"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." - Jesus (John 10:27). Jesus later explains that we'll get a counselor, the Holy Spirit who will explain all truth to us, speaking from God, and He will declare the things to come. (John 16:13-14).
God wants a relationship with us. This means we talk. He talks and listens, we talk and listen. We are made to hear His voice. If you are a Christian, you can hear His voice. He didn't ransom Heaven and send His son to die the most horrible death ever in human history to bring us close to Him so we could converse in 60-80 years when we die. He did it so we could know each other now. (John 17:3) Why would He not give us this gift? (Romans 8:32). You probably are already hearing it, but you don't recognize it as His voice. If you're reading your Bible and suddenly you understand something or have an analogy or can explain it - Holy Spirit. If your journaling out your thoughts about a passage or idea about God and you look back and go "Wow. That's good. I didn't know I knew that." It's because God-the Holy Spirit just told you. Other examples include when you have an idea that you need to call or tell someone something and they say "Man, that's exactly what I needed/needed to hear." That's because God loves them more than you do and wanted to love them through you. So you heard what God said and did it. Awesome! Good job! That's cooking fish!
"Pursue love, and earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially that you may prophesy...the one who prophesies speaks to people for their up building and encouragement and consolation." - 1 Corinthians 14:1,3. Paul here is talking to the Corinthians who are excited to use the Spiritual gifts, but like most everything else in their church are way off. They need him to come in and put up the bumper lanes to show them how to do it well. They're not wrong in doing them, they're wrong in how they're doing them.
WORD: Prophecy - reception and declaration of a word from the Lord through a direct prompting of the Holy Spirit, and the human instrument thereof. (Holman Christian Standard Bible Dictionary & Concordance) Try to redefine this word in your head as positive and good rather than considering "Send me $39.99 and I'll tell you how the world will end." That's not what God intended.
So Paul is saying, "Yes, seek love. Do these gifts for they're good and desire them. Especially, I want to see you seek to hear from God to encourage others with. Listen well to what He's saying, then pass it onto the person because He loves them and you love them." This is what I'm talking about. We constantly are seeking to hear from God as to what the person in front of us needs to hear. Every time we pray for someone, (hopefully we don't just jump in and start praying for what we think they need or with a routine prayer - because if you need prayer it's kind of annoying when someone's saying a mantra rather than thinking about you.) we ask God, "What do they need to hear? What should I pray for? How can I love them?" The more you pray for people and ask, the easier it is to get ideas to pop into your head.
The better the basketball player, the more accurate he is. He still misses some shots. The first time my Chinese students tried to translate something in English, it was close and I could figure out what they meant. It's the same way when someone prays over you or prophesies over you. You don't always take in everything they say because some of it isn't applicable for you. It's like eating fish. They give you a fish, you take the meat and you leave the bones. They're doing their best to love you and translate what they think they're hearing from God to you. You thank them for trying to love you. You affirm the meat, the parts that they heard right that is specific for your life. (An issue is if you take their Word as God's final one and you're not listening to Him too to see if it's confirmed or not.) You encourage them. I had one guy start to pray for me after knowing my name and where I was from first ask "Are you a drummer?" I laughed because I am but had done nothing or shown nothing to imply it. He explained something about my drumming that he felt God wanted to let me know about. I had another girl ask me if I had back pain, I didn't. She said, "Oh. Ok." and we went on. She wanted to pray for my back pain so it would leave. I didn't have pain but if I did would have loved for it to be gone. It's that desire to love people and encourage them that makes us move.
Love makes us move and it steps boldly in front of the fear of being wrong in our attempt to love. We don't let the fear of striking out stop us from playing the game, we don't let the fear of adding too much salt stop us from cooking, we don't let the bones of the fish stop us from eating it, and we don't let the fear of being wrong stop us from praying and prophesying over people. It's because Love is the greater idea. Love makes us move. Love cooks and serves the fish. Out of thankfulness and discernment, we eat the fish.
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