From The Prophetic School: Ten Steps To Spiritual Perception
Today's lesson answers some basic questions all Christians have.
How do I hear God?
How do I know when I have heard God?
How can I be certain that I heard God?
Is it possible to truly know?
And what do I do when I do hear God and I know that I truly did hear God?
This simple and yet powerful lesson will educate new babies in Christ and reeducate older Christians.
God truly wants each and everyone of us to go deeper with Him. He desires forward growth and momentum. Here are ten keys to help you along the way...
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There are two necessary ingredients for a ministry.
- There is no ministry and there can be no ministry where there is no need or no consciousness of that need.
- Also, there is no ministry and there can be no ministry where there is no consciousness of the Lord's presence.
The first thing you must do is to practice coming into the presence of the Lord.
You have received the Holy Spirit, and it is the function of the Holy Spirit to reveal and magnify Jesus Christ to you.
As you are in the Spirit and begin to worship the Lord, believe for the Holy Spirit to reveal the Lord to you.
Reach your hand forth unto the Lord and stand in His presence.
Day by day, do not lose your sense of His presence.
It is not enough to concentrate on someones need; you must appropriate God's fullness and minister that fullness to the need.
All we do and all we say, in our prayer , is to glorify Him.
He is the Lord, and in His greatness He is the all-sufficient One.
He is the head over all things to the Church.
He is the Head over all principalities and powers.
Simply stand, worshiping and praising the Lord.
As you practice the presence of the Lord, practice sensing the presence of the one who is to be met or ministered to.
Make contact with the lord;then reach your hands out to him, believing.
Then you feel that brother's need as you reach into the Lord.
Next, believe for the flow of revelation. You draw the filling of the need from the Lord.
Learn to never lose the sense of His presence and you will be able then to tune into the people and
Our ministry would be much more effective if we would never lose our sense of His presence, as we concentrate upon the one before us.
Your revelation as to what is in that individual will be with deeper insight and with far greater penetration if you forget him and just tune in to the Lord.
Then as you reach out to him, the Lord will show you things about him, and the ministry will start to flow.
This may sound very simple, and it is, but it is a little more complicated to practice.
However, work at it because it is the key of the ministry.
There is a way that we can acquire the Lord's power.
His endurance, and His understanding.
There is a way we can overcome weariness and fainting, as we move into the fullness of His power.
( Kathryn Kuhlman understood this and moved in ministry tirelessly ) .
The Lord shows us how this can be done in Isaiah 40:25-31.
This passage is very high in the plane of inspiration; instead of Isaiah being the intermediary, the one bringing the message, God Himself is speaking in the first person and He gives a description of Himself.
God continues to describe His endurance, His faithfulness, but then He turns and reveals humanity at its best, the young men, the youths.
They faint, and there is no understanding and no power with them.
They cannot make it.
However, in the third portion He explains how we, as human beings, can acquire some of His great omnipotence and omniscience, some of that endurance so as not to faint.
The Lord says we can actually receive it.
That is exactly what we are trying to do in the services.
We know the greatness of God and we know our own limitations, but we reach out and draw on the greatness of God; we acquire it for ourselves.
We lack wisdom in ourselves, but we want to receive His wisdom.
The gifts of the Spirit, spiritual perception and revelation-all of the necessary elements of the ministry that we will discuss in this lesson-are activated by tuning in to the fullness of God.
The process that you are going to learn is actually what this passage of Scripture shows you to do.
You wait upon the Lord and you draw His strength and His wisdom.
You begin to rise and move in a plane that is beyond the human limitations, in wisdom that is beyond human power, and in endurance that is beyond human endurance.
To whom will you liken me, that I should be equal to him? saith the Holy One. Lift up your eyes on high, and see who hath created these, that bringeth out their host by number; he them all by name; by the greatness of his might, and for that he is strong in power, not one is lacking.
Why sayest thou, O Jacob, and speakest, O Israel, My way is hid from Jehovah, and the justice due to me is passed away from God? Hast thou not known? Hast thou not heard?
The everlasting God, Jehovah, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary; there is no searching of His understanding.
This is the Lord's description of Himself and Hid titles: the everlasting God, the Creator of the ends of the earth.
In His omnipotence, He does not faint; neither; neither is He weary. There is no searching of His understanding. How great is the omniscience and the wisdom of God.
