Activate Heaven

Therefore whoever confesses Me before men, him I will also confess before My Father who is in heaven.

—MATTHEW 10:32, NKJV, EMPHASIS ADDED

TO BE A voice that heaven responds to, you need a certain kind of atmosphere to grow, develop, and be stirred, because when you’re in that kind of atmosphere, your gifts, anointing, talents, and abilities come forward. Now, there are different things that contribute to this kind of atmosphere, and really, the local church should be the place where this atmosphere is cultivated for you to be developed and to grow.

In other words, you should not be attending a not-for-prophet church. Though this book is not specifically about the prophetic, anyone who has been called to speak as heaven speaks or to speak in a way that heaven responds to must have a prophetic nature. As we have already seen, to speak into situations and bring heaven instead of hell, and healing and peace instead of strife and confusion, to bring the virtue and power of God, you must be prophetic. To continue to be built up and stirred in a way that allows you to grow in your ability to be a voice, you must be able to hear from God. This is the core of the prophetic realm. Local churches that accept and promote the prophetic gift and office are the most effective in helping you keep your voice sharp, accurate, and effective.

You will not flow in your calling or accomplish your assignments if you are in a church where people fight, shut down, and don’t encourage or believe in the prophetic. You will end up dying in that place. You will feel stifled and eventually feel silenced. Having visions and dreams is good, but more than that, to stir your voice and see it impact the nations, you must have a desire for the glory of God.

A voice that brings heaven to earth should want to see God glorified. You should want to see God honored, served, worshipped, and prioritized. Bringing heaven to earth—seeing heaven come into people’s lives; seeing heaven come in and change your family and reverse generational curses; seeing heaven come into your church, your city, or your nation—is all about God manifesting His glory, His presence, and the rule of the heavenly realm on earth. Declaring the glory of God must be your number one priority as you accomplish the thing God has set you on the earth to do. When you put anything before God, it will disturb the effectiveness of your voice. Expressing the glory of God must be your main concern. And if you are in a church that does not cultivate an environment where the glory of God dwells, it may be time to find a new one.

When giving God glory is not the number one thing, we begin to give glory to false gods, just as Israel did. We open the door to idol worship when God is not number one. Our churches and our lives become centers for serving idols and worshipping false gods. We begin breaking covenant and disobeying the voice of God, and the blessing of God is no longer evident. In that environment we compromise our influence in the heavens and in the earth. Many in the church are wondering how we lost the ability to speak into certain areas and see God’s power manifest. It is because the glory of God is not the number one priority. We shut it out. If we want to be blessed and see our words carry weight in the earth, we must repent and return to a place in our hearts where God is our number one priority. We must give Him glory.

Worship is at the forefront of developing a heart that makes God the priority, because as you glorify God, you become a worshipper. There’s no way you can tell me that you glorify God in your life but don’t like to worship. God’s glory is His presence, and He is present in praise and worship (Ps. 22:3). If God is a priority in your life, worship must be important to you. If God is the priority in your life, you must love His presence. If God is a priority in your life, when His presence is in a service, you will not be standing there with your hands in your pockets chewing gum. You will either be bowing down, lifting your hands, dancing, or weeping. True worship should always be the focus in everything you do—your priority should be what exalts God, what brings glory to His name, and what amplifies His nature.

Anytime Israel did not worship God properly, the prophets would come and rebuke them. It was always the will of God for worship not to be relegated to Jerusalem and Israel; it was always meant to go throughout the world so there would be people from every color, tribe, tongue, and language who would worship God, because our God is great. There is no one like Him in heaven or earth. He is awesome. He is magnificent. He is the greatest. He is beautiful. He is majestic. He is powerful. He is the only true and living God. When you really get a revelation of the God for whom you’ve been called to speak, you’ll become a worshipper.

