We Can Take the Initiative in Making Ourselves Available to Receive a Gift of Prophecy

I was invited to share a testimony one afternoon in a meeting in Sydney. 

After the meeting a young man approached me and asked me to prophesy to him.

I didn't know him. I'd never spoken to him before. I didn't know anything about him. 

And I didn't feel I had a word for him. I felt nothing at all.

I wasn't even sure how I felt about anyone approaching someone for a word like that.

I wondered whether we're better to carry-on living by the Word without seeking-out a word through someone else - and just leave it up to God to grant a manifestation of the gift of prophecy as He wills.

I didn't want to presume upon God!

But I could see the young man was so earnest and sincere. So I thought I could at least consciously make myself available to God for anything He might want to give me to say.

So I stretched out my hands towards the young man. And as soon as I did so, the Spirit of the Lord gave me something. 

I told the young man that I could 'see' him going to Russia. 

Then he told me that he'd been invited to head-up his denomination's church-planting work - in Russia!

So he asked whether I had anything else. 

I didn't have anything else - and I was again a bit taken-aback by his boldness. I still felt a bit conscientious, wanting to avoid presumptuousness. 

But then I 'saw' something else: I saw a lady coming alongside him. 

"What does she look like?" he asked.

Then I saw that she was fairly tall: just a little bit shorter than him. 

"What colour hair does she have?" he was very bold. 

Then I saw that she had light-brown hair, and that it was about shoulder-length, and straight. 

Everything the young man asked, the Lord answered - the Lord didn't seem to mind at all! I was just an available channel. 

"That's exactly the confirmation I've been desiring," the young man said. 

And with that he happily and eagerly went on his way. 

That night we were back for another meeting. The young man approached me again - and this time he had a lovely lady by his side. 

"Does this look like the lady you saw in your vision?" he smiled.

She was fairly tall - just a bit shorter than him - with nice shoulder-length, straight, light-brown hair.

"I would like to introduce you to my fiancée," he said.

____________

"...desire spiritual gifts, but rather that ye may prophesy...

...Even so ye, forasmuch as ye are zealous of spiritual gifts, seek that ye may excel to the edifying of the church...

...covet to prophesy..." - I Corinthians 14:1,12,39

____________

"...this is the confidence that we have in Him, that, if we ask any thing according to His will, He heareth us: 

And if we know that He hear us, whatsoever we ask, we know that we have the petitions that we desired of Him" - I John 5:14,15
____________

"God is more eager to answer than we are to ask" - Smith Wigglesworth