Monday, September 6, 2010

Activating Spiritual Gifts - Exercises - Part 1

Here's just a few exercises that I've come across for growing in the gifts.

1.  Look at Jesus - Practices the prophetic gifts (words of wisdom and words of knowledge), the seer/visionary gift, and discerning God's voice
          This one comes from the previously mentioned How to Hear God's Voice book by Mark Virkler, with my adaptation.  First, plead the blood of Jesus over your mind, thoughts and imagination; bind any spirits that would interrupt, distract, or hinder your time with the Lord. Get in front of your computer or use a pen and paper (if you want to go old school).  Then picture yourself sitting with Jesus.  Mark suggests using a Gospel setting for the imagery, my recommendation is that you can start with that and slowly adapt to picturing Him where you are.  Remember the reality is that Christ is always with us (Matthew 28:20) so picturing this is actually activating our faith in the Truth.  Then ask Holy Spirit to breath on what you are picturing and journal your conversation with the Lord.  After you've written it all down, be sure to take the conversation to either a spiritual adviser or ask the Lord to confirm it with His word.

2.  Prophecy Line - Practices the prophetic gifts (words of wisdom & words of knowledge)
          This exercise requires a minimum of 3 people but is best done with 5 or more.  One person faces the wall and an administrator organizes the others in a single-file line behind the prophesying person.  The person at the front of the line has 10 seconds to get a word for the person behind him/her before another person moves up to the front of the line (this is monitored by the administrator).  Instead of keeping a normal rotation, it's good to mix up the line frequently.  Prophetic words can be for the individual in the front of the line, but a lot of times we've found that Holy Spirit reveals who is receiving the prophetic words (which is a fun confirmation).  The objective is to remove the analytical side of prophetic words and just use what Holy Spirit gives you.  This is essential for moving in the prophetic in public settings, you don't always have 10 minutes to get the interpretation for the revelation, so you go with what you have and 9 times out of 10 Holy Spirit gives all you need.

3.  Small Group Healing - Practices the gift of healing
          The gift of healing is pretty simple to practice, you pray for the sick.  Kevin Dedmon said, "I used to have see 100% of the people I prayed for getting healed, because I wasn't praying for anyone."  Remember the prophetic gifts and healing are promises for everyone, while there are those with aptitudes and callings that show particular gifts in these arenas, they are both promised to the body of Christ as a whole!  (That means you). The easiest way to learn to pray for the sick is with a group of like-minded friends in a small group or just hanging out.  Find some sickness among you, lay your hands on it, and command it to go.  It's that easy.  Don't despise the day of small beginnings, I still celebrate when headaches are healed through my hands... because it's something I can't heal on my own and God is choosing to do it through me and that's worth celebration!  I didn't actually start praying for the sick this way, I joined a healing team and was visiting malls and hospitals on my own praying for the sick regularly.  One thing that helps to stay encouraged is to read testimonies and record all the ones you see (until they start multiplying beyond your journaling ability).  Bethel, Andrew Womack, Todd White, this blog, Joel2Generation blog, etc.  All of these have great testimonies to encourage you.  But I digress, back to praying for your friends.  Just use simple phrases like "In Jesus name sickness go!" and if you run out of things to say just say the name of Jesus over and over (every knee must bow to His name).

4.  Facebook Prophetic - Practices words of wisdom and words of knowledge
          While the social networking outlet you choose is irrelevant to how this is done, Facebook has shown to be the best for this sort of arena in my experience.  The objective is to join a community of people pursuing the prophetic gifts like yourself, and engage in prophesying over/with them.  (Warning: incoming shameless plug)  I have facebook group called Prophetic Practice where people that are interested in the prophetic go and are encouraged to message other members with prophetic words.  I used to hold weekly/monthly activities but consistent participation was hard to find.  Anyway, all the members of that group are accustomed to prophecy and you can join and give prophetic words to any one of them.  If you are new to the gift of prophecy, I encourage you to start by giving your words to an administrator first because they can offer some valuable feedback to your words.

5.  Specifics - Practices words of wisdom and words of knowledge
          This is simply having fun with the prophetic (who said God had to be boring?!)  Get a group of friends, a small group, or online friends that are familiar with the prophetic gifts and ask a series of questions of each other.  The following is an example we did with my men's group:
  • What did the person eat for breakfast? 
  • What is a circumstance the person is currently going through or dealing with? 
  • What is something the person can expect to see in the next week?
Since we had less than 5 people there we answered these questions for every group member, if you have a larger group... obviously it's best to pick one person to be the "subject" and everyone else can get the words for that person.

These are just a few great little starter exercises for practicing spiritual gifts.  Obviously if your church has a healing and prophetic ministry, I recommend joining that as well.  The most important thing to remember is that we grow by being consistent (doing this once a week rarely yields the results most of us desire).  The more we are willing to steward what God has given us, the more He gives!  Be blessed in Jesus name!

5 comments:

  1. Wow Thanks for posting this! great stuff!!

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  2. Glad you like it. I'll be adding more to this in the future.

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  3. yes, this was good. I will contact you via facebook to see if a small group could be done through face book to practice #5 above. Cee

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  4. Read this the other night and thought it was really quite interesting. Thanks for the enlightening post...

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  5. What an awesome summary of how to practice these spiritual gifts :) thank you so much for this encouragement :D

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