CRYSTAL THOMAS MINISTRY

REVEALING THE VOICE OF GOD TO THE NATIONS

Walking as a Prophetic People

‘In the last days,’ God says, ‘I will pour out my Spirit upon all people. Your sons and daughters will prophesy. Your young men will see visions, and your old men will dream dreams. 
Acts 2:17.

I am going to say right out of the gate that there is a big difference between someone who is a five-fold minister and is called to the office of a prophet -versus- the flow of the gift of prophecy in the life of a saint who is called to do the work of the ministry, I will continue on depth in that later.

All prophecy is spoken from the divine inspiration of God and not by man’s own knowledge, wisdom or understanding.

“Knowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpretation, for prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.” 
2 Peter 1:20-21

“These things we also speak, not in words which man’s wisdom teaches but which the Holy Spirit teaches, comparing spiritual things with spiritual.” 
1 Corinthians 2:13

PROPHECY SHOULD LIBERATE AND SET FREE

You need to be pushed out of your comfort zone and out of your area. There is a need for growth and a need for sharpening. As a prophetic person you are a farmer. You are a seed sower. You will have a predominant way of seeing what is going on in the spirit. You will have a predominate door you enter into for the Lord to speak to you. Get strong in this area. Then intentionally get strong in other ways as well. Learn to fully go in to what you’re seeing and ask the Lord what does this mean. Ask questions with elders or other who you know flow in this. Ask God questions. He is OK with questions. Everything we do we are fused with the revelation of Acts 2: The Holy Spirit Comes. Words from the Lord are like KEYS coming in and unlocking doors in others lives. You have to partner with the Spirit. Prophecy is a reliant on the Holy Spirit. In the Old Testament the Lord would put the words in the Prophets mouth, and it would be this big event, this huge thing.  In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit that is continuously in you causes words to BUBBLE UP from with in. You become a spring of revelation. You carry the well of the Holy Spirit.  In the New Testament, the Holy Spirit that is continuously in you causes words to BUBBLE UP from with in. You become a spring of revelation. You carry the well of the Holy Spirit. Stepping out in faith, you build the history of your prophecy, by practice and faith in the Lord.

YOU ARE a seed sower.

4 There are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. 5 There are differences of ministries, but the same Lord. 6 And there are diversities of activities, but it is the same God who works all in all. 7 But the manifestation of the Spirit is given to each one for the profit of all: 8 for to one is given the word of wisdom through the Spirit, to another the word of knowledge through the same Spirit, 9 to another faith by the same Spirit, to another gifts of healings by the same Spirit, 10 to another the working of miracles, to another prophecy, to another discerning of spirits, to another different kinds of tongues, to another the interpretation of tongues. 11 But one and the same Spirit works all these things, distributing to each one individually as He wills.
1 Corinthians 12: 4-11

PROPHECY IS LOVE.  PROPHECY IS A GIFT

The gifts are there for the taking. You don’t have to buy them. Jesus already purchased them for you. The prophetic is us experiencing the goodness of God and then sharing it with others. And the core of prophetic is LOVE. Love is the DNA of it all. 

Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you may prophesy.
1 Corinthians 14:1

The more you fall in love with the Father, the more you’ll flow in gifts. The prophetic is the way we function, the way we see, the way we communicate with people. We need to realize that the prophetic is NOT just a gift of a language. It IS a KINGDOM. Prophetic is the heart of God. When we give a prophetic word we are to translate the heart behind it. People are being entrusted by the heart of God to speak on his behalf. Prophetic words = asking the Father what he thinks of his children and then relaying that information

The Old Testament uses three Hebrew words that are translated into the English word “prophet” or “seer”:  nabi, roeh, and hozeh.

  • Nabi literally means “to bubble up.” It describes one who is stirred up in spirit. It is the most frequently used of the three by the Hebrew writers. When the sense of “bubbling up” is applied to speaking, it becomes “to declare.” Hence, a nabi, or a prophet, is an announcer who pours forth the declarations of God.
  • Roeh means “to see” or “to perceive.” It is generally used to describe one who is a revealer of secrets, one who envisions.
  • Hozeh also means “to see” or “to perceive,” but is also used in reference to musicians. It is also used to describe a counselor or an advisor to a king. The Hebrew does not necessarily indicate that the person is a prophet, but rather an someone who has wisdom. It means “one who has insight.” The translators try to indicate whether the message is spiritual. If it is spiritual, then they tend to translate hozeh as “prophet.” If it does not give any indication of being spiritually generated, then they would render it “advisor” or “counselor.”
  • Naba  = to bubble up . Pour forth. Abundance of words.
    • i.e. speak (or sing) by inspiration (in prediction or simple discourse):—prophesy(-ing), make self a prophet.
    • To plant a seed. And the holy spirit plants the seed like an arrow in the person you are speaking to
    • Go passed the skin. Go passed the flesh. Go passed what the person is looking like in the natural.
    • Prophecy spirit to spirit