In the Bible, the pattern worshipper is David, and probably more than any other person in Scripture he is the one who helps us understand the importance of worship. He loved worshipping God. He loved being in the presence of God. He was a voice that spoke on behalf of heaven and carried a prophetic mantle. There’s something about being a voice and being prophetic. You can’t be a voice without being prophetic. This prophetic nature requires you to have a certain kind of atmosphere of worship in order to thrive. Sometimes in our churches we’ve had more entertainment than we’ve had true worship. We love to sing. We love the music. We have great singers. We have great performers. We have gospel artists, but the problem sometimes—in America at least—is that some of the key Christian artists do not have lifestyles that are conducive to holiness.

When something only makes people clap and feel good and there is no conviction, anointing, presence, or glory, it has no real effect on our lives. So what God did through David was to establish a pattern for true worship that ushers in the glory of God. David led Israel into a place of worship that the people of God had not known before.

We know that when God gave Moses the tabernacle, God told him to establish it and bring sacrifices, which are all types and symbols of Jesus Christ and His work. (See Exodus 25–31; 35–40.) They had feast days: Passover, Pentecost, Tabernacles. They had the sacrifices. They had the different rooms in which they would worship God. They would blow the shofar. They had priestly garments, incense, and the ark of God, or the ark of the covenant, which they placed behind the closed curtain—the veil—that separated the holy place from the most holy place. Only the high priest could go into the most holy place, once a year, with the blood of a lamb in order to make atonement on the mercy seat for the sins of the people. (See Leviticus 16.) But no one had access to the very presence and glory of God.

Because of sin, mankind was separated from God, so God introduced the people of Israel to sacrifices, atonement, and blood covering to atone for their sins yearly. They performed these ordinances on the Day of Atonement during the Feast of Tabernacles, and the priests would make atonement for all the sins of the people. But then something happened during the days of Samuel the prophet, before Israel had a king. Israel was fighting the Philistines and lost a battle, so they had an idea: “Let’s bring the Ark of the Covenant of the LORD from Shiloh. If we carry it into battle with us, it will save us from our enemies” (1 Sam. 4:3, NLT).

But instead of winning the battle, they lost it, and they lost the ark too. The ark ended up in Philistia in the house of Dagon (1 Sam. 5:2). The Philistines had brought the ark as a trophy to their god. They put the ark of God next to the statue of Dagon. The next day, when the people of Ashdod woke up, they saw that Dagon had fallen forward on its face, breaking its hands (vv. 3–4). They were learning that no idol can stand in God’s presence. So they stood the statue up again, but when they returned the next day, they saw it had fallen over again, and this time its neck had broken.

I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t serve a god I had to pick up. I need a God who picks me up. I’d have left Dagon that day, saying, “If you have to pick him up, he ain’t God. We don’t need him.” Aren’t you glad that your God doesn’t ever call you and say, “I need a pickup today”? You worship a God who picks you up.

As one who speaks on behalf of heaven and uses their voice to bring heaven into situations, it is important to know whom you serve. It is important to know the truth that there is no other God beside Him. You will need high levels of discernment to know when something isn’t God, to call it out and see deliverance come. This is how worship purifies our hearts and increases our awareness of God’s glory. You cannot be a voice for God and not be a worshipper of God.

I was preaching in India some years ago, and we were praying for some people, when a young man came up. We began to pray for him, but we felt there was something blocking his deliverance. So we asked him, “Do you have any idols in your house?” We asked this because many in India are Hindus and therefore tend to worship many gods.

He said, “No, I don’t. But my cousin needed a place to stay, and he brought his idols with him to the house.”

We told him, “You must get those things out of your house, because they are demonic.”

Then I thought about it. If a friend of mine didn’t have a place to stay, and his idols said, “We need a place to stay too,” he and his gods would be homeless! He cannot bring his broke gods into my home. I’m sorry.

Our God is rich and doesn’t need us to put Him up for a few nights. He said, “If I were hungry, I would not tell you; for the world is Mine, and all its fullness” (Ps. 50:12, NKJV). He said, “Every beast of the forest is Mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills” (v. 10, NKJV). This is who we worship, and this is who the nations need to know is God. We cannot activate heaven on earth if we cannot discern the presence and glory of God—or the lack of it.

Back to the Philistines: God began to judge them. The Bible says that He “smote them with emerods” (1 Sam. 5:6). Emerods is another term for hemorrhoids.¹ The whole town got a bad case of hemorrhoids. And back then, they didn’t have Preparation H or Tucks. There was no Walgreens or CVS.