He giveth power to the faint; and to him that hath no might he increased strength. Even the youths shall not faint and be weary, and the young men shall utterly fall.
Humanity at its best and young men, in their prime and with the greatest vigor, will faint and utterly fall.
But they that wait for Jehovah shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; they shall walk, and not faint.
Isaiah 40:25-31
The thing that we are striving for is to be able to tune in to God-to what He knows and to what He can do.
The key of the gifts and the ministries of the Holy Spirit is to arrive at the place where the human limitations are displaced by the divine abilities.
God is opening the door for the gifts and the ministries of the Spirit to operate, but there is one basic faculty necessary for all of them to work.
Isaiah said there is no searching of His understanding and He gives power to those who faint. Behind
We must have something more than just the human faculties of sight and hearing and smell.
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We must have a spiritual perception so that we see and hear in the spiritual realm
These are not physical characteristics; they are spiritual ones. If we are going to move in God, we must acquire them.
As spiritual individuals, it is important for us to be able to see in the spirit, to be able to discern, and to have spiritual perception so clear that whenever God is moving we will perceive it; whenever the enemy is moving we will perceive him.
The gifts of the Spirit always work on that basis.
A man must have his faculties developed in the realm of the spirit if he is going to move in that realm.
If he is going to move in miracles, he has to know what God is doing.
If he is to move in the healings, he must understand God's will.
If he is going to give a word of wisdom or a word of knowledge, he must first be able to hear that word from God.
A man must have a spiritual ear.
He that hath ears to hear, let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches ( Revelation 2:7 ) .
If he is going to prophesy, he has to hear what is to be prophesied; he must be able to perceive it in the spirit realm.
Only then can he lay hold of God's Word and prophesy it effectively.
We know that the job cannot be done by the human faculties.
You are not wise enough, you are not strong enough, and you do not have enough endurance in yourself.
You will never be able to do God's will completely.
That is true.
But you can tune in.
You can learn how.
You can follow the steps where you get the leading and the guidance of the Lord.
You can hear what God has to say to you and you can know His leading.
There is no doubt in any of our minds that God is speaking.
The trouble is that there are not always ears to hear it.
It could be compared to a large transmitter that is sending out broadcasts; if you do not have a receiver, you cannot hear what is being sent.
And even if you do have a receiver, but you have a faulty condenser that cannot separate the various sounds, there will be only a jumble coming through.
This would be like listening to your radio when two stations are jamming each other, and you cannot get them separated.
You would like to hear one or the other, but they are crossing each other out.
The Russians know how to jam radio broadcasts.
When we are sending a broadcast that they do not think the people should hear, they will jam it so that it cannot be understood.
Some people find that their spiritual signals are being jammed.
Others are hearing everything; they have no tuner to tell what is of God, what is of man, and what is of the devil, or what is their imagination.
We must learn to tune in only to what God is saying.
What the Spirit is bringing to us can be very carefully lined out so that we hear and receive only what God has for us, and we learn to tune out everything else.
Let me give you an illustration of a principle that will be very helpful.
Simply put your hand up with the idea that you are reaching into God.
Be thinking about Christ and His Lordship, how full He is, how in Him are all things that you or anyone else has need of.
Worship Him; adore Him. Hold your hand out there until you actually feel in the spirit that what you are doing is effective and that you are touching God.
When you feel you have touched the Lord in His fullness, then reach out to the brother who is being ministered to, and without losing that awareness of the Lord and His sufficiency, be a channel of blessing for him.
As you do that, you may feel as if there is something wrong with you physically.
As you reach into the Lord's fullness and you reach to the brother, you may feel his symptoms.
This works so simply: first focus upon the Lord; then focus upon an individual and watch some amazing things take place.
Recently I had an experience that was rather unusual.
I was suddenly aware that there was something wrong with my automobile.
It was running all right, but I knew that something was wrong.
This may sound weird, but I could feel a loose cable somewhere.
I got out a crescent wrench, lifted the hood, and sure enough, there was a loose terminal.
This was not by accident.
When you are in tune with the Lord, you are even able to reach in and feel the parts of a car.
Like wise, you can feel another person's infirmity.
You can sense what God wants to do with him.
Spiritual perception, discernment, and revelation are not as uncanny as people think.
Here is the key behind it.
Notice the two negatives, which always makes a positive.
Stated positively, this Scripture says that we absolutely do have a high priest who is continually touched by what we feel, by our infirmities.
