 Good morning and welcome to today's session. We will continue with our discussion on the prophetic ministry. I want to request one person from the class to lead in prayer. This will most likely be our last prophetic session. Dear Heavenly Father, we come to you under the name of Jesus. We thank you for this day. We thank you for this fast that we are about to have. We thank you that you're a God who speaks with us. God, I pray that as pastor teaches the deep truths in the Bible. I pray that you help us to open our mind and heart and listen to it and understand it and put it into practice in our life so that we can be a blessing to others. What an amazing God you are. How amazing is your love to us is that you want to reveal the things to us, that you want to have a deep relationship with us. We honor you. We adore you, Jesus. We stand in all of you. I pray that you will give us good Wi-Fi connection throughout the session. Be with us and guide us in Jesus' name, my friend. Amen. Thank you, Jafina, for praying. Sorry, there was a disconnection, but then I'm back again. So we will get into our content for today. So, so far we've learned about the basics of the prophetic ministry and how to flow in the prophetic anointing. We've also learned about interpretation of dreams, visions, and today what we're going to do is we are just going to look at the other key aspects for us in the ministry when we minister in a congregational setting or when we minister in a group, when we minister together as a team, you know, how exactly do we go about things and so on and so forth. So now start off with chapter Yeah, 12 in our notes here, ministering prophetically. So this talks about how do you deliver? We said that interpretation is very key. But sometimes we have different settings and different audiences. So how exactly do we go about delivering the prophetic word is the question. So whatever we do, we've been saying that the prophetic word is to glorify God, it is to edify the people and that shouldn't change. So when we talk about the prophetic ministry, we said that there are different levels, you know, we could operate at the level of the ministry, the believer as a believer, the gift of prophecy, we could also be ministering at the level of the grace gift or the, what do you say, it's a ministry gift, the prophetic ministry, and then you have somebody in the prophetic office. So generally when it comes to somebody who's operating in the gifts at the level of a believer, we tend to share more with individuals and we've already learned, you know, how exactly to do it. But then when you come to the level of somebody who's in the prophetic ministry, there could be other opportunities that these people minister to larger numbers, they minister from a pulpit or a stage. So how exactly, you know, could you deliver that message to a large congregation or during a church service? These are things to think about. So when delivering a message to a congregation, if we are delivered to, if we are led to deliver a prophetic word, then we need to ask some questions. So maybe I am on the stage and I get this prophetic word. Now this word could be for one person or it could be for a set of people in the congregation or it could be for the entire congregation. So I must first check who the messages form. So within myself, you know, I pray and I try to assess, okay, who should I be delivering this message to, that the next question that I would need to ask myself is, when should they be told? So whoever is the audience, when should I tell them? Should I tell them right now during the service or is it okay for me to share, maybe post service sometime? So two questions, who, when and we could also ask, you know, this question as to how we must deliver this message. So in that, how a couple of things come in, you know, should it be done publicly, publicly in the sense, okay, maybe after the service is over, if there are a group of people and you share that message openly, will that offend the person or should you actually do it privately or, you know, take time with that person alone and say, I have something to tell you and you know, share that message. So publicly, privately and maybe sometimes there is a need to keep the leader in the loop. So if it's a simple prophetic word where you're saying something like God is saying that he's going to bless you, he has seen your prayers, maybe it's okay to just just make those statements to the person themselves, that should be fine. And we are saying something where the oversight of the leader is essential. It's good to keep the leader in loop. Now, the leader might also tell us that we can submit the message to them and they will share it with the concerned person. So it could work that way as well. Now, especially when it comes to a message for the church body, then we must seek the permission of the leader to share that word. So it's always good to just submit it to the leader and the leader might say, God is speaking to us at this time and he has a very pertinent message for us. So you know, leader or pastor, can you please go ahead and share this with the entire church family? So when we have the permission, it's okay to stand up at the pulpit and go ahead and share that message. But otherwise, we may not know when exactly the pastor chooses to tell the church