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-- © GodSpeak International 2006 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis <ts@godspeak.net> http://www.godspeak.net
Editor: Earlene Bown

Prophetic-School Course #36

Become An Effective Messenger

By Teresa Seputis

Lesson 8
Review and Closing Remarks

This teaching series may be a bit on the advanced side, because it looks at specific ways to improve your delivery skill. It assumes that you already know how to hear God's voice clearly and that you already know how to get a message from God.

The prophetic beginner typically struggles with issues like: "I think I am hearing something, but how can I be sure that was God?" or "God is stirring my heart so I know He wants me to share something, but I don't know precisely what He wants to say." Or they may get a very general message like "God loves you," and be struggling to hear at least one specific detail to personalize it for the one whom the message is for.

When a person is at that beginning level, their big goal should be to step out in faith and let God speak through them. They should not have to worry about how to refine and fine-tune that message. They should not be concerned about how to make it clearer and more powerful; they are just trying to get up the nerve to share the message that they think God has given them to share.

At first it is enough just to deliver the word, and the stepping out in faith to share will please God immensely, no matter how clumsy those first initial steps are. But as a person grows in their prophetic gifting, it becomes important for them to start refining their delivery skills as well. Why? It is because God often gives us a message to share, but He asks us to play a role in it by deciding how to package and deliver His message. Sometimes He gives us detailed packaging or delivery instructions, but at other times He leaves those details up to us.

Let me define what I mean by packaging and delivery. Those things are not the message itself, but they are necessary to get the message to the intended receiver. Think about ordering a book from Amazon.com or from some catalog or mail-order bookstore. When you buy the book, it has to be packed (put in a box and addressed to you) so that it gets to you in good condition. Then it has to go through some sort of delivery service to get from the Amazon.com warehouse to your house, such as through the postal service. The postman or courier delivers it to you. They are not a part of the book you ordered, but you could not get the book without their service. The box the book came in and the address label are not a part of the book either, but they were also necessary to get the book to you. In this illustration, the book is the "word" and the box and label are the packaging and the postal carrier is the delivery.

It is somewhat similiar with the prophetic. The message is what God wants to say to a person (or to a group of people). Delivery is the things like how the word is communicated (written, spoken, acted out), and which Member of the Trinity addressed this message to the receiver (Triune God, the Father, the Son or the Holy Spirit). Packaging is things like whether it is given in first person (God speaking directly) or third person (you reporting what God is saying). The actual words and phrases used in the prophecy are often part of the packaging. Sometimes we give examples to clarify a part of the message, and that can also be part of the packaging.

When God uses you to give a prophetic word, He will often give you the message, then allow you to choose the words and phrases to best communicate that message. He is trusting you to select ones that accurately reflect the message God wants you to give. That is why it is important to develop our skills as messengers, so we can do a good job with the message that God entrusts to us.

If we look at different prophets in the Bible, we notice that they had different styles of prophecy. Each of them did a good job delivering God's message, but we see something of the personality of the prophet reflecting in their words. John the Baptist was direct and confrontational. Moses was methodical and systematic. Jeremiah was passonate and a weeper. Isaiah was a poet. God was fine with this. In fact, He intentionally used the prophet's style as a part of His message. Since God did that in the Bible, we can expect Him to do it with prophecy today.

In short, God expects His message to be delivered faithfully and accurately, but He allows some portion of the prophet's own style and personality to become a part of that message. Have you ever wondered why God does it that way? It is because He likes to involve His children in what He is doing. He lets us work with Him; He gives us a real piece to do with Him. Of course, He wants it done His way and in His power and anointing, but He lets us do it with Him; He lets us play an active part. I.e., the prophetic is not just God speaking; it is God speaking through us. And because of that, we become a part of the process and a small piece of His message.

That is why we want to do our best to grow in our gifting, to become more skilled at packaging and delivering His message. We want to accurately reflect what God wants said.

This teaching series looks at written words and shares seven guidelines we can use to improve (or fine-tune) our prophetic packaging and delivery skills. Let's briefly review each one.

1. DELIVER ONE MESSAGE PER WORD, NOT MULTIPLE ONES

There should be one main message that the word is trying to communicate, not several. Each prophecy should have a single theme (main topic) and it should stick to that theme. It may have some subpoints to build and develop the main point, but they should all be directly related to the topic of the word. If you have two completely different subjects/topics in a given word, you probably need to divide that word into two separate words, one for each topic.

2. DELIVER GOD'S MESSAGE AND NOT YOUR OWN OPINIONS

We need to be aware of our own passions and strong opinons. Any time we see them appear in a word, we should prayerfully review that with the Lord to assure that it is really Him speaking and not our own passion or opinion.

I shared about a prophet who had a strong passion for evangelism. Over time, his words began to reflect that passion until every single one of his words, regardless of the subject, always contained two almost identically worded paragraphs on evangelism. He did not mean to do this, but he had begun throwing his passion for evangelism into every word, adding it to whatever message God was giving.

We need to be careful that we give the Lord's words and not our own. We have to watch for themes or messages that run through many/all of our words. If we find a theme that repeats a lot, it might be us and not God. We need to pray and ask God if He is really saying that or if we are adding it from our own strong opinions or passions.

3. KNOW YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE AND ADDRESS THEM ACCORDINGLY

There are two important criteria that God uses in deciding how He is going to address a person. One is how closely they are lining up with His will and the other is what direction they are moving. In general, God wants to encourage those in the center of His will, and the devil wants to harrass them. Also, God wants to encourage those who are moving towards Him, to wake up those who are stagnant (not moving), and to discourage those who are moving in the wrong direction so they will change directions and start to move toward Him again.