The minute you make an adequate contact with the Lord Jesus Christ and then reach out to a brother, you become a channel through which the Lord Jesus conveys what He is feeling in that individual, you become God's representative.
This is the basis by which we discern infirmities.
I have had an exceptionally good ministry in discerning and feeling the infirmities of the people.
Yet it is not based upon anything I can point to or any spectacular gift.
It is based upon the fact that I never stand before a person feeling that I am going to meet his need in myself.
I am always aware that I have a hold of the fountain of all blessings and as I reach into Him, I become but a sounding board.
It is nothing in me; it is Christ's concern and Christ's feeling that comes through.
It behooves us to use this gift as efficiently as possible, because the revelation that flows reveals what Christ is feeling and what He is concerned about in the individual.
There are ten simple steps which you should follow in order to activate the spiritual perception and the flow of revelation to you.
The first seven deal with bringing you into spiritual perception or revelation or discernment.
These terms are used interchangeably.
Discernment means the ability to discern demonic powers and demon sources.
Spiritual perception is the ability to perceive what is going on in that realm, as though you had spiritual ears and eyes.
Revelation is the means that God can use to communicate truths to you so that your heart can receive them.
1. Lay a good foundation.
Establish a scriptural basis. This is the first step toward spiritual perception.
This foundation can be laid in several ways, but it must be done adequately, because as you progress in receiving revelation, you will sense that what you do requires a great deal of faith.
Not only must you have a general faith toward God but you must also have an absolute faith in the scripturalness of divine revelation and divine guidance.
You have to believe not only that the Spirit of God will speak in this day, but that He will speak to you personally.
You must believe further that in your own personal prophecies and in your own ministry, God will reveal Himself and make Himself known.
In order to do this first step, you should dig out some Scriptures that proves to you that God intends to guide you and to lead you, passages that will show you once and for all that it is scriptural for you to believe for real revelation and guidance and spiritual perception.
Why do we need revelation from the Lord?
I remember a comment made by a denominational pastor.
He said, "We do not need the word of wisdom or the word of knowledge today because we have the New Testament. Paul needed it because then they did not have a New Testament."
Imagine a man with enough wisdom to write most of the New Testament, yet he still had to have special guidance and direction.
He needed the gifts , the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge in operation.
It would not have made any difference if Paul had had six dozen New Testaments in his day.
General principles are revealed, but specific questions are not answered in the New Testament.
For example, when Paul was on his second missionary journey, where would he have turned in the New Testament to find out whether he was to go up into the mountains of Bithynia or whether he was to go to Troas?
Such specific questions of guidance and individual problems require the word of wisdom and the word of knowledge to reveal the way you should go.
You may want to know whether you should buy a certain home.
Where are you going to find the chapter and verse in the New Testament that gives an answer to that?
The Old and New Testaments, however good, still do not give you individual direction.
They do a great deal to bring you into a closeness with God, but the Bible is basically the story of those who were led by God's Spirit.
From Genesis and the days when Abraham was being guided by the Spirit until the book of Revelation and the one hundred forty-four thousand that follow the Lamb whither-soever He goes, it is the story of guidance and the story of a people who are being led.
It is not enough for us to have the Scriptures alone, because the Scriptures are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.
They are not to be read as so many stories in history.
They are to be read with the idea that they will open up a walk with God for you.
They point the way to Jess Christ and they testify of Him- not that you will see Him afar off, but that you will partake of Him in your heart.
They speak of the wonderful works of the Holy Spirit throughout the ages, not that you will marvel and wonder and say,"My, wasn't it a great time in which they lived?" but so that you will find the Holy Spirit being brought near and becoming more real to you.
He will lead you and guide you into all truth and into the perfect will of God.
You do not read the Scriptures about men who walked with God in other generations just to rejoice in them, thinking there is nothing for you today.
The same guidance and blessings that were in their lives are to be recreated in your life.
So the first thing you must do is to take the promises in the Scriptures and build yourself a good foundation.
We must first build a Bible basis for believing that God is going to speak in this day, and that He is going to speak to you personally.
We must establish that He wants you to have ears and eyes to see, and that He wants to guide you. Many Scriptures make this promise of God very clear to you.
Be not foolish, be not unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is ( Ephesians 5:17 ).
Psalm 23 is also a good Scripture to follow.
There are many passages that can be used, but you will have to decide for yourself and get hold of one verse.
