Receiving a Prophetic Word

Prophets are not spiritual automatons. God speaks to a prophet as a whole person. A vision from God has to be perceived in the prophet’s imagination. Words from God have to pass into the mind, because that where humans process all information. These words from God have to pass into the memory, so the prophet can write them down or speak them later. The prophet must judge with their will whether the word is from the Spirit and chose whether they will speak it. Some prophets actually feel what God is feeling (Jer 9:1).

Therefore, it is not at matter of rejecting thoughts, feeling and imagination, as that would be impossible. Feelings, thoughts and imaginations are not bad, per se. It is an issue of avoiding my thoughts, my feeling, my imaginations and accepting God’s thoughts, God’s feelings and Gods imaginations.

The flesh is the part of our mind, memory, emotions and imagination that is still corrupted by sin. The problems is that the flesh is not in a separate box, distict from the part of the mind, memory, and emotions that have been made new in Jesus by the Spirit. They are intertwined.

A prophet must learn to distinguish between thoughts and feelings that come from the Spirit and those that from you flesh (corrupted mind, emotions, etc.) That is the key to being a reliable prophet. The issue is not whether we have received a feeling or a thought, but whether it comes from God. That is much harder than just rejecting all thoughts and feelings.

Some will say that they will only receive things that come through their spirit, but that is easier said than done. The human spirit is neutral like an antennae. If it is born again it can receive the Spirit of God, but if corrupted, it can pick up the activity of demons, so the fact that something comes through our spirit, does not mean it is from the Holy Spirit. The human spirit is part of the human, so it cannot be discerned. What we can discern is the Spirit of God speaking. The renewed spirit loves to hear his voice and hums when it hears it.

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