They said, “We’ve got to get this thing out of here.” So they sent the ark of God back to Israel on a cart (1 Sam. 5:11; 6:1–12). When the people of Israel saw the cart coming, they rejoiced (v. 13). As we know, the ark of God represents God’s presence. But it was not delivered into the land immediately. The people had become idol worshippers and needed to repent. They did, and God drove the Philistines out of their land. Over the next twenty years, the people would grow tired of Samuel and demand a king. Samuel would anoint Saul to be their first king. They would fight the Philistines again as well as other surrounding nations. Saul would disobey God and lose his throne to David.

Because of his love for the presence of God, David remembered the ark of the Lord and wanted to bring it to Jerusalem (1 Chron. 13). He knew he could not rule righteously without the presence of God. But bringing the ark into Jerusalem would not be easy, because once again some were disobedient. God had given the command that the ark was to be carried a certain way (Exod. 25:14–15), and the people had to keep a distance of one thousand yards between them and the ark (Josh. 3:4). The priest even covered it with three layers of cloth to keep people from seeing it (Num. 4:4–6, 15, 18–20). It housed the manifest glory of God.

But on this day, Uzzah thought he could keep the ark steady by holding it on the cart with his hand. He was wrong; he dropped dead the moment he touched it. The Bible says that “David was afraid of God that day, saying, ‘How can I bring the ark of God to me?’ ” (1 Chron. 13:12, NKJV).

So they put it in the house of Obed-Edom, and it remained there for three months. Then the Bible says in 1 Chronicles 13:14 that God blessed the house of Obed-Edom. This is a revelation you can claim for yourself: when you get the presence of God in your house, you will be blessed. This is what you know as a worshipper. This is what you declare as a voice of heaven. You’ll be blessed when God’s presence is with you.

After the ark stayed for three months in the house of Obed-Edom, David went back to bring it to Zion. He didn’t bring it back to the tabernacle of Moses, where it belonged. He brought it to Zion. David brought the ark of God to Jerusalem, set it under a tent, and established three courses of priests to worship twenty-four hours a day. (See 1 Chronicles 16:37–42; 25:1–6.) He appointed Levites to play instruments and praise God before the ark. Yet the ark of God, according to the Law of Moses, was intended to be in the holy of holies behind the curtain, which was in Shiloh (Gen. 49:10; Josh. 1:8).

I often wonder what led David to bring the ark to Zion and put it under a tent. I don’t believe that he, as a prophet of God, did it without God inspiring him to do it. I believe God gave David foresight into something called the kingdom age, a time when the ark of God would no longer be behind a curtain, a time when God’s people would have access to the presence of God in praise and worship.

David established this atmosphere of open praise and worship with the help of three prophetic families: the families of Asaph, Heman, and Jeduthun. (See 1 Chronicles 25:1–6.) Each of them had sons and daughters who prophesied with musical instruments, and David told them to do this twenty-four hours a day. Each of the families took an eight-hour shift, and on a rotating schedule they worshipped and praised before the ark of God twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The Scripture actually uses the term prophesy: “Moreover David and the captains of the army separated for the service some of the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthun, who should prophesy with harps, stringed instruments, and cymbals” (1 Chron. 25:1, NKJV). They were not told to just play. They were told to prophesy with the instruments.

This is where we see that David established not just worship but prophetic worship. David shows us that worshipping God has always been more than just singing songs. It’s something done by the unction of the Holy Ghost. It’s something done by the anointing of God. It’s something that we carry as we use our voices to proclaim the kingdom and the nature and character of God. It’s something that comes when the Spirit of God comes upon you. Jesus in John 4 tells the woman at the well that the day is coming when men who worship God must worship Him in spirit and truth. (See John 4:23.)

Of course, He was referring to the day when the Spirit of God would be poured out on the day of Pentecost and the sons and daughters would prophesy. So when God baptizes you in the Holy Ghost—when the Spirit of God comes upon you—it’s so you can do more than speak in tongues. It’s giving you the ability to worship God in a way you’ve never worshipped before. It’s putting something prophetic on your life so you can become a worshipper. Your worship is your voice, and your voice your worship.

