Ministry Team Training

RELEASE BLESSINGS

A blessing prayer is where you speak and release blessings over a person. You go on for as long as you can, and you release God's blessings over many areas of the person's life. Ask God to help you pray by showing you what blessings He wants to release in the person's life and then release them. You need to understand that as you speak blessings, God releases a spiritual power to affect the person in a positive way. Blessings are not just things you say to make the person feel good, they are real and powerful spiritual ministry.

There is incredible power in prayers that release God's blessing on people. In fact, we often find our own ministry gifts growing when we pray prayers of encouragement and blessing over an individual. This can even launch us into the prophetic. That was part of how I got started in the prophetic. I was on a ministry team and I would pray for people at renewal meetings and bless them. As I prayed, I would get certain impressions and pray blessings on whatever the impression was. Let me give an example.

One time I was praying for a middle-aged woman and suddenly I thought, "I bet she has teenage children." So I began asking God to touch and bless her children. She responded visibly to that prayer, expressing agreement by nodding her head and saying, "Yes, Lord." Then I had the impression that maybe one of her children had some sort of health problem. So I began to release God's blessings over her children's health. The woman got really excited when I did that and began muttering her daughter's name, Marie. It does not take a genius to figure out that she had concerns for her daughter's health, so I put a bit more emphasis into blessing that. As I blessed Marie's health, I got a mental picture of doctors in a hospital setting running some sort of complex medical tests on big fancy medical equipment. So I began to bless any doctors or health professionals that worked with the daughter to excel in helping her, to be able to quickly discern any problem and to come up with the most effective strategy possible. I blessed them to excel in their profession as health care providers in general, and particularly in the daughter's case. I also asked God to release any finances that were necessary to cover any type of testing or medical treatment, because I had an impression that this type of thing could be expensive. I don't know why I prayed it, but these words came out: "Lord please arrange for top quality medical treatment to be provided to Marie totally free of charge."

When I finished praying, I had no clue that I had been prophetic. I simply followed the ideas that came to me as I released blessings. But after the ministry session, the woman came back up to me and was very excited about my prophetic prayer. Her teenage daughter had some type of serious and unusual health condition and their insurance company would not cover the type of medical treatment she needed. There was some type of research going on related to Marie's health condition, and Marie was being considered as one of the research subjects. If she was one of the subjects, then she would get all the medical care she needed free of charge. The big prayer request that she and her family had been praying was for Marie to be accepted into that program.

Now a total stranger (me) prayed that same prayer for her daughter at a ministry session. It sparked her faith that God would answer that prayer, since He had prophetically led me to pray it. And during all of that, I wasn't even aware that I was being prophetic. I was just praying what "seemed right" as I released blessings and prayers of encouragement over the lady.

The result was that both of us got blessed. She got blessed and encouraged because of the prayers I prayed. And a I got blessed because God came on me and allowed me to move with Him in the prophetic as I prayed. Blessings prayers are like that--they are a win-win situation and they are very powerful. When we pray and release blessings in accordance with God's will, something happens in the spirit to cause those blessings to be empowered and to really "land" on the person.

ENCOURAGEMENT PRAYER

Encouragement prayers are where you ask God to encourage the person in a certain area. It is similar to blessings but it tends to focus on an area where they need encouragement.

For instance, maybe the person is going through a divorce. They may feel hurt and rejected because their spouse does not want them any more. Maybe they are past their prime physically, so they are fat and ugly, etc., and figure no one will ever be interested in them. Their divorce situation may seen pretty hopeless to them. So you may pray for God to encourage them, that they are of value because of who they are in Christ, that the beauty and character if Christ is maturing it them and that this makes them highly desirable to people. You may ask God to meet them in a special way and make His presence and His love real to them as they go through this difficult time. You may want to invite God to come into their situation and encourage them in it, to work on the person's behalf in all the conflict and court system so that the person receives fair treatment. You may want to ask God to begin to show them the destiny and future that He has for them so that they can know that there are good things ahead. You may ask God to surround them in His presence and pour His goodness out on them.

