By Sarah Williams
If you have given your life to Jesus, you have an amazing privilege to be able to hear His voice and walk in relationship with His Spirit. It was God’s delight to provide you with this dynamic gift combination so that you would always have everything you need in your life on earth. Maybe you have begun to unwrap this gift and to discover the priceless treasure that you have permission to access. God’s design is for you to be able to know Him deeply. And as you grow through that journey of discovery, His plan is that you would become His mouthpiece, as one of His prophetic people. If you are like me, that invitation – that we can become a friend of God and have the honor of representing Him on the earth – leaves you awestruck! In order to walk this out and do it well, I propose to you five vital goals that every prophetic person should have. These objectives will keep you tenderly aligned with God’s heart and reflective of His nature as you yield to Him to be used as a conduit to release powerful words of love, strength, and hope.
1. Protect Your Relationship with the Lord As Highest Priority
Life is like a grand buffet with endless, appealing choices you can heap onto your plate. But we all know we are miserable after overeating, so in reality, there is only so much we can do with one life while still maintaining health. As God’s prophetic people, our goal should always be to keep God on the center of the plate. In every season, He should make the cut! Sometimes we have to forfeit other desirable things in order to choose God. To put God first over other pleasures is called the fasted lifestyle. This may involve traditional fasting but can reach beyond to include cutting out some media, social opportunities, or entertainment in order to enjoy extra time with God.
I often think of men in the Bible like Enoch, who walked with God, and Moses, whom God treated as a friend. I consider the verses where God says that He shares His secrets with His friends. These examples and verses have served as models that have driven me to consider how to shape my life to be included in God’s friend list. What price will you pay to protect and prioritize your relationship with God? How hungry are you to not just have knowledge about God but to know Him deeply, personally, and experientially?
2. Study and Model God’s Heart and Character
When you decide you want to dive deeply into God, He will take you on a journey to teach you about who He really is. He is unlike any other. He will reveal to you fascinating facets of His nature – what motivates Him, what He sounds like, what emotions are evoked when He speaks. If you will submit your preconceived ideas to Him, He will strip away the lenses you picked up by human observation and hand you pure, clean new ones.
If you make your goal to truly know Him, the God of the Bible will illuminate the truth of His Word so that your heart can understand what your head knows. He will teach you the way of love, demonstrated by His every word and action toward you. As you learn this, it will become a launching pad from which you get to minister and co-labor with God.
3. Learn God’s Language and Timing
As you dig into God’s Word, you will find that God’s messages to people often come shrouded in mystery. From dreams to visions to parables, we see that symbols are a common part of His language. Proverbs 25:2 (ESV) says, “It is the glory of God to conceal things, but the glory of kings is to search things out.” As God’s prophetic people, He invites us to search out what He has hidden. We do this by pursuing God, not by reasoning with our minds, for interpretations belong to God (Genesis 40:8). To learn God’s language, we must listen for His Spirit to unlock understanding of His revelation.
Likewise, we must depend on God’s wisdom to discern His timing. Consider Joseph, who as a teenager received a symbolic dream from God that indicated that someday his family would bow down to him. Joseph likely did not realize that it would be many years before this would play out in his life. Our human nature typically seeks immediate application when we hear from God. At times we will have a deep witness in our spirit of the correlation of what God is saying with a present situation. But when His words seem puzzling, it is best to protect the word by writing it down. Ponder and pray over it, knowing that when the time is right, the Holy Spirit will unlock what God has revealed.
4. Be A Conduit of God’s Love
It doesn’t take great discernment to see the negative in the world or the dirt underlying a person’s humanity. What makes an impact is Spirit-led ministry that is sourced from the heart of God, who is Love. If we don’t minister out of His love, we are ineffective and our ministry has no value. Jesus Himself said that on the last day some will remind Him that they prophesied and performed miracles in His name, but He will reply that He never knew them (Matthew 7:22-23). God makes it clear in His Word that He is looking for people to be His voice on the earth. Prophecy is in His heart. But if the prophetic is not fueled by the love of God, it will completely miss the mark of God’s intention and be worthless in His eyes. “If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:2, NIV).
On the other hand, if we are stewarding our relationship with God and studying His character with a desire to truly know Him, we will catch a personal revelation of His great love for us, which inevitably will cause us to minister out of the overflow. “We love because He first loved us” (1 John 4:19, NIV).
5. Humbly Walk in the Fear of the Lord
“Pride leads to disgrace, but with humility comes wisdom” (Proverbs 11:2, NLT).
Being a representative of God is a privilege that should have no pride attached to it. To hear from God is a gift that should be handled with the greatest humility. God will test hearts to see what we will do with what He gives us. Revelation should never be paraded around or shared to glorify oneself. Some whispers are never to be spoken, for they are secrets between lovers. Others will be a key to set captives free, healing balm to the broken, or a springboard for destiny.
The key to properly delivering God’s words is to depend on His wisdom and to stay close to His heart. There is a learning curve in communicating on behalf of God, but He gives grace and wisdom to the humble. If you always point people toward Jesus and stay soft and teachable, the Lord will train you as His spokesperson. As you protect your purity and maintain the right heart motivation, you will learn to serve God and His people and to represent Him well.
Humility and the fear of the Lord go hand in hand. Jesus Himself walked in step with the will of His Father. He said He did only what He saw the Father doing. To walk in the fear of the Lord is to seek out, to honor, and to respond to what God desires. It is to align one’s life in reverence to what pleases the Lord above all else.
God’s prophetic people should be sensitive and obedient to His promptings. They should depend on His leadership in every area of their lives. When this becomes your core value, God will find you a trustworthy friend and you can become a vessel that God can flow through.
“The friendship of the LORD is for those who fear him, and he makes known to them his covenant” (Psalm 25:14, ESV).
Click here to listen to Sarah’s interview with Open Bible President Randall Bach
About the Author
Sarah and her husband, George, have been in ministry together for over fifteen years. They began their journey as urban missionaries, which led to planting and co-pastoring CityLight Church. Sarah’s passion is to see people saved, healed, and delivered. She and her team run the Transformation Center, which offers personal prayer ministry to help people receive heart healing and freedom. Sarah highly values her ministry to her family and to the Lord. Her delight is in raising her two daughters and being a friend of God.
