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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS AND CONTRIBUTING RESOURCES
Author: Teresa Seputis ts@godspeak.net http://www.godspeak.net

FireSide Chat II

Informal Prophetic MentoringWith Teresa Seputis

Week 5
Prophesying "Faster"

Dear Teresa,

I am on a prayer team at my church and pray for people at the end of the service. The prayer team is relatively small, and we have a lot of people who come up for prayer. That means there is some pressure to not spend too long with any given person. But as I pray for people, I often feel the flow to go into the prophetic. Most of the time my revelation comes from "just knowing" some information. It takes me a bit of time to understand what I am getting prophetically, and then it takes a bit more time to figure out how to describe that that revelation to the person in a manner that is meaningful to them.

It is not a long time, maybe 3 or 4 minutes. But when there are a lot of people in the prayer line, I feel that I don't have enough time to go through that process to deliver the prophetic word to them. But I don't want to ignore the words that God is giving me for them either. So, I want to learn to prophesy faster, to better minister in this situation.

I have been reading a book called The Seer by James W. Goll. He talks about letting the Holy Spirit see through the windows of your eyes. That sounds like it might be faster than getting a word the way I do, but I don't know how to start getting words that way. So, my question is; apart from asking for this type of supernatural vision and stretching out for more of this revelation, do you have suggestions for me, and how is your experience when you have many people and less time.

-- Wanting To Hear Faster

Dear Wanting To Hear Faster

I can relate to your situation. What you are describing is a pull on you to give more prophetic words in a shorter period of time, and still not compromise the quality of each word. That is not an uncommon thing to happen to people as they start to get more proficient in the prophetic.

There are actually a lot of factors in your question, and I'd like to break them into three components and answer each one separately.

First, you mention that God has a "regular" or "usual" way of speaking prophetic information to you. It is very good that you recognize that, because our ability to hear God's voice more clearly increases as we learn to recognize the ways He usually speaks to us. You might say that when we are in tune to His way of speaking to us, or that we make better listeners.

Now that brings me to a point of concern: you are thinking of asking God to speak to you in a totally different way than the way He has already chosen. There are times when God will do that, but in general, it is not a good idea. It is much better to choose to cooperate with Him in the manner that He has chosen to speak to you. You can ask Him to improve the clarity and accuracy of your hearing, to make you more sensitive to His voice, etc. But it is not a good idea to tell Him, "Ok, God, I think sensing is too slow a way to hear from You. So I want You to start giving me pictures instead."

I did that once, by accident, many years ago when I was first learning to distinguish His voice. He had been speaking to me in a sensing way, but my hearing was only 50% accurate. I wanted to improve my ability to hear God's voice, so I went to a new church that that was known for it's ability to teach people to hear God's voice. The pastor there was a seer, and He did not know any other way that God spoke. So he taught his congregation to seek God for a picture, then to ask Him for an understand of that picture. I joined that church and started trying it his way.

But the problem was that I was not a visual person at that time, and I did not get any pictures. That went on for a whole year and I got more and more frustrated. Everyone else was hearing God, except for me. I had been hearing Him some before I came to this church, but now I was not. Finally one day I had a crisis over this and I cried out to God, "GOD! WHY AREN'T YOU TALKING TO ME?!"

Then God responded to my cry. He did not use a picture to do it, He used that same inner knowing that I used to get, but His answer was clear and easy to recognize. He said, "Teresa, I have been trying to speak to you for the whole last year, but you have been refusing to listen to Me. Each time I would say something to you, you would throw it out and ask me for a picture."

The bottom line is that we have to learn to hear Him the way He chooses to speak to us. We can't force Him to choose some other mechanism of communication instead. If God has made you a sensor, then His primary way of speaking to you is going to be in a sensing way, not in a visual way. The idea of seeking Him for pictures may seem more efficient to you, but it probably won't be, because that is not the way that God wants to speak to you.

There is a key to getting faster at hearing Him so that you might be able to prophesy faster. It is to draw closer to Him, to get to know Him better and to ask Him to teach you how to recognize and process His communications more rapidly. It is about learning how to hear Him better in the way He speaks to you instead of learning a whole different way of hearing Him speak.

