Jentezen Franklin - The Power Of Personal Prophecy
I want today to talk to you about something you don't hear a whole lot about in church anymore even though the Bible has a lot to say about it. I want to talk to you about the power of your personal prophecy and how to go to war with the prophecy over your life. Whether you realize it or not, God has spoken through His word and at times through people with a prophetic word over your life. People that are in authority spiritually over your life like a father, a mother, a pastor, a preacher. God will all along in your life speak prophetically over you and your family and when He does, you have some responsibility to do something with that prophecy.
The church didn't talk about prophecy, but I believe in prophecy. I believe that we're not to despise the gift of prophecy in the church, but we need it now more than ever. Can I get a big amen? And I want you to look with me at the instruction the apostle Paul gives Timothy in 1 Timothy 1:18, "This charge I commit to you, son Timothy, according to the prophecies previously made concerning you that you may wage the good warfare having faith and a good conscience which some have rejected concerning the faith and have suffered shipwreck".
I love the fact that he connects prophecy. He says according to the prophecy previously made concerning you with that prophecy that's been spoken over you, notice what he says in that line in part of that verse, "go to war". "Engage in spiritual warfare with prophecies words from God about your future", because that's what a prophecy is. Sometimes it will come through a sermon that a preacher is preaching. Sometimes God will speak, as I said, through a parent or someone who is a spiritual authority in your life, and when God does this, it's up to you to take that prophetic word spoken over your life and go to war with that prophecy. "Wage war", he said, "with three things".
In Verse 19 he said having faith and a good conscience. Notice that a good, clean conscience is connected to strong faith. A defiled conscience weakens our faith. You know that's the truth. You know if you have lived right, then that creates a clean conscience and that creates strong faith, but a defiled conscience, meaning we're not walking in the spirit. We're not thinking on spiritual things. We're not resisting temptation. Therefore, a defiled conscience produces weak faith. Treasure and protect a clean conscience, folks.
One of the greatest things that you have that effects your faith. And without faith, you'll lose the battle. One of the things that really affects our faith is a clean conscience. Strong faith is directly connected to a clean conscience. One translation put it like this. Use your prophecies as weapons against - as you wage spiritual warfare by faith with a clean conscience. I wanna say it one more time. Lean in now. Track with me just a moment. I'm going somewhere. "Use your prophecy - personal words that have been spoken over you and your family. Use your prophecy as weapons to wage spiritual warfare by faith with a clean conscience".
Prophecy is God coming with a word about you and your family in the future. Prophecy has to do with your future. God will always keep His promises, but He is not obligated to keep our potential. When God speaks a word of prophecy over your life, He will keep His promises. But the prophecy contains the potential about your future, and it's not up to God to do anything with that. At that point, He says: You are, Timothy, to take the prophecies that have been spoken over you, and wage spiritual warfare against any and everything that comes to stop you from walking into the future that God has proclaimed for you and your family.
There's something God puts in our heart through prophecy, but you don't automatically step into it. It requires warfare. Spiritual warfare is required if you're going to walk into the prophecy over your life. There are some things that you are just going to receive by inheritance spiritually.
In Mark 10, he said, "Unless we receive the kingdom as a child we can't enter into the kingdom". What he's talking about is identity. What he's talking about is inheritance that when you come to Jesus Christ, there are some things that you come as a little child, and it's just like a parent or a grandfather dies and because you're kin, because you have identity, and you have inheritance through your bloodline, you go to an attorney, and the attorney will tell you this has been left in the will, and he doesn't say if you do this and do that, you get it. You get this because of your identity. You get this because it is your inheritance.
There are things when we come into the kingdom of God that we don't earn like salvation, forgiveness, grace, eternal life. You don't get them because you have been perfect. You get them because it is your identity as a child of God, and therefore, you have identified with Jesus. His blood has been given to you, and you are a bone of His bone and flesh of His flesh, and you not only get the inheritance, but you get the identify of that family, and God pronounces over my life right now. I am a child of God. I have His identity. I receive my salvation not according to my words. I don't follow in and out of my salvation. I don't go up and down concerning my relationship and my walk in who I am in my identity and my inheritance. I get it through the cross and the blood of Jesus Christ only.
He then says there are other blessings that you can only get. For the kingdom of heaven suffers violence, and the violent take it by force. So, there are things that we walk into and we receive because of our identity in Christ and they're our inheritance, but there are other things that if you're going to receive the fullness of the prophecy over your life, you're going to have to learn how to take it by force spiritually speaking, and that's where prophecy comes in. Paul said, "Timothy, there are prophecies over your life. There are things about your future that God has already declared".