FIND THE GOLD IN THE DIRT

Paul describes very clearly what prophecy is supposed to be and that it is to build up like-minded people and the church. Learning how to distinguish between God’s voice and other voices is vital. It takes practice to discern His voice and tune out all the other distractions. As you become accustomed to His voice, you will distinguish between good and bad, fake and true, and discern possible differences from other voices and His voice. Every voice that conflicts with the Word of God and the Father’s heart is not the truth.  So, if something you hear differs from either of those, it has to be weighed before it is given! Prophetic is calling things as they should be, in Genesis 1:1-3, it states darkness hovered over the face of the earth, it took no gift to see the darkness, But God didn’t call out the darkness, God said let there be light, he called things as they should be. Prophetic is to change perspective. Sometimes you’ll see the darkness and then you speak to the light. Sometimes God will speak the secrets of others to you so you can speak into their lives. Secrets remain in the secret place unless otherwise advised by God.

THE PROPHETIC GIFT (NOT THE OFFICE OF THE PROPHET)

Love / Culture of love
Strengthening others
Encouragement
Edification = confirmation, to build foundation
Exhortation = call near, to make request, God reaching out to pull close
Comfort = console, encourage, hope to relate nearness

WHO CAN PROPHESY? (NOT WHO IS A PROPHET)

All – Every believer has been called by God to live in the prophetic. It’s the call of every believer.
Acts 2 | 1 Corinthians 14 | Ephesians 4 speaks on equipping the saints. All have privilege to hear God. He calls all because all are needed to edify the church.

“Now it shall come to pass, if you diligently obey the voice of the Lord your God, to observe carefully all His commandments which I command you today, that the Lord your God will set you high above all nations of the earth.
Deuteronomy 28:1

Listening to the voice of God is the activity for deeper relationship.

“my sheep know my voice"
John 10:4-5

Prophetic is the natural overflow of a spirit filled life. It’s the overflow of the Holy Spirit. When we shut down spiritual gifts, you shut down key aspects of the Holy Spirit. Receiving gifts in other people is receiving God. Rejecting ministries is rejecting God. The prophetic was never intended to be the full console of God. The Bible says we see in part an know in part. God gives tastes of things – taste is to spur on hunger.

COUNTERFEIT PROPHETIC ANOINTING

The enemy is not a creator so if there is something he has taken and manipulated its because it is high value to Gods kingdom. The religious spirit and political spirit want to impart the gift of suspicion b/c that reinterprets the circumstances and it causes a spirit of offense to rise up that mirrors that prophetic anointing. Its a counterfeit prophetic anointing. You have the same burning that something needs to be done, something needs to be said, but not recognize that the origin of information is actually deception. Whatever you misdiagnose you mistreat. You have to be alert to the spirit of offense. When you speak from yourself your offenses you’re not tapping into what HE says. And when you do that, it is a subtle way to move into self-promotion not Heavenly promotion. 

21 “As for Me,” says the Lord, “this is My covenant with them: My Spirit who is upon you, and My words which I have put in your mouth, shall not depart from your mouth, nor from the mouth of your descendants, nor from the mouth of your descendants’ descendants,” says the Lord, “from this time and forevermore.
ISAIAH 59:21

This was the covenant from the LORD. And almost always when the spirit of the lord fell upon them, it came out in way of prophecy.

THE BODY OF CHRIST

Prophecy was to the body of Christ. You are the sons. You are the daughters of prophets. Why is that important? Because of the covenant in Isaiah 59 was established that I will put my words in your mouth and in your descendants and in your descendants and so on. You have an inheritance. You’re not going to write a check if you know you don’t have the funds. You’re not going to draw from identity unless HE reveals to you who you are. When you read this you realize that you are an heir. Once you realize this your posture will change. Not out of arrogance but in confidence in your inheritance, who God called you to be. The sons and the daughters of prophets, you’re in line to carry the spirit of god and the words of the Lord.

