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Growing in the Prophetic
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As far as I am concerned all the biblical charisms are prophetic because they make evident the supernatural presence of God in our world in a very clear way. One of God’s purposes at Pentecost was to bring about the prophetic in the lives of Christians. Prophecy itself is simply one of these gifts. When we receive any of the gifts we don’t always know how to use them. That is why charismatic prayer groups have been so helpful in the past. Part of using the gifts is simply stepping out in faith and taking a risk. Thus it is important to be surrounded by a sympathetic body, who are not going to reject us, if we get it wrong. I believe that God honours this stepping out and through this begins to teach us. If you don’t step out in faith and pray for healing, for example, you will never learn how to do it, and you won’t experience how God works; it is not really something that can be learned in theory but only in practice, as God speaks to people in different ways. It is a process of learning how to recognise His voice as you do it. One of the best ways of learning how to use the gifts is simply to read the gospels and get the feel for how Jesus used the gifts and do likewise. “Test the Word” I only discovered that I had a prophetic gift when I first started praying for people many years ago. I remember when I first began I wasn’t expecting to receive words of knowledge. I just used to pray for people spontaneously, and afterwards they would often say to me “How did you know that I have a fear of death, or of loneliness?” In this way, I started to realise that God was giving me prophetic words . This helped me to grow in confidence, and as time went on, I would get clearer and more specific words of knowledge. As you grow in the prophetic, you develop a listening ear. On one level you are listening to what people are saying to you, but you are also tuned in to the Lord and asking Him to reveal what is wrong and what to pray for. It is a rather mysterious thing, however, and one can’t be certain that one is always right, so it is important to discreetly test the word. I will often say to someone “Does that mean anything to you?” And very often people will say “yes, that’s really relevant.” Sometimes, however, it will mean nothing to them. Then you know you have got it wrong. God is good, however, and in my experience He protects those you minister to, and they are not offended or hurt if you end up being wrong, because they can see your concern is to help them and you are discerning together. “Hard to Step out” Sometimes, it can be hard to step out, however, especially if the word seems totally inappropriate. I remember once praying for a man in his 80s who had come to me. He didn’t even know why he had come he said, but he wanted prayer. He was a happily married man, and a grandfather, so when I received the word “homosexuality”, I felt very hesitant about offering it. When I did, he said it didn’t mean anything, so I let it drop. But the word wouldn’t leave my mind, so I brought it up again, and asked him if he was sure that there was nothing in his life that could be connected with homosexuality. He went very sheepish and eventually it all came out. When he was 10 years old, he had been sexually molested by an older man. He was given chocolates afterwards as a reward, which he had eaten and this had weighed him down for years, as he felt that by this he had somehow colluded in the act. I held him and as we prayed together, he wept. He left with a new sense of freedom, as this burden was lifted from him. Another time a man brought his daughter to me. She had tried to commit suicide a few times and he had come for help. As he talked I had an overwhelming feeling that the man himself was involved in an adulterous relationship and this was in fact the cause of the spirit of suicide that had come into the family. When these things occur to you, you just have to say it as humbly as you can. “I could be wrong, but as you were talking, I have been praying. Are you involved in an adulterous relationship?” It turned out he was. He confessed and I prayed for him, and his daughter became well very quickly. It’s times like this when you see the real power of prophecy at work in a person’s life bringing them to salvation and holiness. “Need to be in submission” I have learnt a lot from sitting at the feet of others whom I could see knew more than I did in this area. In this I have been particularly blessed by people like Fr Ian Petit (RIP) and Fr Sean Conaty, who used to serve on the NSC with me. An important aspect in growing in the spiritual gifts is having a teachable heart. One of the dangers for the prophet is that because of what God has revealed to them, they can start to think they know better than others in everything, which then becomes a real spiritual danger. This is why it is very important that they are part of a community of faith, who can give them space to express themselves, and encourage them, but also love them enough to correct them when necessary. For their own protection and the good of the people, they should always be in submission to the pastoral leadership of the community or the parish priest. The spiritual gifts are no indicators of holiness and can be given to brand new Christians who need a lot of guidance, as they don’t always have the spiritual maturity to use the gift properly. At the same time, prophets can be difficult to handle, as they are