A word about Prophetic Reformation

I wanted to talk just a little bit about this prophetic Reformation that's going on and then we're gonna well it will jump into some dream interpretation before we end but this is something that is so core to who we are streams to the beginning of streams clear to to our current roof focus if you will as to what we're doing when John Paul first put together the organization the the legal organization the corporation if you will that that's now called streams ministries when he first incorporated it he actually called it prophetic Reformation ministries and that was the heart that was what God had given him what what what is it that needs to be done to reform the prophetic and the earth and funny enough I had no idea that this was that this is what had happened at the beginning I didn't know that in the early years of John Paul's ministry he used to do these seminars that he called reforming the prophetic and prophetic Reformation and I actually have tapes of one of those seminars I found somebody that had been to one of those had the tapes and they gave me those and so I had the tapes and I brought him out and I showed John Paul one time and he goes yeah that's that that's what became the art of hearing God which is kind of our our flagship course if you will it streams this prophetic Reformation it comes out of this heart just to see what would happen when people are about to prophetic not just for supernatural experiences but to really represent and speak for God and and having a lifestyle that that that that represents God and and and communicates and witnesses to his nature and witnesses to his names and witnesses to his attributes and makes room for everything that God wants to do and that that that heart is is still the core of who we are at streams ministries when John Paul passed away I was asking the Lord Lord what's my inheritance I knew there was a spiritual inherit that that was gonna come from the Lord because of my relationship with John Paul and he spoke this phrase he said it's prophetic Reformation prophetic Reformation and this is before I knew that John Paul had actually incorporated streams as prophetic Reformation originally and then they changed the name to streams ministries after the Toronto outpouring actually funny enough which I just I love that heritage that we have because that such a heart that I have for the revival and for the flow of the spirit but that prophetic Reformation and so I've been pursuing what what is what what is it look like in Scripture when the prophetic is healthy and what does it look like through history when the prophetic is healthy and and I've had an opportunity to literally travel around the world and work with prophetic communities in in different continents and different countries and different cultures and there are there are some themes that you can find for healthy prophetic communities and we actually have one of the resources that was the first resource that I released once I became the president of streams ministry is a teaching set on prophetic Reformation on how to mature prophetic communities and I go through the the different points that I found when I look at healthy prophetic communities what are the things that sets them apart what are some of the the core values if you will the core practices that they have that that helps them to remain healthy how does the prophetic interact with the other fivefold ministries with the Apostles with the evangelists with the pastors and the teachers what are the strengths that they bring what are the what are the the warnings that they bring to the prophetic that can help us to mature and better express the nature and character of God and we go through these things and I want to focus on one particular thing today and it's actually a phrase it's a single point that we make in the art of hearing God and it's disis this little phrase that's in the midst of us talking about the need for growth in the prophetic that that when somebody is called to the prophetic we're given this gift in an immature state but it actually needs to grow up it actually needs to mature and so we mature in the use of the gift and we mature in our character and that process is important and as we're teaching about this John Paul put this phrase in the notes and in and and it basically goes this I'm not gonna have the exact the exact words but but basically what he says is that when someone begins to identify with their gift rather than their relationship with the Lord that they will be offended when someone tries to discern the revelation that they have and and what happens is is kind of this process prophetic people tend to be a little bit odd and especially immature prophetic people because they they don't know how to integrate their gifting into their lives and so Minh if you will if you have a child that's very prophetic and they're feeling what's going to be happening a year from now and let's say a year from now things are gonna be amazing and and there's so much joy but right now the family is going through a difficult time period and everybody's sad maybe grandpa just passed away or maybe there there's been a move and so everybody else is sad and the child is all happy because they're experiencing what's going to be happening a year from now people don't know how to connect with that and and they begin to think that they're weird and then you have a child that begins to talk about the the things that they're experienced I remember standing in line in the second grade and telling the girl in front of me I know what you're thinking and she's like oh yeah right what am I thinking I said we're right now you're thinking that I don't know what you're thinking and she's little I did know what she was thinking and that is what she's thinking and I know somebody could just make that happen but it just is so stood out in my mind the ìiî litter I could feel what other people were feeling I could feel when one people thought that I was weird and people liked me and when people didn't like me and