Prophesy!

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

No achievement in life is without the help of many known and unknown individuals who have impacted our lives. I owe every measure of my success to many and here is listed here a few:

To my wife and co-labourer, Nadia, for her unwavering support

To my children, Raphaella, Amadou and Aisha for allowing your Dad to pursue his passion and purpose. For being so patient and supportive.

To Claudia, my Senior Executive Director for her patience and continual inputs, hard work and encouragement.

To Bernard Glover and Bethia Kinyua, my faithful, anointed, relentless and loyal worship Leaders; and to Pastor Selina, a woman of breakthrough who stood by me in difficult seasons without wavering. You have built an atmosphere of the prophetic in tough times that marked my life and the life of the body of Christ permanently. Your support and love have been a source of strength for me to rise up and lead.

And finally, I thank my Lord Jesus for inspiration and empowerment to bring this book forth.

Introduction

And it shall come to pass afterward that I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men shall dream dreams, your young men shall see visions. And also on My menservants and My maidservants I will pour out My Spirit in those days. (Joel 2:28–29)

The world changed the day the Holy Spirit fell on Jesus’ remaining disciples in that famed upper room in Jerusalem. The Spirit of God, reserved in the Old Testament for a select few, had now been placed on anyone who sought and loved Christ. With that outpouring came the gifts of the Spirit. While once only a few could prophesy, suddenly everyone could.

I have been in the prophetic ministry since 1999. I began prophesying the year before. That’s twenty years of sharing the love God has placed in my heart. Amazingly, I’m still learning and I never want to stop. Every year, I understand something new about God and His ways. He never ceases to intrigue me.

Prophecy comes when we have a burden to encourage and bless the people around us. There is no magic formula to prophesying; it all depends on our love for God. When we love Him fully, that love should spill over onto the people around us. Prophecy is simply encouraging, exhorting, and comforting people by tuning them into what God has for them. In every church in the world, there are people who need that life-giving word from God. These aren’t just the individuals who are obviously struggling; some appear to have everything together. But God knows what’s really going on.

Everyone could benefit from a prophetic word, even those for whom everything is soaring. I love to prophesy over people who are doing really well. If we can target those people and increase their faith at a critical time, they can fly even higher in the things of the Spirit.

New Testament prophecy will be spoken through the context of the Gospel of Grace. Jesus has received the judgment of God for sin for all those who are living, to enable them to find repentance through the goodness and kindness of God.

Prophecy is now in the context of a family; a company of called out people who are learning together to become the beloved of God; the Bride of Christ. There is a new language in the Spirit to learn and the unity of the Spirit to maintain and enjoy, as a people together. Of course there are necessary tensions in all good relationships and prophecy is not the way to resolve conflicts. Clearly we need wisdom for those situations.

I believe strongly that the more encouraging, exhorting, and comforting prophecy we have the better our churches will be. Blessing and encouragement stir up anointing. The more of this kind of prophecy we can have in church, the less we will need intensive, time-consuming pastoral care.

People will actually be touched by God and come into the things of the Spirit themselves. Individuals will realize that, yes, they are loved personally by God. That kind of revelation will stoke up their faith in ways a counseling session never could.

I know I need that kind of encouragement every day from the Holy Spirit. I can’t remember the last time I asked Him to encourage me and He didn’t. He may not speak it out immediately, but He always meets me at the point of my greatest need. That’s just who the Holy Spirit is, and what He loves to do.

This book can help you go further in the prophetic than you have ever hoped and prompt you to dig deeper into the things of the Spirit. Blessings on your journey into the prophetic!"

CHAPTER I. 

THE EXERCISE OF PROPHECY

God is in the business of developing prophetic companies around the world. I believe He is more interested in creating these collaborative communities than He is in breeding a new generation of prophetic superstars. His heart is to bring the whole body of Christ under a prophetic umbrella. To live in Christ is to live in the prophetic nature of God. The revelatory gifting is part of God’s DNA, implanted in us at creation.

We are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26, 27). Jesus came to restore that broken image through His death and resurrection. Image counts for something in the Kingdom. All good prophets are concerned with restoring the Christ-like image to the church. All prophecy is connected to rebuilding God’s image in the Body of Christ. This is why we build into the Spirit and not against the flesh. What we build up (edify of Christ) in the image of God will automatically remove the flesh from the life of the believer.

Man has an inbuilt capacity to be drawn towards revelatory insight whether they are in Christ or not. It is part of the DNA in all people that they are drawn to the supernatural. It is the image of God. The Father did not remove His DNA because man had sinned. All people are made in His image. Until Christ reforms it, that image is fractured but it still contains the propensity for spiritual experiences beyond the natural realm. If not Christ, then another power will seek to usurp that God shaped vacuum in all people.

