Hidden Treasures

By Ron Brackin

What’s the difference between the prophetic gift and the prophetic office?

How should a pastor pastor prophets in his church? 

What keeps you from hearing God and drives you to pursue prophets?

How can you tell the difference between your voice, God’s and the enemy? 

Can a true prophet ever be wrong?

Recently, I discovered a 23-hour course called the Elijah House Prophetic Video Seminar online in the Streams Online Classroom. It was created way back in 1998 at Elijah House and has been gathering dust ever since. But John came across a copy recently in his video library and immediately made it available to us at no charge, because yes, it’s that good!

It features:

• John Paul Jackson, founder of Streams Ministries International
• John Sandford, who with his wife Paula founded Elijah House and
• Marc Dupont, founder of Mantle of Praise Ministries, Inc., concerned with revival and restoring a prophetic edge to the body of Christ

And among many other things, it covers:

• the history, calling and functions of the prophetic office, 
• the prophet and the gift, 
• the prophet and the church, 
• pastoring the prophetic, and
• learning to love what Jesus loves.

So I downloaded the course, and after I finished it, I told John that I’ve listened to, watched, read and sat through countless courses over the past four decades, but I’ve never encountered anything quite like this. I’ll give you an example of one little piece that immediately changed my life. Permanently.

In Lesson 7, John Paul shares five levels of listening.

1. Ignoring  (Listening for personal gain)
2. Pretending (A lie)
3. Selective Listening (Tuning in and out to see if what the other person is saying is something I’m interested in)

Then he shared level four and hit me between the eyes.

1. Attentive Listening (Watching for opportunities to talk about myself)

The Attentive Listener, he said, gives what he called autobiographical responses, like,“Yeah, I had the same thing.” And when he said it, it sounded like my voice.

I’m an only child and an introvert. I’ve always spent a lot of time alone. And because I was never interested in sports, cars or computers, I never felt I had much to share in conversations. So I would listen for opportunities to share personal anecdotes. I always thought I was trying to find ways to connect with people.

“You did that? I understand, because I did this and that.”

But Holy Spirit showed me that somewhere in the past 78 years, my attempts to connect had morphed into attempts to best. I wanted to make myself look more interesting or important.

Ugh! I felt like I hadn’t washed in a month. How could I never have noticed it before?

But Holy Spirit is committed to seeing us walk in greater freedom, not in crushing guilt, which I remembered when I read the fifth level of listening.

1. Empathy (Understanding so intimate that the feelings, thoughts and motives of one are readily comprehended by another).  Empathy, said John Paul, is the essence of love.

In Lesson 13, John Paul shared something that armed me rather than healed me. He read the story in Acts 16 about the young slave girl who was a fortune teller. Day after day, her owners had her follow Paul and Silas through the streets of Philippi, shouting, “These men are servants of the Great High God, and they’re telling us how to be saved!” The people saw her as prophetic because she was accurate. But it was witchcraft. And when Paul and Silas left town, she would still be there, be thought of as one of them and be able to turn the people back away from God.

When he finished, John Paul said something very sobering for me. 

“It’s easy to discern God from evil,” he said, “but it can be very difficult to discern God from good.” The only way is to know God more and more biblically and intimately.

There’s a wealth of life-changing revelation waiting for you in this course—tools you need to make the changes you need to make to prepare you for the days ahead.

So go ahead. Download the free 23-hour Elijah House Prophetic School, with John Paul Jackson, John Sandford and Marc Dupont today at https://streamsministries.com/courses/elijah-house-prophetic-school/, and see what God does.