When you receive a prophetic word, most often it should be a confirmation of something you already know. Also, your prophetic word should have the “up factor.” It should build up, train up, encourage up and edify up. It should leave you hopeful for something that is coming to pass in the future.
What happens when a prophetic word doesn’t do the thing it is intended for? What do you do with a prophetic word that doesn’t make sense? You have three options:
- You can throw it out because it is in no way witnessing with your soul and spirit, and you think the person who delivered it is way off in left field.
- You can pray into it and see if the Holy Spirit confirms the word to you.
- You can shelve it. You can put it up on the shelf and see if the Holy Spirit ever brings it down, or if a situation happens and all of a sudden you remember this word you’d put on the shelf because you were unsure if it was for you.
Occasionally when we receive a prophetic word, we can be unsure and unsettled over whether the word was for us. We can react in different ways to the prophetic word that was spoken in our lives. We can become caught up in attempting to discern the word, or we can dismiss the word altogether. Both options can have adverse effects.
When we receive a prophetic word, it should witness to us. There should be some kind of affirmation within us that it is a word from the Lord. When a word is from the Lord and resonates within us, we should pray into it, cover it with the blood of Christ and call it forth according to the Word of God and will of God in prayer and declarations.
When a prophetic word is not witnessing to us at that moment, we should shelve it — put it up on the shelf in the spiritual realm or in your mind. Don’t let it consume you, and don’t try to figure it out. Put the word in your memory bank and then move on.
Keep doing what you are doing for that season. When and if the word is for you, God will bring it back to your mind, confirm it in His Word or bring another person to prophesy a similar word to confirm it to you.
There was a time I received a very long prophetic word from a well-known prophet. Part of the word was, “My daughter, you have a desire for prayer. Lord, I feel like the church has forgotten about prayer. I wish someone would reinstitute prayer in the house. Guess who I am going to use? Going to use you to rally men and women to seek Me, seek Me, seek Me, as they have never before. Find yourself in at least one 24-hour vigil.”
As I received this word, I thought, “I don’t feel that way, and I have been in charge of several 72-hour prayer vigils.” As I dissected the prophetic word given to me that night, I put this part of the word up on the shelf because it didn’t make sense to me; I thought it was off and not for me. I did not throw it away. I put it in my memory bank.
A year later, I found myself teaching people around me how to pray differently, but I still did not realize that this word was manifesting in my life. One day as I was writing one of my books, the Holy Spirit shot through me. I was sitting at my desk typing and was allowing the Holy Spirit to move through me to write.
I started writing about prayer and thinking that people don’t know how to pray. That is when I felt the Holy Spirit come upon me. It felt like a bolt of lightning shot through my body. I looked up and in the spiritual realm I saw the shelf and the prophetic word. I had misinterpreted the word. I was looking at the church as a building when the church is the people.
That prophetic word was right! The church is the body of Christ. I had been complaining for months that people didn’t know how to pray effectively. I took what I was seeing and hearing and started teaching people how to really pray!
The word was for me all along, but I didn’t recognize it. How many words are people waiting for that they think are not coming to pass because they totally dismissed them or did not recognize them? We need to be open to how the Holy Spirit wants to move through us. We need to make sure that we are not dismissing a word or assuming it’s not for us in our pride or arrogance.
The most important thing is keeping our minds and will open to the Holy Spirit so that when He reminds us of a word from long ago, we understand and hear His voice. Even though I dissected the prophetic word, I still did not get the full meaning out of it. I should have looked further into every word — but that’s OK because now I can use it as a testimony to you.
Stay open to the Spirit. Don’t totally dismiss what you don’t understand. Dissect your prophetic words (learn more about dissecting your prophecies through my Prophetic Course at charismacourses.com). And most of all, don’t give up in the waiting.
Who knows — perhaps the Holy Spirit will get hold of you like He did me and pretty soon you will see things manifesting in your life that were spoken long ago.
Be encouraged; God has a plan for you. Be diligent! Seek His presence and His Word! Worship Him in freedom and truth, and discover how the kingdom of God will manifest in your life and use you to display His kingdom to others!
Learn more about the prophetic during Kathy’s upcoming virtual event at https://training.kathydegrawministries.org/courses/pve.
Receive a free PDF e-book about how to manifest your prophetic words at kathydegrawministries.org/prophetic.
Kathy DeGraw is a prophetic deliverance minister. She is the founder of Kathy DeGraw Ministries and K Advancement LLC. Kathy hosts a podcast show called Prophetic Spiritual Warfare and is the author of several books: Prophetic Spiritual Warfare, Speak Out, Discerning and Destroying the Works of Satan, and Unshackled. Kathy’s training platform is available at training.kathydegrawministries.org. Kathy has e-church based on her podcast, which produced her most recent book, every Sunday night at 6 p.m. EST; the web link can be obtained here. You can connect with Kathy on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/kathydegraw/ or visit https://kathydegrawministries.org/.
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