Prophetic Utterances

The fourth way of hearing from God is through prophetic utterances and tongues. You have within you a wellspring of wisdom. You have the Word that has been stored within you. You have the Spirit of God that is within you. In fact you have everything.

The Scripture speaks about us having within us a spring of life. Jesus spoke about that well springing up and pouring out of us. He said,

Out of your innermost being will flow rivers of living water.

You need to tap into that inner wisdom. So what you have to do is create a link or a channel for the flow to begin to take place and flow outwards. One of the ways of doing it is through the faculty of speech.

We have seen that the spirit can communicate outwards via the soul. As it communicates outwards via the emotions we have our Urim and Thummim. As it communicates outwards via the mind we have dreams and visions.

How does it communicate outwards via the will? It communicates through speech. The speech center is linked directly to the spirit. And when you open your mouth by an act of your will to speak forth, then you speak forth what comes up out of your spirit.

Have you ever noticed that as you pour forth in speech, often just talking about anything and everything, something just slips out that you did not expect? It just pops out and you say,

"I wonder what made me say that?"

Psychologists call it a Freudian slip. Something just popped out while you were not thinking about it. That often happens when you are counseling somebody. I will be dealing with that a little more shortly as we look at some other methods of hearing from God, but speech is a means of pouring forth what is from within you.

Other Tongues

So God has given us the means of tapping into the wisdom within using speech - both speech in the natural tongue and speech in other tongues. As you pray in tongues, what actually happens is you begin to tap the resources that are within your spirit. The Scripture says,

He that speaks in an unknown tongue edifies (or builds up) himself.

How does that happen? Have you ever noticed that when you pray in tongues for a while something begins to take place? When you get down to pray, and you open your mouth and start to speak in tongues, your emotions may be completely dead.

Your mind may be preoccupied with all sorts of things that are not spiritual at all. You are not even thinking about the Lord. But by an act of your will you open your mouth and you start to speak. It is a choice. You choose to speak in tongues.

What is happening is you are tapping the resources of your spirit by an act of your will and you begin to pour out. The Scripture calls that praying with your spirit. It is not praying in the spirit, but praying with the spirit. As you pray with the spirit you are praying with other tongues. Paul says,

When I pray in other tongues my spirit is praying.

It is your spirit that is now in control. It is your spirit that is pouring forth, and the words that are coming out of your mouth are not coming from your own understanding. They are not coming through your mind at all, but out of your spirit.

As you continue to speak in tongues and pour forth out of your spirit, after a while it starts to break through. The flow begins to take place through your soul, your emotions start to churn and you begin to feel something happening within. Your thoughts start to come into focus, you begin to think about the Lord, and you begin to think about spiritual things.

Now most people do not pray in tongues long enough for it to go any further than that. Very often people will only speak in tongues when their emotions are churned up; when they feel the anointing on them, when they feel good spiritually and when they want to worship and praise.

Speaking in tongues is for you to tap the resources within when you do not feel like it; when your emotions are down, when your mind is dull, and when you need to hear from God desperately. It is for when you need His power and when you need to hear His voice right now.

You say, "I wish God would speak to me. I have prayed but He won't speak to me. I can't hear anything. I do not hear anything in the Urim and Thummim either. He is just not there. It is dead."

"Can you pray in tongues?"

You say, "Yes, but I don't feel like it."

"I didn't ask if you feel like praying in tongues. I said, 'Can you pray in tongues?' "

If you have received the gift of tongues then you can pray in tongues. All you need to do is open your mouth, and by a choice and by an act of your will, start to pray in tongues.

I shared my experience when I gave my testimony on how God led me to spend long periods praying for an hour in tongues, and how I hit a second wind in the Spirit.

Do you know what happened when I hit that second wind? It started to gush forth and suddenly pictures started to come into my mind. Suddenly my emotions became churned up to the point where I was so excited I didn't want to stop. It was just pouring forth.

And so very often just praying in tongues will cause influences, visions or pictures to come up out of your spirit and into your mind. Your spiritual Urim and Thummim and all of them start to come to life as you spend long periods praying in tongues.

You are also in a position now to begin speaking in your native tongue, because you do not understand what you are saying in tongues. You may be seeing pictures in your mind.

You may be feeling a sense of positive and negative in your emotions. But you still do not have any instruction, because you do not know what you are saying in tongues. You do not know what your spirit is saying in tongues.