Let me give you an example, if you have a family today, here's a prophecy over your family. As for me and my house, we, not me, we will serve the Lord. Now, wait a minute. That's a prophecy over my family. My family, all my children, all my grandchildren have a prophecy over them. As for me and my house, it doesn't just affect me, but when I understand there's a prophecy over me and my house and we, not me, but we will serve the Lord. Then God says it's not enough to leave that promise just hanging. You are to reach up when the enemy comes to destroy the family when he begins to show you another family in your house that is not wanting to live for the Lord, you are to take like a weapon the prophecies over your life, and you are to fight a good warfare with the prophecies. Go to war with the prophecies that have been spoken over you and your family.
It's an amazing story about the journey of the Israelites in Exodus 13:17-18. God actually said, "I would have taken you the shortest route, but it was through an enemy's territory, and I knew", He said this, "that Israel would get in conflict with this nation, and they would have got discouraged and went back to Egypt. So, I took you around the conflict the long way because you weren't ready for the conflict". Now listen to me. This really is a blessing hidden in disguise. This little verse that I just gave you indicates that if God doesn't take us around the conflict. He has equipped us to win the conflict.
How many of you right now are going through a conflict in your life with something going on in your life? Do you hear what this preacher just told you? God have taken you around it, but the reason He let you get in it is because there's enough prophecy over your life in that very area. It may be for your marriage. It may be for your finances. It may be for one of your children. There is already enough prophecy that's just out there. Now, you've got to grab it like a weapon, and you are to use that prophecy like a weapon to engage in spiritual warfare, and God says, "I've already equipped you to win the very conflict that you're in". The conflict with an addiction, with bondage, with sin, with lust, with anything else. God has already equipped you to win.
I thought about how he said to Timothy, "I want you according to the prophecies made concerning you to war". How that we need to love the prophetic. We need to host the prophetic words of God in our life. We need to give place and entertain the prophetic. There's that woman in 2 Kings 4 who said to her husband, "There's a prophet that walks by our house, and I want us to build on a room so that the prophetic will have a place in our family and in our life. He carries the prophetic word, and it's passing by all the time. We need to host the prophetic. We need to entertain". We need to be open to it, and I'm afraid that many of you don't have a fresh word over your life. When you get in conflicts, you need God to give you prophetic words that you can go to war with.
You see, in 2 Corinthians 10 it tells us the real battles of conflict that have to do with our thinking. It said we're to cast down the strongholds that are build up in our life. I was reading something about that recently, and it said when we think wrong consistently, each thought is a brick in the wall that gives the devil the ability to build a castle in that area. Every time we think wrong. Every time we allow the enemy with bricks of fear and bricks of hopelessness and bricks of lust and bricks of disobedience, and we're not controlling our thought life we're building brick by brick strongholds where Satan can set up a castle and rule with authority in those areas of our lives, but He said you are to cast down those strongholds. You are brick by brick to throw them down, and then he said you are to put on the helmet of salvation.
What is that about? It's about our thinking. In other words, you are to think saved that when the enemy comes, and he tries to attack, you are to take the prophecies over your family. You are to put on the helmet of salvation, and you are to say you are not going to have my children, you are not going to have my future, you are not going to have my marriage, you are not going to have my business. This is what God has given me, and I put on the helmet of salvation, and I think saved. How do you think saved?
Philippians 4, "Whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are just, if there be any virtue, if there be any praise, think on these things". There's a weakening of our strength when we don't think saved, and it's not just in church while the preacher is preaching, but all week long you need to think saved. Put on the helmet of salvation. Think saved when you're in your home. Think saved when you're on your job. Think saved when you're riding in your car. Think saved.
I think most of us are about ten minutes away at any time from defeat, and it's all according to what we let our minds go on, but the Lord is teaching me that when the enemy comes, we have to keep thinking saved. No, hell won't win. Know the lies of the enemy. I take the prophecies. There's prophecies over my family. There's prophecies over my children. There's prophecies over this church. There's prophecies over your lives wherever you're watching me at all of our campuses, and don't you let the enemy come in and brick by brick build up defeat and build up addiction and build up bondage and then set up a castle and say I own this family, and I own this house.