I would respond to what they were feeling inside not necessarily what they were saying outside and so I was socially awkward for a lot of my life and it created this this this kind of dynamic of rejection where people didn't know how to relate to me and I didn't know how to relate to people and I had to learn how to integrate my gift with the present moment so that I was actually engaging with people where they were at and I didn't know how to do that but what happened is I would start to tell people about some of the things that I saw or some of the things that I experienced and and people would begin to you know some people were astounded by those things and they just thought that they were really cool and people began to tell me how cool I was why I'd been through most of my life with dealing with rejection and people thinking that I'm weird now all of a sudden people are thinking I'm cool and so I want to do this more this happens in the church as well somebody that has this this experience of being a little bit off or a little bit different living in a different moment and people don't how to understand them they're talking about things that nobody else can see I I remember a friend of mine telling a story when they were when they were young preteen they went to a funeral and they were wondering why everybody wasn't freaking out about all the crows that were hanging out in the room nobody else saw them they were the only ones that saw them they had the social awkwardness there were talking about these things that nobody else was seeing and and didn't know how to relate to people and and because of that now all of a sudden they get into church and and and people are focusing on the prophetic and they begin to tell the things that they see and everybody's like wow that's amazing tell me more and and they get validation that they haven't gotten before and that wound that had been opened up by rejection is now being given the balm of praise but the praise is related to their gift and and when the praise is related to their gain then they start to identify with their gifting not through relationship and their identity becomes about their gifting and so they want praise they begin to feel that wound of rejection and they begin to feel lonely and so they start telling people about their experiences because people engage with them and people like that and people want them and so they need to tell people about their experiences and and if there's a wound in someone's heart where they haven't been healed of that rejection wound they they will end up walking into situations and the first thing they do is tell everybody about all their experiences because they want people to think that they're gifted because if people think that they're gifted then they feel loved because they really don't feel loved but they're now getting their love through their gift this is a problem that this is it's a dangerous path because sooner or later there's gonna be seasons where God is not activating your gift there are seasons of silence with God and that's not an it's not an angry thing it's not a bad thing that's a good thing because it's it's not about gifting it's about relationship that God's more interested in relating to you as a person and he is using you for what you can do he is we don't have a using relationship of God he doesn't want to use us he wants to love us he wants to be with us and sometimes he'll just sit with us but we're we're trying to do something for God because we think that that's being that that's love but he refuses to give us those things so that we begin to identify with him not with what we're doing he begins to identify out of relationship not out of our gifting and and that process becomes very difficult when we haven't actually dealt with that rejection wound because we will find a way to get revelation and some people they end up making up revelation they they begin to to to stop discerning the difference between imagination and revelation and imagine can be an amazing tool that's kind of like a runway that can lead you into the things of the Spirit but imagination is merely a runway that you go down but if you never lift off it's just a road you're not actually flying so there's a place for imagination to prepare us to go into the things of the spirit but as we mature we've actually got to separate out imagination from revelation and and and if we don't do that and we have that rejection wound then we're just imagining things and we're telling everybody as if they were real experiences because we want everybody to think how gifted we are because that's what it means to be loved because that's how we find acceptance and we've spent so much time being rejected that we're crying out and we're reaching out for acceptance and and it's a trap because if we do that the next step is this is if we refuse to surrender to just relationship with God and and and we begin to use that imagination one people begin to reject us because the spirit of truth is no longer witnessing to what's happening and then we have to figure out realized one we have to repent for lying to people because telling somebody that imagination is revelation is lying letting that one sink in because I've heard people teach you all would just imagine it and then tell everybody that it's revelation because that's called faith no that's not faith that's lying the Spirit of Truth does not require lying to operate with him that one we could talk about that one all day long that's such a key principle when it comes to the prophetic but that we'll talk about that more another time and we deal with that and practical prophetic training and I deal with that in the prophetic Reformation as well so if you want to go a little bit deeper on that those are a couple keys a couple places resources you can go but but once we if we stopped if we don't separate out those things and we're still looking for something to happen that becomes the door if we're crying out for something that God is not giving us and we keep on going after it we can end up