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Growing in the Prophetic - Mike Bickle PDF

257 Pages·2009·2.97 MB·English
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Growing in the Prophetic is a valuable resource for indi- viduals and congregations who desire to mature in prophetic ministry. Through Mike Bickle’s deep and tested reservoir of knowledge and experience, many will find encouragement to exercise the spiritual gift of prophecy in balance and power. —Francis Frangipane Pastor and Author Mike’s journey in the Lord has been quite amazing. In the begin- ning, he was a young conservative, anti-charismatic, evangelical pastor. Now he is an intimate, passionate worshiper, moving in the supernatural and leading others into a powerful place in the Spirit. He has moved a million miles in his heart and experience of God. It is this authenticity that stands out in the man. He is not afraid to explore, to quest, and to pioneer. This book is a journey into the territory of prophecy, the prophetic ministry, and the role of prophets. Developing prophetic people is not easy. Pastoring a prophetic community is not for the fainthearted. Cultivating a safe place of relational accountability for prophets is a tough job. Only a leader who has been led into divine encounters with the Lord can undertake such a transitional process. Mike’s book is real, pragmatic, and rich in experience and wisdom. To love the gift of prophecy as a church is a good thing. To develop a prophetic community who can hear and act on the voice of the Lord is an altogether different proposition. Growing in the Prophetic is an important book to read and study. It will teach you transitional process. That alone is worth the investment. I loved the initial book of this same title. If Mike has found a way to upgrade and expand its wisdom, then I am definitely first in line to read it! —Graham Cooke Brilliant Book House Gentle but firm. Compassionate yet incisive. Abounding in under- standing. —Colin Dye Senior Pastor, Kensington Temple London, England Mike Bickle’s practical wisdom will serve the body of Christ well. —Terry Virgo Leader of Pioneer International London, England A man of transparent integrity shows us the way forward into areas where angels have feared to tread. —R. T. Kendall Author, Total Forgiveness Mike Bickle is a man with a remarkable teaching gift, quick to acknowledge past mistakes that he has clearly learned from. This is a book every charismatic should read if we are going to increase our ability to hear from God, speak to Him, and remain committed to Christ, to Scripture, and to one another. —Gerald Coates Leader of Pioneer International London, England At a time when the Spirit is speaking strongly to the churches about the gift of prophecy and the office of prophet, Growing in the Prophetic is an extremely important book. Mike Bickle brings an enviable combination of maturity and transparency to his exposition of biblical principles molding the prophetic along with valuable lessons learned, both positive and negative, through his ministry to the “Kansas City prophets.” —C. Peter Wagner Professor of Church Growth Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, California prophetic in the Growing mike bickle Most Strang Communications/Charisma House/Christian Life/Excel Books/FrontLine/Realms/Siloam products are available at special quan- tity discounts for bulk purchase for sales promotions, premiums, fund-raising, and educational needs. For details, write Strang Communications/Charisma House/Christian Life/Excel Books/FrontLine/Realms/Siloam, 600 Rinehart Road, Lake Mary, Florida 32746, or telephone (407) 333-0600. Growing in the Prophetic by Mike Bickle Published by Charisma House A Strang Company 600 Rinehart Road Lake Mary, FL 32746 www.strangdirect.com This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law. Unless otherwise noted, all Scripture quotations are from the New King James Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1979, 1980, 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc., publishers. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked nas are from the New American Standard Bible. Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked niv are from the Holy Bible, New International Version. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, International Bible Society. Used by permission. Scripture quotations marked rsv are from the Revised Standard Version of the Bible. Copyright © 1946, 1952, 1971 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA. Used by permission. Design Director: Bill Johnson Cover Designer: Jerry Pomales Copyright © 1996, 2008 by Mike Bickle All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Bickle, Mike. Growing in the prophetic / Mike Bickle. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-1-59979-312-2 1. Prophecy--Christianity. I. Title. BR115.P8B53 2008 234’.13--dc22 2008030850 08 09 10 11 12 — 987653421 Printed in the United States of America vii C o n t e n t s Preface .........................................................................................................ix 1 “There’s Been a Terrible Mistake” ...........................................................1 2 Confirming Prophecies Through the Acts of God in Nature ..........11 3 Prophetic Administration: Revelation, Interpretation, and Application .............................................................23 4 Overview of the Prophetic Ministry .....................................................35 5 The Difference Between the Gift of Prophecy and Being a Prophet ................................................................................49 6 Women Operating in Prophetic Ministry ...........................................61 7 Seven Dimensions of the Prophetic Church .......................................69 8 The Coming Great Revival .....................................................................77 9 Contending for the Fullness of the Prophetic Anointing .................89 viii Growing in the Prophetic 10 False Equations About Prophetic Giftings ........................................101 11 God Offends the Mind to Reveal the Heart ......................................113 12 Pastors and Prophets: Getting Along in the Kingdom ...................125 13 Origins of the Prophetic