Now this is exciting. We are ministers of the spirit. You have something to give. Whatever God has given to you, you can give to someone else. Think about that - so the more you can receive from God, the more you have to give. If you experience His love, you can release His love. If you experience His joy, you can release His joy.
We need to engage God regularly so we have something to overflow, to give. We're not trying to make things happen. We're taking what we have, and I've taken a long time to gain these things. It's taken me time and effort to work on my mind, and deal with fears and things - but you have something to give because of that. Isn't that exciting?
When you work with God, He's always willing to work with you. What happens is, you become aware of blocks and barriers and things in you, that you need to address in your journey with Him.
We don't have to have it all now, it's a journey with God, so on the journey we're learning stuff. On the journey you find there are blocks, and so you work to remove the blocks.
Notice I've avoided touching him. We're just calling on the spirit of God to come, just decreeing it. You've got to learn to exercise your faith, not try to make things happen. So I ask him to connect with God, and reach out expecting; and I myself reach out expecting, and make God my focus. It's quite surprising what can happen, what will happen - you might like to try it.
Now remember that, for the anointing of the spirit to flow, the anointing flows from within the person's spirit, through their soul and body, out to touch a person. So if your soul is in turmoil, and blocks and argues, there's no flow from your spirit. Bible says “out of your belly flows...”, so your soul, your mind and thoughts have got to co-operate. I've got to choose to set my heart to believe, and to resist the distractions. If I do that, then the spirit of God can flow quite easy. He wants to do it.
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Word of Knowledge is a Gift of the Spirit. A word of knowledge is a manifesting of God.
This is what a word of knowledge is: it's just a little piece of information. It's not that you know everything. If you have a word of knowledge, you don't know everything, you only know a little bit.
So a word of knowledge, it just comes as an impression, a thought; it comes as a mental picture; a still voice; and you become aware of something about a person, that you had no natural way of working it out.
So it is given to you, it's a revelation. You don't work it out; so you don't look at the person, and try and figure this thing out. You listen, and God just shares the secret with you.
Oh really? I didn't know that! So it's like a thought that comes to you; so it's not accumulated knowledge. It's actually revealed knowledge; God reveals something to you.
So what is the purpose of the gift? There's a whole range of purposes; but when you have a word of knowledge, it helps you see what in a person's life, what God wants to work on.
So for example, in counselling, words of knowledge are just so important, because you'll just get something about a person, and it's related to their past or their current situation. It's like their whole life starts to open up, and you have access to minister into them.
So a word of knowledge can uncover some details about a person's situation, and it enables you to minister and help them very, very clearly. It's just such a huge asset to get words of knowledge, because you know things that you couldn't have known naturally - and the person is so surprised, and it opens the way to minister to them, help them, and so on. Words of knowledge are just wonderful.
There are a few Bible examples... Elijah, the king, the enemy of Israel, kept making these plans to invade Israel; but every time he got there, he would find that the Israeli army was there already.
In the end the king got very angry. He said: who's selling me out? Who's telling our secrets? They said: no one's telling your secrets, but God is telling the prophet. Get this - he said: well let's go get the prophet then. Hello! If God's telling secrets about army battles, then He's going to tell the prophet about what your plans are too - so it didn't work out very well at all.
So in 1 Samuel 9:15-20, Samuel received about 16 pieces of information about Saul - what he was doing; where was going; his father; his donkeys; and what God had planned for him. It's one of the most accurate words of knowledge in the Bible. There are about 16 specific facts that God gave him, he could not possibly have known. It's extraordinary.