Sometimes several are in order, but sometimes it is good to take one verse that you fully believe will work the wonder for you.
It will give you the basis, and with it you can lay that good foundation until your own faith takes hold of it.
You can use this principle for anything that you want from God.
If you want to be healed, approach the great subject of divine healing in the same way; get some Scriptures to establish your faith.
"He went to the whipping post," Isaiah prophesied, "and by His stripes we are healed" ( Isaiah 53:5 ) .
Later on Peter wrote, "By His stripes ye were healed" ( I Peter 2:24 ) .
Surely He has borne all of our sicknesses and carried them upon Him. Bless the Lord, O my soul, who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases ( Psalm 103:2-3 ) .
I am the Lord thy God that healeth thee, I will put none of these diseases upon thee, which I have brought upon the Egyptians ( Exodus 15:26 ) .
All of these precious promises we can stand upon; and when we do, we come to the conclusion that the provision for healing has been supplied by the Lord Jesus Christ.
When we have a Bible basis for healing, then we do not come before the Lord and beg, "Please, Lord, I think that maybe I deserve to be healed. Would you please heal me?"
That is asking on the wrong basis.
You must have a Bible basis.
You must have a foundation.
You must believe that God wants to reveal Himself. Isaiah wrote, "Thou shalt hear a voice behind thee saying, 'This is the way; walk ye in it,' when ye turn to the right hand and when ye turn to the left" ( Isaiah 30:21 ).
Many Scriptures reveal the same truth.
It becomes your responsibility to read the Word and constantly apply it to yourself, saying: "This is what God wants me to do.
He wants me to walk in His will.
He wants to reveal His will.
I believe it is absolutely the mind of the Lord that He will speak to me, and speak to me personally.
He will guide me in His will."
The first step is very essential. It is not complicated, but it is absolutely necessary that you do it thoroughly.
2. Enter into His rest ( or to express it in one simple word: relax ).
You first build up your faith and then you enter into that rest of the Lord.
You are already believing that God is going to speak to you personally, and you are standing on a firm scriptural foundation.
So what you do next is just relax.
A state of physical tension serves as a barrier and a shield against divine revelation.
You decide that you are not going to try to work things out in your own mind or by your own actions.
You must let God work them out.
And you can say, "Here I am, Lord. Here I am before You.
Now God, O my mighty God, happen to me."
Relax and let God happen to you.
Just relax and back into it.
If there is a struggle, it only defeats your goal.
You enter into His rest.
You know that God is speaking, so decide in your own mind that you are going to hear it.
In this second step, avoid muscular or mental tension if at all possible, and try to let go and relax thoroughly.
I know this works.
When the ministry of revelation was beginning to flow, I was instructed by revelation to get a barbell and work out each day, which I did.
I did it, not because I wanted to be a superman, but because I was very tense and was not able to sleep properly.
At the beginning of this ministry, the nervous tension was tremendous, but the longer I walk in it, the more relaxed I am.
I have learned to let go and relax completely.
The physical exercise takes away the strain and helps one to relax.
Then spiritual things begin to flow.
Many times, after a simple little workout in calisthenics, I notice the signs in the Spirit beginning to come.
This second step of learning to enter into His rest and relax is very important in the flow of divine revelation.
3. Tune in.
This step follows immediately. We read in Daniel 6:10 how Daniel went into his chamber three times a day and opened his windows towards Jerusalem.
There has to be that definite act on your part of opening your window toward God.
People are walking around with headphones, and they are not going to hear the beautiful songs of Zion until they remove the headphones.
You can have a radio, but if it is not turned on and it is not tuned in, you are not going to hear anything.
The radio will sit there, silent, and although there is music in the air, you will not hear it until you tune into it.
God is speaking and you know He is speaking.
You have to believe that God has never stopped speaking to men and that He is speaking to you right now.
Take of the headphones so that you can hear Him.
Start opening up to the things of the Spirit.
Some of these steps seem to overlap and the fourth step is very closely related to the third.
4. Woo the flow of the Spirit.
You must say, "Lord, here I am.
I refuse to express any doubt or fear or any negative reaction that might come up out of my own conscious mind or even my subconscious mind, I blot it out and just tune my spirit toward God."
Your mind will tell you to worry or to start fretting about the problems.
Your conscience will arise and tell you that you should be doing something other than sitting, waiting on the Lord.
