-- © Transforming Life Prophetic Ministry -- 1999 --
-- Do Not Reprint without written permission from John Webster,
<prophetjpw@aol.com> --
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Author: John Webster
Transcriber: Lucy Deliganis
Editors: Paul Cummins, Teresa Seputis
Prophetic Training 201 -- Week 5 Teaching
The Lifestyle of Listening - Part II
We are continuing our discussion on the lifestyle of listening, part II.
This is our fifth lesson on Hearing God's Voice Now. In Part I, we talked
about listening to God in our personal life. We talked about such things as
intimacy, parenting, marriage, encouragement, direction, emotional hurts and
wounds. Now we want to talk about what God might speak to us in other areas
of our life.
We want to start off talking about how the Lord may want to
talk to us about our ministry life. The Lord wants to talk to us about how
He wants to use us, and what our purpose is in Him, our roles and gifting in
the kingdom of God. Therefore, I'm not just talking to those of you that
are called to full time ministry or those just called to a pulpit ministry.
I'm talking to each one of you because every one of you has a ministry.
Isn't that right? We're going to talk about various aspects of hearing the
voice of God in a ministry context. That is to say in a context of hearing
God's voice in order to minister to others.
The Gift of Prophecy
The first thing I would like to talk about is hearing God's voice and the
gift of prophecy, or really any of the gifts of the Spirit, but specifically
the gift of prophecy. After all, prophecy is a gift from God and we have to
learn to hear from God before we can speak it. So we want to hear God's
voice first and speak second. Many times when somebody is learning to
prophecy, you may have seen this. Perhaps during a worship service in the
church and as worship is going on, perhaps there is a little bit of a lull
between choruses. That is an opportune time to prophesy. Someone gets up
and begins to prophesy. As they do that and they speak forth the message
they feel God is laying on their heart, they begin to prophesy and then they
fall silent. They know they are not quite finished, and you know they are
not quite finished either. They seem to have gotten a blockage, therefore,
they are quiet for a few moments. Probably in their heart, they are saying,
"God, get me out of this one. I stood up, and I was faithful." Then, they
start to prophesy again. Then they go quiet again, and start up after a few
moments. It's like somebody learning to drive a stick-shift in an
automobile. Sometimes that is what it is like when somebody is learning to
prophesy and they are just a beginner. The gift of prophecy is like they
go, and then they stop, and then they go. I thought I would address that in
the event that some of you have faced that. Maybe you have a fear of
getting up and prophesying and finding yourself in the middle of a word and
you go blank.
Let me explain why that happens. Oftentimes what happens is as a person is
worshipping the Lord, God will drop something in a person's heart. It is
certainly not the whole message He is going to speak through them. It is
probably just the beginning of the message. They stand up in faith, wanting
to be pleasing to the Lord, and they begin to say what God has put in their
heart. When they say that and get to the end of that and are expecting more
to come and nothing more comes. Then they kind of go quiet and suddenly
more comes.
What is happening is that they are trying to learn how to
listen and speak at the same time. You see when we first learn we are
sitting in our seat hearing from the Lord and as we stand up to prophecy, we
have stopped listening and started speaking. A person who is new at this
does not know how to do these functions simultaneously. So they speak, and
then what they have to say is finished, and then they go quiet. We are all
in an awkward moment while they are listening. Then when they have
listened, they begin to speak again. That is why you have that jerky
stop-start type of action.
What the Lord wants to do is get us to the place that we can easily speak or
prophesy as we are listening simultaneously. So as we are prophesying the
first part, we are hearing the second part. As we are prophesying the
second part, we are hearing the third part. Until finally, it is just a
flow. It just flows right out of you without that start-stop jerky type of
experience. When you are hearing the voice of the Lord with regard to
prophesying, learn to listen as you are speaking.
