As I mentioned, when I began walking out a prophetic lifestyle, I didn’t even know what the word prophetic meant. I remember being invited to a Sunday morning church service by a teenager my husband and I had previously youth pastored, and we agreed to go. The pastor said that his message was going to be on prophecy and discerning the voice of God. What felt like electricity ran across my body. I was all ears. As he began defining things I had never heard of, like words of wisdom and words of knowledge, tears filled my eyes. I knew Holy Spirit was guiding me and leading me to the community I needed to get me where I needed to go. It would be that very pastor and that very community that launched me into my calling.
Regardless of whether you feel you discern God’s voice easily or you feel you’ve never experienced it, you will not delay God’s plans for your life. Hebrews 12:2 says that Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith! That says to me that those who call upon the name of the Lord, who seek to know God, will not only find God but will see and know that He has His hand in yours and is leading you to everything you need so you can succeed. In Christ, our only outcome is victory! Right in this moment, God knows the communities you need so you can flourish. God knows the resources you need to pull you into great things with Him. Holy Spirit will stop at nothing short of you seeing the victory that was and is and is to come!
One of the biggest things I run into when equipping people in the prophetic and discerning Holy Spirit is the question, “How do I know if it’s God I’m discerning?” Unfortunately, because of bad theology and bad identity, this question comes up all the time. People have been taught that they are no good and they can’t trust in a union with God let alone believe that God trusts in them. I mean, we compromise our own internal integrity so often—meaning we make promises to ourselves and then break them, repeatedly letting our own hearts down—so how can we even begin to trust in the discernment that God has built into our beings? True discernment begins with believing that God trusts us enough that He shares not only secrets with us—He shares His confidence, so that we may discern ways His perfect love can operate in our lives or the lives of others. It’s hard for us to reconcile that God speaks to sinners! But He does, He is, and it’s how He is maturing us into functioning in His likeness. As a general rule of thumb, it’s easier when we simply keep our eyes on the hope of glory—Christ, who is in us! (See Colossians 1:27.)
You’ll know if it’s Holy Spirit giving you prophetic insight or wisdom because Holy Spirit convicts you of sin and righteousness (see John 16:8). Remember, sin is not the behavior; behavior is the symptom of a lie that is believed. Sin is your belief when you’ve forgotten who God is for you in that moment and who you are to God in that moment. What you believe will always empower something. Belief will either empower the remembrance of who God is and what He has said to you regardless of circumstance, or it will empower a lie. Any life area where you are empowering lies with your belief is sin. Discernment from Holy Spirit will be picking up on the lies that are coming against the knowledge of God, and you’ll be discerning what’s actually true (righteousness) too. It’s not one or the other; it’s both!
I hear a lot of people say they have the gift of discernment, but when I hear what they are discerning I quickly know if it’s God they are hearing, accusations they are agreeing with, or if it’s simply reading people. Discernment given by Holy Spirit will always have sound understanding attached to solutions. Why? Because the spirit of prophecy is Jesus Christ and Christ is a victor.
I cringe when I hear someone say they are gifted with godly discernment and then they begin to tell me all the dirty secrets and all the warnings they are receiving about someone. I can tell by their fruit what spirit they are hearing. If it’s God, it’ll look a whole lot like power and love and less like division and gossip. I’m not saying God doesn’t warn us so that we can approach circumstances with wisdom in dealing with other people. But while you may not be led to approach every single person, if God gives you insight, He will give you promises and prophetic strategies to declare over them, even if it’s from afar. If you’ve stewarded discernment correctly, you won’t be left feeling anything but hope for that individual and their circumstance, and nothing less should be coming from your mouth. How could it be anything different when it’s Jesus who is the source of your information?
One time I was sitting at a favorite restaurant, and while waiting for the food to arrive I looked up and saw the girl who was working behind the cash register. Without any asking, Holy Spirit gave me complete insight about what was going on in her current life. I saw that her father was very sick and in a hospital bed. On top of worrying about her father’s fading health, she was financially carrying the burden in her family, and she was concerned about paying her bills. I actually saw that she had a low amount of money in the bank, and she was hoping she would be able to cover her bills. By outward appearances, she didn’t look like someone who was worrying. Simple observation told me that she did her job above and beyond and was excellent at customer service, but Holy Spirit was giving me insight into her internal world—she was stressed and barely holding it together emotionally.
As I received all this information in the form of what I call a knowing experience (no visions, just a knowing of information that comes), I sat there watching her, empathizing. I was experiencing her fear. I just continued to sit and stare. Holy Spirit nudged and asked me to go pray with her. I said no. That’s when a familiar holy correction hit my heart. I heard Holy Spirit say, “I don’t share the secrets of My children’s hearts for your entertainment.” I mean, God’s not spilling the tea about someone’s life just so I can sit and gawk into their life. Holy Spirit empowers us to love really, really well, way beyond anything we could ever do—hence the prophetic insight. The gifts are meant to be given away and to demonstrate God’s incredible power and love, and it’s never any more complicated than that. I wish I could say that I got up and went and prayed for her. I walked out of that restaurant without ever going to her, and I missed an opportunity that God had empowered me to take.
Lesson learned: Discernment is about being empowered, not being entitled. You are not entitled to information about anyone’s life. God graces us with wisdom and insight so we are empowered to shift external and internal atmospheres. It’s what Jesus called advancing the Kingdom of God—bringing Heaven to earth. Discernment has power and frees people from the fear and bondage that they are repeating and reliving every single day! I love what Shawn Bolz says: “True love can see people as though they were never separated from God, and then true lovers of God treat them that way.” If perfect love truly casts out all fear, then discernment and prophetic insight is love’s tactical operation that results in fear being cast out. I tell you, after that moment I got over myself real quick and realized God didn’t awaken my prophetic voice so that I could sit and observe from the sidelines; He did it so that I could jump in the race and not only win but push people ahead of me so they could experience winning too!
