My confidence in the love of God colors the way I prophesy. Thank the Lord it does! Sometimes when we pray for our person, we can be given the gift of discerning spirits, along with our prophetic intuition. Primarily, discernment enables us to detect and witness God at work. however, it can also enable us to understand the spiritual state of an individual. There are no secrets from the Holy Spirit; He knows everything about everyone. Discernment can be helpful as it can tell us if an evil spirit is present, if the person is oppressed or possessed, and if they are under some form of spiritual attack.
In prayer times, the Lord has often shown me the spiritual state of the person I am prophesying over. For example I have detected profoundly low self-esteem . Of course, the last thing you want to do when praying for someone with low self-esteem is broadcast to a room of 500 people that they have a poor self-image. We must not prophesize the problem; Instead, we must speak out what God wants to be for them.
A new confidence is going to come into your life from the Lord, one might pray over a person with low self-esteem. Through events in your life, God is going to meet you and take you to a whole new level of peace, rest, and confidence. He’ll take you to a place where you’ve never been before, and you’ll love it. As he does that, the Lord says he will break some long-standing things in your life. Your life is at the point of breakthrough. A spirit of breakthrough hovers over your life right now and they will enable you to get revenge over the enemy for all the areas where you have felt pushed down over the years. In Isaiah 61 we have the favor of God and the possibility a vengeance on the enemy for all our situations.
When we exit the prison of our circumstances, we are able to receive the Lord’s blessing and turn our life into an opportunity to strike back at the enemy.
Whatever we have suffered and been a victim of in life, now, when freedom comes, it enables us to use our favor to set people free from the very thing we ourselves were victims of in life. It is a crucial part of the prophetic gift to declare God’s heart, intention and favor to another and to proclaim that their own breakthrough will lead them to assist others in overcoming!
By speaking to what God wants to do, and not what the individual, the world, or the enemy has already done, we speak freedom into a person’s life. If we see a particular sin over someone’s life, it has not been revealed to us so we can pronounce judgment. We need to wait and listen for further insight and instruction from above. He shows us sin because there is a release in the spirit over the person’s life. Our question must be: what is the nature of that release? God is not heartless. He will not show a sin without showing us the critical point of release that’s about to come into that person’s life.
Seeing someone’s sin prophetically boils down into one question: this is a grace issue or a discipline issue? When we sense something is amiss, we have to dig into our spirit and listen very closely to what God has to say. Does he want grace or discipline? If it is a grace issue, we have the promise of grace, mercy, and hope.
My mentor saw a spirit of lust sitting on a man I was praying for. It was almost oppressing him, but he felt God telling him that it was a grace issue. God showed him what was going to happen, and he prophesied it: a new anointing of holiness is coming upon you. I see a fresh anointing for holiness that will bring you to a whole new place of purity, power, and righteousness. You’ve been crying out for those things and God is delighted to say yes with all his heart. Men break open when you prophecy holiness over them; many have been crying out for that new path, and God loves to open it to people.
There are also times when we see a sin and God declares it a discipline issue. This occurs when a person has been ignoring the grace of God for a long time. Pride and arrogance accompany that sin. In scripture, we see this dealt with a few times-Paul, for example, told the Corinthian church to throw out a man who was having sex with his mother. It was a deplorable, abhorrent sin and the individual had to be disciplined. We can also be disciplined in a Hebrew 12 context, where God is developing us into mature sons and daughters.
Hebrews 12: 7 if you endure chastising, God deals with you as with son; for what son is there a father does not chase him? But if you are without chastising, of which all have become partakers, then you are illegitimate and not sons.
Loving confrontation is sometimes required in discipline.
One rule holds true whether it is a grace issue or a discipline issue-you always deal with sin privately, not publicly.
A man was having an affair with his secretary for three ½ years. She knew something was wrong but didn’t have any proof. She could not stand his hypocrisy and became depressed. The Lord has been speaking to this man for 3 1/2 years said this is a discipline issue tell him what I’ve shown you. The man confessed it all.