You are to cast those things down, put on the helmet of salvation, think saved, and say I'm going to war with the word of prophecy over my life. I am not going to die. I'm going to live and declare the goodness of the Lord. By His stripes, I am healed, and I'm going to think saved. My children were not made for addiction. They were made for the glory of God. Their bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, and I'll go to war with a word of prophecy and God said if you'll do it, I'll back it up. Somebody praise God for the ability to activate the prophetic in our home. A prophecy is not about where you are; it's about the future.
I love the story of Mary when the angel came and said you're going to get pregnant and produce the Son of God, and the Bible said that after the angel prophesied that she did two things. She treasured the words and pondered them in her heart. Treasured words. He's the Savior. As her belly was growing, she would treasure the words of prophecy that were personal over her and her child, and the word treasure there one commentary said that she would bring them out like special jewelry or china at special times. In other words, when she really, really, you know how you don't eat on china every day. You don't wear your good watch or your good jewelry to a ball game or out there or go out when you're going to work out. You don't put on your good stuff.
In the same way, when God speaks a prophecy over your life, you are to pull it out of the drawer every once in a while and put it on. It's a treasure, and then she pondered it. She let the full effect of what God said just ill her. Use the prophecies over you to get where you're supposed to go. Say it. Something has to be spoken. I can't just know that as for me and my house we will serve. I have to proclaim it. I have to say it. And I heard the Lord say this. I know this is a little different message, but I know it's right. It's time to start decreeing the word of God again over our lives. Make decrees. There are some things that have to be spoken.
Angels, the Bible said, give attention to His word. Oh, well, that's God. That's God's word and God speaking. No, that's not what it just means. Angels, angels know when a word is being spoken that we declare, and that word originated from the heart and breath of God. They know it and when you open your mouth, I'm going to tell you like the Lord told me to tell you, many of you have unemployed angels. They stand up in the unemployment line in heaven with their arms folded waiting on you to decree the word of the Lord.
You keep saying I'm waiting on God, and God said I already prophesied over your life, but you need to go to war with the prophecies that have been spoken. This is not my prophecy. Lack is not my prophecy. Defeat and addiction is not my prophecy. My children messed up, and junk is not my prophecy. I'm going to war with my prophecy, and my prophecy is about the future. This is what is, but I'm going to speak what shall be. I'm going to decree what God has said, and my children will be used mightily by the Lord. Every one of them will honor God, and their children's children will from the glory of Jesus Christ, and you go to war with that and watch what your angels will do.
Turn to somebody and say, say it. It's not enough to think it. IT's not enough to know it in your head. You have to say it. He said in Mark 11, "Whosoever shall say unto this mountain, 'be thou removed and cast into the sea' and shall not doubt in his heart but believe the things that he sayeth shall come to pass, he shall have whatsoever things he sayeth". You have to talk to mountains. You have to talk to lies. You have to talk to sin. You have to talk to addiction. You have to talk to demons, and you have to go to war with prophecy, and you have to say that is not what my Lord said about me and my house.
He said me and my house would be blessed. We would be the head and not the tail. We would be the ones who would possess the land, and nothing will stop us. Say it. Say it. Say it and angels get activated. The most powerful prayer you can pray is when you say back to God what He has already said to you in His word. The reminding of God of the prophecies is exactly what Daniel did. The Bible said that Daniel went to God, and he said, "Hey God, according to the prophecies that were spoken that this bondage and captivity was supposed to end in 70 years, and I've been looking at my calendar, and by the way, today is 70 years. Now, what are you going to do about the prophecy that's been hanging over me".
Some of you keep quitting too soon. It doesn't matter how long the prophecy has been over you. If you haven't seen it come to pass yet, go to war with it, and God will make it happen in the time you have left. He said, "God, I've got a fresh word, a prophecy", and he went to war with it, and God broke the captivity in a day's time. He sent an angel because Daniel fasted and prayed and broke the power of 70 years of captivity and turned it around and reestablished the nation of Israel. God, give us a fresh word. God give us a fresh promise until it sinks into our spirit, until it sinks into our mind, and until we have saved thinking enough that it affects what we say out of our mouth, and I proclaim over you and your family the blessing of the Lord.
The Lord will bless you and keep you. The Lord will make His face shine on you. The Lord will be gracious unto you and lift up His countenance upon you and give you and your family peace. Let's praise the Lord just a minute. Hallelujah. Hallelujah. It's going to be all right because there's a prophecy that's just been activated. I don't go by what I see. I go by what I hear, and I hear a sound that's saying that hell will not win. Demons will not win. Lies will not win. Truth will win. Victory will win. Jesus will win and reign in my life.