Prophesying is easy. Let’s be honest. And in this ‘latter rain’ era more and more people are discovering this gift, having these kinds of experiences and learning to walk in prophetic ministry for the benefit of the Body’s maturity. Amen! Hearing God it turns out is very easy.
It’s what comes NEXT which is where we are having all the difficulty!
And in this case I want to talk about what in my experience is the biggest problem people face with prophecy which has to do with interpretation. But what I mean to say is ‘testing’ really, but these two issues of testing and interpretation do overlap a little.
Is this a test?
So let me say it like this: Testing a prophecy to see A. is this a true word from God? and B. what did God actually say? … and I’ll even throw in a third question which most people are not yet even close to grappling with which is C. What should I therefore do about it?—these are the places where people right now are stumbling the most.
The blanket remedy I ALWAYS hear people say is to use Scripture to test a personal prophecy—people always says this same thing, and usually only this one thing. They say “Use the Bible to test a prophecy and if it goes against Scripture, throw it out.” Well, I’ve been prophesying for over 30 years, more if you think about it because I began prophesying before I knew prophecy was even a thing. I just knew secret things and had sublime understanding by revelation of the nature of reality that I could not explain, let alone explain how I knew it. Later when I began to walk with God knowingly and read the bible voraciously I started having prophetic dreams and what people call ‘words of knowledge,’ especially during church worship.
Later still I began to press in to seek God to talk to me directly and that opened up a whole new level of communication. In what I teach people as “Communion with the Holy Spirit” (but which God told me he simply calls ‘having fellowship with him’), I discovered being able to open my heart to the Holy Spirit’s in-dwelling presence, or you can think of it of as ‘tuning in’ to the ‘still small voice’ within my heart. This was scary at first because like when you first learn to swim and they start by giving you arm floaties and you are only allowed to stand in knee-deep water splashing around in a kiddie pool … but when it gets a little deeper you tend to grab onto the pool hand-railing and may never dare to let go of that safety device … well, try telling people like this what swimming REALLY is, and they will say, ‘No, I’m already swimming. I already know how to swim. See, I have my arm floaties.’ Of course you do, and God says not to despise the day of small beginnings … but sometimes we say ‘swimming’ and all people have any experience with or all that comes to their mind is a child splashing around in a kiddie pool. Well, in college I had a dorm-mate who was a lifeguard in Long Beach, New York. His morning routine before work was to go out into the open ocean and swim down the length of the beach for one mile or so, yes, out in the ocean surf, in the unprotected water—no buoy line, no other safety equipment that I know of—and he would swim in the untamed ocean surf for a mile before coming in to start his work shift guarding the beach. I know two other athletes who are ‘swimmers’—one with regional medals, and the other was able to move in the water in ways that still baffle me. He was so smooth in the water he glided like a seal and never made a commotion or splashed unintentionally against the water. Well, I grew up on the shores of cold Lake Winnepesauke, and had swimming lessons from a young age, but I still can not move in the water like he did. It was like he was one with the water.
What is swimming to you? What do you recognize as being a ‘real swimmer’? Does the child in the kiddie pool first come to mind?
Don’t panic
So testing prophecy to see 1. if it is from God, and to clarify 2. what did God really say?—testing is where people always will get into problems, especially if people only teach you to ‘use the Bible’ to see if a prophecy is from God. Why this advice is not as helpful as it sounds, and what testing a prophecy may actually entail needs to be understood in a similar context to ‘what is swimming?’—I mean when you think Prophecy is simply hearing God say, “I love you” or simply quoting a well-known general scripture of universal encouragement, then when you get into ‘real prophecy’ these safety nets and guard rails are far from reach you will either A. panic and run away, or B. end up calling the Holy Spirit a devil and declare his true word to be from the Pit of Hell!—and his true prophets liars and deceivers—all when the real problem isn’t with them or what God is actually saying—it’s with you!
Believe his prophets ….
King Jehoshaphat once said, “Believe in the Lord your God, and you shall be established; believe His prophets, and you shall prosper.” That’s 1 Chronicles 20:20. What did he say? Can I read that again? BELIEVE in God and you will be established, but to be prosperous, or succeed, or overcome … you will need something more.