family, but we give it to him. That's how we do it. Now, there are many times that we may have seen that during prophetic ministry, people are called out from the congregation. So generally, it would be by name or by pointing at someone or something. They may say that I see somebody, they are like this, this, this. When a person relates to what is being spoken, then they say, okay, that's me. And the prophetic word is delivered. So is it okay to call people out? It's fine. It's fine to call people out because we know that the prophetic word is to edify the people. It is to exhort the people. So God can get their attention. God can strengthen them through these methods. And there are many ministries in which I've seen such things happen. And in fact, in some of the meetings, it was sort of unthinkable that even my name was called out and I was really like, oh, how does he know me? But it's amazing how God can actually work in this way. So it's a beautiful thing. But having said that, when we go to new congregations, it's always a different setting and culturally and in different ways, logistically, the way they have arranged themselves, the structure of that, the format of that meeting, it could all be very different from what we do. So we have to be very sensitive to how we go about doing this as far as possible, keep the leader in the loop and also while calling people out, we must make sure that the message which we are delivering will be uplifting. So if it's a corrective word, if it's a very personal word, it may not make sense to tell it out publicly, because it will bring more embarrassment for the person than encouragement. Now, even in the way we go about calling people out, right? We have to be sensitive. Now, maybe we get casual setup, but the people over there expect a certain kind of an honorable way in which the minister of God addresses them. So if we say something like, hey, you or something, when we address people like that, they may not like it. The word we are sharing is genuine. The way we are doing it is embarrassing the people. So it's all about being sensitive to the timing, to the culture, to the format of the meeting, the person over there and all. So don't embarrass people. Don't humiliate people by bringing things out that they may actually not like. Or unfortunately, in the prophetic ministry, there have been instances where false accusations have been spoken in public in the guise of prophetic ministry. But it's actually meant to put somebody down. It's actually meant to hurt them. So these are all things that happen and we want to stay away from that. So let's be careful in the congregational setting about these matters. Okay. Now, when it comes to delivering personal prophecy, I mentioned, we have to think this, if there's a message for a particular person, how should I do it? Should I do it in a group setting, call them out during the service or meet with them later on? So remember, we said that in a prophetic word, a lot of things get said, but then there are a lot of things which go unsaid. So while giving that word, we may not have all the background of the individual. So to apply the prophetic word, this individual might need the wisdom of God. We as a traveling minister will go say the word and we'll be gone. But that person has to work with that prophetic word, apply it and see if it's a genuine prophetic word, see the results of it. So what happens is, in these kind of scenarios, it's good to have the pastor involved or a leader involved because then the local pastor will be able to provide the future guidance that, let's say it's a young person and they have this prophetic word about their career, about their ministry. So we get the word and we go away. But the local pastor knows in a sense, they know, okay, what is this minister saying, which part of the prophecy relates to this, which part of the prophecy relates to that, okay, these are the kind of practical steps that the youth needs to take. Now, if that doesn't happen, let's say the young person is very enthusiastic about ministry, they might, if we just give them a word saying, okay, I see you, you are ministering in China and then we are gone, that person will do everything they know to get to China to make it happen tomorrow. So they may make some wrong decisions of quitting their job and selling their things and they are deep into it, it's very difficult to reverse decisions like this, which is why for personal prophecy, involve the leader, engage the pastor, okay, and then you could actually, that would be the right way to do it. Sometimes these matters are very sensitive, I don't know whether I shared with your batch, but I remember once we had gone for a mission trip and we were praying for a particular lady and two of us were praying for this lady and it was very different, the kind of pictures that we saw, I personally, I saw a clock which had stopped. So the sense I had is like time is going by, but the clock has stopped, okay, so then I could understand that it's like a passage of time, but probably not a useful passage of time. So I didn't understand, I just didn't understand what it was. So the other person got some pictures, we were sharing it with this lady and turns out she's a new believer and she was also not very clear on the standards of the Bible as far as marriage is