Call ...............................................................135 14 Embodying the Prophetic Message .....................................................141 15 Common Abuses and Misuses of Prophecy ......................................153 16 Practical Ways to Grow in the Prophetic ..........................................169 17 The Prophetic Word in Public Worship .............................................183 18 The Prophetic Song of the Lord ...........................................................191 19 Manifestations of the Holy Spirit ........................................................201 20 God’s Strategy of Silence ......................................................................225 Notes.........................................................................................................233 ix P r e fac e W hy another book on the prophetic ministry? I’ve read many books on the prophetic over the years. Some focus on the various biblical categories of prophets and the supernatural manifestations that occur through them. Others focus on how to prophesy and then what to do with prophetic words. This book touches on those subjects, but it also frankly discusses the joy and the pain of prophetic people in a local church context. I relate the perils, perplexities, and tensions involved in nurturing prophetic people among nonprophetic people. When Holy Spirit activity happens among weak people like us, the clash between selfish ambition and lack of wisdom is inevitable. Many tensions arise. Plus, we encounter Holy Spirit experiences that are foreign to us. All this makes for a challenging experience in our church life. I pastored in a local church context for twenty-three years until I began the International House of Prayer missions base in Kansas City in 1999. On September 19, 1999, we began a ministry of worship with intercession that continues nonstop, twenty-four hours a day. Our staff members view themselves as “intercessory missionaries” because they do the work of the ministry and outreach from a place of night and day prayer. Our staff raises their own financial support as missionaries in a way similar to other mission organizations like Youth With A Mission and Campus Crusade for Christ. Currently, God has graciously joined about fifteen hundred people to us full- time. About five hundred people are our ministry staff, and another one x Growing in the Prophetic thousand serve full-time as students or interns. They each are involved about fifty hours a week. In addition to these, approximately two thousand people join with us in our Sunday celebration services. Thus, about four thousand people make up what I refer to as the “IHOP Missions Base family.” We cry out daily for the release of the spirit of prophetic wisdom and revelation from Ephesians 1:17. The Lord has given us glorious answers. Many have had prophetic dreams, visions, and supernatural experiences. We have hundreds of people actively involved on our prophetic teams. These teams give prophetic words to thousands of people each year. It is important from the start of this book to say that we only receive prophetic experiences that glorify Jesus, honor the Scriptures, and promote holiness and love for one another. This is the safeguard for subjective prophetic experiences. My journey in pastoring prophetic people began suddenly, in the spring of 1983. I admit that I have made many mistakes in this journey, but I have learned some valuable lessons. I will share some of what I have learned in the last twenty-five years of being deeply involved with prophetic people and movements. The future of the church is sure to be filled with people who operate in the prophetic anointing. In the generation in which the Lord returns, the whole church will receive dreams, visions, and prophetic experiences (Acts 2:17–21). This will be exciting as well as challenging. New dimensions of the Holy Spirit’s ministry will certainly emerge that will demand faithfulness to the Scriptures as well as deep humility as learners (1 Cor. 3:18). This is not a good time in history for a “know-it-all,” but rather it’s the proper time for the virtue of humility expressed in a teachable spirit as we go to greater depths in the prophetic. 1 1 C h a p t e r “There’s Been a Terrible Mistake” J ohn Wimber had set it all up. It was July 1989 when four thousand people gathered to a prophetic conference hosted by the Vineyard Chris- tian Fellowship in Anaheim, California. John had spoken a couple of times at the conference, then introduced me and others who were going to bring messages on the prophetic ministry. I taught on the nurturing and administration of the prophetic ministry in the local church and offered some practical advice on how to encourage people who were just beginning to receive prophetic impressions, visions, and dreams. I told stories about how we had experienced God’s use of dreams, visions, angels, and His audible voice to accomplish His purposes in our church life. I shared a few stories about how God confirmed some of these prophetic revelations with signs in nature—comets, earthquakes, droughts, and floods occurring at precisely predicted times. I guess I should have been clearer about the fact that seldom do any of these supernatural experiences ever happen through me directly. I had been mostly a spectator of the prophetic ministry and, initially, a reluctant one at that. Yes, I was the pastor of a church that had about ten people who trav- eled full-time with a focus on prophetic ministry, but I had only had a few prophetic experiences myself. Mostly, I told what happened in their experi- ences, not mine. Growing in the Prophetic 2 In my early days of ministry in the middle 1970s, I was a conservative evangelical doing youth ministry, hoping one day to attend Dallas Theo- logical Seminary. I was anti-charismatic and proud of it. However, by 1983, I found myself surrounded by a group of unusual people whom some referred to as prophets. I had no experience with the prophetic ministry; however, I became the leader of these ten to fifteen prophetic people. “Why me, Lord?” I asked many times in the years that followed. The Vineyard conference where I spoke in July 1989 was mainly attended by conservative evangelical church leaders who had been blessed by John Wimber’s