Christ. He is in each and every one of us in equal measure. We are all equally worthy in him, even if we do not feel worthy. Our worthiness is in Christ. It is all about our faith, not our feelings. We must believe that we are what God says we are in his word; that we have, what God says we have in his word; and that we can do what God says we can do in his word.

When my wife Lynne and I were very new Christians we had not had enough time or teaching to grow our discernment of the Lord’s voice. Fortunately we had also not been told we were too young in the Lord to hear from God. One day Lynne was outside in the garden when the thought suddenly came into her mind: Read Joel. It came spontaneously and persistently until she thought: I wonder if there is a book in the Bible called Joel? If there is, then these thoughts must be from God. When she found the book and read it she discovered a promise that our marriage would be restored and that the grace of God would compensate for the years we had wasted (Joel 2:25-27).

There is a prophetic lesson to learn from Lynne’s experience. When we are young in the Lord, he speaks regularly and clearly to us because he wants us to learn to recognise and then understand the sound of his voice. In these early days God will sometimes speak to us very loudly. He will certainly speak loud enough for us to not miss nor misunderstand what he is saying. As we mature in the Lord, he speaks more softly and expects us to do more listening, to spend more time in worship, and to wait on him and to read his word.

An immature Christian may hear from God occasionally by randomly opening a page of the Bible. As he grows in God, it is more likely he will hear from the Lord through his daily devotional readings. Then, with even more maturity and experience, he will get more serious with God. When he is looking for breakthroughs in revelation, ministry or destiny, he may choose to or even need to spend quality time alone with God in prayer and fasting.

BUILD GOOD HABITS WITH GOD

As I have grown in the Lord, the enthusiasm of my first love, which I still have all these years later, has matured from the joy of my salvation into a true covenant relationship with God. Couples in love experience the absolute joy of building their relationship to that very happy day of their wedding ceremony. But just as building a marriage starts as soon as the wedding reception is over, so it is in our walk with the Lord.

At some point in our relationship with God we realise there are certain responsibilities we need to accept as our part of our covenant of love with him. There are good habits to be built in to our lifestyles in order to sustain a long-term relationship. Many Christian married couples today have a regular weekly date night for this very purpose.

The fact is, that after the wedding, we experience a mix of great high days, unwelcome low days and not-so-great, even boring ordinary days. Even after their unforgettably good high day experience on the mount of transfiguration, Peter, James and John had to come back down to earth. They were immediately confronted with the need to help a demonised boy and his family. Praise God they soon learned that Jesus is Lord of every day (Matthew 17:1-23).

Build good habits into your

love relationship with the Lord

I had to learn two important means of winning the battle of life, through my relationship and partnership with the Lord. The Holy Spirit communicated this me: Nick, if you want to win the battle of life, you must first win the battle of the day.

If you want to win the battle of life,

you must first win the battle of the day.

The first way was to read my Bible before breakfast and put prayer and praise before pay and play. On many days what this looked like was me reading the bible while I was eating my breakfast and praying in the car on the way to work. I learned to use my car as a mobile chapel. The more of God you take in, the better your day and your life will be.

The second way is about having fresh faith for each new day

Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed,

for his compassions never faiL. They are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness. I say to myself,

The Lord is my portion; therefore I will wait for him.

LAMENTATIONS 3:22-24

I had to learn, and am still learning, how to shut the door on the past when faced with difficult situations or negative circumstances. This may include the very recent past. Whether someone hurt you years ago or only yesterday, you must learn how to get over it. You can do this by exercising forgiveness, by getting overyourself and by stepping into the Lord’s new mercy, new grace, new love, new blessing, new hope and new power! God has provided these for you each and every day. This good habit, this good love relationship exchange will bring the Lord’s victory, healing, peace and joy into your life.

REVELATION COMES FROM INTIMACY

I must say again, because I cannot over-emphasis this point: prophetic ministry is founded on the love relationship we have with the Lord. Recently I read a brilliant chapter in Katherine Ruonala’s book that includes a section based on Jude 1:20-21. Jude tells us to keep yourselves in God’s love.