Interpreting Your Tongues

And so Paul says,

If any man pray in an unknown tongue, let him pray that he can also interpret.

Do you realize that as you pour forth in tongues, you are tapping the wisdom that is within? It is the wisdom that your spirit has, because it is in contact with the Holy Spirit?

Do you want to know the will of God? Do you want to hear His voice? Do you want Him to speak to you? He is doing it all the time.

All you need to do is learn to hear the voice of your own spirit, because your spirit is going to tell it to you. If you are to hear the voice of God, do you know what it will sound like? It will sound like you!

I began to help people move into these things, and to understand the voice of God and the revelations that were coming to them. I found that as I did this, that there would be times when the Spirit of God would move and God would show me things. I would say,

"Now, God has put something in your mind. Come on, share it with us. What do you see?"

The person would say,

"Well, I kind of thought this, and I thought, 'Hey, it is just me. I am making it up.' "

Of course it was you! It came up out of your spirit, because the Holy Spirit is going to speak to your spirit. And it is your spirit that will communicate it outwards.

That is the voice that you have learned to hear throughout your life ‐ the real you, the inner you, the spirit within you. That is the voice that will come out. That is where God is going to speak through and where the influence is going to come from.

If you can learn to speak out in tongues, you can then learn to interpret your tongues. And if you can learn to interpret your tongues, you can know what the Spirit is saying.

So you can pray, and you can speak in tongues, and you can interpret your tongues. You can develop to the capacity where God will then begin to speak to you. The anointing of the Spirit of God will rise up within you, and you will speak in tongues and interpret your tongues. You will speak in tongues and again interpret your own tongues.

When God first began to show me that I could do this I thought it was heresy at first. But the anointing of the Spirit of God showed me that it had to be real. It was God. I could feel it and I could sense it. It was powerful.

I began to speak in tongues and interpret my tongues, and God began to give me direction. He began to give me prophetic words, words of wisdom and words of knowledge. He started to give me direction concerning the future, to tell me His plan for my life and what He had in mind for me.

Eventually I kept a tape recorder handy and I recorded it. Every time I felt the urge to speak in tongues I put the tape recorder on. And I would speak in tongues and then interpret my tongues. I ran out of tape! It went on for hours.

Eventually I began to transcribe some of the recordings, write them down and keep a log of them. I began to look at them over a period of time to see whether I had made all these things up or whether it was God. It started to fall into place like a jigsaw puzzle.

Something would happen in my life and I would go back and read something that God had said to me weeks or even months before. And there it was ‐ in writing right there.

The Lord was warning me. He was telling me that things were going to happen or that changes would take place, so that when this happened I was not to be surprised because it was of Him.

Then as I would pray for people, not knowing what their needs were, I could pray in tongues. I could interpret what I prayed in tongues and know what the wisdom of the Spirit was, and what it was that I should pray.

Every single believer who can speak in tongues has the ability to tap into the wisdom that is in their spirits in this way.

Prophecy

Prophecy is speaking without tongues. I shared in my testimony of how I would practice over myself and prophesy over myself. You will find as you do this that it works the same way.

You have developed the capacity now where you do not need to pour out in tongues to get the water flowing. You have prayed in tongues for long periods. You have set up the channel. The pipe is sunk, the flow is there, and you can close your eyes and the Lord is there.

When you open your mouth to speak, His Spirit is there. You sense that urge rising up within you, and you begin to speak forth in prophecy.

Very often, it will happen while you are praying. I found out that as I would pray with people concerning their needs, it would slip out. I would say something while in prayer like,

"Lord, we pray for this person, and Lord I pray that you would do this."

The spirit of prophecy would rise up and say,

"Yes, that is it! This is what I am going to do."

And out came an unexpected prophecy. Why? It was because I learned to tap the flow from within my spirit by the faculty of speech.

Now you might be one of those people who do not talk much. You might be introverted and quiet, and you are wondering why God never uses you in prophecy. You are like the person who is standing there saying,

"I wish I could speak in tongues. Oh Lord, I want to speak in tongues. Lord, please make me speak in tongues."

I know I was one of them when I first received it. I sat waiting for the Lord to give me tongues, but He did not seem to give them to me. But do you know what? Even if He gave them to me I would not have known it, because I wasn't talking.

How can you tell if you can speak in tongues if you are not speaking? You have to open your mouth and say something before what comes out is tongues. You have to open your mouth and get it going.