concerned and all. So long story short, she was living in with the person, she was not married to the person, she had no intention of changing that setting. So it was a really sticky situation because the prophetic word is revealing this about her and we had no idea, we got into delivering the message and then we realized, oh this is what it is. And so the moment we realized that the person wouldn't know how to use what we are talking about unless a pastor guides her. So we spoke to the pastor's wife and we just requested her to come and we said, ma'am could you please talk to her in a very sensitive way, thankfully the pastor's wife, very mature lady, she was like, okay, I understand. And in a very gentle, nice way she was just sharing it. Another good thing is once we came away, they can now guide the individual. So you see sometimes prophetic words are like that and so just okay calling up his names, telling them what to do from the page and going away. Let's see that ministry that pastor has built over years and whatever we do, whether as a prophet or whether as an apostle or a teacher, maybe we are invited as a teacher to go to that congregation and serve. We have to think, they have built a work, whatever I do should help the work continue, should strengthen the work which has been going on, not do anything which, you know, remotely insensitive to either the leader or the pastors. I think we have to really settle in our hearts and work towards it. So even in the prophetic ministry, that's how it works. Now coming to ministering to political leaders, now we have seen that prophecies were given to kings and people in authority and it made a difference in their lives. Today, does God use us to minister to people in authority, especially political leaders? We would say yes. If we look back at the life of apostle Paul, he was ministering, he was speaking, he was testifying, he was into kings and commanders and people in charge of great responsibilities in the nation, in the regions. So it hasn't stopped, it's not just an old testament thing but it happens even today and we know that men and women of God can give a word to political leaders. So when there's a word, how is it that we should deliver? That's the question we're asking. So a couple of things we must keep in mind is we must come from a place of sincerity. So while we share the prophetic word to everyone and we are okay with that, when we share with political leaders or somebody, let's say, they have great influence, they have a lot of money, human nature is such that you get tempted to maybe flatter the person because how can we flatter in prophecy? It can happen that we could say all the nice things. God is going to raise you up and God is going to give you a lot of treasures and God is going to give you favor with this one. So the tendency is when somebody who is influential, we could err on the side of flattery but we really need to check our hearts. Let's say a chief minister is coming to your Sunday service and you're praying and your ministering in the spirit, you get big long prophetic words for many people but for the chief minister, let's say you just get one word or two words or maybe some simple words that God is saying, he sees your prayers or God is his hand upon your future. That's it. So the problem is people feel that if they do that then they may not have the favor of the leaders or let's say at point in time they need some help from the political they may not get it. Now we better make this person very very happy. So that is something that we must stay away from whether it's a political leader or influence. In the book of James, we read about this. We read, James says people are from different strata of society and he especially points out somebody poor, somebody rich in the same assembly gathering. He says if somebody is very rich with a lot of rings would you favor and would you neglect the poor? Don't do that. James, Apostle James talks about that. So in the same way because somebody is a person of influence giving them a better prophecy than somebody who is poor neglecting them because they don't look rich enough or famous enough. That's so sad if as Christians we do things like that. So that is something we have to be careful about. Then the next thing is do not compromise. Whatever God is really, again we may have a tendency what will they think, what will suppose let's say it's a corrective word, let's say it's there's a wisdom we can apply to the delivery of the word. It's important. It's coming from the Lord. You have to go ahead and release it appropriately. So don't compromise. Speak with wisdom that of course we have talked about it. We said that sometimes when we have to deliver some serious messages particularly, you know, God's judgment or correction, there's a way of putting it without offending a person. So obviously the message will offend them anyway but the presentation can be dealt with very smartly. So that is something to keep in mind. And the next thing is do not seek political favors and this is not just for political people but influential people in general. We must think that now that God is moving by his spirit in this area, I can use it to get rich or I can use it to at a piece of land or you know how people tend to think. So we need to avoid all these tendencies. Yeah, we'll move