So let us then at least define three tiers of persons of interest: First, unbelievers who believe not in God nor in his prophets; second, those who believe in God but not his prophets, and third, the overcomers who believe in God AND his prophets.
What advice can I give to the first category? Get saved! People like this are funny in that they don’t believe in God’s prophets but do believe in all kinds of demonic counterfeits! Weird. So get saved and join the Congregation of the Living who are in fellowship with the giver of life, wisdom, freedom and love. You’ll never look back!
To the second category? Get Spirit-filled. Stop resisting the Holy Spirit. Relax a little. Take it all in. Breathe. Let go of the carnal ways of man and fleshly fears that you grip like a pool guard rail with white knuckles thinking, “But if I let go I’ll drown!” Stop it! You won’t die, you won’t drown, but you may find a new level of normal. This is the demarcation line between the Hearers and the Doers. Doctrines are what Man can agree upon and understand of the Logos, the written word, but God is still bigger, and his word is Spirit. Believe in God and you will be established. But why stop there? And your Doctrines and knowledge of the logos are fine. Only the next step is beyond doctrines, it is beyond knowledge. I mean the Kingdom is NOT a matter of Logos Paul said. The Kingdom is not a matter of words, ideas, doctrines, and merely things you think, and even ‘But I have a verse for that’—I’m glad you do, but it does not mean it is the right verse, or the right understanding of that verse! To say the next step is beyond knowledge, means it is beyond your control, it is beyond YOU. Paul said the Kingdom of God is not a matter of logos—words, ideas, doctrines where men think they rule, what Paul called the wisdom of Man even when it has to do with things of God!—it is instead a matter of Dunamis, or the POWER of GOD manifesting. It is God WITH us, not us merely having doctrines about him.
So to this second category of people who believe in God but NOT his prophets, are they goats? Are they tares? Or are they simply immature sheep? You can’t tell the Bible says until the time of maturity in the harvest comes. Only when they reach their penultimate end do you see if there are any fruit. That’s not my job anyway. I am only trying to reach the goats, to reach the tares in hopes of converting any! Or are they unwise but nevertheless still pure virgins? What advice can you really give them that they will listen to? In a word: Grow up. Well, that’s two words, but I mean the best advice to tell them to stop walking in the Flesh, or according to the mind of Man. Things like that. Man’s ways DO NOT produce God’s blessings. Repent, let go of that guard rail you think your life depends on but which is actually keeping you from going on to maturity and come join us out in the open water!
But so to the third category of people who believe in God AND his prophets, we’re now in the deep end! To this third category we have to learn not just how to prophecy, but how to prophecy well. We have to learn the Scriptures of course, but this is still not the guard rail or safety floatie that you think it may be.
This is a discussion for you, and this is why.
1. Satan quoted the Bible
Yes, sadly Satan quoted the Bible to tempt and ensnare Jesus, but thankfully the Bible tells us so. By this simple test of ‘is it in the Bible’ everyone would be ensnared by Satan’s schemes. Just having a verse is not enough. Is it the right verse? Do you understand what that verse really even means? How are you sure? Who told you that? So in fact you really do need to DISCERN the voice, not just the words and also yes be familiar with verses but also have a spi[ritual understanding of what those verses really mean. Is there such a thing as being taught by God? well, are you? You need to flow in the Spirit, not just memorize a verse and repeat man’s ideas of what that verse might refer to. It’s complicated, I won’t say it isn’t so let me go on to touch on a few other points and get back to that in a minute. But just remember you need to test the voice, who is speaking. Satan quotes scripture sometimes! That’s hard to test!
2. It’s not enough to just find any old verse
Most prophecy covers too many topics and finding a verse for each concept is not impossible but certainly impractical. Look at what Jesus taught. Everything he said was Biblical, most was directly from Isaiah and Jeremiah and the Psalms and books of Moses—yet the people who were Bible scholars rejected him anyway. Having one verse to test against a paragraph of prophecy is not very helpful and mostly people just find a verse GENERALLY ON TOPIC and not bearing on any specific ideas or revelations or instructions mentioned.
