If prophecy is a gift of the Holy Spirit, then why do you have to be trained in it? The simplest way to get the right perspective on that question is to ask a similar question. If the gift of teaching is a gift of the Holy Spirit (which it is), then why do preachers get better at preaching with more experience? Why is your pastor’s thousandth sermon leaps and bounds better than his first? Gifts of the Holy Spirit are not necessarily like superpowers that crash over a person. Perhaps, sometimes they can be, but many times they are a God given ability that needs to be stewarded and grown in.
This Sunday, July 19, during the second service, in the Family Life Center, we have a prophecy training meeting. You can register here to let us know you're coming, but I'm sure you can just show up as well. Maybe you have the gift. Maybe you want the gift. Maybe you’re just doing your biblical duty to earnestly desire that gift. Or maybe you just want help answering the age old question, "How do you know when it is God speaking or just your own thoughts?"
One time when I was praying for a woman in a small group, I got a vision of a beaver working really hard to dam up a river. I don’t usually see things in my mind, so I have learned to pay closer attention when it happens. I thought the vision was a little silly, so I didn’t want to share it. Instead, I prayed for an interpretation. To this day, I cannot remember what the interpretation was, but I think it was something like, “ I feel like the Lord may be saying that the enemy is working hard to stop the flow of the Holy Spirit in your life…”
I don’t really think that was the interpretation, but for the sake of the story, that will do. Anyway, that interpretation did not seem to land for the woman. Instead, she shared what she had been praying diligently about recently. She felt like she had been working really hard to stop the generational dysfunction that had been passed down to her from flowing down to her children. When she shared that, I realized that the vision seemed to coincide pretty well with that, but my original interpretation had been way off!
When I was praying for that original interpretation, I remember having a feeling that I was really trying to reach for it. It felt a little forced and unsettled. It was that experience that helped me learn what it feels like to NOT get a correct interpretation of a vision. Nowadays, whenever I see visions, I still pay close attention, but I also am on the lookout for that reaching feeling. If I feel like I’m reaching for an interpretation, I will typically hold off on giving the word, or I will just share the vision itself without an interpretation. This is an example of growing in the prophetic gift by experience.
But my experiences are mine. The best way for you to grow in this gift is to get into situations like this prophetic training meeting this Sunday where you can share and test words and gain some first-hand experience for yourself!
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