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Pro phetic So n g
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By

St an Smith

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Copyright © 2003 by Stan Smith

Prophetic Song
by Stan Smith

Printed in the United States of America

ISBN 1-594671-24-9

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or

transmitted in any form or by any means without written permission of
the author.

Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture references are taken from The
Holy Bible, New King James Version, Copyright © 1982 by Thomas
Nelson, Inc.

Xulon Press
www.XulonPress.com

Xulon Press books are available in bookstores everywhere, and on the Web
at www.XulonPress.com.
 DEDICATION
Se
This book is dedicated to —

Wade Taylor, who founded Pinecrest Bible Training Center to

be a school of the Spirit, and who taught us about intimacy
with God when few in the church were preaching it.
three prophets who made a profound impact on me during my
formative years: Barbara Massie, Jewel Courtney, and Bill
Hickson.
my father, who taught me what I know about music; and my
Mother, who taught me what I know about writing.
my wife JoAnn, who loves the anointing and has had faith in
my calling as a writer, a musician, and a minister.
My son and daughter-in-law, Chris and Danielle. Your genera-
tion will see the glory of God.
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
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Chapter One — Prophetic Song: A New Frontier .......c.cccccccccsscscssssseeseeeeees 9

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Chapter Four God Seeks WoOrshipens «.0y2.0:.c-secisccaecsocevocsossostscccoseeooceors 35
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PART TWO — DAVID’S PROPHETIC SONGS. 1.0.0... eeccecsnesseeeees 51

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Chapter Seven — Spontaneous But Skillful... ee esescceneessceeeseeees 61
Chapter Eight — The Song That Starts With Need ........
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Chapter Nine — Prophetic Song In The New Testament ................eeeeee Td

PART THREE — THE SOUND OF THE TRUMPET ............0...00 85

@hapter Tenr—T he Gitt Of Prophecy In Song® riick scncvessensscseaneters 87

@hanter Mleverm— Gods, Songals Creative ns .ccscscseveccdesesdstcesssteeadeceessers 95
Ghapterswelve. you. CAN Prophesy aire act sccevtosesey sovsctacsctastecssteucke 103
Chapter Thirteen — Singing The Unlearnable Song ..............c:csseseees 111

PART FOUR — TEAMWORK IN PROPHETIC SONG ................. 119

Chapter Fourteen — Involving The Whole Church ............:c:csseseeseneees 121

Chapter Fifteen — Releasing Other Ministries ...........cccsccsceseseeseeeeeenees 129
CHAPtCT SIXCCelh ml New VVOFSIIIP! LEAIIN servercresecsecssctessosacerenesastneossecncetbens 137
Chapter Seventeen — Centered On Jesus............csccseseressssesscseseessscensenee 145
Chapter Eighteen — Gateway To GIOry ............sssssssrrssreenssesssseceeresees [53
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 Chapter 1

Prophetic Song: A New Frontier

SMR

By faith, Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to the

place which he would afterward receive as an inheritance. And
he went out, not knowing where he was going.
(Heb 11:8)

TPS is a‘season when God is releasing prophetic musicians in the

church. Never before in church history has there been such
widespread interest in prophetic ministry — the gift of prophecy, the
prophetic office, prophetic prayer, prophetic evangelism, prophetic song.
For the musicians among us, God has awakened our hunger to prophesy
in song as David did. It is a pilgrimage like Abraham’s. We have heard a
call and have responded, but we don’t really know where it is taking us.
Abraham’s journey meant stepping out of his comfort zone to go to
an unknown destination. He probably listened to every traveler he could
as he prepared for his own journey. How should he prepare? What land-
marks should he look for as he traveled from one place to another?
Where were the wells where he could replenish his water supply?
What dangers would he be likely to face, and how could he prepare for
them?
God called Abraham to leave friends and family behind, taking just
his wife with him as he journeyed into the unknown. Most of us who have
been reaching into the heavens for prophetic music have had that same
sense of aloneness. We have had to learn without mentors. I have spent
more than thirty years exploring prophetic song, and it has been a
pioneering experience.
 Stan Smith