What if God speaks for 15 minutes on marriage, marital issues, faults inherent in human relationships, God’s overarching plan to reveal himself through human marriage, Satan’s hatred of God’s order and revealing some of his evil plans in attacking marriage, hope for God’s purposes to succeed, and encouragement to trust God and forgive and walk in love … in 15 minutes God can talk a LOT! And he just drops nuggets of divine wisdom into the conversation, peppering it with hidden treasure here and there when he does … but then someone ‘tests’ the word and comes up with a verse! Genesis 2:24. “Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” and they confidently declare, “I tested it and this word is from God!”
Why? I mean, it was from God but why do you now judge it to be true? Simply because you found a Bible verse on marriage!? Are you kidding me? This is what most people mean when they say test a word with the Bible … it’s not an honest or meaningful test of anything. I don’t want to be mean but this is childish and borderline foolish and not helpful in any meaningful way.
This means having a verse is hard. I mean getting a verse on topic is easy but getting THE RIGHT VERSE is difficult. How to get THE RIGHT VERSE? That’s the real issue.
3. Not all prophetic symbolism is in the Bible!
So much personal prophecy has symbolism that is not even biblical anyway. You see an Airplane? What verse can you possibly find to see if this is God’s word and what it may mean!? It’s an airplane! Or you see a machine gun blowing bubbles? Or bubble gum stuck on someone’s shoe? That kind of thing. What verse can you find to shed ANY light on these visions to see 1. if they are from God and 2. what they might mean?
Some visions have clear and simple biblical symbolism, and thank God for these kinds of words. Someone saw a fishing net catch a map of their nation. Easy! God will evangelize their country! But someone else saw a volcano erupting, or a lady in a fish tank who spoke only fish language, or Jesus but he was wearing a brightly colored Hawaiian shirt and blue jeans. …
So finding a biblical precedent for the meaning of a symbol is useful, but some visions are of symbols NOT in the bible or worse, the example I like to use is a LION. If you see a vision of a lion, what does that mean? Does the bible have verses that mention lions? Sure, over 100! And what does it mean? Jesus?! Not always. Sometimes it means Satan! While Jesus is the Lion of the tribe of Judah, Satan also prowls around like a roaring lion looking for easy prey. In some verses a lion refers to evil people, sometimes it refers to the strong people of God and a few times it refers to actual physical Panthera leo, I mean real living animals—lions!
So a biblical symbol in a dream is often clear, it’s Jesus! or it looks evil, it’s Satan or a bad man trying to harm me. Sure. But it also may be a warning that outside the hotel there is an actual lion walking around! Don’t go out after dark! You’re not in Kansas anymore! I was in a hotel in India and in the morning the staff were excited to see fresh tiger scat in the garden from the night before, how wonderful! We left!
So how to know what a symbol means? Only the Holy Spirit can tell you! Get your verse, I hope you can find a type in the Bible, but still you need to ask God if it is right and what nuance he wants to put onto it. The interpretation of a prophecy BELONGS to God and you will NEVER get over your need to be dependent on the Still Small Voice of the Holy Spirit to lead and guide you into all truth, even with prophecy. Listen to the Spirit.
4. Test all things; hold fast what is good
It’s therefore clearly a problem when people only rely on finding a verse on their own, aligned with their own doctrines or personal interests, or in their own understanding to prove or disprove a point—but it’s maybe even worse when all they do is try to find a verse ‘in general’ to suggest a given concept being mentioned is vaguely biblical and that is the extent of their test—because honestly, so what!? I don’t need to know such things are true in general, I need to know if THIS WORD is correct direction for YOU and for you NOW.
You hear a word, “Rebecca will marry John.” Now go get a verse and all you have is Genesis 4:24! Wait, the question is not if she will get married, or if someone somewhere will get married, or if marriage exists … we need to test WHO she ought to marry!