But remember the Scripture in Hebrews 9:14.
It speaks about having your conscience purged from dead works, and that is what we need.
Because most pastors have a conscience telling them they are supposed to be servants of the people, they literally become that; servants of the people, and not servants of the Lord.
You must determine to hear what God wants you to hear.
There are many good things to do in this world, and people can dream up plenty of them for you to do, but you must find the one thing that God wants you to do as you listen for His orders.
Put away doubt and fear and the negative; even put away the working of your conscience that might hinder you as to your duties and responsibilities.
Simply sit still and wait upon the Lord.
One of the most blessed disciplines that taught me this step was the fact that the Lord spoke to me to wait before Him, and I waited before the lord for seven months, to the day.
Each morning I gave myself to it, and did only what was absolutely necessary otherwise.
Before I was through, revelation truths had been given me that were tremendous.
The church suffered, because I did not know enough to give the babies milk and to keep meat for myself, and I started giving the people everything Gos was giving me.
Sometimes I was plagued by a sense of conscience, thinking that I should be doing other things, but God seemed to take care of the Church as I gave myself wholly to waiting upon Him.
If the elders and the ministries of the churches would wait upon God for about a month, only seeking the face of the Lord, waiting before Him and rejoicing in Him, at the end of that month the churches would be better off than if we all got busy without any leading of the Spirit.
If we waited upon the Lord, our actions would really count because we would be doing what Gd wanted us to do.
Blank out the flood of thought that comes to you from your conscious and subconscious mind and from your conscience, and just woo the Spirit and let God speak.
Tune in to everything He has to say.
5. Practice select tuning.
This step follows very simply. As you learn to receive from the Lord, other things are activated within you.
You will receive thoughts in your own mind, and your own imagination will start working.
First you must watch it that you do not get so relaxed that you go to sleep.
If your body is tired, ask the Lord to give it a quick charge.
Then lie down, sleep one or two minutes, and you will be wide awake to go ahead.
There are fantastic things that you can learn to control and letting yourself draw the strength of the Lord.
Basically, this next step is knowing how to sift, sort, and evaluate.
Once you open the window toward Jerusalem and everything starts flooding in, you will not know whether it is from God, from the devil, or even from your own heart.
It is at this point that you have to hear the voice of the Lord and learn how to use a system of fine select tuning; sift out what is coming; sort it, and learn how to evaluate it.
To illustrate what you are looking for in this step, we could use the example of a well.
As things come to you, drop them in a well.
Some will make a false sound.
When something hits the bottom of the well, you can hear its ring of impact.
Dropping coins on a table is another illustration.
When you hear the certain ring, you know that the coin is pure silver and genuine.
( of course pure silver coins have been removed from circulation today ) If it has a flat lead sound to it, you know that it is not pure silver ( like the coins of today ) .
Down deep within your heart, you are looking for that sure inner witness.
Many voices come through, but you are listening foe the one that the Holy Spirit illuminates and makes alive.
When you find it, you know that it is the word of God.
You hear it then echoing and reechoing within you, as the Holy Spirit amplifies it, and you find it rising to the surface of your consciousness with a conviction that this is the word of God.
You will have to practice, because this is the difficult step.
It sometimes takes years to perfect, but the results are beautiful and worth every bit of effort and discipline.
As you learn to wait upon the Lord, and impressions begin to come, there is a way by which the Holy Spirit amplifies that little signal, until it has a the ring of the voice of God.
You learn to listen to it, but even that is not enough.
You sift, sort, and evaluate; you sift all that comes, and you sort it over, and you evaluate it with the understanding that you will end up with something from the Lord.
6. Prove all things through a process of confirmation.
Everything should be confirmed.
The confirmation may come through several channels. It may come by repetition from the Lord.
During a focused period of waiting on the Lord, the first day you may get something that really sounds like the Lord.
The next day the same thing comes, even stronger.
Maybe the third day it comes again and again.
You have a dream and it comes in that dream. Someone approaches you and says, "I was praying the other day" ( and you find out it was at the same hour you were praying ) "and the Lord witnessed to me that a certain thing is going to happen."
This is more confirmation.
Sometimes it can come as it came to Gideon ( Judges 6:36-40 ) .
You want a word confirmed, and so you put out a fleece and begin looking for the Lord to answer and bring confirmation by circumstances.
Sometimes you will know how it is to be confirmed; you just keep seeking.