This man was at the point of losing everything because he had resisted God’s grace for 3 1/2 years. He had reached a point of critical mass and God had to deal with the issue. The man could not be trusted to respond to a grace word any longer; he had to be lovingly confronted and led to a place of confession and repentance.
When we encounter A discipline issue, we must remember that the whole point God has brought it up is to lead the individual into confession and repentance. Pause sex or taxation inflation 6: one must be a paramount concern to us: brethren, if a man is overtaken in any trespass, you who are spiritual restore such a one in any spirit of gentleness, considering yourself lest you also be tempted. Charging someone will not cause them to change. Restoring them and gentleness will.
Anytime someone receives A prophetic word, grace should explode in their hearts. if Some is walking in sin, they usually don’t need to be told about it because they already know. You don’t need to be prophesying what a person’s problem is, we need to be prophesying what God wants to do at that moment in time.
I heard a story of my prophetic mentor doing a conference with a team of prophets in the northeastern United States. They were praying during a ministry time when my mentor took a break from what he was doing. He stood for a moment to gather himself in the spirit and found himself listening to what another speaker was prophesying over a young man.
The Lord sees you as very hard nut with a very hard exterior, he told the man in the in the next 12 months, God is going to crack open your life. In graphic detail this man prophesied the pain and pressure God was going to pour out on this poor person’s life, all to crack him wide open. My mentor was getting depressed just listening to it-I can’t imagine what the poor man was feeling! I don’t like this, he said to the Lord, his heart was Jarred by the word this man had been given. This person had nothing to look forward to for the next 12 months: it was like his life was going to be flushed down a toilet for a whole year. The man finished prophesying and walked away, leaving a devastated young Christian in this way. He didn’t know what to do or where to look. He was totally lost.
My mentor walked over to him and put his hand on his shoulder and he flinched.
OK mate. He said.
Please, I don’t want another prophecy, he replied. Ok, he said why don’t you and I be just two guys, two brothers on a spiritual journey? We’re both on a quest with God so let’s just see what else he might have to say. I asked the Lord show me the first thing he had shown to the other prophet. God showed him a very hard nut, one that could be pounded on a table but make no sound. It was rock hard. OK, Lord, he prayed. Was there anything else you wanted to show him something he didn’t get? Suddenly, right next to the nut picture as a bottle of oil.
The first prophetic person had gone with the first thing he had seen. He didn’t wait or dig deeper into what God wanted to do he didn’t ask any questions period God gave him the nut picture as information to contextualize the actual word.
What’s with this nut he asked the Lord, and he showed him that the man had lived a hard life. He was rebellious or hard hearted; Life had just been difficult. He had to build a shell around him to protect himself from all the damaging things he had grown up with. he was an orphan. He lived in institutions but was never chosen for a home. Never got adopted. He never received anything. He had known all kinds of abuse. That hard shell was the only way he could have kept himself together. God showed him he was a nice kid. He had come to the front because he desperately wanted God.
God doesn’t break nuts by shattering them. When my mentor asked the Lord how he wanted to break this hard shell, he saw a picture of the oil bottle being opened forward onto the nut. But it didn’t happen just once; It happened again and again and again and again. The mysterious ways of God softening that nut to the point that one could take their fingernails into it and pry it apart wasn’t hard anymore.
He told the young man I see a nut. He lowered his head not wanting to hear the rest.
The mentor said next to the nut he saw a big bottle, full of oil, he continue I see it being poured on the nut again and again and again. It is a continuous stream of activity; oil being poured out so lavishly that the nut suddenly became soft. He said I believe that all your experiences of life to date have made you tough and hard on the outside. God knows everything you have gone through just to preserve your own life. And now he’s saying, my son, my son, the days of hardness are over. These are the days of softening, a day when the oil of my presence and beauty will soften you. The Lord says that the next season will be a profound season of change, of transformation. You will dance your way through this time, you’re going to laugh your way through this time, you’re going to grin your way through this time, you’re going to smile your way through this time, for the days of hardness are at an end. These are the days of continuous grace and the oil of the Holy Spirit being poured out on you, enjoy this time.
Something in his heart began to connect with God and when my mentor prayed for him a few minutes later, he saw him on his knees worshipping. He was changed by that word.