Well, John looks really fine so we judge it’s from God, but what about Simon!? But Simon has no job! You therefore judge Simon is clearly a bad choice! And John already has a great job and is very handsome and wow I wish I married someone like John! Gawsh! But you don’t even know John is a serial cheater! And in 10 years will run off with his secretary—another man! You see, prophecy is not your opinion, your wisdom or your logic. God said she will marry John and that is his will! And in fact she did. And yes in 10 years he also did run off with another man. Meanwhile Simon just listed his new startup on the NASDAQ.
Prophecy is not to blame for the mess, our confusion or the outcome of what we make of our lives. In fact God wanted Rebecca to marry John to help him learn NOT to run off in sin! She was his perfect soul mate, a match God in fact created for both of them, and she was the best chance he had to overcome the temptations he was facing. But he was unfaithful. Rebecca’s love to him was a true gift from God, undeserved but also unreturned. Humanity is broken. Don’t blame that on prophecy!
Trying to temper our erratic and turbulent humanity with the perfect and pure word of God from the Bible is a noble endeavor but flesh and spirit do not mix. We end up with high aspirations from the Bible and condemned people who cannot live up to it. Adding fallible ‘personal prophecy’ into the equation makes it all the more difficult to conform imperfect people to the perfect Word of Life. Don’t become frustrated and disillusioned with the Bible or personal prophecy either when this happens. It is because we are sick that God sent his son, the Doctor! don’t forget.
The Bible and personal prophecy are not meant to be used to condemn us when we fall short or fail to live up to or abide by his word, eternal or personal. We make mistakes. We’re imperfect. We’re stubborn, disobedient and self-willed! And Satan is prowling around like a lion looking for a weakness to exploit. Again, don’t blame that on God, the Bible, personal prophecy or the messengers, his prophets for this. The Word of God is life IF we obey it. God is offering us vision of destiny and sometimes we can only receive a part of it. Many just won’t or can’t do what God asks. Would you prefer him to remain silent? Why not give people the choice to try to see how far they can go?
Paul said in 1 Thessalonians 5: 19Do not quench the Spirit. 20Do not despise prophecies. 21Test all things; hold fast what is good.”
Why say all that unless we are tempted to do those very things! Throw it all away when we have hiccups!
The Word is still true and good and right. But people have free will also.
So what can we do but be clear with what God said and separate from it what you expect and assume it means. God said for them to marry, YOU HEARD they will be happy, be a perfect couple, live a perfect life and stay married for 50 years faithfully, serve God, go on mission to Africa, have a prosperous business, three beautiful kids who are all valedictorians, one who discovers a cure for Lupis and they all lived happily ever after …
You see the fault is not with the prophecy but our childish expectations, our unrealistic, wishful thinking of what it means when God says …. God said one thing and you heard so much more that he never said. God told me this one time that we are thinking God is saying SO MANY THINGS that he is not saying! He says, ‘Go to the store,’ and you hear, Oh I know why, it’s because I’m going to meet the man of my dreams there and buy a nice designer dress at discount and well, um, find a pile of cash on the sidewalk, let me see, what else do I want, um, Oh I know, catch a baby falling out of a tree, stop a crime, get voted best dressed in town … what else did God promise me??? … You see, God only said to go to the store. But what you heard was so far beyond what he actually said.
I always tell people who are upset about a word not coming to pass, to tell me what did God actually say? And so often their expectations are all imaginary and they left God’s word far behind and ran off on their own fantasy. There are also conditions on all personal prophecy, the least of which is to believe it and obey it in faith, but oftentimes people are careless listening and a bit lazy doing and don’t fulfill the conditions but still want the manifestation as promised. They just weren’t listening! Wow I can talk about that all night but I’ll leave the longer discussion to the book chapter on that topic:
Chapter 4: Personal Prophecy is subject to Faith—It’s not Fate at https://prayermountainbohol.com/10things/chapter-4-personal-prophecy-is-subject-to-faith-its-not-fate/
I mean it complicated because God is not always to blame for what we mistakenly make of a word, and also what happens to us if and how we obey it. We may obey and still have struggles, attacks and problems. Sometimes the difficulty is BECAUSE OF THE WORD we obeyed! I mean life happens and we think if we obey a word everything else is going to go our way. But we have no idea what is going on behind the scenes, or what may come our way tomorrow. Jesus said tomorrow has enough trouble on it’s own, just deal with today, here, now. Jesus was in 100% perfect obedience but look at the opposition he attracted! or David, or Joseph, or Paul or my cousin Vinny.
