The Word & Prophecy: How to Balance the Supernatural with Scripture
Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ (1 Thessalonians 5:23).
The spirit is the God part of us.
The place where we are connected to God the Father through Christ Jesus. Where we possess the God-breathed life that causes us to exist; this is also the place where we are born again. John 3:5 says you must be born of water and spirit. When you are born again, your spirit is made perfect!
To the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are registered in heaven, to God the Judge of all, to the spirits of just men made perfect (Hebrews 12:23).
The soul is made up of your mind, will, and emotions.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:2).
The mind is the area of decision and belief. The soul is like a valve that opens to you what you already possess in the spirit realm and allows it into the natural world.
The natural is your body’s arena. It is made up of what you can sense, literally through your five senses. You receive from the realm of the spirit by exercising these senses to discern good and evil.
But strong meat belongeth to them that are of full age, even those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil (Hebrews 5:14 KJV).
These senses exercised to discern are in reference to your five senses: seeing, smelling, hearing, touching, and tasting. The point is that the natural ability to navigate life must regularly become subject to a renewed soul with a revelation from the spirit. In a daily disciplined way, we are to read our Bibles and pray.
Let’s make the connection. Here we have three major areas that make up a human being. In each arena, we find an applicable equivalent to the process of revelation, interpretation, and application.
SPIRIT – REVELATION
SOUL – INTERPRETATION
BODY – APPLICATION
It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh profits nothing. The words that I speak to you are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63).
John 6:63 says “the words I say to you are spirit”; the purest form of spirit you can encounter are the words Jesus speaks.
Now we must realize that Jesus is the Word made flesh. He brought the Spirit into full manifestation by becoming flesh. When discussing prophecy, we recognize Jesus is the highest example we have. Prophecy ultimately is all about Jesus.
The testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy (Revelation 19:10).
Jesus is the ultimate example of revelation, interpretation, and application. He not only became flesh; He fulfilled His purpose. Jesus was with the Father when He formed creation (see Proverbs 8). John 1:1 says, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
The Greek word for “was with” is pros, meaning face to face. The Father and the Son looked into one another’s faces for eternity past. This represents the spirit realm. Jesus was spoken about and prophesied into existence for much of the Old Testament, until finally, the very words that God spoke about Him in Genesis, and that were carried along by the prophets throughout history, were fulfilled through Mary.
When Jesus was born, it was a birth of the many prophetic words, beginning with God the Father, and spoken out through the prophets by the unction of the Holy Spirit until the Word was made flesh!
REVELATION
SPIRIT – REVELATION
SOUL – INTERPRETATION
BODY – APPLICATION
A revelation is a realization of what exists in the realm of the spirit. Jesus walking this earth as a blameless Man began as a revelation. The revelation was interpreted and believed until the fullness of time had come for application, the virgin birth.
Revelation is revealed knowledge to your spirit man! It is that moment you sense something. You have an impression and maybe it’s to bless someone; it could be a dream you’ve had, and it sticks with you throughout the day. While standing in worship, God’s presence floods you with a sense, a pull to do something.
A revelation is a Holy Spirit moment when you strongly or subtly believe God has spoken to you. Revelation is usually the fun part of walking out the prophetic process. I like to call it the “Mufasa moment,” with shivers, much like the hyenas experienced in the movie The Lion King, each time they said “Mufasa.”
It may involve intense emotion. Sometimes a revelation is you receiving a powerful prophetic word from a prophet. It is that wow moment that is so strong your five senses can become overwhelmed by what is happening internally and externally. These moments are so impacting and emotionally overwhelming that many who have these encounters are left with the impression that this must be from God!
Revelation Needs Scripture
These experiences are wonderful and very life-giving! However, they can also come with long-term issues. When times like these happen, through a prophetic word or in various supernatural encounters, what begins as a legitimate revelation or experiential encounter can result in individuals who go off and do something presumptuously without giving it another thought—as there is no process for measurable longevity to the experience.
If it were not for a very intense and rock-solid foundation in my own life, there would have been many devastating consequences to the long-term effects of certain words and encounters I had received. This is true for so many, especially in the younger generation. Many go by feeling, where the Word of God is not the standard. Some launch into something they are unsure about, saying, “It must be God, so here I go!” Examples of this would be people who have received prophetic words about marriage to a specific person and married them only to endure damaging results.
A friend of ours once told my wife, Heather, and me a story that had happened to her in her younger years. Someone had given her a prophetic word that she was to marry a specific individual. So, wanting to obey the Voice of God, she began dating this person and, as time went on, found nothing compatible or even remotely good about the picture.
Thankfully, she broke it off but felt guilty for disobeying “the Voice of God.” We were able to explain to her that that she wasn’t disobeying the Lord as that word was not from God; it was someone’s manipulation under the guise of prophecy, in an attempt to get her to marry someone they thought she should marry. This type of thing sadly happens more often than it should. People in organizations or positions share prophetic words with those who don’t know any better, and these innocent ones can get worked over by a manipulative angle.
This is horrible and should never be allowed in the body of Christ, but it is. It is a serious thing to mess with people who are legitimately and even desperately trying to hear God or are newly following His Voice.
The good news is that God is always speaking, and even if someone is misled but remains in faith, the Holy Spirit will always lead them out. He always provides a way of escape.
Dear reader, please remember God loves you; and if you are looking to get out of a difficult situation, remember God wants you free more than you do!
A Revelation Alone is Not Enough
A revelation alone isn’t good enough. Most people stop at a revelation because experiencing some form of a revelation typically feels good! The “wow factor” and sensing the supernatural are in full throttle, opening the hearts and minds of individuals wanting to please the Lord. When these experiences happen, the results, most often, can be incredible.
However, many people wander around the body of Christ, going from revelation to revelation, experience to experience, yet never with any form of measurable application that moves them forward in life.
Discipline Must Be Applied to Your Revelation
Many are either undisciplined, untrained, or unwilling to develop their senses to hit the mark, which is why God spoke to them through a revelatory encounter in the first place.
Let me repeat this point. A revelation is a wonderful thing: words of knowledge given to you or you to others. Dreams, visions, impressions, that feeling of fire, and goosebumps that come over you in the presence of God are wonderful. However, God’s highest and best for you is to walk in all of it rightly.
This means a healthy process is in order. I desire for you to translate your revelatory encounters from mere experience into a fruitful journey. God gave us the ability to have these glory-filled experiences so that we might be encouraged and continue onward.
He is a double-minded man, unstable in all his ways (James 1:8).
For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was (James 1:23-24).
A final thought about a revelation. The book of James speaks of a double-minded man who looks into a mirror. When he walks away, he forgets what he looks like. This is like a person in a meeting, in a worship encounter, receiving a prophecy, having a vision, or another supernatural experience and upon leaving the revelatory moment, they let go of the revelation.
