Hallelujah, our God is a speaking God! The reason we speak for Him is because He is speaking in us all the time – and He wants us to cooperate with Him! Our God is not a dumb God – He is always speaking, and the highest & greatest speaking of God in the whole universe is the Bible! Hebrews 1:1-2 says,
God, having spoken of old in many portions and in many ways to the fathers in the prophets, has at the last of these days spoken to us in the Son.
Our speaking God desires to have a speaking people – He spoke to the people in the Old Testament and He gained some to speak for Him, and now in the New Testament age, He spoke in the Son and He speaks through His believers!
Having God’s Speaking and Speaking for God
If you want to have God’s speaking, come to the Word of God and come to the church – you will hear the logos (written word of God) and the rhema (the instant spoken word of God)! However, traditional Christianity has suppressed the believers’ portion – “one man speaking and the rest listening” is prevailing in such a way that this is what most believers expect to happen when they meet together!
We all need to rise up and overthrow this custom – we need to speak for God, speak God forth, and speak God into one another! Actually, the Spirit mingled with our spirit is always ready and expects to speak with us and in us / through us, but many times we don’t cooperate with Him!
We’re afraid that we will “lose our face”, we will make a fool out of ourselves, we will say something wrong, or maybe we think we have nothing to speak. But as long as we cooperate with the Lord when we come to the meeting – to speak for Him – it is OK!
Learning and Practicing to Speak for God
In a good sense, it doesn’t matter whether we speak properly or wrongly, or if we speak well or poorly – what matters is that we speak! When we speak for God, He is happy! When we exercise our spirit to speak something for the Lord and with the Lord, something that we enjoyed in our fellowship with Him, God is happy and we are happy!
By practicing to speak in this way, we are learning to prophesy – we are learning to speak for God, speak forth God, and minister & dispense God into people. This may not be our disposition naturally – we may be quiet people by disposition, but we need to stand against ourselves. The way to overcome this obstacle is to be against our natural man with our disposition and habit.
When we were regenerated, we received another life – the divine life – and now whether we do something or we speak something, we need to do everything by this another life! When we speak for the Lord, when we prophesy to build up the Body, we need to exercise our spirit and stand against ourselves – we speak not from ourselves or by ourselves, but we speak from the Lord and by the Lord!
Our natural man is on the cross, and we are raised together with Christ, living a new life with Him in His resurrection life! In His resurrection life and by His life we speak!
And one more thing – prophesying is the function of the overcomers! The overcomers speak for God! In the Old Testament, the overcomers were the prophets; in the New Testament age, the ones who overcome speak for God! Prophesying makes you an overcomer! For us to overcome the degradation in the church and even our own failures and degradation, we need to learn to cooperate with the Lord and speak for Him!
[sharing from the morning revival about, The Need to Have a Fresh Vision of the Lord’s Recovery, with quotes mainly from, The Practice of Prophesying, by brother Witness Lee]
Lord, we want to be the overcomers! Make us the speaking ones – a reproduction of our speaking God! Lord, speak in us and speak through us! Even if this is against our disposition, Lord, we want to stand with You! Thank You for Your divine life in us – we just want to cooperate with You by living by this life! Lord, speak today in us! Make us the prophets of today, those who speak for the building up of the Body of Christ!