It is enough for us to know, Did God say it? Ok. Did you obey it? Good. Let’s take the rest of it one day at a time.
5. Spiritual Growth and Maturity matters
People still feel a kind of self confidence when they have a verse! But is it the right verse? Jesus once told me there are so many verses in the Bible a person can search and find a verse to back up ANY THING they want to justify. So just finding a verse does not mean it is the right verse, it may not even mean what you think it means! But people are often just looking for an excuse for or against and not judging truthfully or honestly.
Or consider that five people can pick up the Bible, read the same passage and come to five different and sometimes contradictory meanings of what that passage means. Is there 100% agreement among well-meaning Christians as to what correct doctrine and ministry practice is? If we cannot even agree what the Bible means, how can we then use it to ‘test’ a spoken personal prophecy and come to the right meaning, interpretation and action plan to respond to it when we can’t even all agree what sound doctrine even is!?
Some of this will go away with maturity as the Body grows up but still when Jesus returns for his faithful bride only HALF will be considered wise and taken to enjoy the seven-year marriage supper of the Lamb. The other half will spend those seven years in quite different circumstances. So even when this age is concluded not ALL who claim to be Believers will find God’s heart and mind and that precious ‘extra oil.’ Man’s ways are foolishness to God and these unwise will remain wise in their own eyes, and ‘I have a verse! I have a verse!’ but for many it won’t make one lick of difference.
Again, having a verse does not guarantee you have the right verse or the right meaning of that verse!
How to know? You need to ask the Holy Spirit to lead and explain it to you. Ask him privately, ‘Please Lord, confirm this verse. And what does it really mean?’ … and wait …. My wisdom is never to speak this kind of thing out-loud, but to only say it privately in my heart. Demons can often hear us speak and they can sometimes orchestrate or manipulate things around us, so I ask God for a fleece as we say or a confirmation when I need it and I do so privately, secretly.
But the Holy Spirit already knows, and so we find Colossians 3:15 helpful which says ‘And let the peace of God rule in your hearts’ or as some versions say let the Holy Spirit be ‘umpire’ or ‘referee’ of God’s will in our hearts. So this is the true way we test a prophecy, but finding stillness, being calm, overcoming anxiety, doubt, fear … these are the things we have to conquer to be good at testing prophecy, discerning God’s will and finding his direction. A troubled heart has great difficulty submitting to God. A broken heart has many obstacles to being able to sit at Jesus’ feet, listen, and obey the word of Life living within us.
This means the best way to learn to hear God’s voice has to do with finding or experiencing Inner Healing, having our hearts ‘bound up’ to be healed of past pain, fear, trauma. This is how Jesus explained his Gospel to me, from Isaiah 61, that he wants to transform us into his image, and this is a personal transformation from broken, hurting, bound and blind people orphans into healed, healthy, free, and enlightened children of God. I share this openly and you can see this conversation with Jesus in my latest book 8+Splash in Chapter 20: Isaiah 61–The Model of Your New Life here https://prayermountainbohol.com/8plussplash/chapter-20-isaiah-61-the-model-of-your-new-life/ … Jesus even told me, “Healing always brings hearing” … so how to improve your ability to hear, flow, test and understand? Open your heart to God’s Spirit to heal, set you free and enlighten you … join an inner healing retreat. Go on a fast to find freedom, these things work! And there is a reason why they do!
Then ask God to show you if this is the right verse and then to tell you what HE THINKS this verse really means. If he blows your mind, I’d say you are on the right path!