God didn’t fill you with the Holy Ghost so you can try to impress people with how much you speak in tongues. God filled you with the Holy Ghost to make you a worshipper, because He knew that in order to really satisfy God, you would need to know what pleases Him.

How do we know what God wants? How do we know the songs God wants us to sing, the words He wants us to speak, the prayers He wants us to pray, the assignments He wants us to complete, and the lives He wants us to touch? How do we know what to offer God? Because let me tell you something: God doesn’t just accept anything. We think we can just come to church and throw anything up to Him. We think that we can do this thing or the other and say that God approves of it, but He is very particular about what He accepts.

Did you know that God rejects things? If you’ve been taught that God doesn’t reject anybody, you need to read about King Saul. God told Samuel, “Stop praying, for I’ve rejected him. I found a man after My own heart.” (See 1 Samuel 16:1.) Read about Cain; God rejected his offering. I talk about this more in my book Destroying the Spirit of Rejection. The bottom line is God doesn’t accept just anything.

You can’t give just anything to God and say, “Here, God. Take it. Here’s Your worship. Here are my plans. Here’s my offering.” Too many people who have good incomes show up at the altar with a one-dollar bill that is folded so tight the deacon has to use a crowbar to get it open when the money is counted. They just drop anything in the offering bucket without giving some thought to what would be equal to our giving God our best.

Sticking with the giving analogy, because worship includes how we give, some of us know we can spend one hundred dollars, two hundred dollars, even three hundred dollars on hair, nails, shoes, a bag, or a pedicure. But when we get to church and the preacher says, “Come and bless the Lord,” we’re digging out one-dollar bills. Now, if that’s all you have, that’s a different story. Some of us have more but don’t take offering seriously.

God gives you His best. He gave you His best when He gave you Jesus. You ought to give Him your best. Don’t just give God anything. That will never work if you want to approach God with a true heart of worship.

A favorite Scripture passage many Christians like to fall back on is the story of the widow’s mite. (See Mark 12:41–44 and Luke 21:1–4.) The difference here is that not many of us are widows. We are not in the same socioeconomic situation as she was, so her ability was different than our ability. She gave all. Are you giving all?

Being prophetic means more than being able to deliver a string of words that carry a certain sound and cause people to jump and shout. Prophets have the ability to know what God likes and doesn’t like. They just know it by His Spirit. They have an unction. That’s why if you’re prophetic and you’re in certain ministries, you feel nothing during the worship time. You will see people running and falling out, and think, “Are you kidding me? There is no glory here. This is flesh.” Prophetic people know, and you can know, as you are prophetic as well.

Most often, when you have spent enough time with God and gotten to know Him and His presence, you will more often know when something isn’t God than when it is. For example, when a false prophet shows up and begins to prophesy, you will sense something isn’t right. Again, people may be falling out or shaking, but you will feel that something is not right. You know you are thinking and feeling differently than those around you. You can sense all kinds of devils in the room: Leviathan, Jezebel, witchcraft, lust, and perversion.

As a voice of heaven you have an unction, a fervor, a fire of holiness that alerts you when something’s not right. You are grieved. You are vexed. You may try to shake it and just go along with the program for a while, but like your heavenly Father, you can’t just accept or be party to anything. You may even spend time praying about it. That something you feel is called discernment.

It’s what you develop as you draw closer to God, and it becomes sharper the more you become like Him. The more you become like Him, the more you will come to love the things He loves and hate the things He hates.

Everything can look right on the outside, because believers are good at being religious in church. We know how to have church. We know how to sing. We know how to do it all. Many of us have been doing it for years. Everything looks right and sounds right; everybody is up smiling.