getting it but it's not from God and that's actually the path that false prophets end up taking this is this is one of the keys this is one of the things that happens with Jezebel Jezebel spirit is often it pretends to be more spiritual than everybody else and points everybody to their experiences and and there will be the first persons when you meet them the first thing they talk about is their experiences how prophetic they are and how about their dream and about their encounters and and it's like that's all that they can relate to people with and they kind of create this feeling of oh they're so spiritual and then people begin to look up to them because they're spiritual and then they begin to control them with their spirituality now people don't become Jezebel because they decide that they're going to be Jezebel people become Jezebel because they're wounded and they have a rejection issue and they're looking for love and because they can't find love because they're not receiving the love that people are giving them because they have a filtered picture a tainted picture of what love is they begin to reach out for control they begin to control people using revelation and that takes people into that place of being false prophets people can start out down the wrong road but they can get healed and go down the right road people can can can start out the right road and if they don't deal with their stuff they can end up on the wrong road and it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of time to be that deceived and most of us we're not going to get there if we're honest see this is the key radical honesty about who you are now let's go back to our thought process rejection issues people begin to be impressed by our gifting we begin to put our gifting out as a badge to receive love and to receive acceptance and then somebody says well I'm not sure that was from the Lord now you find out what you love by what you protect and if you have to protect your revelation and prove that it's from God the reality is as you love your revelation more than you do the person in front of you these are beautiful heart checks because if we can learn these things we can stop ourselves from going down paths that we shouldn't go down before we go down then what we actually can can be in that place of full surrender and and and it really comes back to this what do you get your identity from is your identity because people tell you that you're gifted because people tell that you that you're prophetic or that you're a CEO or or whatever it is if that's your identity then that's what you have to put in front of people to feel okay with being you and everybody longs to belong everybody needs to feel okay with being themselves because we were created in the image of the I am who is ultimately okay with who he is we were created to be okay with who we are but there's a specific image of who we are that we've been given that comes from him when we get our identity from from the things that we do from other people and their responses and not from him and him alone then that that that good thing that God put in us a desire to belong and that desire to be settled in who we are it begins to take us into bad places and we begin to violate our conscience to satisfy our needs it all comes back to healing that there's this issue of the healing of the heart and and when it comes to the prophetic it's the issues of the heart become more and more pronounced because the the message that God gives comes through the heart of the Prophet it's like a light that gets shine through and the person actually is a lens that that light shines and to the extent that that lens is cracked and broken it distorts the light that's showing up that the shining through and to the extent that we allow God's love to heal our brokenness we're able to reveal a pure image of what it is that he's saying what it is that he wants to communicate this is so important now once you get to this point and and you share something that you feel is from God and some misses why I don't think that that's from God you don't have to defend it you you can one maybe there's relationship enough that you just well help me understand that like what why what what is it that you know that doesn't agree with this and then you can talk with them about it I mean if there's not that relationship you could just say oh okay you you don't have to believe that it's from God I'm gonna go back and figure it out for myself and you don't have to tell them I'm gonna figure it out for myself but you can just be okay and you can leave them be them and you can be you so because there's a determined psychology and the term is this differentiate if you're able to differentiate who you are from who other people are you're healthy the the level of your differentiation is the level of your emotional health now this is a it's a scriptural concept I don't have time to go through all of the the ways that we find this but when you're when you have a low differentiation what happens is you you begin to get your identity out of how other people respond and we you know there's all kinds of unhealthiness you have people that they get merged together and and you know the the kind of the saying well mama ain't happy ain't nobody happy I mean that's as unhealthy as it gets I mean you be you let other people be other people and when you get into gifting the same thing holds true if you can't be you and you can't let other people be them then you can actually help them you'll only use them to be okay with yourself and if you're going to be a prophetic voice that's going to have impact in the lives of other people you've got to be Oh kay letting the other person be themselves and if they don't agree with your revelation that's between them and God not between you and them now you have a responsibility to go back to God for yourself and figure out whether or not it was really him god I thought that was you is that you now you don't have to question your revelation because somebody else questions it but if you never question