Primarily Doug Addison wrote this book to address prophetic hopelessness in many people's lives. When someone gets a prophetic word that does not seem to come about in their life they can suffer from prophetic hopelessness and often give up on hearing the voice of God. That is what people need right now; people need their longings fulfilled and their hope in God restored. Proverbs 13:12 says 'Hope deferred makes the heart sick but a longing fulfilled is a tree of life.' Through this book, Doug teaches us to activate our prophetic words so that they could come to pass and we can experience the fulfilment of a prophetic word.
I believe that many of us have received a word from God at some point of our lives. Some believers may not know that is the word from God because they either don't believe the word or don't trust the person who gave the word. Hence they don't receive. That is like the seed sown on the rocky ground and the birds of the air came to eat the seeds. Yet there are some who received the word but because persecution and trials came and they gave up the word. Then there are some who received the word but because it took longer than expected hence they started to grow weary in the waiting.
My experience with prophetic words either in my life or others' lives is that most misunderstandings come because we didn't discern the timing of that word. Like Doug said, many a times, the prophetic word given is not for now. We would need to understand the timing of what you have heard from God. At the same time, it is important to activate or respond to it in some way. It is biblical to do something practical along the way. He encourages people to do something to activate their prophetic words, but do not go bankrupt doing it.
He said God will often speak to you in a powerful way during a season that you really need it. Most of the time we get very excited and then nothing happens. This is because God gave you the prophetic word to get you through a difficult time and keep you going through the process of refinement. An often difficult part of hearing God is understanding if what you are hearing is for now or later. This can only come with practice, along with some trial and error. Sometimes God will speak to you about something that you are being called to in the future. He may even give you signs that look like it is happening now. But then things change and the opportunity or situation goes away.
Another common thing that could get people discouraged is the fact that troubles can come along with the prophetic word, especially powerful ones. Doug addressed this in his book. When the stakes are that high like for apostle Paul, you need a powerful prophetic word to carry you through the challenging times. God was pretty much calling Paul to change jobs and move. Just know this, when you get a powerful word, sometimes it is designed to get you to hold on through a hard storm. If you think about it, you do not need powerful words to do normal things. There are a lot of things in life that you do not need a powerful prophetic word in order to accomplish.
Sometimes the greater the calling or the greater the prophetic word, the tougher the path is going to be, and the more resistance you are going to face. That is why God has given you that clarity, so that you will remember His word and not give up. Many times people find that after a prophetic word is given, instead of seeing it come to pass, things went totally the opposite way. Persecution, spiritual resistance and troubles come because of the word and people are confused wondering what happened. But this is quite common. It means you are headed in the right direction.
Doug said that it often takes time for prophetic words to be worked out in your life and I found this to be true. The prophetic word is like a seed sowed into your heart and you will have to give it some time for that seed to grow into a tree before it can bear fruit. Though some prophetic words God gave you might be for now, to get you to act on it immediately for it is the appointed time, most of them are for the future seasons.
God will use the prophetic to get you on track, encourage you and help you to accelerate into your life’s calling. Trust God to speak to you and guide you, but do not forget to activate what He is saying to you. If you are called to do something that you are not released to do yet, or you are not at a mature enough level to do yet, then do not worry about that. You can still begin to prepare now. You can take a class, read a book or watch videos on the things you are called to do.
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