Prophesying Over Mr. X

I was recently in a prophetic practice class called “Prophesying over Mr. X” with our friend Sheila at the Inside Out Training And Equipping School. I’ve heard God many times accurately before, but when I take a class like this I still feel like I’m about to jump out of an airplane.

Sheila has also been prophesying for a long time and given many accurate words of knowledge. She was the one who prophesied about us moving northwest to the interior of Brazil just a few weeks before we got the opportunity to do so. She said something in this class that I could really relate to. I don’t know if I remember it word-for-word, but paraphrasing “God will never bring us to the place where we don’t need faith or don’t need to trust him anymore.” She also gets words that don’t seem to make any sense to her, and it takes faith to share and not be sure if she’s right.

She gave the example of seeing a cowgate when she was praying for someone. Being a city girl, Sheila didn’t even know what a cowgate was, or that there was such a thing! But the person who received the word began weeping. When she was young she would round up the cows and then go come, knowing her parents were about to beat her. God used this word that Sheila didn’t understand to set a person free from oppression. The person was also healed of headaches as God healed the emotional trauma.

How I Used To See People Who Walked In The Supernatural

When, as a teenager, I saw people who walked in the supernatural, I thought “If only I had that experience or gift that they did, if I could only hear God like they do, life would be so much easier!” It was as if I thought that if I were in their shoes I would no longer have to stand firm in faith, resist doubt, or keep going in faith regardless of my feelings. Boy was I wrong! Now that I have seen the Holy Spirit’s work in ways I barely imagined, I realize what a misconception this was.

I’ve now experienced many of the manifestations I saw in those people’s lives, and although it was thrilling it didn’t feel like I had imagined it would. Many miracles actually came when I was persevering in the middle of crazy circumstances and didn’t let introspection or my personal situation stop me from stepping out and seeing God touch someone else. If I was not living by faith and only looking at my situation I would have felt like God was far from me and doubted his favor on my life, and would have never stepped out to see a stranger healed.

We Will Always Need To Walk In Faith

No matter how much we have seen God do in the past, today is a new day and we must rely on God now and receive his grace for today. We are weak and helpless in ourselves, we can do nothing of ourselves, but we can do anything with Christ and his word empowering us. The key is not to rely on ourselves, and not even on our knowledge or past experience, but on the Holy Spirit helping us. Jesus himself said “By myself I can do nothing.” 

Even after having seen everyone healed before, miracle after miracle, I’ve found myself facing new situations with a person in front of me who needs to be healed and feeling absolutely helpless. I still need to confront and reject feelings of unbelief, persevere, and act according to the truth even if my feelings are telling me otherwise.

Likewise, I’ve given quite a lot of accurate words of knowledge by now, some really specific and amazing, but I still regularly feel like “I’m not sure if this is God or just my imagination”  when I get a picture or a word from God. I don’t feel like I’m always the best at hearing God’s voice or quieting my own thoughts. It’s still a risk to share and not be sure if I’m totally missing it. And as Sheila said, often the words that are right on are the ones that seem most bizarre to us!

The other day I prayed for a guy and a picture of Jesus laying hands on his ears came to the screen of my imagination. I wasn’t sure if it was just me but I stepped out and said “I see Jesus laying hands on your ears. Do you know what that’s about?” It turns out he was having nightmares in which he heard a lady screaming, and Jesus was there to set him free from a tormenting spirit that had entered his ears.

Yes, there’s such a thing as having an open vision or hearing God’s voice audibly. But often some of the most detailed, accurate, and powerful prophesies or words of knowledge come as a very subtle impression that you’re not even sure is God and you know needs to be tested, but you step out and risk being wrong.

We will always have to walk by faith and not be sight. We will always have to trust God. Even when you’ve had experience after experience with God, when Jesus Christ is the most real person in the world to you, you will always have to live by faith. We still have to hold to God’s word when things we see look contrary. We still have to resist the temptation to doubt and despair. Even Jesus had to live by faith and resist temptation! He had to walk by faith when they killed his friend John the Baptist, and through many other things. And no matter how much you have seen God do, walking in God’s power will still involve stepping out to walk on water when you don’t see everything but you rely on God.

Isaiah 42 is a Messianic prophecy, a prophecy about Jesus. Why does it say Jesus was blind and deaf? At times when we walk by faith, it is like we are blind and deaf, we don’t see, but we trust God and not our sight or our natural capabilities!

Isaiah 42:18-19 (NIV) “Hear, you deaf; look, you blind, and see! Who is blind but my servant, and deaf like the messenger I send? Who is blind like the one in covenant with me, blind like the servant of the Lord? You have seen many things, but you pay no attention; your ears are open, but you do not listen.”

2 Corinthians 5:7 NIV For we live by faith, not by sight.

2 Corinthians 1:10 NIV He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us.

Hebrews 10:38 (NIV) But my righteous one will live by faith…

1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV) And now these three remain: faith, hope and love…