Where pure worship happens is not a matter of being Baptist, Methodist, Catholic, Church of God, Charismatic, or Pentecostal. It’s none of that. True worship is in spirit and truth. I’ve been in Baptist churches where I felt the anointing and then went to a Pentecostal church and felt nothing. Worship that pleases God has nothing to do with denomination. It depends on the heart. It depends on the people. I don’t go by what’s on the door. I’m looking for the anointing of God. I’m looking for the glory of God. I’m not looking for who the bishop is, who the pastor is, or how nice the building looks. Those things make no difference to God, and they make no difference to me.

Some time ago I was in Cologne, Germany, preaching. Cologne has the largest Gothic cathedral in Europe. When you drive into Cologne, the huge cathedral is one of the sites you cannot miss. It dominates the skyline. It took 632 years for construction to be completed—and you thought your church building program was long. When you go into a cathedral, it’s huge, dark, and filled with the tombs of bishops and cardinals. Can you imagine trying to get your worship on with a tomb next to you?

Of course, it’s a Catholic cathedral, and they have been praying, singing, and worshipping in the same way for about as long as it took to build the cathedral. I do not say this to mock anyone’s worship. Jesus said they that worship God must worship Him in spirit and in truth (John 4:24), so as we talk about activating your voice through worship, we’re not just talking about prophesying. We’re talking about the worship you engage in that brings you into a place where God’s presence becomes your dwelling place. While He inhabits your praises (Ps. 22:3), you sit and gaze at the beauty of the Lord and inquire in His temple (Ps. 27:4).

Worship is where the exchange happens and God tells you great and mighty things you don’t know (Jer. 33:3)—solutions to problems, innovative strategies, witty inventions, book ideas, and so much more. Worship is where you declare the glory of God in everything you say and do.

And it should be a transformative experience, where the Spirit of God moves you in and out of the flow of what He is doing in your life and in the areas to which He’s called you. From season to season He is always doing new things. Growing in your ability to discern what He is doing is critical to your call. That is why rote worship can be very limiting.

I’m not against singing songs that we learned, because God does anoint songs, and there are some great songs being sung in churches. But there comes a time when we need to be in the welcoming atmosphere of prophetic worship that is full of the Holy Ghost, because it stirs up the gift of God inside us. David set up a pattern for worship. That did not make him perfect, but it did cause God to call him a man after His heart. He set up those three families. He looked for some prophetic people who knew how to flow in the Holy Ghost. Not just anybody—he looked for some Asaphs, Hemans, and Jeduthuns because he wanted to give God the best. David, a prophet, knew what God wanted, so he established something that had never been established in Israel—twenty-four-hour worship, prophets, and prophesying. What is God leading you to establish?

Your gifts and your calling cannot thrive in a worship environment where people can just sing really well but don’t have a holy lifestyle. No, you need to be surrounded by people who are full of the Holy Ghost and are prophetic. This is the atmosphere that activates and stirs your ability to hear and know what God wants to release through you. True prophetic worship builds such a love and desire for the things of God that you will simply ask, “God, what do You want? What kind of praise do You want? What kind of worship do You want? What do You want me to offer You, God? What do You desire me to say in this hour?”

This is not about a service or a denomination. This is not about a hymnal. This is about God. Activating your voice is not about you walking around prophesying to everybody. It’s not about you walking around trying to discern what’s in everybody’s heart and trying to find their sin. It’s about you knowing and doing what God wants, what pleases Him. And you will walk in this knowledge not because you’re smarter than anyone else, but because God has given you an unction, a gift to know when repentance is needed, when prayer is needed, when fasting is needed. You will know when a word of correction is needed and when the Spirit of God is grieved. You will know when God is happy and pleased, and by your words you will be able to lead people into a place where they are aligned with God too.

If you’ve followed my ministry for any amount of time, attended a service at Crusaders Church, or heard me speak at a conference, then you are familiar with my use of prayers, decrees, and declarations at the end of my messages. I use this pattern in my books as well. When we speak the word we have been exposed to in a message or that resulted from a personal revelation from God, another level of faith is activated in us, and what we have heard takes root in our lives. With greater faith, there is a greater level of manifestation.

We have the power to create with our words, just as our Father God does. He spoke, and it was so. We speak, and it is so. Our world has been and is shaped by words.