Never neglect seeking that confirmation. Because of human inaccuracy and human error, God always confirms His word.
At the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word will be established ( II Corinthians 13:1 ).
This is a principle.
Never become an authority in your own sight.
The first time an impression comes, do not receive it as the absolute word of God.
I have received a great deal of wisdom from the Lord ( I say this very humbly ) but I keep checking and asking God for confirmation.
I do not go by one incident.
I ask for it to be confirmed again and again because I know if God speaks, confirmation will keep coming.
Satan can come and imitate the voice of God that the first time you hear it, you could almost be carried away with it.
Always wait for that repetition.
The enemy cannot bring the same word to you a second or a third time because by then you yourself are too focused upon the Lord to be deceived.
Satan is an imitator of God, but the only time he can bring repetition is in the case of mental illness.
When men, women, or children are neurotic, they will have recurring dreams with certain patterns.
The same fearful dream will come night after night.
Satan will repeat when he can, but he cannot do it as long as the mind is healthy and the spirit is tuned to God.
Satan cannot do it , but God can.
In the Old Testament, as well as in the New, when men had prophetic dreams, those dreams would come to them two or three times.
God speaks and He confirms and reconfirms and reconfirms.
That is what you are looking for.
Be open to confirmation; prove what you have received.
No matter how sure you are that you know the voice of God, do not skip this process.
This is the safe procedure.
Even when yo reach the place where you are sure you can tell the difference between your own imagination and the voice of God, still look for God to confirm His word and reconfirm it and reconfirm it.
This gives safety.
It gives us the sureness we want so that we are not stumbling along making a big mistake, thinking God spoke to us.
The Lord may have told you something, but difficulties come by the presumption of not following through, not looking for the word to be tested, not submitting it.
You must wait for confirmation.
Galatians 1:12 tells us that Paul received his gospel by revelation. No man taught it to him. He received it directly from the Lord.
It almost sounds like an arrogance, for him to believe that out there in the deserts of Arabia God had given him this word.
Paul might have decided he did not need anyone else- apostle, prophet, or teacher- but that is not what happened.
What did he do?
He came back and submitted all the revelation to those who were apostles before him, lest by any means he had run in vain.
That is real submission.
Bring what you have to the brothers and have them either confirm it or disallow it.
Anytime somebody comes and says the Lord showed him a truth, but he will not submit that revelation to the elders and ministries of the church, you can be sure that he is off.
An arrogance that does not open itself to the Word of God is spiritual anarchy, and it will lead people to spook.
The route of confirmation is not easy to follow, yet we must follow it. ( Over time you will learn the other languages of the Holy Spirit through His high~lighting of things etc through many different ways and means ) .
Let us always lay things before one another for confirmation.
In our submission one to another, we are looking for confirmation and we are endeavoring to prove all things.
You are not to despise prophesying , but you are to prove all things.
The prophecies will come, the revelations will come, but they must be confirmed, reconfirmed, and proven.
I have never seen in the Scriptures that God rebuked any man because of his carefulness in this matter of confirmation.
I have heard ministries insist that Gideon was full of unbelief. god had told him to do something, and he could not believe it; so he put out a fleece.
The first time the fleece was to be wet and the ground dry, and the next time the ground was to be wet and the fleece dry.
That way he would know that it was God speaking to him ( Judges 6:36-40 ) .
We can still do this today.
In some way, God has to create a miracle in circumstances to confirm to us what we believe is a word from God.
When Gideon had finally finished, he had a word from God that he could not dispute, because it had been confirmed a second and a third time by a fleece.
Then there was nothing for him to do but to go full steam ahead.
However, Gideon was not doing this because of unbelief. He was doing it because he wanted to be sure.
God will always honor an honest question about revelation.
It is our quick presumption, jumping and running before the word is confirmed, that always leads to disaster.
When God speaks, let us stand still until we are sure that it is God speaking.
If we are going to stand upon it, sooner or later we will go through something like Gideon went through.
He was facing a mob of Midianites, with thirty two thousand men in his army.
The Lord spoke to him again.
This time Gideon knew His voice because it had been confirmed and reconfirmed.
"Gideon."
"Yes, Lord. ( I know His voice. Now that is the Lord. ) "
"Gideon."
"Yes, I'm listening, Lord. What is it, Lord?"
"Ask the people who are afraid to go home."
"Hey all you fellows!