You may also find in the gift of prophesy that God might put three, four, or
five things in your heart before you begin. You might be aware that there
are several different elements to this prophetic message. As you get up and
yield yourself to the Lord, and you don't prophesy what you think you are
going to prophesy, the prophesy kind of takes a different direction. In
your mind, you are thinking about the two or three points over there that
you thought you were going to talk about. I want to give you a word of
encouragement that many times when God drops a word in your heart, that
those first few points may have been given to you by God as a frame of
reference. We talked about this in our last teaching. It is like the
stage, or backdrop. It just gives us a point of reference about what God
wants to talk about.. But as the prophecy goes forth, He ends up talking
about whatever He wants to talk about, and we end up sitting down. We
think, "Man, I was going to talk about this, but I ended up prophesying
something else, and I feel like I didn't end up doing what I was going to
do, or somehow there are things still left on my list, so to speak." When
that happens, just go with the flow, and don't worry about not covering
everything that you thought you were going to cover. Because as I said,
many times God will drop things in your heart and you will be aware of them.
You will think that you are supposed to prophesy them. God knows the whole
time that He is not going to let you say those things. They just serve to
orient your thinking, point you in the right direction. They help turn your
head to make you look in a particular direction. When you look in that
direction, you end up taking off from there. You end up prophesying that.
Not these other things that you thought you were going to prophesy. Ok?
Now that applies to any of the gifts of the Spirit. You do not want to get
into the place where you are directing the voice of the Lord. You may
think, "Now wait, I was going to prophesy this, so let me bend this back
around and prophesy the things I was thinking about." Now you would be in
the driver's seat and in control. You do not want to be there. You want to
let God control. Let God say what He wants to say, and you sit down and be
real satisfied with the results, even if you didn't cover everything that
you thought the prophecy was going to cover.
The Gift of Healing
Then, we have God's voice for physical healing. We know God wants to heal
today. Now, when you have gifts of healing and you lay hands on the sick
and they recover, one of the most powerful expressions of the gifts of
healing is when they listen to the Lord and God begins to speak to them,
revealing to them some of the physical needs present. When there is a word
of knowledge, coupled with the gift of healing, that is a real powerful
combination. We have seen this where not only will the gifts of healing
flow, but first of all God will speak to your heart, telling you this is the
person and this is the need. You have heard the voice of the Lord. Now go
pray for them for that need. Then when you pray for them, the gifts of
healing kick in. Healing takes place. That is a neat combination that when
you pray for people for healing, that you listen to the Lord. Who am I
supposed to pray for? What's wrong with them? How am I supposed to pray
for them? Then, you pray. Let me listen to the voice of the Lord, and
combine my listening with gift of healing. That is a real powerful thing.
Intercession
So there we have the gift of prophecy, the gifts of healing, and then we
have intercession. How many of you are prayer warriors? Here is how
hearing the voice of God in intercession can work. This is a real powerful
combination as well. Do you remember the Persian Gulf War? When we were
watching that and we find out about precision guided munitions or Smart
Bombs. Some of them are TV guided. Maybe you saw on the news or
documentaries where there was a camera in the nose of that bomb. The pilot
in the plane has a little joy stick and he by looking at a screen in his
cockpit, seeing what the camera sees in the nose of that bomb, is as if he
is sitting right in that bomb. He can steer that bomb into that
destination. Maybe you have even see this looking at the target and you are
getting closer and closer until finally the screen goes blank. That is a TV
guided munitions. There is also radar and laser guided. Laser guided is
where they put a laser designator, like a flashlight shone against a wall,
and point it at a target. It is an invisible light and you cannot see it.
A second plane will come and drop a bomb and that plane will see a
reflection of light on the target and will home right in on that reflection
of light. It is very, very accurate. You've seen where they put a bomb
right through a door or air shaft. Spirit led intercession or hearing the
voice of God in intercession is like those precision guided munitions or
Smart Bombs. You see we have the power of God, and as God tell us what to
pray for and when to pray, that is like those precision guided munitions.
Now your prayers are guided by the voice of the Lord. You are praying for
the right person, the right thing, at the right time. Your prayers home in
right on their target, and the power of God is released right on target.