God is maturing His people from being selective hearers to excellent listeners. Holy Spirit is maturing us into people who are present and fully engaged in life! It’s like a spouse who has been accused of “selective hearing”—only hearing when it’s convenient—choosing to stay present and fully engaged within the relationship, exchanging dialogue, dreams, and desires.
As a coach, I often ask people what they believe people see when looking at them. What do people walk away knowing about them? Essentially, what they are experiencing is what they will begin to be known for. What they should be experiencing is someone who is present, is walking out truth (not perfection), and is engaged with every life area. It doesn’t have to look orderly, but it should look like living.
In each life area, we all have spheres of influence. As a mom, I have authority and influence in the relationships with my children. As a wife, I champion my man. I remind him of his potential and recall where he’s come from and what God’s promised to him! My husband uses his authority to push me out further than I could go on my own and influences me by reminding me who I am. I am a life coach with a global clientele, and I have a committed responsibility to walk through life with them, sometimes as a pastor and sometimes as a coach. As a woman, I have an influence with women. You get the picture. We all inherited responsibilities that need to be accepted. That’s a problem for most of us because we don’t want to take on responsibilities. Some want responsibilities, but they are waiting for permission. I see a lot of women struggle with that one. But it’s important to understand that we’ve been empowered by Holy Spirit to be experts in every life area that we are immediately called to. We’re not born experts, but we are transforming into learned experts, and it’s never outside of relationships with others. We must choose to face life and live it from a place of power and love, leading from a sound mind. What does this look like?
As humans, we are to submit ourselves to one another, grow in community with one another, and learn to equip and encourage people into being powerful through meaningful relationships. But it requires that we begin to view people in the right light.
Second Corinthians 5:16-21 lays it out perfectly:
So from now on we regard no one from a worldly point of view. Though we once regarded Christ in this way, we do so no longer. Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come: The old has gone, the new is here! All this is from God, who reconciled us to himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation: that God was reconciling the world to himself in Christ, not counting people’s sins against them. And he has committed to us the message of reconciliation. We are therefore Christ’s ambassadors, as though God were making his appeal through us. We implore you on Christ’s behalf: Be reconciled to God. God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.
I tell my boys all the time, when you grow older you will meet some beautiful young women who don’t know that they don’t have to wear short shorts to get your attention. They won’t know they don’t have to give you permission with their body in order to gain affection from you. You will need to exercise self-control and honor them even when they don’t know how to honor themselves. You will need to see them beyond what they are presenting, far beyond, and honor them for who you know they are truly—a woman created in the image of God who deserves to be treated equally and deserves to be known. True power is exercising self-control and seeing people the way God sees them. True power and freedom isn’t being able to do whatever you want, whenever you want. True power comes from choosing self-control when you don’t have to. Freedom will always honor someone or something. Powerful people see people in a different light than what is presented, resulting in honoring people even when they don’t know how to value and honor themselves.
It doesn’t take a spiritual gift to point out the negative in a person. It doesn’t take someone wise beyond their years to point out people’s flaws. It’s the wise who see past behavior and see potential. It’s the spiritually gifted, rooted in God’s heart, who are able to call out what isn’t yet, as if it already is. God has been doing that with mankind since the very beginning. He’s been calling us a holy priesthood, His own children before any of us ever knew Him!
God is all powerful because He could destroy us, but He chose to love and reconcile us back to Him. Think about it. God’s grace would have no value if it wasn’t for the fact that He didn’t have to extend it to us. God is above us and beyond us, yet He gives us access to Him in every way. Through His choice to offer us reconciliation by way of viewing us and calling us by His name even before we truly knew Him, we can say that God is all powerful! And by observing Jesus, who came to reveal the Father, we can say that He is the epitome of love.
God’s people are not only powerful because they say yes to who they are in God, which requires self-control to say yes to that vision, reality, and truth a million times per day. They are also in the process of prophetically seeing others the way God sees them. They are not just going around, willy-nilly prophesying over people. As they engage in meaningful relationships within their sphere of influence (family, neighbors, friends, community), they are essentially saying yes a million times to who God says others are, too. God’s people remind others, they pray for them, they write it down and make it plain. This is the way God has designed us to change the world—through relationships that are built around the way He sees His creation, His children!
I want to add this: No one is more of an expert on your life than you are. Be awakened to your true relationship with God and live from that union. You are not God’s project; you are His child. This is not about behavior; it’s about love. He’s invested all of Heaven into you and through Holy Spirit has given you access to see and hear and know that you are good and can do impossible things if you simply believe in the Word of God that He is speaking over your life.
It’s time that you begin to shape the gift of life that God gave you by seeing what He sees, by speaking out what He is speaking, and by practicing being the minister of reconciliation you are—not only with others but with yourself as well! Be reconciled! Be whole! Be free! By the power and by the Spirit that has been vested in me, I pronounce that you, the Bride, have the ability to see, hear, and know God in ways that you’ve never known before! I declare that you and your children will be known as a people who walked with the living God. May your life be a living testimony that God is good and that you are known by God!
Next is a devotional including built-in prophetic hearing moments so that you can begin to prophetically declare who God is revealing you to be! I encourage you to work your way through, share your visions and insights with one another, and start taking back the responsibilities that have been placed in your life that you’ve been avoiding for too long! Today is the day that the Lord has made; let’s rejoice and be glad, because He’s empowered you with Holy Spirit to do something new with this day! Let’s start shaping our day by awakening our prophetic voice and declaring that today will be a good day!