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Making Prophecy Normal?

Posted by Cath Livesey on December 4, 2013 in Values

This week was the last session of the marriage preparation course at our church. I was asked, with a few of my team, to pray for the couples and ask God for words of prophecy and encouragement for them. This got me thinking about how great it is to see the gift of prophecy being used in so many different areas of our church and really integrated into so many of the missions that our church focuses on. It’s good to see prophecy as a normal part of Christian life and mission. But what is normal, and what does normal look like?

Our vision at Accessible Prophecy is to see prophecy become normal in every church and to help churches on their journey with the prophetic. We have seen that in many churches today, even those that are comfortable with spiritual gifts, there can often be an uneasy relationship with the prophetic ministry. Often the perception of prophecy is that it is only for certain people: the leaders and the spiritually ‘elite’. Prophetic people are often thought of as suspicious or odd, and the average Christian can sometimes think that this amazing gift is out of their reach. However we passionately believe that prophecy should be the norm for all of God’s people.

Prophecy is a wonderful gift from God that means we can hear His voice, and this gift is accessible to all of us no matter how ‘ordinary’ or ‘normal’ we are.

One of the amazing things about prophecy is that it is God speaking through ordinary people telling them what is on His heart. When someone gives you a word of prophecy; you have the chance to hear God’s heart for you, which is encouraging and builds up faith.

  1 Corinthians 14:1 says-

“eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.“

This means we are all encouraged to desire the gift of prophecy. We are given permission to desire it, ask for it and learn it. Therefore, prophecy can’t just be for the elite as we are all told to desire it.

We want to help churches develop a culture where hearing from God for ourselves and for each other is completely normal. We want the supernatural gift of prophecy to become natural in communities. We want all of God’s children to be able to hear His voice. We would love to see prayer meetings all across the country filled with prophecy for what’s to come, and prayer for each other to be abundant with prophetic encouragements. This is because we know that prophecy should be natural, normal and used all the time everywhere.

Now it’s true that there will always be something about prophecy that is ‘other worldly’ and not normal. In the world’s eyes hearing from God is strange, and getting a ‘picture’ from God is bizarre. At the end of the day prophecy is a supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit, and it can take some getting used to.

But when we were born again we became spiritual beings and the Bible encourages us to fix our eyes on the unseen.

2 Corinthians 4:18 says- “Fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.”

As spiritual beings we can learn to lift our eyes from the physical world around us and start to perceive the realities of heaven. We can start to tune in to God’s voice. And with this kind of mindset prophecy becomes a normal part of church life; not just for special times or with special people or when the worship has been good. Prophecy should and can be a normal and natural part of everyday life.

So, how well are you engaging with prophecy? Do you and your church find it to be a normal part of life? Prophecy is accessible to everyone, normal or otherwise, so if you don’t see it as normal yet – what’s stopping you?

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