Instead of being in the place thinking, "Well, I'm an intercessor and am
not real sure who to pray for or what to pray or when to pray, therefore, I
am going to pray as it seems best to me." Well, first of all thank God you
got that far. Thank God you have a heart to pray and to intercede. But
there is a higher level. That Spirit-led intercession or hearing the voice
of God as you pray and intercede.
Deliverance
Then we have the voice of God in deliverance. When God wants to free people
from demonic spirits and the hold of demonic spirits, He wants to speak to
us. Let me just tell you how God can speak to us to make the deliverance
process so much more effective and efficient. One of them is when we are
able to discern the type of spirit that is involved. What do they need to
be delivered from? God speaks to us. Then God tell us what the stronghold
is. What was the open door for this demonic spirit? How did it get there?
As we perceive this, and God speaks to us, if the person is in the place to
converse with us, we can lead them in a prayer where they renounce that. We
can break that stronghold. It removes a lot of the power of the demonic
spirit We can also discern how that demonic spirit came in. How did it get
there? Was it a spirit that came down the family line? You know there are
generational sins. Deuteronomy 5:9, says" the iniquity of the fathers is
visited to the third and fourth generation." When there are sins, there are
usually demonic spirits, kind of like flies around a dumpster. Where you
have trash, you find flies. Where you have sin, you have demons trying to
get involved in that. So where sins have been in the family line, a lot of
times demons try to follow that. It could come through trauma. There are a
number of ways, spirits get into a person's life, and you want to find that
out. It is not necessary in order to bring someone to deliverance, but it
sure can help. Therefore, you want to listen to the voice of God regarding
deliverance.
Preaching and Teaching
Also, you want to learn to hear God's voice in preaching and teaching.
There are just so many applications for hearing God's voice. This is why we
say that hearing God's voice is a lifestyle. You should always be listening
in all areas of your life. I remember when I was doing some research for
this set of teachings, and this was l0 years ago. Remember the first
lesson, we talked about John 10:27, l0:l6, l0:4, and I was amassing these
verses to give evidence to the fact that we do hear God's voice. I stumbled
across another one. When I read it, I thought, "Okay, this validates what I
wanted to say." The Lord quickened to me and said, "No, don't use that
verse." I said, "Why, Lord?" The Lord said, "Because it doesn't say what
you think it says. You read it quickly and casually, and it appears to say
what you think it says, but that is not what that verse really means.." I
had been in too big of a hurry to research the verse, and so I just said,
"Okay, God, we're going to leave that one." It was a little bit of a
struggle. Isn't that amazing? Because I wanted to give evidence to prove a
point. So I left it out and came back later and did the research on it. I
found out that sure enough. That was not at all what it meant. Now how
many people could have been sitting in on the teachings and had actually
heard that other verse and realized that No, this guy didn't do his
research. If I can't trust him on that point, maybe he made mistakes on
other points as well. It undermines the validity of the teaching. God
wants to speak to us as we are researching his word.
Counseling
Then, we have God's voice for counseling. As we are counseling, God can
show us beyond what the counselee is telling us. God can speak to us
concerning the true root issues that are at play with this particular
person. This is what they are telling you, but this is not really the
bottom line. This is a fruit issue, not a root issue. Some people are very
perceptive and they can get to the root issue. Other people are not so
perceive, and they really need God to show it to them. God, what are we
dealing with here? God can speak to us. So the voice of the Lord is
invaluable for counseling. Those are some of the ways we can hear God's
voice in our ministry lives.
Business Life
Then, we have our business life. I am speaking of our vocation, our career.
So when I say business, I'm not just talking small business owners. I'm
talking about anybody that works and our work life. God can speak to us in
our work life in decision making. This is a wonderful area. There are so
many decisions to make. God is the best decision maker there ever was. In
fact, God has never made a wrong decision. He is perfect. He does it the
best way every time. So you know that when you are making a decision and
you disagree with God, the most you can hope for is second best. God
already has first place. So the most you can do is second place in terms of
the quality of the decision. So the idea here is, "Don't disagree with God."
