The bible is a biography, it is not a textbook. It is a story of God walking with men and women. And it tells us what is possible in this life. This is the only way to read scripture; it is the biography of God in concentrated form, so we have to add water. So, we need the Holy Spirit poured out on it because this is a concentrated biography. When we add water to it, it becomes a library. All the revelation that is in this book, if it were written down, it would fill libraries. Everything in the book is the story of God and us. It is the story of how he loves to live with men and women. It is the story of how he invades lives, of how he helps people, supports people, blesses people, how he raises their identity.
So, when God gives us a passage of scripture, what he is saying is that everything in that passage now belongs to you. So, you can have encounters with me in that scripture, you can have ongoing experiences, everything that you claim in that passage is yours, I give it to you. And if the passage of scripture that God give us has somebody’s name in it, then he is going to give us the same identity as that person.
When the lord starts talking to us about Caleb, who was one of the two that came back with a good report about the promised land. He wants to give us a Caleb anointing, he wants us to be a man or woman of a different spirit. He wants us to relish the fight; he wants to push us into some battle fields that are going to be challenging. He needs us to be a man of a different spirit; he has called us to relish the fight. So, he gives us passages with Caleb’s name in it, and says everything I have given to Caleb, I am going to give to you. Everything that he was, you can become; it is a part of your identity.
So, we step into this place of looking at those scriptures, studying them, week after week and meditating on them. What was Caleb’s attitude when it came to fighting? His attitude in terms of how he kept himself. At the end of his days, he was as strong and as vigorous as when they left Egypt. He was the one elbowing all the young guys aside when there was one last stronghold to break, he wanted it. He loved to fight so much he was saying to all the younger guys push off, this is mine. And just to make sure he gets it, he goes to Joshua and says give me this mountain, you owe me something, I want that fight (Joshua 14:12).
When God gives us prophecy, scripture, dreams, visions, he is opening us up to a new relational partnership with him and he does this when he proclaims his word over us. God loves to speak over us, he loves to proclaim over us. To proclaim is where God officially announces what he is in favor of in our life, which is a proclamation. This is my first choice, so he speaks that out. This is what prophecy is, this is what I have in mind for you, this is what I want you to become. When God prophecies over us he also wants to tell us the resources that he has allocated to that prophecy. Because we don’t just step into the identity of something, into the permission of something, we step into the resources that come with it. Because the whole point of our identity is that we leave the place where we are having our needs met and we move into the place where God gives us our inheritance.
A baby gets their needs met every day. They don’t do anything apart from being cute. They don’t earn anything, pay their way, or do any work around the house. We don’t have to pray to get our needs met, which is a stupid prayer. We get our needs met because of who we are, not because of what we do. We get our needs met because we are a much-loved child. We have to learn how to be a much-loved child. The idea of praying for hours that God will meet our needs is religion. We get our needs met because God adores us, because he loves to provide, because he is a good father. Then what happens is that as we start to grow up in Christ and as God begins to give us prophecy and promises, what he is teaching us is how to move, how to remain a much-loved child while we are becoming a fully mature son.
And as we are moving into adulthood in the Spirit and we are moving into a place of becoming a fully mature son, then what happens is as we begin to partner with God’s intentionality, so he begins to show us our inheritance. And we step into our inheritance, when we step into our prophetic word, because our prophetic words will lead us into our assignment or mandate, and our assignment always has an allocation of resources attached to it.
Many ministries are still praying for four or five hours to meet their needs when it is not about that. It is about them stepping into their inheritance. There are resources allocated to our identity. They are allocated to our assignment, to our promise and our prophecy. So, it is not just or identity that we pick up, it is the allocation of resources that goes with it. So we step into the place, where God gives us things because of who we are becoming and because we are aligning ourselves with the assignment he has laid out for us. We have to stop praying like a widow and start praying like a bride. We start praying out of our relationship with God, out of our intentional partnership with God. We need to be in a place of new intentionality, and we are starting to understand the resources that are allocated to us and we begin to pray about them in a different way. God has staked his claim on who we are. This is what prophecy does. God says this is how I see you and he stakes his claim on that identity. God works out from us according to whatever depth we have allowed him to put in us. Every encounter with God becomes part of our inheritance.
This is why we read back scripture to the lord.