STEPS TO HEAR FROM GOD

1. Quiet yourself Fix your eyes on Jesus
2. Tune into spontaneity – pictures, thoughts, verses
3. To grow in the spoken you have to grow in the written —- Keep a journal
4. Embrace you & Celebrate progress
5. Embrace learning
6. Prophecy over yourself
7. Activate your senses

THE GIFT VS THE OFFICE

The gift is for all, but being called to the ministry as a prophet of God (or into the office of a prophet) is to be called to be a part of the five-fold ministry. This is detailed in Ephesians 4:11-12.

'Now these are the gifts Christ gave to the church: the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, and the pastors and teachers. Their responsibility is to equip God’s people to do his work and build up the church, the body of Christ.'
Ephesians 4:11-12

The office of a prophet is very different from operating in the gift of prophecy. As a calling, it is firstly affirmed by God to that individual, and then at a later stage, it’s affirmed by man, specifically by other members of the five-fold ministry. Most probably this affirmation will come by another prophet, but it can be confirmed by one of the other offices too (apostle, teacher, pastor and evangelist). Just because a man or a woman is called into the office of a prophet, it does not mean they are ready to be behind a pulpit or put into a place of influence. However, they are called to be raised up to be servant-leaders and to equip and train the Body of Christ to do the work of the ministry.

Thus, operating in a gift of prophecy vs. being called into the office of a prophet are very different indeed. And let me say this one thing:

A prophet’s job really isn’t to prophesy over individuals, but someone standing in the office of a prophet is meant to teach the church how to hear the voice of God more clearly.

Another function of their calling is to point and show the way.  They may do this by providing words that indicate timings to the church leadership of where they are going and how to stay on track. Some prophets tend to be very straight forward in their approach when it comes to giving direction, re-direction, correction and seeing into the spiritual realms where others cannot.

This straight-forward, spiritual keenness can make people feel like the prophet is a little weird, and in some cases, even rude—but please hear me on this. Those who are called to the office of a prophet should love people and the church with the love of God, and so their communication should never be judgmental or critical. Their directness in wanting believers to be all God has called them to be can be received as a little harsh, when really, it’s not.

Gift of Prophecy:
  • It’s a gift of the Holy Spirit
  • Every believer is encouraged to prophesy
  • It’s for edification, exhortation, and comfort (EEC)
  • Prophetic utterance is a gift
  • He/she is defined as a saint doing the work of the ministry
  • The gift is for life
Office of a Prophet/Prophetess:
  • It’s a gift from the Godhead
  • God chooses the office; it’s not our choice
  • It’s to train, equip, direct, correct, warn and govern
  • He/she is a gift to the Body of Christ
  • He/she is part of the five-fold ministry

WORD OF KNOWLEDGE

The gift of prophecy is given for all believers to edify, exhort and comfort. Even if you are not called into the office of a prophet, you can start to speak prophetic words of life and encouragement to those around you as you start to spend more time hearing God’s voice.

A Word of Knowledge is a Holy Spirit given revelation about a fact, a current circumstance, or something that took place in the past. This kind of word can reveal the whereabouts, conditions, nature, or thoughts of a person, place, or thing, even when it is impossible to know it in the natural. This can be especially true of words given for healing.

A Word of Knowledge is simply the Holy Spirit downloading His specific knowledge to us on something that we would have no natural ability to know through our own knowledge. It is supernatural insight being given directly to us by the Holy Spirit Himself.

The Holy Spirit can impart a word of knowledge to cover anything from something very trivial, such as where you may have misplaced your keys, to actual life-saving knowledge on how to solve an impending crisis or emergency.

“How can I judge a prophecy when it is about the future of a person or a group of people?”

Well, the Holy Spirit who lives both within me, and every believer, discerns the validity of a word by bearing witness with our own spirits. We know this because He is the true source of all prophetic declarations. There is an unction, or a spirit-to-spirit knowing, that you have inside about the word. That knowing governs your understanding by indicating if the word lines up with His kingdom mindset and heart. One sure indication of whether a word lines up with the Word and God’s heart is that it will always raise the person up and bring them to a higher level. It leads them to understand how God sees them and what He wants for them.

PRACTICAL EXAMPLES

Here are just some specific examples of in what cases you can receive a direct word of knowledge from the Holy Spirit for your own life or someone else’s.