Go God's way. Do what God wants you to do. When you are making a decision,
and you are in your workplace, go with God's decision. He sees the big
picture. He understands it all. He knows what has happened in the past and
what is going to happen in the future.
Personnel
Then we have the voice of God dealing with personnel, or other people in
the workplace. Particularly, when you have authority over those people in
the workplace. How many of you know that your business will benefit when
you place the right people in the right positions? Having interviewed and
hired people myself, you realize that it is not always easy to get the right
person in the right slot. Whether you are hiring them in or transferring
them into another position you want to fill, it is not an altogether easy
thing to do. Because you know God knows that person. He knows who is going
to blossom in a particular area. He also knows when a person is giving
certain responsibilities what is going to shut them down. Rob them of
creativity, rob them of effectiveness. Therefore, if you really want your
business to go well, you want to get the right people doing the right thing.
Some people have the mentality that when they need a job done, they just
designate a person. Here, you do what I want you to do, not what you want
to do. Now I know that you have a gift in a certain area and an aptitude in
that area, but I need this other thing, so go over there and be faithful.
Now there is a certain amount of merit to that, but a wise leader will
realize that it is essential to get the right person in the right slot. If
you don't do that, you may have the authority to make them do what you are
asking them to do, but your business is going to suffer if it is not the
right person in the right place. So listen to God. This works not just for
Christian businesses. This works in the day to day workplace. If you are
working with personnel, God can show you who is going to do well and where.
He can show you how to work with them and how to interact with them. An
effective leader wants to learn those things.
Financial Matters
God also wants to speak to us with regard to financial matters. Are you all
beginning to get the picture that this is a lifestyle? You think of the
area and that is where you can learn to hear God's voice. When you learn to
hear His voice efficiently, accurately, and consistently with great clarity,
you are way ahead. Some years ago, I believe in 1989, when the stock market
took a great tumble (Black Tuesday), I had an associate in ministry that the
Lord spoke to the day prior to the crash. The Lord spoke to this man and
told him to get his money out of the market and put it in something else.
This requires a high level of knowing the voice of the Lord. You need to
have some experience in hearing God's voice with something like this So,
the man pulled his money out of the stock market and put it somewhere else.
The next day the market took a tumble, and the following day he goes into
the office. Other men in his office are sharing how they lost money. One
man said he lost $l0,000. Another said he lost $50,000. They asked him
how much he lost. He looked at them and said he actually made about
$l5,000. Because God showed him how to take his money out of one place and
put it in another. Now again, a word of caution. This is not for someone
who thinks, "Oh, this is a great idea. I'm going to use God's voice to
make a pile of money." But if God has put you into that realm or level, He
wants to speak to you about it. His wisdom is better than yours anyway. So
start listening to God on a small level, and prove that it is the voice of
the Lord and work your way up until you are hearing the Lord efficiently.
Strategic Planning
God wants to speak to us with regard to strategic planning in the
marketplace. God spoke to Pharaoh and gave him a dream. Seven fat cattle
coming up out of the river, and then seven skinny cows coming up and eating
the seven fat cows. Joseph interpreted the dream and said there were going
to be seven years of feast and seven years of famine. He told Pharaoh to
gather up grain during the seven years of plenty, and then during the seven
years of famine, Pharaoh would have everything needed. It turns out that
that plan was so good that even surrounding nations during the famine came
to Egypt and became debtor nations to get the grain. So God can speak to us
in strategic planning in business.