your revelation because other people question it that's probably a lack of humility because if you don't think that you can be wrong you're already wrong we're human and we can be wrong I mean Paul got revelation wrong in in Scripture he told everybody hey if we if we go if we take this boat out of the harbor we're all gonna die there's gonna be loss of life there's gonna be a loss of property there was no loss of life now there was loss of property he got it partially right there's gonna be something bad that's going to happen but he didn't have it completely accurate he was partially wrong agamous he gives Paul this prophecy is partially wrong we've got to be humble enough to admit that that maybe we had some revelation but we understood it wrong we interpret it wrongly we communicated Iran we applied it wrong that that's possible sometimes it was it was not even revelation it was imagination or it was our desire we just had this heart desire to be helpful and so we were giving people something out of our own heart instead of out of the heart of God it's not an evil thing until you try to defend it and you try to force people to believe that what you said is a word from God it you can't force anybody else see self-control is a fruit of the Spirit other control is not and if we get this we will be so much more helpful in and as we're moving forward as we're helping people out so that's really where I wanted to go today I wanted to introduce you to that subject and and hopefully that will create some thinking and we'll give you some some things to Maul around to study out look in Scripture and watch how this happens in the lives of people and how it happens in the lives of of even prophetic peope in Scripture that that their experiences begin to filter their revelation and and that that happens all the time and so that's why is prophetic people we need to constantly be be looking and inviting the Lord into our hearts to bring healing to our hearts it's why things like Elijah house and restoring the foundations in so zou and inner healing ministries are so essential especially for prophetic people and if you're not going through those types of things you shouldn't be trying to lead other people through those things you know you cuz you only comfort others with the comfort Eidman given and so there's a need for this but what's also beautiful is the more that you begin to understand about the shape of the heart the more effective that you will be in healing hearts and one of the key things that God is given prophetic people is that we're supposed to be an example of a pure heart to allow others to experience the love of God through our lives through our words and as we do that they actually get healed they actually get a picture of Jesus and the extent that they see Jesus in us they get transformed into the image of Jesus that they see so we get transformed into the same image though we behold the glory of the Lord as in a mirror we get transformed into the same image from glory to glory we get transformed into the image that we behold and one of the things that the prophetic is supposed to do is to pull up a picture of Jesus in that other person so that they can see it in to the extent that they see it they can become it and that is a beautiful tool in the hands of a master craftsman and it is a dangerous tool and the hands of someone that's never taken the dime to deal with their own rejection and their own her in their own pain and they begin to use their gifting to beat people up to control people to separate people to cause themselves to feel superior to other people to look more like Satan than Jesus we can't do that we can't do that we must be the ones that take the time to deal with our own hearts so that we can be pure vessels and then we can help people so hopefully that was helpful to everybody if I could keep on going boy we would spend the rest of the weekend this is one of the reasons why I wanted to make this prophetic Reformation teaching available I think we we put it up in the comments if you haven't seen it yet you can go to our website if you're not here in the states you can download the mp3s and listen to it you can have a CD sent to you but it's going to help you and it'll not only help you as you are growing yourself but it's going to help you to equip other people because whatever you've been given you get to give away now here's the thing you're only going to change people to the extent that you've been changed so don't let it just be information let it become something that transforms you and as it transforms you then you can impart it to somebody else and it'll really transform them as well and so I pray that that's a huge resource that it will help you and the art of hearing God if you've not taken the art of hearing god that is is so helpful and so powerful and if you feel like your calling really is to become a prophetic voice the course that we wrote practical prophetic training it's it's specifically for people that feel like they have a calling to the prophetic where we go in-depth into issues like this but also some very practical what are the functions the prophetic and how do you operate in them what are the dynamics that we need to understand that we need to know we need to grow in and how does it operate with a five-fold that go much more in-depth I talk about what emotionally healthy prophetic looks like and that'll be a fun one that that is is so important we don't know we don't understand how important that is some of us do but boy is it so important and is it so rare in our day for it for that to happen thankfully it's becoming less and less rare and warm voices are rising up to talk about the need to have the voice of love in the midst of clarity and accuracy because it's a both/and when we're speaking for God

Channel: Streams Ministries

Views: 6,117

Rating: 4.921875 out of 5

Keywords: John E Thomas, Streams Ministries, Prophetic, Reformation, Community

Id: KicmQx3Jvss

Length: 26min 57sec (1617 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 17 2017