on to the next subject here. Any questions? Okay, any questions or if you've had any experiences in a conversation or something of receiving a word or speak? Yes, success? No, no, no, I'm okay. You're okay. I wanted to say something regarding the submission of the assignment. Okay, sure. Yeah, though I have not really been chance to do my assignments and I know today is the end of the day. Is it possible for me to submit it maybe because this is five, this is almost five a.m. Can I give me opportunity to submit it before nine o'clock this morning? Nine o'clock as in, I'm sorry, it's at the end of today for us, right, Indian time. So you still have time. You still have time. It's all right. Thank you. Yeah, sure. Thank you. All right, so we'll move on then. Can we come to the power of prophetic themes? How do these teams really help? We've seen how in the Book of Acts to the Church of Antioch, you had prophets come over and when they were ministering, when the team actually served there, they were able to strengthen the church. So it's nice to work for us somewhere. We might think that it's only about one person who is called into the ministry of a prophet and we may not have an idea that a group of leaders or a group of believers can actually minister the prophet together, but it's really help and can it be done? Yes, it can be done. It can be done in an orderly way. In first Corinthians 14, Paul gives instructions to use the gift, particularly that of prophecy in a proper manner. So he says things like let two or three prophets speak at the other's judge. Why? Because as a team, there are many people who are flowing in the same gift and so they can do it in such a way that there is greater accuracy. Now, he also says that if anything is revealed to another who sits by, let the first keep silent, for you can all prophesy one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged. This is from verses 29, 31 of 1 Corinthians 14. So we see here that people can minister together and the order in which they can minister is ideally one by one. So based on, maybe everyone has revelation and everyone wants to speak, but Paul is saying you do it one by one. So we give everyone a chance. Now, what if there is a word which let's say others also have a witness for? That word can actually be built up further. So let's say one person says, you know, I see that God is using you mightily in your work and that's about it. That's the revelation they got. Another person also got the same area about the work of this individual and they add another line maybe and they say that, yes, God is going to use you and I see him opening doors for you in the UK. So what's happening? There's one word, but together as a team, it's sort of coming out in its fullness and what God wants to actually speak to that person. So we can work together as a team and that way it gets done even better. So some good things about ministering as a team would be, as I told us now, double confirmation. So if the messages are on the same lines, we get more confidence that yes, I'm hearing it correct. Remember, I shared about that experience with another teammate. So we both were talking about the same subject. So I remember another time when we were ministering again in one of our missions trips, this person, we just closed our eyes for a couple of seconds. And then, you know, I asked her, what do you see? She said, I see a waterfall and I think I saw a river. So both of us saw water at the same time and that's the confirmation and, you know, we got the picture of the spirit, the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the description that God gives is through the picture of water or maybe even fire or wind, but in our case it was water. So we both knew, oh, God is talking about the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. So there's a double confirmation. So when we are flowing in the prophetic, the confidence or the assurance can be really strong when we have prophetic teams. So we must encourage prophetic teams, pieces of the puzzle. I shared how, you know, one person says one thing, another person says another thing, but it's like a jigsaw puzzle. You see that the picture is forming as each one releases the word which they are doing. So that's again a beautiful in which prophetic teams can flow. When we are in a group setting, somehow the stirring of the prophetic gift is, you could say, you know, it kind of stirs faster. If one person is flowing, you just find that others are also flowing just in the same way. So it's nice for us to create opportunities for groups of people to minister together. And that way, the flow will be better and the experience also, the prophetic experience will be better. So I'm not saying that it plays individual ministry with team ministry, but I'm saying if there is an opportunity for team ministry and you have people who understand the prophetic, why not? It's nice to have a team work together. The flow is better. Now checks and balances. So talking about this teams working together, I remember particularly post COVID, when our services were restarting here in Bangalore city, we did not have all our locations open because of the permissions and restrictions which were still on. So we could open our main location and in the main location also there were restrictions that only so