6. Using logic to test prophecy is itself illogical!
Let me say that again! Using logic to test prophecy is itself illogical! How many times God has spoken things to people in prophecy that make NO SENSE and so they cry foul! This is unbiblical, heretical! They accused Jesus of this over and over. But after they calmed down and continued to hear that ‘still, small voice’ a verse comes to mind, a verse they never consciously heard, certainly never preached on, one they don’t remember ever reading maybe and yet there it is, hidden in the Psalms, or deep in Ezekiel, or Obadiah.
What I mean is when you test a prophecy by the Scriptures you may not be the expert Bible scholar you think you are. In arrogance people declare, “I looked and that’s not in the Bible!” Yet it clearly is and also is clearly what God is saying to them. But it goes against both their doctrines and their bad attitudes so they are not really looking and won’t listen anyway!
Worse, God says an earthquake will come next year. How do you test this? Well, logically, we’ve never had an earthquake here so its illogical and must be false. Then it hit and people died! Where are all those self confident experts now?
Or you are driving and God says, “TURN RIGHT!” Well, is that logical? Knowing the truck behind you has lost its brakes it is! “DO IT NOW!” Well, I need a verse for that first. And God will give you one! In heaven he’ll give you a whole, long list! But wait … how did I get here? Is that Abraham coming to meet me!? Well, you should have listened! Welcome to your heavenly home.
I mean God telling you his direction is not a question of logic. If it is logical that you do a thing why would God even tell you to do it? You already will anyway! And most personal direction is ‘go here, do this, find that, wait here … now go, hurry or you’ll be late!’ It’s just not within the realm of ‘logic.’ So testing a prophecy by logic is so often itself illogical. But you can ask God to clarify, he even told me it’s OK to ask to clarify and to get confirmation, he said that! But he continued at some point you just need to obey. Later you will see the reasoning behind it, why you needed to turn left, why you needed to go to the store now, why you needed to say sorry even when it was their fault … but on this end of the event we just need to trust him. Logic is sinful in these cases. Trust is illogical. Love is illogical.
7. You will need more than just the Bible to test rightly
So can you see why I say testing prophecy is not just a matter of ‘use the Bible’ or ‘I have a verse’? Maybe for children it’s OK to say that, they are still wearing those arm floaties anyway, but honestly if people want real answers to real questions to real prophecy and to find God’s real solutions to real life’s problems this trite response is just not enough.
So let me now go back to the first point again. Satan tempted Jesus USING the BIBLE! If modern believers were faced with this kind of challenge they would certainly fail with close to 100% failure rate because all they are told to do and all they care to do is ‘test to see if it is in the Bible’ and ‘get a verse’ as I said they usually only do it in general and with vague brush stokes and only according to the beliefs they already have, according to the attitudes they currently clothe themselves with. This is not effective and if Jesus had only done that he would have failed that test. Imagine that!
Even more, if you stop and look at what Jesus taught and try to ‘test it’ with the Bible, already knowing it’s true, but how many of you could find the verses he is quoting or verses his teaching is illuminating? How many of the events of his life that fulfilled prophecy as the Bible says they did, would you even now be able to identify? “This was spoken to fulfill the word from Isaiah …” It still so often leaves me baffled. How does THIS event fulfill THAT word? Even with years of study, hindsight and the Holy Spirit living INSIDE of us, it is still often not clear without only being able to quote the answer and if the scripture did not tell me it is so I would not have guessed it was so.
We are students of the Word not authors of it. We REMAIN learners and will do so for eternity. The interpretation of a prophecy is not private but BELONGS to God. When people proudly judge a prophecy and say things like, “I know the whole Bible and I have decided this word that you are to move to Indonesia and be a missionary and preach the word is False!” … it’s so often not a problem with the prophetic word or the prophet but sadly with an arrogant, opinionated pastor walking in the flesh with a mind to please man that is behind all this friction!
‘Believers in God’ opposed Jesus so forcefully and were unable to prosper and find what he demonstrated calling it his Kingdom simply because they judged him to be false because their carnal minds and fears and human reasoning and political ambitions BLINDED their hearts to what other people saw plainly manifesting right in front of them! The way to test prophecy is not like these men did then or as their modern counterparts do now. Their own hearts lied to them and led them astray. Other people saw the same things, often knowing the same verses and came to a very different judgment. So what good is the light of the Word in you if it has become darkness? Two people seeing the same thing may still come to quite opposite conclusions.