  1. A sudden solution to a particular problem you are trying to solve at school.
  2. A specific solution to a problem at your place of employment that no one else could imagine or figure out.
  3. Finding where you may have misplaced your wallet or something of great value that’s been lost.
  4. Knowledge on what a certain Scripture verse may mean and how it can apply to yours or another person’s life.
  5. Bringing to light a specific past or current situation or circumstance in someone’s life in order to minister to them. (Jesus and the woman at the well – John 4:5-41)
  6. Revealing a past issue in someone’s life to bring them into complete freedom when they hear the truth of a situation.
  7. How to solve a dispute between others. (Just look at Solomon with the baby in 1 Kings 3:16-28)
  8. A time and/or a place given to actually find someone who’s in trouble or who may get into trouble.
  9. God’s knowledge/personal revelation of a particular Scripture He wants to show you.
  10. A new idea or innovation in bringing something to marketplace for the greater needs of others.
  11. How to bring counsel and comfort someone who has just had a tragedy hit them full force.
  12. Instructions to divert a tragic situation in your own life or that of someone else’s (911 situation).
  13. What your specific calling in the Lord is going to be in this life and when to move into that season.
  14. A word of knowledge that God wants to heal someone of a specific illness and what is needed to cooperate with the healing.

As you can see from some of these examples, there is literally nothing that the Holy Spirit cannot get to you so that He can then give the correct knowledge that you or someone else needs.

PROPHETS ARE WEIRD

  • Isaiah walking around naked prophesying
  • Jeremiah hiding his underwear under a rock by the Euphrates
  • Jeremiah wearing “yoke-bars” as he spoke to the nation
  • Hosea marrying a prostitute and naming his children weird names
  • Jonah running from God and ending up in the belly of a great fish for 3 days
  • Ezekiel eating a scroll, laying on one side for 390 days, cooking his food over a fire of manure, prophesying over dry bones that come to life
  • Habakkuk confronting God on his seeming inactivity
  • Balaam riding a talking donkey

There are others but these are perhaps the most remarkable. The prophets were, indeed, a strange lot but God chose them and used them to speak his truth often to people who were utterly disobedient or others who didn’t even know him! Though we often think of prophets proclaiming visions of the future, far more of their speech had to do with daily living and how God expected his people to reflect his character to the world around them.

prophets ARE communicators, and like all great communicators, they utilized a wide range of verbal and nonverbal elements in their prophetic speeches. They didn’t merely speak out prophecies; they acted them out as well.

Ezekiel is the most notable example of being weird. Just a few of his enacted prophecies included lying bound in ropes (4:1-8), shaving his head and striking some of the hair with a sword (5:1-2), covering his face and digging through a wall (12:3-7), trembling (12:18), and avoiding the full mourning rituals for his dead wife (24:16-24).

People can choose to not hear a prophets words but majority of the time they want be able to miss them releasing a word.

Jeremiah buys, wears, and buries a new waist sash and then digs it up to discover that it’s ruined, no longer good for anything.

1 Thus the Lord said to me, “Go and buy yourself a linen waistband and put it around your waist, but do not put it in water.” 2 So I bought the waistband in accordance with the word of the Lord and put it around my waist. 3 Then the word of the Lord came to me a second time, saying, 4 “Take the waistband that you have bought, which is around your waist, and arise, go to the Euphrates and hide it there in a crevice of the rock.” 5 So I went and hid it by the Euphrates, as the Lord had commanded me. 6 After many days the Lord said to me, “Arise, go to the Euphrates and take from there the waistband which I commanded you to hide there.” 7 Then I went to the Euphrates and dug, and I took the waistband from the place where I had hidden it; and lo, the waistband was ruined, it was totally worthless. 8 Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, 9 “Thus says the Lord, ‘Just so will I destroy the pride of Judah and the great pride of Jerusalem. 10 This wicked people, who refuse to listen to My words, who walk in the stubbornness of their hearts and have gone after other gods to serve them and to bow down to them, let them be just like this waistband which is totally worthless
Jeremiah 13
Then the Lord said, “As my servant Isaiah has walked naked and barefoot for three years as a sign and a portent against Egypt and Cush, so shall the king of Assyria lead away the Egyptian captives and the Cushite exiles, both the young and the old, naked and barefoot, with buttocks uncovered, the nakedness of Egypt .
Isaiah 20:3-4
Many (not all) of the words in this post belong to Jeremiah Johnson & Emma Stark. I implore you to look them up & seek after the wisdom they carry in this avenue of our Kingdom walk. I personally needed all this information in one spot. :)  

recommended books:
prophetic pioneering - jeremiah johnson
cleansing and igniting the prophetic: an urgent wake-up call - jeremiah johnson
the prophetic warrior - emma stark
becoming the voice of god - emma stark