It is like a boat on the water. You can place it in the water and you can sit and play with the rudder all you like, but it does nothing to the boat. The boat just sits there. But get the boat moving, push it out and set it in motion, and the moment you move that rudder the boat is affected immediately.

You have to open your mouth and speak. And if you want to prophesy or hear from God in prophecy, then you are going to have to practice this. If you are afraid to do it in public, then you must do it the way I learned to, by doing it in your private prayer closet.

You do it by learning to pray in tongues and interpreting your tongues, and by learning to prophesy over yourself. The more you do that the better you will become at it, until eventually you will have the confidence.

As you begin to pray over people that you know and that are near you, you start to hear for them while you are praying with them, and you start to prophesy over them as you pray for them. You become an instrument to speak the Word to them.

It is the function of the prophet to speak the Word of God to other people. But if you are to do this, then you must develop the capacity and exercise it, and make it available to the Lord so that He can use it.

Then when He wants you to speak a Word to somebody, He does not have to shake you and put you in a trance, or put you under the power. He just needs to give you that gentle prompting that says,

"Now!"

It is a gentle prompting that just gives one or two words, or one or two thoughts. Or a little picture pops into your mind, and God says,

"Okay, now speak it forth."

"What do I speak?"

"Speak it forth!"

"But what do I speak?"

"Speak it forth!"

You are saying,

"Lord, move the rudder."

The Lord is saying,

"I want to move it. Get the boat going."

You open your mouth and you launch out, and as you do it He steers the rudder. You speak and He will give you the words to speak. As it comes out, it is going to come out in two forms. It will either be general prophecy, or it will be personal prophecy.

General Prophecy

General prophecy normally falls under the standard gift of prophecy that Paul speaks about in 1 Corinthians 12. It is a prophecy that is given to the whole group.

That word of prophecy could be a word of encouragement or exhortation, and it could apply to more than one person that is in the group. And so there could be several people who leave a meeting and say,

"The Lord spoke to me tonight."

Thus one prophetic word covers all of them. In order to do that, the prophetic word needs to be general. It needs to cover principles of Scripture, so general prophecy will very often involve quoting the Word.

What it is actually is a spontaneous little sermon; an unprepared little 'sermonette' that the prophet gives. He simply stands up and God gives him an idea. God gives him the main points of his message, and he stands up and preaches it by the Spirit.

It is just a quick, short, sharp little Word to the group. It is like the preacher standing up and sharing. Sometimes it is a confirmation of the sermon that is being preached that night.

Personal Prophecy

Personal prophecy is when you are speaking only to the person that you are praying with, and you are giving a specific prophecy. You could say,

"Thus says the Lord to you, my brother/sister..."

Personal prophecy becomes a little bit more intensive and it becomes more directive. You cannot give directive prophecy to a group. You cannot stand up and say,

"Thus says the Lord, 'You have pondered changing jobs. This is of me. Go ahead and do it.' "

A whole lot of guys are going to go and pack up their jobs and get into trouble because they were mad at their bosses. You have to be careful. You do not give directive prophecy to a group. But when you are prophesying over an individual you can speak directive prophecy by the word of knowledge or word of wisdom. It is a specific word for that individual.

God will give the words as you speak them forth. But you have to learn to develop that capacity before it is going to flow out of you as a prophet.

Practical Project for Tongues and Prophecy

To hear in this way, you must learn to recognize the voice of your own spirit. The only way to develop this is to pray in tongues for long periods. So this is where you will begin.

Set aside time each day to do nothing but pray in tongues. Allocate a specific amount of time to do this, and gradually increase it each day. Do not try to do anything spiritual or get revelation when you do this. And do not try to control your mind in any way.

Whatever thoughts come into your mind, let them just do as they wish and let them come. You might start thinking or seeing a lot of junk in your mind. Just ignore it and let it flow. It will change naturally as you proceed with this project.

I suggest you take a week to grow into this. If you begin on Monday, for example, this is what you should do:

Monday

Pray in tongues continuously without stopping for 10 minutes.

Tuesday

Pray in tongues for 15 minutes.

Wednesday

Pray in tongues for 20 minutes.

Thursday

Pray in tongues for 30 minutes. You might feel like you have been praying for hours. But keep going even if it feels like you are chewing on rubber.

Friday

Pray in tongues for 40 minutes. You should by now be seeing that your mind starts to settle after a while, and you can think more spiritual thoughts while praying.