A church that denies the Holy Spirit and His presence and power is simply not able to compete in a post modern culture where the organ for receptivity of truth is the eye and no longer the ear. People are not open to hearing about God. They want to see God at work because they live in a show and tell world.

Prophecy is in our DNA because every one of us in the church has the capacity to prophesy. We can be a prophetic statement of what the Kingdom of Heaven is — showing people what Christ is really like by our lifestyle, our actions, our thoughts, and our identity. We’re a prophetic voice of who God is, how He speaks, and what He’s doing on the earth. We cannot help but be prophetic; it is in our very bones. It is who God made us to be.

It seems to me that the whole earth is waiting for something to be revealed. I sense that very clearly in my spirit; God wants to reveal something in these days that the earth has never seen. He is acutely interested in creating prophetic companies of people willing to hear His voice. He wants to finish better than we started — Pentecost was a wonderful beginning for the gifts of the Spirit, but God has even more in store.

Of all the billions of people walking the earth today, I believe that Christians should be the most confident. And out of that confidence should flow courage and boldness. We all need confidence for ourselves, to enable us to walk with God effectively and to overcome the world, the flesh and the devil. Prophecy is centered on restoring confidence, trust and faith to everyone who has an ear to hear. God wants a bold people, a prophetic company of declaration and proclamation.

For far too long, the Church has been a people of explanation. God has not put us here to explain Him; He doesn’t need our help, and we’re not very good at rationalizing Him anyway. We can’t explain Him, and we’re certainly not supposed to apologize for Him. No, we are here to declare who He is. We are here to proclaim His majesty, and the best way to do that is by living it. Confidence is the lowest form of faith, but every Christian should stand at least at that level.

Prophecy can help build people’s faith by revealing more of God’s nature to them. In 1 Corinthians 12:4–7, we read more of the Holy Spirit’s role in this: Now there are varieties of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are varieties of ministries, and the same Lord. There are varieties of effects, but the same God who works all things in all persons. But to each one is given the manifestation of the Spirit for the common good. (NASB)

That final phrase, for the common good, is at the very heart of the revelatory gifts. The gifts of the Holy Spirit, including prophecy, are not just for our own personal benefit; they enable us to benefit the Church for the common good of everyone who is present. The gifts of the Spirit should never be abused — they are used only to bless the common good.

The gifts of the Spirit are for the purpose of releasing and expanding the Kingdom not just empowering the church. The common good therefore is about the benefit for all humanity and not just believers in Christ. Prophecy as much as all aspects of Christ’s spirituality has relevance for all people everywhere at all times.

When God is vague about something it is always for a purpose. Clearly here He does not want us to know specifically what the varieties are of gift, ministry and effects. If He had specified exactly what these different varieties were then humanity would have locked up the experience to only those elements.

This is an invitation to be open in our thinking and practice. It is an ongoing call to intentionally explore the heart of the Father for all people and all circumstances. It is a summons to live a life of sensitivity to the Holy Spirit so that He may always give us not only the best gift but the most suitable expression of it to that individual or people group.

Jesus only mentioned the word church two or three times in Scripture, but mentioned the Kingdom almost eighty times. He clearly wanted to keep our understanding of the Church as fluid as possible.

Ekklesia, the Greek word for Church, means more than just a simple gathering; it can also mean a company of called out people. We are a committed band of people, meeting together for a common purpose. Church is not a place we go to. It is who we are together.

God didn’t list the full variety of gifts because there are endless ways He can do things. He knew that if He had laid everything out for us, we would stop exploring the Spirit and quit experimenting with His gifts. In the past thirty years, I have worked with different kinds of prophets. I am sure there are more that I just haven’t met yet. I love discovering what kind of prophet a person is, and what the nature of their particular calling includes. God is not one-dimensional. He is multidimensional and far bigger than anything we could dream of.

Prophecy And Grace

God punished Jesus for the sins of the world because Christ made Himself available for judgement as we read in

Romans 8:31–34:

What then shall we say to these things? If God is for us, who is against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things? Who will bring a charge against God’s elect? God is the one who justifies; who is the one who condemns? Christ Jesus is He who died, yes, rather who was raised, who is at the right hand of God, who also intercedes for us.

God delivered Jesus up for all of us, and now no one can bring a charge against us. As prophetic people, we must carry that same positive outlook. We represent the essential nature of God, including the Galatians 5 fruit of the Spirit. Being prophetic does not exempt us from being Christ-like. It doesn’t mean we live one way and talk another.

We don’t get to live lovely in Christ but talk nasty in the spirit. Instead, we must display the character of God: loving, kind, gentle, patient, peaceful, joyful, self-control, good, and meek.

Perhaps the hardest fruit for a prophetic person to show is self-control. Yet self-control is the only form of control that is acceptable in Church life. This is the basis for all true maturity, purity and integrity. People must take responsibility for how they speak in every circumstance. If the fruit of self-control is not visible in a person’s