Katherine writes that this involves positioning yourself to receive God’s love – to experience it at a practical level. It means to deliberately position yourself where you can keep your focus on God and receive the love He wants to show you. She writes: I need time alone with God to drink in His love and allow Him to restore my soul more than I need anything else. I need much more than just one focused time alone with Him a day, and adds, we must learn to drink deeply, deliberately and continuously from the river of His pleasure that flows with love for us.⁵

The foundation of prophetic ministry is an understanding that we are in a love relationship with God himself, a covenant relationship, one that truly is two-way in both responsibilities and benefits. Yes, every believer can literally bless and benefit God. How often have you wondered, what you could buy for the person who has everything? This applies even more so to God, who has no needs, because he has an infinite supply of every good thing.

However, each and every Christian can bless and benefit God himself by fulfilling the very purpose for which mankind was created. We can love him, spend friendship time with him, praise him, please him, and partner with him as his adopted children, so that his work and will is done on earth as it is in Heaven. Simultaneously, we can enjoy the abundance of His grace, blessing, power and provision. Hallelujah!

Sadly, Christians can also affect God in a negative way, such as grieving Him (Ephesians 4:30). But, I’m going to assume my readers want to please Him and stick to the positive aspect of our love relationship.

One day while reviewing my manuscript I received a tweet from internationally known prophet Graeme Cooke. I want you to know I am not remotely desperate for God. I am too busy enjoying being delighted in Him. That was a great tweet!

God makes it easy for us to understand Him,

so we can enjoy two–way communication with Him

TWO-WAY COMMUNICATION WITH GOD

Two-way communication with our heavenly Father, our daddy-God is as normal and natural a part of our relationship with him as it is with all our other earthly family and friends.

It is important to realise that hearing from God is not a difficult or complex matter. God wants to speak to us. He wants us to recognise his voice and to comprehend what he is saying to us. How else can he build relationship and partnership with us? The good news is that the Lord will speak to us in our own language, and in ways that we can understand.

We can see this demonstrated in the Scriptures by noting that God gave Pharaoh’s baker a dream about baking, which was his job. To Pharaoh’s cupbearer, the Holy Spirit gave a dream that related to his job of cup-bearing. Pharaoh himself received a dream about the agricultural economy of his nation. The Jewish apostle Peter saw a vision and heard a voice dealing with Jewish laws and religious traditions, which he knew well.

So it is not surprising when in prophetic ministry a mechanic receives a message about God giving someone a spiritual tune up or a complete rebuild; or saying to people who feel they have been running on empty that there is a plentiful supply of spiritual fuel, energy and power for them to fulfil the purpose of their journey with God.

God created mankind to be in relationship with him. He designed prayer to be like a normal two-way conversation between family and friends, except that it’s between us and our creator, our heavenly Father.

i. We talk to God

We talk to God in praise and prayer and the Lord listens and responds to us. Our prayer, praise, worship and listening activate his voice, because as we draw near to him, he draws near to us (James 4:8).

ii. God talks to us

God talks to us by his word and by his Spirit, and we listen to him and respond.

Sadly, however, for too many Western Christians, prayer is not a two-way conversation. People rush into the presence of God. They do not greet him with praise or thank him, as the Bible says we all should.

Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise;

give thanks to him and praise his name.

For the Lord is good and his love endures forever;

his faithfulness continues through all generations.

PSALM 100:4-5

These people just say as fast as they can the many things they want God to do for them. Then they rush out of his presence, without waiting for God to share in the conversation. It is not like a two-way conversation as between family and friends but more like rushing into a pizza shop, placing your order, and then rushing out again, saying, I’ll be back later. At least the customer has faith that the store will make the pizza!

If you did this to your father or your mother, your leader or your friend, they would be shocked and disappointed. They might be offended or even angry with you, so much so they might even unfriend you on Facebook, especially if you had treated them that way on a regular basis.

So why do we treat God in this way? It is very disrespectful.

GOD ALWAYS HAS SOMETHING TO SAY.

ARE WE LISTENING?

If I asked you which of the Psalms says that we are fearfully and wonderfully made, I am sure many of you would say Psalm 139 verse 14.

BUT could you tell me what it says in verses 17 and 18?

How precious to me are your thoughts, God!

How vast is the sum of them! Were I to count them,

they would outnumber the grains of sand–

when I awake, I am still with you.

PSALM 139:17-18

God’s thoughts toward each and every person on earth are so many they cannot be counted. The Lord can speak any of his many thoughts at any time to anyone, whether it be a man or a woman; young or old; pastor or new Christian; leader or follower; rich or poor; high born or orphan; educated or uneducated.

Any consumer can buy a radio or television and tune in to the messages that are beaming into his living room twenty-four hours a day. Similarly, any Christian can