often very sensitive souls, and they may have a strong sense of what they think God wants in a particular situation. Thus pastors need to be gentle in handling them, because they can be easily hurt. We must not be put off by their human weaknesses, however, in a way that can stop us from hearing God’s word to us through them. “Prophetic singing” Although some people have a greater prophetic anointing and we may call them ‘prophets’, all Christians are called to be prophetic, and we should encourage this dimension in everyone. One of the simple ways we do this in our own community is when we come together in worship and prayer. Instead of just singing recognised worship songs, we encourage people to step out in prophetic singing, known as the New Song. This is done by keeping a tune of some kind going, and then, as people feel moved, they spontaneously speak or sing out a few lines that fit in with the music. The lines that people come up with can be very powerful, as they are led in the spirit. “Practising Words of Knowledge” Another way to encourage people to grow in the prophetic is to get them to practise on each other. I learned this from Damien Stayne and now do it myself, especially with fairly small groups. You split people up into twos with people they don’t know. Then you get them to pray and ask the Lord to give them a word in a specific area of their partner’s life. After they have done this, we come back to the main group and we ask for feedback and whether people have received anything relevant or not. Amazingly they almost always have. Although this is an artificial situation, it helps give people confidence that the Lord might use them more in their everyday lives . It also helps them to recognise the ordinariness of how God can speak to us by putting thoughts or images in our mind, which we might not have ever realised before are words from the Lord for others. I feel very strongly that we really need to encourage the use of these gifts because people are not being helped and converted the way they could be because we are not using the gifts the Lord has given us. Those of us who have been touched by the Charismatic Renewal have a particular responsibility in this area because of our understanding and experience of the charisms. If we don’t who will? “Behaviour of prophets can be strange” In small gatherings where everyone knows each other it is not so important, but in large gatherings if someone spontaneously utters a public prophecy that is not of God, it needs to be publicly corrected. This has to be done in as straightforward a way as possible. Equally in large gatherings, if the prophet feels he has a word, it is important to go and check this out with the leadership of the meeting, to see if it would be appropriate to share. Sometimes it will be accepted and sometimes you might be sent back to your seat, which has happened to me a few times. This can be a bit humbling, but it’s all part of the calling! It doesn’t happen so much within the Catholic tradition, but among Pentecostals sometimes the behaviour of the prophets and their manner of delivery can seem very strange. When we look at the Old Testament Prophets we can see that this has a solid biblical basis. Thus we should be careful not to simply react to surface behaviour or allow an overly conservative attitude to determine what is acceptable Godly behaviour. Here in England I think we have often been crippled in our openness to the power of God in the prophetic because of a misguided sense of respectability. This was brought home to me during a recent trip to Africa where we saw the most incredible healings, at the same time witnessing the most bizarre behaviour I have ever seen. I believe that a wrong sense of propriety at work in us can kill the Spirit. “Breaking Through Barriers of Respectability” When I am invited to minister anywhere I always pray that the Lord will give me the right theme to preach on and tell me what to say. A couple of months ago I was invited to speak at a church in Stockton. Although I prayed all day, I got no guidance on what to speak on. It got to the stage of my standing up to begin my talk, and still my mind was blank. It was as though God had deprived me of my normal thinking ability. I felt terrible. They will think I’m stupid, I thought, and never invite me back. I just said the first thing that came into my head, which was a comment on my dirty shoes. I don’t know how it happened but suddenly, the glory of the Lord fell on that place. Almost all the congregation ended up whistling in the spirit and people grew massively in their sense of expectation. We broke through the barrier of respectability and that night people were healed of depression and all kinds of other problems. The lovely thing about it is that I can honestly say, “it had nothing to do with me.” As if to prove it, the following evening when I gave a talk to an ecumenical gathering in the same church, although it was a good evening and what I had to say seemed alright, the glory just wasn’t there. Although I wanted it to happen, I couldn’t make it happen. And that’s the point of the prophetic: it is to bring the attention back to God. In our weakness He can be strong! I believe ultimately the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for two purposes. They are tools for salvation and to help us to become holy as they encourage us to grow in dependence on God. (See below from the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CCC).
CCC Section 2003
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