A comment frequently heard among those who "study (the prophetic) to show themselves approved" is, "When I listen for the Voice of the Lord, I am not always sure what I am listening to - whether it is my own mind, God, or at times, the enemy".
Just about everyone who moves in the prophetic has asked themselves this question at one time or another .. because we all desire to minister from God's Spirit -- and we want to know how to discern when it really is God speaking to us and when it is not.
From Romans 8:16, we know that God's Spirit interacts with our human spirit. Some people have termed this as "Spirit-to-spirit communication". But our spirits do not control our mouths or our actions. Our spirit must translate what it has received from God into something our minds can understand. This is how we receive and process what God would speak to us. It is a two step process:
Thus, our mind plays an important role in our ability to operate in the supernatural gifts of the Spirit. So it is important to renew our minds (Eph 4:23) and to take on the Mind of Christ. This makes it easier for us to discern God's voice when He is speaking to us or moving us to minister in the supernatural gifts.
So, let's examine the mindset we need to have to move effectively in spiritual gifts. Afterwards, we will explore some of the mindsets that hinder us from moving with God in these gifts and what scripture has to say about it. This will better equip us to recognize the differences in these various types of minds so we can know and recognize which type of mind we are operating out of at any given point in time.
Our goal, of course, is operate out of the spiritual mind.
This is the mindset we will have when we allow our normal thinking to be transformed (Romans 12:2) by the renewing effect of the Word of God and by the Holy Spirit resident within us. The Bible says that God has given us the "mind of Christ" (1 Cor 2:16 NIV). This means that if you are a born again believer in submission to God, He is transforming your mind to be more like Jesus.
Look at Phil 2:5:
"Your attitude (mind [KJV]) should be the same as that of Christ Jesus"...
Verses 6 - 8 go on to describe the nature and attitudes of Christ, admonishing us to be like Him. As we stated before, none of us start out with a spiritual mind but as we allow the Word to continually renew our minds according to Romans 12:2, we gain more of the mind of Christ.
As our minds are transformed, we find that:
The way to achieve a spiritual mind is to consciously choose to obey God and give Him lordship in our everyday lives; and then to spend time with God -- time in His word, time in prayer, time in worship.
We are all acquainted with our natural minds. With our natural mind, we carry on our daily existence. We use it continually in almost every situation to accomplish normal decisions such as what to do, how to do it, where to go, how to get there, etc. It also functions as the anatomical center of our central nervous system and enables our bodies to carry on normal function. It is not considered good or bad but rather necessary to our everyday function.
In fact, God has given us our minds to use to develop skills and talents for natural things, such as the computer programmer who learns to write and debug software or the gardener who learns the landscaping business. In fact, Jesus used His natural mind to learn how to be a carpenter.
(There is NOT a problem in having and using our natural minds -- in fact, God created us this way on purpose. Gen 2:7 says "And the Lord God formed man out of the dust of the ground and breathed life into his nostrils; and man became a living soul." God created us with a soul, which includes our mind, will and emotions. We simply mention the natural mind here to acknowledge it exists. It is not an issue in this teaching).
As stated above, our goal is to operate in the spiritual mind. This will allow us to hear God's voice more clearly and flow with the Holy Spirit. There are other mindsets that can interfere with this process. Let's examine them briefly, with the intent to avoid these mindsets.
Romans 1:18-32 gives us an accurate depiction of this type of mind. It is Godless and self justifying, seeking to please itself rather than to please God, and falls into various forms of wickedness. It looks for joy and satisfaction in all the wrong places but that satisfaction and sense of fulfillment often eludes it. It thinks it is wise when it is really foolish and it perverts and twists truth for its own selfish agenda.
It is obvious from this passage that those who manifest this type of mind initially knew the Lord but neither glorified God nor gave thanks to Him (vs. 21). As a result, their thinking became futile and their hearts were darkened. Eventually, they saw no reason to retain the knowledge of God at all and then God simply gave them over to their desires and to do all that is sinful and wicked. A seared conscience also accompanies this type of mind as can be seen in 1 Tim. 4:2.
It is obvious that none of us possess this kind of mind or we would have no interest in improving our ability to hear the Voice of God through prophetic training. This kind of mind does not care about hearing and pleasing God.
Now let's look at another type of mind that can exist in a believer but keeps us from the intimate place we desire to be.
How do we recognize this type of mind? It is typically consumed with thoughts that are fleshly, evil and sensual. Consider 1 John 2:16 (NIV) which says:
"For everything in the world -- the cravings of sinful man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does -- comes not from the Father but from the world".
When we are trying to identify the thoughts that might come to us from the worldly, carnal mind, we see from this scripture that they would involve the "cravings of sinful man", "the lust of the eyes" and the "boasting of what he has and does".
In 1 Corinthians 3:3, we are given another illustration of the worldly carnal mind: "You are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not worldly? Are you not acting like mere men?"
The worldly mind is in infancy in Christ and is identified with and involved in the acts of the flesh (Gal. 5:19-21).
Since this type of mind is open to the flesh, it is also open to demonic inspiration, thoughts and feelings.
The soulish mind is both natural and spiritual in composition. From our soulish minds we have the ability to imagine, demonstrate our creativity, generate ideas, perceive, demonstrate special abilities and giftedness, to make plans, etc.
Take a look at 2 Cor. 10:5 (NIV):
"We demolish arguments and every pretension that sets itself up against the knowledge of God, and we take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ". The King James version says, "Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ"...
The arguments (NIV) and imaginations (KJV) mentioned in this scripture originate in the soulish mind. When God gave us a soul, He gave us a creative nature like His own. Because of the creative nature of the soulish mind, we can generate plans and ideas which seem good but we must know and guard against the fact that not everything that comes from the soulish mind is automatically from God. Even in the context of this course, our soulish mind may conceive a thought which seems to be anointed but we need to base what we receive upon the foundational test of the scripture and make sure the thought is in agreement with the Word rather than disagreement.
This is the place where we must be very careful in ministering the prophetic. Here are some of the danger areas where we can wrongly try to minister the prophetic from our soulish minds:
As we continue this course, let us focus our attention on allowing time in the word (scriptures) and time with The Word (the Lord) to bring about that continual renewing of our minds so that we may be better equipped to receive thoughts, impressions, and words out of our spiritual minds rather than the others.
Each lesson is accompanied by an activation exercise, or workshop, designed to help you more fully develop your prophetic gifting. These activations start simple, and each week's activation builds on the previous ones. To see the activation for this week's lesson, click here.