Now, on to the second component of your question. You feel pressure to do more than you are able to do in your given time frame. So the real question is: who is setting the agenda for what you do during this ministry time? Is it being set for you by the expectations of those awaiting prayer, or are you setting it by placing too many expectations on yourself, or are you allowing the Holy Spirit to set your ministry agenda?

There will always be pressure on us from others; they will draw on the anointing, they will want a word, they will hope you have more for them to meet their given need. But we cannot allow the external pressures to dictate how we do ministry. We must be led by the Holy Spirit. Jesus (our role model) gave us the key to effective ministry in John 5:19. He said, "I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by Himself; He can do only what He sees His Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son also does." In short: we must see what the Father is doing and then do it with Him in His power and anointing. God has an agenda for each and every ministry time. We need to discover and follow His agenda instead of succumbing to the pressures and expectations of those around us.

There are times when God will want to give a word to everyone. If that is His agenda for a ministry time, then He will somehow enable you to do that with Him (even if you don't hear a fast as you wish that you did). There will be times when He wants to ignore "the many" to focus in on only a few. We have a bible precedent for that in John chapter 5. Many people where waiting at the pool of Bethesda for healing, but Jesus singled out one paralyzed man, and he was the only person that Jesus ministered to at that moment.

There may be times when God wants you to do in-depth ministry to a given individual, and you may have to spend time with that person. When this happens, the others will either just have to wait, patiently, or they will have to get prayed from by some other member of the prayer team.

I have experienced that "conflict" between man's expectations and God's agenda more than one occasion. I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to speak at a church, and the pastors expected me to prophesy to "everyone there," or at least to a large percentage of the congregation. But I don't plan the ministry time based on what the pastor wants--I plan it based on what the Holy Spirit is leading me to do. There have been times when He leads me to prophesy to many; and I do that if that is what He is doing. But I won't do it if God has something else that He wants me to do.

When I do precisely what the Father is doing, there is always a lot of power and anointing, and the people go away feeling satisfied and "met" by God. But if I lay aside God's agenda to do what the people expect me to do--well, it is usually not a very powerful meeting. I had a few failures where I succumbed to the expectations of the people, and God did not show up. I won't do that any more.

Ideally, I would prefer to please everyone--God and man. But if it comes to a choice between the two, I think it is more important to please God. Generally, when the Father is doing something different than what the people expect Him to do, it still turns out pretty powerful and anointed. So don't let people's expectations force you into something different that what the Father is doing at that moment.

The last component of your question has to do with a "faster" way to prophesy--but that method is not available to everyone. It is only available to those who have either the gift or office of prophecy. (All of us can prophesy by hearing God speak to us about someone, and sharing what we hear. We can do that whether or not we have the formal "gift" of prophecy, because according to John 10:27, all of us have the ability to hear God speak to us.)

There is a method of prophesying that completely bypasses our "hearing" and processing. It is called "prophetic flow." That is when we yield to the Holy Spirit and open our mouths and He supplies the words. There is a verse that describes this: Psalm 81:10 says "open wide your mouth and I will fill it."

Prophetic flow is a type of prophesying where we give God control of our mouth, and He says what He wants to say through us. We literally have no idea what is going to come out of our mouth until we hear it being spoken by our own voice. It is a rather "advanced" method of prophesying because you have to build a certain level of trust and confidence that God speaks through you before you can trust Him enough to let Him flow through you like that.

The reason that it is fast is because you don't have to spend any time receiving, understanding or processing the word. You don't have to figure out a delivery style--all you do is yield to the Holy Spirit and let Him speak through you. But that is not quite as easy as it sounds. You don't want to open to any "spirit" (such as your own thoughts, woundedness, or the enemy). You only want to open to the Holy Spirit, and that can only be accomplished effectively when you have a deep relationship with God and are already used to being spirit-led.

I do consider prophetic flow as one of the more "advanced" forms of prophesying, and I teach it in my advanced class. I don't plan to explain how to do this here in this fireside chat because it is far too involved for a single lesson. But I wanted to let you know that it exists, and is something you can begin to peruse as you grow in the prophetic.

Blessings to you.


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-- Do not republish without written permission from <copyright@godspeak.org> --

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