Saturday

Pray in tongues for 50 minutes. Now it should be easier even though you are going for longer periods. When you reach a stage where it is feeling really difficult, just keep going slowly, and avoid the temptation to speak in English.

Sunday

See if you can pray in tongues for a whole hour today. If you have not yet experienced it by today, you should now come to a place where it moves from being really difficult, to where it becomes really easy.

You should experience a kind of 'second wind' in the Spirit, where your mind is filled with spiritual thoughts, pictures and revelations, and where you feel close to the Lord.

If you have not yet experienced this, keep going until you reach exhaustion. Then push a little further. This is how a marathon runner experiences second wind. He pushes beyond the point of exhaustion and suddenly finds a new level of energy.

You might reach your spiritual second wind before the week is up. If you do, then you can move on to the next project right away. Otherwise keep pushing daily, increasing the time of speaking in tongues, until you get that breakthrough.

The Next Level

Once you have learned to pray in tongues until you feel a flow in the Spirit, you can now begin to use this to tap into the wisdom of your spirit and hear from God.

Start your prayer time with a warm‐up of praying in tongues until you sense a flow and the presence of the Lord. Then stop praying and set your mind on Him. Wait a bit in His presence and see Him with you.

Now open your mouth and speak in tongues for a short sharp burst. After you have prayed in tongues, pray in English.

Do this several times. Pray a few sentences in tongues, followed by a few sentences in English. And as you pray in both tongues and English, keep your mind fixed on the Lord, and imagine that He is speaking to you.

Pray in English for about the same length as you prayed in tongues, as though you are now praying in English what you just prayed in tongues. Believe that as you pray, the Lord is inspiring you to pray in English the same thing that you just prayed in tongues.

If you practice this for a while, you will soon come to a place where you sense a flow of anointing in both your tongues and your prayer in English. And by doing this often you will learn to sense in your spirit when the Lord wants you to speak out in either tongues or English.

This will develop your ability to sense whether the Lord wants you to bring an utterance in tongues, an interpretation to someone else's tongues, or just a plain 'message' in English. Tongues combined with interpretation is equal to straight speaking in English, which is a prophetic utterance.

You might feel that you are making up the words that you speak out in English. And in fact you might be making them up at first. But as you continue to do this, you will find that some of the things you say seem to produce a sense of the anointing.

You will then learn how to identify when you are speaking under the anointing or influence of the Holy Spirit, and when you are speaking from your mind.

Every person who functions in prophetic utterances actually moves between speaking from their mind and speaking from their spirit. Some is from God, and some is from their own mind. That is why a prophetic utterance can never be treated like Scripture. It is the picture or concept that God gives which is inspired – not the actual words that the person speaks.

But you will soon learn to sense when your words are inspired and anointed. And with practice you will learn to stop speaking from your mind, and speak more from your spirit. The better you get at this, the better you will get at speaking prophetically.

Recording Your Utterances

It is good practice if you are able to record some of these things. You can either use a tape recorder, or you can record into your computer if you have a microphone and can use a sound recorder program.

Once of the easiest ways to do this is if you have a webcam connected. Then you can even video yourself speaking in tongues and praying in English.

This way you can see if you sense an anointing in your words when you play them back afterwards. It helps develop your spiritual sensitivity, and you will soon know if you are speaking from God or not.

Write It Down

As a final project, try writing down a transcript of the words that you speak in English. See if they have a flow on them, and if you can sense any anointing in them. You will very quickly identify which of these words came from your mind and which came from the Lord.

Prophesy Over Yourself

If your prayer in English is an actual interpretation of what you said in tongues, you might be amazed to see the Lord speaking directly to you in prophecy. You could find that in interpreting your tongues, you receive a piece of wisdom from the Lord – a prophetic word especially for you.

And once you learn to speak out directly in English without tongues, which will become a prophetic word, you will find the same thing. In this way you will learn to actually 'prophesy over yourself'. And in this way you will learn how to use the gift of prophecy correctly when the Lord begins to use you in this gift.

The wonderful thing about this whole experience, is that if you mess up, it affects nobody but you. You will not end up giving false prophecies to other people or telling them things that God did not say.

And you will not need to go and find someone else to prophesy over you. It is because you will be able to prophesy over yourself and hear from God for yourself.

Double Take

This is a kind of double take, because you will learn to sense better in your spirit, speak under the anointing, and become better at giving prophetic words. And at the same time you will be able to hear God's voice for yourself as well as for others.

The bottom line - you will learn how to flow in the Prophetic Ministry.

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