We have the power to speak life or death; we have the power to speak things that were not as though they were. This is why it is so important that we understand not only how we activate heaven with our words but also that we are indeed the heavens as Paul revealed. So as we have come to this point in the book, where we’ve understood another aspect of our identity in Christ, how to answer the call, in what ways the call to “preach” can be manifested, and the purity and virtue of heaven’s voice, it is time to be activated.

In my book Prophetic Activation, I go into depth about the power and practice of activation, especially in relation to spiritual gifts specific to prophesying. As you speak, you are first hearing from God what to relay or minister to people, whether at home, in corporate America, or in the nations. What I explain is that to activate something is to start it off, trigger it, or set it in motion. Activations are spiritual exercises that use words, actions, phrases, objects, Scripture verses, worship songs, dance, prophetic prayers, and more to trigger the prophetic gifts and help believers in every area of life and ministry to flow freely as they are commissioned to release God’s Word in the earth. You’ve already experienced a few of these as you read earlier chapters.

Activations set in motion prophetic utterances, songs, and movement that will bring great blessing to the members of local churches, ministries, and the world.

Activations are designed to break down the barriers that prevent people from operating in prophecy. These barriers include fear, doubt, timidity, and ignorance. This will also provide people an opportunity to minister, some for the first time, in a safe and loving environment.

Activations rekindle and fan the flame of ministries that have become stagnant in the prophetic flow. We all need times of rekindling and reigniting. Prophetic activations will ignite believers and churches to prophesy. Motionless churches need to be set in motion. Prophetic activations can get us moving again.

That is why I would remind you to stir up (rekindle the embers of, fan the flame of, and keep burning) the [gracious] gift of God, [the inner fire] that is in you by means of the laying on of my hands [with those of the elders at your ordination].

—2 TIMOTHY 1:6, AMPC

The value of different activations is that they will break your limitations and give you the ability to operate in different ways. Don’t be limited to your favorite way, but be ready to move in different ways and administrations. Your expression of gifts must never become boring and routine but should always be exciting and new. God has many surprises for us, and the prophetic will always release new things.

Activations are not designed to make everyone a prophet—only God can call and commission a prophet. Activations are simply designed to stir people to grow in whatever level they are called to. There may be people participating and leading activations who are prophets, some who have the gift of prophecy, and some who have the spirit of prophecy as a result of being filled with the Holy Ghost. But there also may be people in the activations who are psalmists, minstrels, intercessors, counselors, preachers, teachers, and dancers. Activations will stir them and cause them to move more in faith and inspiration. The following decrees are designed to do just that.

Lord, give me strength to bring forth my destiny as heaven’s voice (Isa. 66:9).

I reject every false vision and every false prophetic word released into my life (Jer. 14:14).

I bind Satan, the deceiver, from releasing any deception into my life (Rev. 12:9).

I bind and cast out all spirits of self-deception, in the name of Jesus (1 Cor. 3:18).

I bind and cast out any spirit of sorcery that would deceive me, in the name of Jesus (Rev. 18:23).

I bind and rebuke any bewitchment that would keep me from obeying the truth (Gal. 3:1).

I pray for utterance and boldness to make known the mystery of the gospel (Eph. 6:19).

I bind and cast out any spirit of Absalom that would try to steal my heart from God’s ordained leadership (2 Sam. 15:6).

Make the crooked places straight and the rough places smooth before me (Isa. 40:4).

You are a God that reveals secrets. Lord, reveal Your secrets unto me (Dan. 2:28).

Let me understand things kept secret from the foundation of the world (Matt. 13:35).

Give me the spirit of wisdom and revelation, and let the eyes of my understanding be enlightened (Eph. 1:17–18).

Hide Your truths from the wise and prudent, and reveal them to babes (Matt. 11:25).

Let me understand Your parables; the words of the wise and their dark sayings (Prov. 1:6).

Give me the treasures of darkness and hidden riches in secret places (Isa. 45:3).

My spirit is the candle of the Lord, searching all the inward parts of the belly (Prov. 20:27).

Let me comprehend with all saints what is the breadth and length and depth and height of Your love that I may speak it and minister it to those I am called to (Eph. 3:18).