Organizational Structure
God wants to speak to us about organizational structure. When I worked in
the ministry of Christian International, I had an administrative
responsibility. I am still associated with them, but I travel full time in
ministry. We were providing college courses in our School of Theology to
individuals to study the word of God. We also had colleges and local
churches involved, so a church could set up their own college using our
material. I was the Dean of the Bible College, and the Director of
Education for our ministry. This organizational structure had been in place
for a long time. It pre-dated me and also my predecessor. So the way we
provided courses to individuals and churches had been done this way for a
long time. So as I was trying to make our department more efficient and
effective, the Lord spoke to me. He showed me that we were providing the
same product to two different markets, and we have one department that
handles the needs of the individual, and you have another department that
handles the needs of the churches. It was almost like I could see a picture
with two conveyor belts, and the two conveyor belts were doing the same
thing with the same product. The Lord told me to consolidate. If you will
consolidate these departments, you can reduce the manpower. Neither
department had been working at capacity. Therefore, we consolidated and
reduced the overhead. It had never been my intention to lay anyone off.
That allowed us to allocate more people to research and development. We
actually ended up making money in the process. Therefore, God can even help
us in things like organizational structure.
Entrepreneurial Endeavors
Then lastly, God can speak to us in entrepreneurial things, endeavors, doing
something new. God can sometimes speak to us, telling us it doesn't matter
how good it looks, don't do this. As we obey Him and heed the cautions He
gives us, He can save us from all kinds of heartache. God can also
encourage us to get involved in a new area and it will bless us
tremendously. But the idea is to hear God's voice in the process.
Now let me just talk to you about business for a moment. I want to
encourage you. This departs just a bit from hearing God's voice, but it is
a tremendous encouragement with regard to God being involved with your
business. When I say business, I am thinking workplace. Whether you are an
employer, employee, part time or full time, salaried or hourly wage, own
your own business or work for someone else, I want to encourage you that God
can be trusted in business. God is a businessman. This is real essential
for you to know this because sometimes we think we don't want to turn our
business over to God. You know it is a dog-eat-dog world out there. When
you go to work it is not like being in church. But I want to encourage you
that God is the ultimate business man. He knows business. In fact, God
invented business principles. Let me explain it to you this way. In
economics and in the free market economy we have here in the United States,
the way that the value of good and services is determined is through supply
and demand. Right? It is not it's intrinsic value that determines its
price. It is the law of supply and demand. If supply is high and the
demand is low, the price drops. if the supply is low, and the demand is
high the price goes up. God invented that principle. Our intrinsic value
is zero. In me, my flesh, there is no good thing. But because God loves us
so much, the demand is high. He paid the ultimate price for us which is the
life of His Son. You have value because God loves you. That is the only
reason you have value. That is the law of supply and demand. God invented
it.
Another example is marketing. Marketing is telling other people about your
goods and services. Do you know what God calls it? Evangelism. It is
getting out the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The Bible is the
most printed book of all time. God knows how to get out the word. God
knows evangelism. He understands this principle.
God understand personnel and organizational structure. He runs the affairs
of the universe, including this planet with five billion people and all of
the angels in heaven with perfect order and structure. He even understands
personnel and who to put in what position, including Judas. Sometimes when
we don't understand this and we think God is removed from business, we
conduct ourselves differently in business than we do in church. Maybe we do
some things in business that we know God would not approve of. But when we
realize that God fully understands business and we listen to His advice, God
will bless and prosper us. When you learn to hear the voice of the Lord, it
is like having the most high powered business consultant that ever was. He
wants to help you every step along the way.
Summary
Let me summarize that as we learn to hear God's voice more efficiently in
that digital burst (rapidly, openly), we will make much more progress in our
Christian life. But if we don't learn that, God will still communicate with
us the slow way - through trials and life experience. He really would
prefer to communicate through direct communication.
Lord, I ask for each person here that you would help them to open their
hearts to You and be vulnerable to You. So that You can speak to them with
direct communication and speak to them all the things that You want them to
know so that they can grow up in You and be who You want them to be in
Jesus' Name. Amen
-- © Transforming Life Prophetic Ministry -- 1999 --
-- Do Not Reprint without written permission from John Webster
<prophetjpw@aol.com> --