many people can come and all that. But having said that, one good thing is pastors, instead of ministering at different locations, we could all go and gather. It's very difficult to have all the pastors together, right? But during those months, it was possible because we were still connecting with the central service and, you know, people are watching live stream. So nearly every Sunday, we did prophetic ministry as a team. So after the service, after the sermon, whoever's ministering would call us up and the pastors will flow, begin to flow. One person will say one thing and another person will say one thing. It was so beautiful to see how the spirit was actually flowing and how people were getting words and that's so nice. So even in a church, in a congregation as a pastoral team or a ministry team, if we develop people like this and then they begin to minister, that will be beautiful and it'll be a great blessing. Quite a few testimonies came out of those ministry times when, you know, people flowed in the gift of prophecy. So it's very useful. Texts and balances. This simply means that when people are flowing together, we can call found if something is wrong. As an individual, yes, I do my best to be accurate to provide a genuine prophetic word. But if something goes wrong, as another person who understands the prophetic gift, they can correct me or they can. It's not really like a correction, correction, but at least help me get back on track. So let's say, save that water interpretation that I shared. So I'm seeing water and the other person is seeing a waterfall. Maybe I think it is only what is God talking about? God is talking about direction in life because there's a river flowing. But when that other person also gets a waterfall, then as I'm interpreting it, I also think about it. Oh, okay, God is saying the same thing. He's talking about the same matter. So what can the interpretation be? So it really helps us align to the right interpretation and the right delivery. So that way it's very helpful. And also, we can be mutually accountable, right? We can be mutually accountable to one another and it really causes the development of the prophetic gift in us. So prophetic teams, there's something known as corporate covering in our notes here. But that simply means that it's like a safe umbrella of protection over a group of people when it comes to the operation of the gifts of the spirit. So what does it mean? It means that the whole group, the whole group, they are trained in the basics and other doctrines and the methods as to how one should flow in the prophetic gift. So if, let's say, one of us goes off, we are in error in the message or if the source of what is being prophesied is a deceiving spirit and not necessarily what God wants, the whole team is there to kind of correct those issues and help as God really wants it. So it helps, it's very protective for us to minister in teams and have this sort of a corporate covering. And also the development of the gifts will happen better because there's also opportunity to make our mistakes, to learn from our mistakes so on and so forth. So it's a safe environment that way as well and people will grow. Yeah, so we must encourage these prophetic teams. So where can we have these prophetic teams? We can have prophetic player teams. One church that I used to go to, this was while I was studying and I was not in Bangalore, another city, that church, they had a prophetic prayer team, it was something different that they were doing actually. So they had some people on the prayer team and they usually had seats somewhere in the front, they would keep a notebook with them and due to service, they would sketch images that they're getting but all in the context of prayer, not so much delivering a message but what the Lord is saying to the church, what the Lord is saying to the people. So more about, they'll receive the message, they'll write it if it's a scripture or this or whatever it is and then they'll just be praying for the service as the service is taking place. So that was the unique concept I've never seen, things like that. But yeah, prophetic prayer team that manner or it could simply be a set of people who are praying for the church, they're praying for the city, they're praying for the nation and whatever we discussed about prophetic prayer, remember? We hear from God and we pray that through, that is prophetic prayer. So they're not just praying, okay, everything in scripture is good, so we'll pray, no. But they are listening to God, the now message and they are praying that through, they see a powerful manifestation of the power of God. So that can happen, prophetic evangelism teams, this is when people go into streets or just a normal, you know, everyday life, you're just going about doing your things, but a word for somebody, right? You have a word for somebody and you're asking the Lord, Lord, give me a word and help me to speak that word to a person. So evangelism, when we share that word, the person is awakened. I remember this one testimony of a friend of mine at the workplace where he was talking to his colleague and he did not have any idea about what that colleague is actually going through in their personal life, but maybe something like, I don't remember the exact setting, but like a coffee break or some such