This ultimately means something very disturbing. It means the test of a prophecy being right or if it is from God and what is means and what we are to do because of it is NOT OBJECTIVE.
No, you say, it is God’s true prophetic word or not, it is what he has actually said or not, if so it has a true meaning and we have one reasonable response to it. It is OBJECTIVE. It is true or not and it is so for everyone.
OK, but what I mean is to find its truth, to come to the conclusion or make the decision or make the right judgment … IS UP TO YOU PERSONALLY to do. So yes, it is objectively true or false in itself, but the judgment of what it is, is up to YOU personally here now, and yes that is unfortunately very subjective. You are the one deciding if you think it is true or not. That is based on your own personal judgment, right or wrong.
I mean you say the right verse is Isaiah 61, but someone else says no, the right verse is Isaiah 55, and still someone else says no, its a false prophecy, throw it out, there is no verse. Should we just vote? The idea with the most hands in agreement is truth? How can we actually test if a personal prophecy is ACTUALLY true?
You see it always comes down to you. Did you hear God? What do you say he said? What does this mean? What is a good verse to give it credence? What does that verse really mean?
You make your judgment … and then you stand, as Luther once famously said, there is nothing else you can do. “Hier stehe ich, ich kann nicht anders.”
So you need to test and determine and then say, ‘This is God’s word and this is the meaning and this is what we must do about it.’ You see inevitably at this point you MUST take off the floaties, let go of the guard rail and SWIM. You must decide IN YOUR OWN HEART if this is true, if this is the right verse, if this is the right meaning of that verse, or even if there is any verse at all—and sometimes there may not be!—and you also have to stand on what you think we ought to do in response to it. You make your judgment, you make your call, you take your stand … face whatever consequences may come … trust God … and that’s it. That’s HOW you test, you just test and then you stand behind your word and trust God with the outcome.
Then they start to bash against you. Some people think the only word that goes with ‘prophet’ is ‘false’ but this is THEIR judgment and they will have to stand for that and face its consequences as well. If it is God’s word and they say it’s Satan’s … well, that’s their opinion, and they have to stand for whatever comes next, and surely it will be a lack of success, a lack of prospering, since only by believing his prophets will we succeed. And you can be sure God is standing there watching who hears his word, and what they do with it! God gives people the opportunity to prosper, some take it, some listen, some believe, some simply don’t … that’s not our concern. We must test, we must judge, we must speak, and then we must stand. So now must say, “Hier stehen wir, wir können nicht anders!”
So I mean to say it always comes down to your heart being open (or not) to the Holy Spirit (or not) and whether you will let go of your opinions and fears of the potential outcome of a situation (or not) and give your heart to God in trust (or not) and so let him guide you into all truth. This is what I mean by letting go of the pool guard rail. Not that we stop knowing the Bible but that we start letting the Holy Spirit guide us into all truth. Its scary at first, but later, its just so natural!
So everyone says they have a verse, but do they? Is it the right one? Ultimately it comes down to each of us individually to be honest before God, to be diligent to test carefully, to be submitted to God from our hearts in the light of the Holy Spirit to find out, ‘Is this what God is really saying?’ And there is no objective way to do this. Some will be honest and submit to the flow of the Spirit, some will sway the result and bend the word to their agenda, fears and attitudes. Both sides will have an opinion, both sides will have a judgment. So no, there is no ‘objective’ test to find what God is saying, not on our end, the best we can do is Fear God, lay down our agendas and ulterior motives, submit to God’s Spirit and say, “I will ask, and you will teach me. I will not speak, but I will listen. Your servant is listening, Lord. What is you word?”
Let him speak, listen, he honest, be brave … this is how you test a prophetic word.
Links to my recent books on Prophecy:
8+Splash is HOW I learned about prophecy:
https://prayermountainbohol.com/8plussplash/
‘10 Things’ is WHAT I learned over 30+ years …
https://prayermountainbohol.com/10things/
Blessings!
Eddie