But the call to prophetic song is not extended only to an elite few.
God is lifting ordinary Christians into this extraordinary experience. Nor
is prophetic song reserved for musical geniuses only. Talent helps, but
God is using people of very ordinary ability. Like every other work of the
Holy Spirit in the church, prophetic song is a work of grace, rooted not in
our abilities but in God’s. In the last few years, prophetic song has been
breaking out all over the world. In coming years, it will be one of the hall-
marks of God’s presence in the church.
In Christ, God has made prophetic song available — it has been avail-
able for two thousand years. I am writing this book to help make it acces-
sible. I spent about five years seeking prophetic song before I ever sang a
prophecy. The search did not have to last so long, but there was nobody to
teach me. I have been singing spontaneous prophetic songs for about
twenty-five years, and have had time to experience a variety of ways God
can work in prophetic music. Sometimes I have learned from scripture,
sometimes by plunging into the river of God, and sometimes by making
mistakes. All of these learning experiences have brought me back to
grace, the root system of prophetic song.

HOW I DISCOVERED PROPHETIC SONG

My story begins more than thirty years ago. I have sensed a call on my
life as long as I can remember. I was saved on my fifteenth birthday, during
a season when God was nudging me to commit myself to ministry. I was a
weird kid: depressed, suicidal, mad at the world, smart but doing badly in
school — and at times, deeply hungry for Jesus. I came to Jesus just as I was,
and that’s how He received me. It would be six years before I would learn
how to leave my struggles at the foot of the cross and to find peace in Him.
My nature was passionate but unfocused. Sometimes I wanted to be a
martyr on the mission field; within days I would be mad at God for calling |
me into the ministry. Back and forth, up and down I went, exhausting
everyone around me.
In those days, I took my guitar with me wherever I went. I lived the
story of David, the harp, King Saul, and the evil spirit. Sometimes I was
Saul, dancing on the edge of lunacy, and sometimes I was David playing
the song of deliverance. God used the music I would play on the guitar to
help me find peace. Most of the church music I heard did not help me
with my own battles. I had to write my own songs.
When I was sixteen years old, I was baptized in the Holy Spirit. I
expected to speak in tongues and God gave me what I wanted, but He
 Prophetic Song

also gave me something I had not thought to ask for: a deeper passion for
Jesus than I had ever known. I began to develop a life of prayer and
worship, and often I would play guitar and sing to God in tongues,
making up the tune as I went along. After all, I had read Paul’s words in I
Corinthians 14:15 —

“T will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the under-
standing.”

Occasionally, as I sang to God in tongues, He lifted me into rich expe-

riences in His presence.
The new passion for Jesus strengthened my resolve to go into
ministry. At age seventeen, I enrolled at Pinecrest Bible Training Center
in Salisbury Center, New York. It was there that I first heard singing in
the Spirit: someone would strike a chord on the piano or organ, and the
whole congregation would all sing whatever was in our hearts. The
music had no rhythm, and the people could sing any words and melody
they liked. The only constraint was the chord that kept us all in
harmony. I had never heard such music in all my life. I wept for joy; I
felt I had come home.
I was still in the season of terrible internal conflict that marked my
first six years as a Christian, and it took me five years to complete the
two-year course at Pinecrest. In those five years, God gave some rich
experiences in worship. Sometimes they happened in chapel, and some-
times when I would meet with a few friends and we would sing in the
Spirit with a couple of guitars and maybe a flute.
At this time, Pinecrest sought to be a “school of the prophets” like the
schools mentioned in the books of Samuel and Kings. We often saw the
gift of prophecy in action, and we often studied the character development
of the prophets in the Bible. From time to time, someone would mention
an obscure scripture about prophetic worship. I Chronicles 25:1 is one of
the verses that gripped me:

Moreover David and the captains of the army separated for the
service some of the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthun,
who should prophesy with harps, stringed instruments, and
cymbals.

