Hallelujah, we all can and we all should prophesy “one by one that all may learn and all may be encouraged” (1 Cor. 14:31)! As believers in the Lord, we are now learning to speak for the Lord and to speak the Lord forth into people – it is a learning process that will take our entire life to complete!
First of all, we need to read and know the Scriptures literally – we need to know the Word of God and be acquainted with the Word. And we should not just know the facts and the main topics of the Bible – we should go deeper and understand / know the deep denotations and the spiritual significances of the Word of God!
The Lord Jesus in many of His portions did not just “recite the Word”, but He also went further to explain and unveil the deeper significance of the Word! It was the same with the apostle Paul – he went deeper into the Word of God, not just skating on the surface of the truth but having the knowledge of the deeper meaning of the portions in the Word! We need to pray over the Word, seek the Lord’s shining, and dive in / dig into the riches in the Word!
Also, we need to have personal experiences of life. We can’t quote others’ experiences or speak based on just what we read and enjoyed – we need to experience the Lord personally! Knowledge by itself can be empty – we need to also pray that we may experience and enter into what we enjoy.
We have personal experiences of the Lord’s doings and blessings in physical things and environmental occurrences – how the Lord deals with us, how He cares for us, how He enlightens us and leads us…
And on the other hand, we have the personal experiences of God’s redemption and salvation, Christ and the church, preaching the gospel, nourishing the new believers in the home meetings, perfecting the saints in the group meetings, prophesying for the building up of the church, and other experiences – by the exercise of our spirit in faith!
These experiences can also be the base of our prophesying – when we share them in a proper way, they serve to strengthen the point of truth we are sharing about. Still, when we speak to build up the Body, we should NOT adhere to our personal experiences, our feelings, our thoughts or opinions, our affections or dislikes, or even our reactions to any persons / matters / things.
We are not speaking for ourselves or speaking ourselves forth – we are not “dispensing ourselves” when we prophesy; rather, we are speaking Christ into others!
Amen, we need to LEARN to prophesy one by one and learn from one another as they prophesy! To prophesy is mainly to speak for God and Christ and to speak forth God and Christ – even to minister and dispense God and Christ into people as their nourishment and supply!
For this, we labor in the Word and we pray over the Word that the Lord may give us the experiences we need to constitute us daily! Then, whenever we come together, we all have something – we are ready to release some spiritual vision as a revelation and some spiritual enlightenment as a light to shine over others!
When we speak forth what we enjoyed with the exercise of our spirit, not speaking our own things, we bring certain things of God to light – we make certain things known to people – and we bring people into the enlightenment of God!
In this way, when we prophesy we speak Christ and not ourselves, and our speaking brings light and life – our speaking builds up the church! [enjoyment from the book, The Practice of Prophesying, by brother Witness Lee]
Lord Jesus, make us those who build up the Body of Christ through our living and our speaking! May we not despise our portion and may we not discard our talent! Lord, we want to get into the Word to know You and to understand the deeper meaning of the truth! Unveil us to see Your economy and Your heart’s desire! O, Lord, how much we need to experience You and enjoy You daily! How much we need to learn, Lord, to speak Christ whenever we meet! We want to speak for building up, Lord! Save us from speaking or imparting “ourselves” into others – we want to minister and dispense Christ even through our speaking!
