When you speak the mind of God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, when you’re speaking God’s thoughts into a situation and not just your own thoughts, you’re speaking prophetically.
I recently found some sermons I preached at First Pentecostal Church of God in Flatwoods, KY. This one is a sermon on the Gifts of the Spirit.[1] I’m going to focus in on the Gift of Prophecy since we’ve been looking at that in our recent podcasts (1 Corinthians 12.8-10).
Speak the Mind of God
Prophecy
This is a fun Gift of the Spirit because we tend to think of John the Baptist with camel hair clothing, eating locusts and wild honey, and thundering down upon the nation of Israel. But that’s not all that prophecy is.
“The gift of prophecy is manifested when believers speak the mind of God, by the inspiration of
the Holy Spirit, and not from their own thoughts.”[2]
When you speak the mind of God under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, when you’re speaking God’s thoughts into a situation and not just your own thoughts, you’re speaking prophetically.
It can happen anywhere in our church buildings, or out there where two or three are gathered in His name (Matthew 18.20). However, it’s usually manifested among the congregation (1 Corinthians 14).
Prophecy marks our progress. Prophetically, the Lord can show us where we’re at and where we need to go (Isaiah 48.17).
Prophecy often brings conviction. Conviction doesn’t only convict us of the sin that’s wrong. It convicts us of the sin that’s right, that we fail to do (James 4.17).
Prophecy is a spoken word from God, like during a Spirit-led moment in a worship service, or in a sermon, or even in conversation with other Christians.
The predictive nature of prophecy
Sometimes prophecy predicts. However, in the Bible prophecy is not often a prediction of God’s will for your life. Oftentimes, God says “If you take this path this will be the outcome, but if you take that path that will be your punishment.” So there is a pattern we see, that when prophets stand before the nation of Israel, they often lay out before them “life and death, blessings and curses” (Deuteronomy 30.19).
Therefore, if you understand the predictive nature of prophecy, you understand that it is often conditional. It is conditioned upon what you choose. Jesus talks about this often when He speaks about our rewards in Heaven.
This is the nature of prophecy for the most part. However, there are times when something is prophesied and it comes to pass soon, and exactly in the way it was spoken. There are revelatory prophecies. Yet many times when we speak the mind of God, it is conditional and based on our response.