teaching on healing, but who for the most part had not been exposed to prophetic ministry. They represented a rapidly growing number of believers in Jesus who have a great longing to hear more directly from God in a supernatural and personal way. I had finished my morning session and was leading the ministry time when John Wimber came up on the platform and whispered in my ear, “Would you pray and ask the Holy Spirit to release the gift of prophecy to people?” For those of you who have had the privilege of being around John Wimber before his death in November 1997, you know that there was not an ounce of hype or showmanship in him. He would invite the Holy Spirit to move over an audience and touch thousands of people in the same tone of voice that he gave the announcements. It was in that matter-of-fact way that he asked me to pray for the people to receive what I had just been describing. With four thousand spiritually hungry people watching us, I whispered back to John, “Can I do that since I’m not prophetically gifted myself?” John responded, “Just go ahead and pray for the release, and let the Lord touch whomever He touches.” “Why am I praying for these people?” I thought. I looked around for help from one of the well-known prophetic ministers who were also speaking at the conference. They should have been the ones praying for the people to receive more grace for prophetic ministry. None of them were in the audito- rium at that moment, so I was obviously on my own. “Well, OK, John, if you want me to,” I said. It would be a harmless prayer. John announced that I was going to ask the Holy Spirit to release the gift of prophecy in people’s lives. So I prayed. I noticed one of the leaders from 3 “There’s Been a Terrible Mistake” my church in Kansas City, at the back of the conference auditorium, pointing at me and quietly laughing. He knew I was not a prophet, and he also knew that I was in deep waters over my head in leading this ministry time that was “supposed” to release the prophetic anointing to others. As soon as the meeting was over, a long line of people formed, anxiously waiting to talk with me. Some wanted me to pray personally for the prophetic gift to be imparted to them. Others wanted me to give them a “word from the Lord,” that is, to prophesy what God wanted to say about them and His plan for their lives. I had recently introduced prophetic ministers to the conference, those who for years had operated in prophetic ministry in ways that had amazed me. However, some attending the conference had mistakenly determined that I was an anointed prophet and certainly the man to see if they wanted the prophetic gift released in them. Over and over I explained to the people lined up to see me, “No, I don’t have a word for you. No, I can’t impart prophetic gifts. No, I’m not propheti- cally gifted.” I looked around for John but could not find him. After spending some time explaining this individually to about twenty-five people in the line, I stood up on the stage and made an announcement on the microphone: “There’s been a terrible mistake! I am not a prophet. I don’t have a prophetic ministry. I do not have any prophetic words to give you!” Then I left the meeting. Richard Foster, author of Celebration of Discipline, had been waiting for me to finish praying for people so that we could go to lunch. Heading for the car, I was stopped by several people in the parking lot who wanted me to prophesy to them. Of course, I had no prophetic words for them either. Finally, we made our escape and found a restaurant about ten miles from the meeting place. But to my surprise, while I was standing at the salad bar with a plate of food in my hand, I was asked by two different people who were attending the conference to prophesy to them. I wished that I had made it clearer during my session that I was not a prophet, nor was I the son of a prophet. Those either excited or desperate to hear from God are seldom restrained and polite. I was getting impatient and exasperated with people’s persistence. The fact that I was with Richard Foster, whom I had wanted to meet for a Growing in the Prophetic 4 long time, increased my irritation. It was also a bit embarrassing. Richard laughed when I said to him, “I’m not a prophetic person! A terrible mistake has been made today.” Yet, the stir that day was insignificant compared to the uproar that was to come a few years later related to the prophetic ministry that I was related to. It seemed to me that God had picked the wrong man to pastor a team of prophetic people. A Reluctant Introduction to Prophetic Ministry Many people know about God only in the context of things far away and long ago. They are hungry to know that God is involved with their lives in an intimate way in the present. When that knowledge is dramatically awakened for the first time, people often overreact for a short season and often become overly zealous. There is a great hunger in God’s people to hear directly from Him in a supernatural way. I see this hunger increasing even more as the years go by. Many people involved with prophetic ministries have been brought into it kicking and screaming because they had been taught that the gift of prophecy had passed away. A good example of this is my close friend Dr. Jack Deere. He was formerly a professor at Dallas Theological Seminary and a committed cessationist before he met John Wimber and experienced the demonstrations of God’s power. (A cessationist believes the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit ceased after the Book of Acts.) He also went through a difficult, soul-searching journey as he came to embrace the prophetic ministry. Being a brilliant Bible teacher, he had to make sure that it all was 100 percent scriptural. We value seeing ministry of the gifts of the Holy Spirit operate in rela- tion to the written Word of God. This is a nonnegotiable aspect of the IHOP Missions Base quest to grow in the prophetic. Eight leaders of our missions base have master’s degrees, plus another four have doctorates—mostly from conservative evangelical, non-charismatic seminaries. Another five men earned law degrees before joining our missions base staff. The personality profiles of these men and women are usually in strong contrast to those who

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