1 Corinthians 14:1 Pursue [agape] love, and earnestly desire spiritual [gifts], but rather that you may prophesy
Have you ever seen a prophet and admired him standing there and speaking the word of the Lord with great confidence?
Have you ever been at the place where you listened to others prophesying and you thought: “Wow! If only I could speak like this! Such a nice flow! Such a beautiful anointing in these words!”
If yes, I can feel with you because I have been there, too. Everybody around me seemed to be prophetic. They all saw visions and prophesied. I seemed to be the only one not to flow in this gift and felt very inferior. But I have good news for you today. You can come to this place where you speak the word of the Lord to his people. I will show now how you can get to this place to prophesy with confidence.
What is prophecy and what is it good for?
Prophecy is like a spontaneous little sermon. It is something that the Lord wants to tell someone to encourage him or to lift him up or to produce new faith, new hope and new love in a person.
Ask for the gift
The first step is that you need the gift of prophecy. Prophecy is one of the gifts of the Spirit. And your father in heaven loves to give gifts to his children. If you are one of them, you can come into his presence and ask him for this gift and he will give it to you. See yourself standing in front of your father and ask him to give you this gift and he will do it.
Start with yourself
Once you have the gift you start to do something with it. You have to train yourself. How do you do this? It is always the best to start alone in your prayer closet. There you can make all the mistakes you like, you can mess it up and mumble and talk nonsense. It just doesn’t matter. There is just you and the Holy Spirit.
I did this for quite a long time. I prophesied over myself. I sang over myself prophetic songs. Songs where the Lord talked to me, told me about his will for me, about his love and his tenderness for me. And this created a foundation in me, I got used to hear my voice and to speak prophetic words.
Once you are confident in this, you can ask the Lord to give you opportunities to serve others.
How to say it
How can you say these words of the Lord now? You might see a vision of a father taking his little child in his arms. This can be your starting point. You say for example: “Thus says the Lord to you: You are my beloved child. I have chosen you and I want you to show the love that I have for you. Open your heart and I will take you in my arms and I will reveal myself to you.”
And you speak this prophecy. It doesn’t matter if it is short at the beginning.
Or you have an impression of what the Lord wants to say and you follow this impression. Sometimes you have to step out with only three words: “Thus says the Lord…” and you don’t know yet, what will follow. So you step out boldly and speak the words and while you do you will get more to speak.
If you follow these pointers you will see yourself coming more and more to a place of confidence in prophesying.
