One of the Benefits of having a Prophetic Word.

It was 8pm, September 2011. 6 Years ago. I was standing beside my daughter’s hospital bed. The Doctor’s addressed me saying, “Mrs Berry. You have a very sick little girl. We don’t know yet what is wrong with her but by the morning, we should have some answers back. So far, we have tested for HIV Aids, Hepatitis B, Tuberculosis, Malaria, Cancer, Leukaemia…..” My mind went blank and I didn’t hear anything else.

The Doctors left the room and I managed to settle my 8 year old daughter for sleep. I sank down into the chair beside her bed. Thankfully, we were in an isolated room (as they thought my daughter may be infectious) so we didn’t have to contend with anyone else.

As I snuggled into that hard plastic chair, my mind was racing. It had taken us over ten years to be able to fall pregnant. Now, I was looking at losing her. Would she die in two years, one year, four months? This was all flashing through my mind. Suddenly, my mind was arrested.

We had just returned from Mozambique, Africa where we had attended the Iris Harvest School for three months under Heidi Baker. Whilst we were there, we had received a prophetic word from a man called David Wagner. We were new to prophecy and had no idea about it apart from the fact that this guy was meant to be very accurate. We didn’t even know what to do with our prophetic word so we had recorded it, transcribed it and prayed it through. In fact, we had prayed it through so much that we knew it off by heart.

It was now that a sentence or two from that memorised prophetic word came back to me about my daughter. “I saw the Lord putting a doctor’s coat on you in the days ahead and I just saw you as one who walks who is not only going to be a physician, but one who carries the great physician and I saw you as one who ministers to people with miracles and medicine and medical missions and all of those things.”

I suddenly realised, for my 8 year old daughter to become a doctor and fulfill this prophetic word (& for me it is not truly about whether she becomes a doctor as she can have the freedom to choose whatever) but it meant that she would have to be at least 24 years old to be finished university to become a doctor. That meant that she was not going to die from whatever disease she currently was facing.

At that moment, I laughed in the face of adversity like the Proverbs 31 woman (Proverbs 31:25). I grabbed that prophetic word and I began to contend and war with the situation we were currently facing and I used it to give us hope. Jeremiah 29:11 says, “ For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”

I knew the outcome. I knew that this huge ‘mountain’ in front of us was not the end. With that prophetic word, I could ‘see’ over the top of that ‘mountain’ and ‘see’ that there was a future. This mountain we were facing might be huge, but it wasn’t going to be the end. Sure, we had to get through it to get to the other side, but it wasn’t the end. The prophetic word gave us hope and a future.

Friends, please, please, please. If you don’t have a prophetic word for you, your children etc, get one. Secondly, use your prophetic wisely and contend with the current situation you are facing. Make your prophetic word into a declaration and speak it out against your current situation. Pray your prophetic word into being.

Make sure you subscribe so that you get next week’s blogpost as I am going to look at “What to do with your prophetic word”. I will be breaking this down in to a three week series.

To prepare, grab your prophetic words out and read over them. If you don’t have one for yourself or each of your children, ask someone you know who is prophetic and whom you trust to give you a prophetic word for yourself or each of your children.

Prophetic Activations / Exercises to incorporate into your week:

The purpose of these exercises is to help us hear God’s voice in a clearer manner. They sharpen our senses to hear and recognise God’s voice and His way of communicating with us. This enables us to grow in our relationship with God and also to impart to others what God tells us for them. Feel free to use as many of these activations each week as you can. The more you practice, the sharper you become at hearing God’s voice. Enjoy!

Remember that whenever you give another person a prophetic word or picture etc, please make sure that it is encouraging, edifying (strengthening) and comforting (1 Corinthians 14:3) and that it comes from a place of love.

1. Children / Families Activation: Gather a number of items that have different surfaces and textures. Spend some time touching the various textures and asking God what He wants to reveal to everyone about Himself through the different textures. Then ask God if He has something to say to the other family/group members through what He has said or shown you.

2. Group Activation: Get everyone to stand up and move to the edge of the room. Ask everyone to turn around and face the wall so that everyone’s back faces into the middle of the room. Ask everyone to focus on God and quieten themselves down before God and then ask God to highlight something directly in front of them on the wall. Then get everyone to use that which was highlighted to them in a prophetic word to the person on their left. Allow five minutes for sharing the prophetic words.

3. Beginner Activation: Go outside where you can see something of nature. Ask God to highlight a particular aspect of His nature and character through looking at nature. Ask God what He wants to tell you or show you about this and how it applies to you. Write down what you feel, hear or see God saying to you and declare it out aloud over yourself.

4. Intermediate Activation: Ask God to show you someone who needs encouragement today. Then ask God to show or highlight to you a verse or passage in the Bible that you can craft in to a prophetic word and use to encourage this person. Share it with that person.

5. Advanced Activation: Look for a news headline from today. Read it and ask God to highlight a person from that headline/news article to you. Then ask God to give you a prophetic word for that person. Either declare it aloud into the atmosphere or write it down and investigate a way to send that prophetic word to the person.