Any of you afraid?
Go home!"
He did not expect anyone to leave, but suddenly it looked as if everyone was going.
Out of thirty~two thousand, twenty-two thousand left.
"It is a good thing I know the voice of the lord, or I would be shaken now."
"Gideon!"
"There is that voice again."
"Gideon."
"Yes, Lord, I'm listening."
"There are still too many.
They will say that they gained the victory instead of the Lord.
Now, you take them down to the brook and test them.
The ones that throw down their armor and start drinking the water, those you cannot use.
Anyone who will satisfy his own personal thirst at the price of spiritual vigilance is not a good soldier.
But the ones who keep looking around for the Midianites, hanging onto their swords and their shields, those are the ones we use."
"There are many of them, Lord."
Only three hundred out of thirty~two thousand were left.
It is a good thing Gideon put that fleece out at the beginning because now he was beginning to wonder, "Was that really the voice of God?"
Any time you make haste slowly, you are putting yourself in a position where you know the voice of God and you can the things that are going to come at you.
When you get a revelation, check it out, and check it again, and recheck it; then get it reconfirmed.
Get the anointing of the Lord upon you again and again and again.
Go ahead; say, "Excuse me Lord; one more time."
And the Lord plays the record one more time.
"Pardon me, Lord, but just once more?
I want to be sure.
I want to be very sure."
It is better to be sure than sorry.
At the mouth of two or three witnesses every word is required of us; that is how God confirms His word.
The law of witness was used in the judgment of men in the Old Testament.
One man's testimony or witness could not bring a man to death.
If one man killed another, and a witness said, "He liked him," that was not sufficient proof.
There had to be two men who had seen the killing.
There always had to be two or three witnesses to establish guilt.
If God has spoken a word to me and someone else comes along and says, "I have a word for you; the Lord says this is what you are to do," I will listen to it, but I will never be judged by it.
Only when another man approaches me and says, "This is the word of the Lord," had I better listen with an open heart.
When it comes the third time, then I say, "Now Lord, excuse me. I want to be real sure."
Then I start seeking it out because I know at the judgment day I will answer for that word.
He has confirmed it by three witnesses.
God cannot hold it against me if there is only one man who speaks it.
That is His own law.
He sent the apostles out two by two, and He overlapped the prophets who were ministering the judgment that was to come upon Israel.
Over and over again the lord has moved in this way, and He will continue to do so.
If you want His leading and His guidance, it is going to take a little time, but it is worth it.
You meditate on it, open your heart, and after awhile you really know what God wants you to do; you really have a word from God.
No matter what comes against it, you will stand on that word because you know that God is with you.
What if one of these steps does not work out too well?
Suppose things are flooding in and you find you cannot separate your own impressions and your own mind from the voice of the Lord.
Write down all that comes to you.
And when you have done this, say, "Lord, I want You to amplify the voice that is really You."
Work it over; take a little time.
The world- shaking revelations are not going to come in five minutes.
I can remember waiting upon the Lord for as long as six weeks without receiving anything.
During that period of time I became very discouraged.
Attitudes of my own soulish nature and my emotions rose up until I thought I could not go on another day.
Then suddenly, one day, the signals began to come through clearly.
This in not something you can do in a hurry.
Some people think they can become an Isaiah or a Jeremiah in just a few weeks of waiting on the Lord.
That is not the way it happens.
God takes a lifetime to build His Word into people.
We can begin to move in God immediately, but we should move without presumption, without claiming too much or too little.
We should work on the process realistically until we know His voice, and not become presumptuous or thin-skinned.
People will come up with what they think is a revelation from the Lord, and when it does not check out, when they have spoken too quickly, their pride becomes involved and they begin defending it.
They never had a word from the Lord, their pride was injured and they became thin-skinned and oversensitive.
7.Take action.
Your actions must correspond to your faith.
James tells us, "Faith without works is dead."
The Weymouth translation uses the expression, "Faith apart from corresponding action."
The works that you want are not just any works; they are actions that correspond to your faith and to the Word of God.
Suppose you receive a word from God. You must act upon it.
It is not enough only to receive a word.
As the word begins to come through to the human spirit by the medium of the Holy Spirit through this process we have described, and it is confirmed and established and you learn the voice of the Lord, then you must take a step on it and act upon it.
If you do not, that revelation flow will sink back down from the spirit level into the soulish realm where everything becomes erratic and you no longer know God's voice.