PROPHETIC PRAYER

If you already move in the prophetic and are released by the ministry team leadership, prophecy is very effective in ministry situations. However, it is important that you follow the 1 Cor 14 guidelines for prophecy when you serve on a ministry team. Do not give corrective, directive or rebuking words as you pray on the ministry team. Your words should be encouraging. They should build up, breath life, comfort, edify or strengthen the person.

INVITING GOD TO COME MINISTER TO THE PERSON

Another type of prayer that is effective is to simply invite God to come and minister directly to the person. You don't tell Him what area of their life He will minister in, you simply ask Him to come and let Him decide how He wants to meet the person.

This can be as simple as praying, "Come Lord Jesus and meet this person," or "saturate him/her in Your love," or "reveal Yourself to him/her," etc. When we do this type of prayer, we become a point of contact for the person in touching God. We must keep the focus on God and not ourselves. We need to be careful not make the person focus on us. We want them to put their full attention on God and on what He is doing, so that they can receive from God, Who has good things for them.

Sometimes the person gets overly proactive in this type of receiving prayer. They may be praying in tongues or aggressively agreeing with your prayers. That type of response is fine when we are petitioning God for something specific. But it is not good when we are simply inviting God to come and touch the person, to surround them with His presence and saturate them in His love, etc. It is like asking someone to talk to you on the phone but you never stop talking to give them a chance to say something.

The person receiving prayer can be assertive and proactive in prayer in many different prayer situations, such as taking authority over sickness or breaking curses or in kicking out demons. But it doesn't work for intimacy prayer; they need to receive from God instead of participating actively in the prayer. They need to put their focus on God and simply receive from Him as He meets them.

If I notice a person is in an assertive posture when then need to be in a receiving place, I stop the prayer and invite them to just receive. I tell them that God has something special for them and He wants to give it to them. This is not the time to ask God for it, it is the time to simply put out your hands and receive. Another thing I will do to have people receive is to begin worshipping God in their hearing. Their spirits will naturally join into this worship and this will make it easier for them to focus on God and on simply receiving from Him.

BLESS WHAT GOD IS ALREADY DOING

This is very similar to inviting God to come and minister to the person, except that in this case God got to the person before you did. They may have been at the altar area waiting for prayer and the Holy Spirit fell on them before a ministry team member came to them. Or perhaps God began to move on them and touch them before they even came down to the altar area for ministry prayer.

In that case, bless what God is already doing on the person. Ask Him to increase it, to do more, to continue to meet the person and touch them or impart into them.

If God shows you that He is doing something specific, pronounce it over them. There is an example: assume God tells you that He is releasing the prophetic in their prayer life. You may say, "Lord, I bless and release the prophetic intercession anointing that you are releasing right now. I call it forth in Jesus' name."

IMPARTATION OF SPIRITUAL GIFTS

God may want to impart a spiritual gift into the person that you minister to, and He may use you to do that. In general, you identify the gift, speak impartation and call it forth in Jesus' name. At times the gift is already in the person, but it is dormant and all you have to do is to call forth what God already put there and bless it to begin manifesting or operating in the person's life.

There are a lot of different viewpoints on impartation prayer. Some people feel you can only impart a gift that you already operate in. Others feel that you can impart whatever God tells you to impart, because He is the one supplying the impartation, not you. I tend more towards the second view, with the caveat that you should never impart a spiritual gift unless God explicitly and clearly tells you to do so. Most of the time, God tells me to impart gifts that I already move strongly in, such as the prophetic, healing, administration, teaching, etc. But at times, He has used me to impart and call forth gifts I don't personally move in.

For instance, my singing ability is far below average. It may be a deficit in my voice and vocal cords, or maybe it is just a matter of being untrained, but I don't sing all that well. And I definitely don't minister in prophetic song -- it would be more like torturing the person than ministering to them if I was to sing over them. Yet at times, God has had me impart and call forth prophetic song in people. And after that impartation, they have begun to move strongly in it, even though I don't possess that gift myself.

Also, not all impartation is for spiritual gifts. I have seen other things imparted, such as an increased sensitivity to discern God's voice clearly, a deep commitment and heart to obey God, etc.