time. While talking to his colleague, he just said, I feel like God is saying, be fruitful and multiply, okay? I know it sounds so weird that you tell your colleague be fruitful and multiply, but he did it. He just was like, is it okay? Can I tell you? And then he said it, but it turns out this colleague of his was, he and his wife did not have children and they really were praying for children or wanting children. They were not believers. They wanted children, but once this word was released, you know, things started moving fast and that person, their family, actually had a child. So you see how God ministers, it would just be one word, but what does it do? It turns the hearts of the people towards God. Oh, that is a God who knows what I'm going through. So prophetic evangelism themes and we try to do this even here when we go out for out-reaches, if you have a word or if there is a dream that person has had, you try to interpret it. So the point is that we want to draw them to God through what we are doing. So that is one way to use this gift, a prophetic worship themes. This I'm sure you all understand. So as a team, you flow together, somebody gets the word, somebody gets the music and then, you know, you're just singing it, singing the praises of God and prophetic creative teams, creative teams, the list is endless. You can have people painting, you can have people sketching prophetic words, you can have answers, you can have drama, skit. So expressions, all kinds of expressions. We can have creative teams and there's a real thrust for this in our current day scenario as well. It's happening right now and people are understanding the worth of such expressions. So that can happen. Prophetic marketplace teams. So this is when teams get together and they are willing to be led by God and God gives them a word in their area of work, let's say, entertainment or education, politics, business, how wonderful it would be and it is happening to some extent. I don't know of groups that pray and ask God and they really want to bless their line of work. So that is a sort of a team and then prophetic city transformation teams. So city transformation team is also now very strategic. They hear from God, they pray things through and they come up with ideas or strategies which are going to impact a region for God. I don't know how many of us know of major programs that have been done for cities and states. I'm not saying this one particular program was profited but you've heard of that thing. I'm not getting the word right now. Build, no, no, what is that? Do you know there's this campaign which they run in the city with books and everything, books and banners, experience changed. Yeah, so a name like that, experience change or I don't know the words but the title is like that. So what they did in that particular campaign is that they found testimonies of people who believe in Jesus and they made banners of those people. So they put it all over the city. Even on buses, on bus stands, everywhere you look there would be banners that would say okay there is a change, this person has gone through a change and there would be a phone number over there. So you need to call up that phone number and when you call up that phone number they would ask you that okay what do you want because in the banner there's also the advertisement for a book like there is a free book if you want to take it. So generally people would call and they would say we want this free book and at the back end you had a lot of churches come together and they were the ones who were taking these calls and mobilizing their people to go and deliver the books. So that was a really nice campaign because the campaign ran for about a month or so but it was very intense. All the churches of the city were a part of it and you know different ones of us even here at our church, we all went as volunteers, we went to people's homes, we would just get the addresses of those who have called up, get together in twos. Of course the area we would pick like okay give me some addresses in this area but still it was very unknown, we would just take the bus and go. You don't even know who that person is, we would just go and we would say you had requested for a book so we are giving you the book and that book had the testimonies like proper testimony of how people encountered Jesus, how their lives were transformed and why they believe in Jesus and towards the end the gospel was in that book. So it was very simple we would just give them the book and come off but if they still want to keep in touch and come to church so that was a way in which we could connect with the new people in the city. So you know things like this God can give us strategies I mean I never thought somebody could run a campaign in the city of this magnitude so I'm just giving you you know one example but city transformation so many things can be done which can impact the city in different ways. So these ideas come from God, when God is speaking we can take it and we can also go ahead and apply it and see the changes. So fine class we will stop with this and we will come back after a break. My sincere apologies for all the technical issues that we've had today but I hope you know it hasn't hindered the learning. So okay let's stop for now we'll be back in 10 minutes and continue. Thank you.