If you follow all of the previous six steps and you finally are getting revelation from the Lord, it will not last long if you do not act upon it.
You must take action.
If God moves upon you once in awhile, and you get symptoms or signs and you do nothing about them, you had better start, even if it is nothing more than reaching your hand out to pray.
Act in some way.
Take an action corresponding to what God is saying and to what you are believing.
That keeps the revelation up in the realm of spirit and lets it really flow.
If you do not act, the word will sink into another level and you will lose it.
The ministry is not being given for you to hold any endowment of God in inactivity.
The passivity of inaction is disastrous to faith.
Faith always has to be active and aggressive.
It must be obedient.
It has to act with corresponding action.
Inaction upon a word may have caused you to lose out many times.
It may only be a simple thing that you do.
You may reach out to take part in the faith, in the prayer, in the ministry, or you may go to an individual and say, "The Lord showed me something about you and I believe He wants to heal you."
You do not even have to follow through all the way yourself.
Get the elders to pray with you.
In some way you can act upon what God is showing you, and you can always do it humbly.
Simply the fact that God showed you someones infirmity does not make you a prophet or one who does not need someone else.
Get other brothers to pray with you because in that way everyone is entering in, and the will of God is being done humbly and simply.
Action upon the word will lead you into a real process of obtaining revelation, spiritual perception, and discernment.
It is a tremendous way whereby God can cause the whole word to flow to you.
The gifts of the Spirit are the outflow of that action, whether it is a gift of the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, or faith.
You seek it first and then it will express itself in any one of the nine gifts afterwards.
But this is the way by which it comes to you first.
8. Exercise daily.
This is the daily application of all the steps.
Hebrews 5:14 speaks of those who are spiritual, who through use have their senses exercised to discern good and evil.
The babes are those who do not have their spiritual senses exercised.
The spiritual senses must be exercised and used; there must be a constant consciousness and awareness developed within you.
You cannot turn them on and then turn them off; you have to learn to live with them.
If I were a man working eight hours a day, five days a week, I would set apart a time both in the morning and in the evening for waiting on the Lord.
I would divide the time between morning and evening, so that I went in fresh to work and at the end of the day I could renew myself.
Whenever I had a day or two free, I would apply myself wholly to it until the process became very real to me and I was exercising myself in it daily.
I would work around the distractions of a very exacting time of employment by this constant application and constant exercise until it became a way of life, and until even in my work I would be getting the discernment and revelation.
Exercise your gift daily.
9. Explore your gift ( gifts ), but channel it carefully.
Find out how you can effectively use your new gift.
For instance, find out what the revelation is coming for and what you are supposed to do with it.
You may be tuning into the lord and the next thing you know, find you are not only tuning in to the Lord, but to a brother, and a flow begins to come.
You may sense that the brother has a real infirmity, but what is behind it?
Is it a demonic battle he is going through?
What are you to do about it?
If you are an elder, go and lay hands on him; but if you are not an elder, start praying for him.
There are may ways in which you can channel and explore the gift.
There is great diversity in the operations and administrations of it.
What I see in the lord may not be the same as what you see, and the way I act upon it may also be different.
Everyone has a different ministry, and the way you minister and what you do has to be learned almost by experimenting.
You experiment and you check the application of what you learn and receive, but always very carefully channel it in God's will- not for yourself, nor for your ambitions, but to do the will of God.
You learn to be faithful as you keep working at it.
This is not a complicated procedure.
It is just a matter of giving yourself to do the will of God.
You could sit in church and hear many sermons on gifts, but it is those who hear a simple message like this and start moving in it who will become the effective ministries.
Work at it!
See what you can move in.
We do not need more theory.
We need to practice these things and to let them begin to work for us.
10. "Enlarge the place of your dwelling. Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes"
( Isaiah 54:2 ).
Constantly build up your faith and strengthen it.
Keep expanding your vision as to what God can do.
When God gives me a blessing or an endowment, I always stop and think, "What could this mean to God's people in the future?
What could the word of wisdom or the word of knowledge that God has given me mean in the days to come?"
It means that the basic gifts of an apostolic ministry could bless hundreds and thousands of ministers in churches all over the land.
What do I do in the meantime?
Sometimes those things are so far off, and yet there is a danger of living in the future so that you never get anything done in the present.
Always take a little definite step now toward the fulfillment of the vision.
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