God is not going to use strong rebukes to those whose hearts are close to Him and whose hearts are passionately commited to obey Him. He would encourage them to continue in the direction they are moving, and He would say positive things to them. Likewise, He would not want to encourage someone who is backsliding and let them think it is ok to keep on doing so. Instead, He would invite them back into intimacy with Him. God is going to be gentle and loving with those who are close to Him and moving closer, but He is going to be sterner and more rebuking with those who are in active rebellion and continue to disregard His wishes.

4. USE PROPER WRITING SKILLS

God is not illiterate, so do not misrepresent Him as such by intentionally using bad writing skills. If you normally write at an 8th grade level, then your written words should also be at an 8th grade level. Some people have the mistaken idea that when they prophesy, they have to write in a different way than they would normally write. Some drop into King James English, which is very hard to understand. Some begin using Yoda-like sentence construction, which may sound mystical but doesn't communicate well. (That is where they don't use the proper order in a sentence, such as saying, "To the store take me" instead of saying, "Take me to the store.")

We should avoid bad grammar, spelling errors, wrong punctuation, run-on sentences and mis-capitalization in our written words. In short, we need to use proper writing skills when we give a written word.

5. CHOOSE THE APPROPRIATE LEVEL OF DETAIL FOR THE MESSAGE

People err on both sides of this. Some over-specifize, giving details that are inappropriate to the person/group the word is for. For instance, if you are writing to a mixed sex group, such as all members of a given church, you want to avoid terms that would tend to exclude some of them. I see this all the time in words submitted to the prophetic-word list which targets the body of Christ at large. They will say "son" or "daughter" in the word to refer to one of God's own. If you say "Son," that excludes the women, and if you say "daughter," that excludes the men. You have to select a term of endearment that fits both sexes, such as "Child of Mine," or "Dear one" or "Redeemed one," etc.

The other side of the error is when God gives you specific details tailored to the target audience and you choose to leave them out so that the word will be more general. For instance, if the word is talking to intercessors, God may give details like "you seek Me on bended knee, and you are at My beck and call at inopportune times to stand in the gap, to raise the standard and to call upon My mercy on the behalf of the lost." Those are specific details, and they would fit the group that God is targeting with the word. Those details would be inappropriate to groups whom God is not targeting, such as the teachers or the worshippers or the Christian businessmen. But that is ok, because the word is not to them, it is specifically to the intercessors.

It would be a mistake to overgeneralize and eliminate the details God gave about "bended knee," "standing in the gap," "call upon My mercy on behalf of..." to fit all believers. Why? Because this message is not targeting all believers; it is to a specific group who happen to be intercessors and who happen to do these things.

(On the other hand, if you were giving a word to the body of Christ at large, then you might want to adjust it to something more generic, such as "You faithfully seek Me and you are available to serve me no matter what I command you to do.")

6. DON'T OBSCURE THE MESSAGE WITH IRRELEVANT INFORMATION

Sometimes God will talk about a subject about which we have some natural knowledge, and we may be tempted to throw in our natural knowledge, which can clutter the subject and make it hard to find the main point. For example, one man worked at a hardware store. The Lord gave him a word about nailing our sins to the cross and not letting them have ownership of the people any more. This man knew something about nails, and he wanted to pass that information along in the word. He talked about different kinds of nails. There are the stainless steel ones, the galvanized ones, ones with a large head, ones with a narrow head, etc. Unfortunately, all of that infomation about nails was totally irrelevant. Describing different types of nails had nothing to do with the concept of "nailing our sins to the cross."

A similar thing happens when describing visions or prophetic dreams. Certain elements are in the vision because they have a meaning to the vision, and other things are in there as filler, to complete the picture. If the vision is about a tree planted by the river of living water, God may include other (insignificant) things in the picture, such as grass or rocks, trees, a sky and maybe a few clouds in the sky. If the clouds are not relevant to the image and related message, then you probably don't want to mention those clouds and you definitely don't want to spend a lot of time describing them.

7. STICK WITH THE SAME SPEAKER FOR THE WHOLE MESSAGE

Some words are God the Father speaking to His children, while others are Jesus speaking to His bride. Some words are God speaking in such a way that you don't know/care which Member of the Trinity is speaking (and I refer to those as words from Triune God). If one Member of the Godhead is identifed as the Speaker in the word, then the whole word must come from that perspective. You don't want part of the word to be from God the Father and another part of that same word to be from Jesus. If God identifies Himself as one Member of the Godhead in the word, then that Member of the Godhead needs to speak for the entirety of that word. You want to avoid words that switch speakers, such as, "I am your loving Father God who laid down My life for you on the cross." Be consistent in terms of Who you are speaking for in any given word.

Closing Note

This teaching series has been very down-to-earth and pragmatic. I know it has been a stretch for some of you who have had it grilled into you that the spoken word of God (prophecy) is just as sacred and infallible as God's written word (the Bible). The truth is that the Bible is infallible, but modern-day prophecy is given through fallible people, and therefore it can contain errors. As God's spokespersons, we do our best to try to eliminate as many errors as possible.

That is why we practice drawing near to God and learning to listen and hear His voice more clearly. That is why we spend a lot of time in His word and get to know His nature and His heart. And that is why we do our best to take an honest look at our own delivery and packaging skills, then to do what we can to improve those skills. We try to eliminate errors from our delivery so that we don't get in the way of the message that God has given us to share. We want to give God our best and we want to "study to show ourselves approved." And that is what we have been doing in this course, learning as much as we can about how to speak clearly and accurately for the Lord as we share His word with others.

I hope this series has been helpful for you...


-- © GodSpeak International 2006 --
-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --

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