And another is in II Kings 3:15, where Elisha faced three kings who
needed a prophecy and knew he had nothing to give them. So he said,
 Stan Smith
ee aay ERR

“But now bring me a musician.” And it happened, when the

musician played, that the hand of the Lord came upon him.

And then Elisha went on to prophesy of a miraculous intervention of

God
The teachers showed us these things in scripture and said they didn’t
know of anyone who was moving in prophetic song. And I would go for
walks and wonder: what sort of melody would go with a prophecy? What
sort of playing? What would the style be — blues, classical, country, jazz,
southern gospel? Would the rhythm be strong, or would it be nonexistent,
as in our singing in the Spirit? What kind of music would I have to play if
I were to be a prophetic musician? What kind of song would release
someone like Elisha to declare the word of God?
There were several scriptures that said, “Sing to the Lord a new
song.” I was determined to find it. Iexperimented with Israeli folk songs,
with new rhythms, with odd scales. I tried to invent new musical instru-
ments. I built a dulcimer. I tuned the guitar six different ways. I learned to
play one rhythm with my thumb and another with my fingers; I used
numbers to create new chord patterns and tried to tie these numbers to
their symbolic use in scripture.
Meanwhile, I continued my history of ups and downs in God. As I
would hunger for a higher place in worship, I had to face the fact that I
simply was not prophetic material. The prophets were men and women
of the Spirit; I couldn’t understand the things of the Spirit. The prophets
despaired at the wickedness of Israel; I had to despair at my own
wickedness. The prophets knew what God was saying; I only wondered.
It was terribly unrealistic to think that I would ever move in prophetic
song.
Then a breakthrough came: I discovered grace. I learned that a new
song comes from a new heart. And in the fall of 1974, there was an
unusual visitation of the Holy Spirit at Pinecrest. For three weeks we had
no classes because chapel services lasted all morning and into the after-
noon. There was much dancing and prophecy. And in one meeting, some-
one prophesied that God would pour out the gift of prophetic song if we
would stand between two poles in the room. Several dozen of us squeezed
between the poles.
The meeting was exciting, but when it was over I asked myself whether
I had received anything. I decided to believe God had put something in my
spirit, and He could use it whenever He wanted. It would be another year
and a half before I would sing my first prophetic song, and then I sang it
 Prophetic Song

badly — more about that later — and God began to teach me some of the
nuts and bolts of how to release the Holy Spirit musically.

A WORLDWIDE PHENOMENON

Twenty-five years ago when I began, it was extremely rare to find

anyone who prophesied in song, and it was hard to find teachers who
could teach about it. Today it is much more commonplace. Wherever I
travel, I meet prophetic musicians. A few years ago, I attended many
meetings in Detroit where Kim Clement and his team prophesied in every
style from rap to classical to hip hop. I watched a Holy Spirit break-
through in a series of open-air meetings in India as an Indian musician
sang a prophetic proclamation. At the YWAM base in Amsterdam, I met a
man who is training prophetic musicians; in France I found a school of
praise and worship where they teach about prophetic song. In my travels
in the last few years, I have heard prophetic songs in twelve states.
Prophetic song is a worldwide phenomenon.
God is using prophetic song to take us to the same places He took
Abraham. He is taking us into warfare and intercession, as with the story
of Abraham and Lot. He is taking us into intimacy with Him, as when He
visited Abraham in Mamre and revealed His purposes in Sodom and
Gomorrah. He is taking musicians to a place of sacrifice where we lay our
talents on the altar, as with Abraham and Isaac on Mount Moriah. And He
is taking us into His glory, as He did when He visited Abraham to make
covenant with him.
This is happening not just in a few isolated ministries, but all over the
world.

ABOUT THIS BOOK

If you are new to prophetic song, you will be able to grow more
quickly than I did because there are plenty of examples of prophetic
music in the church, and God is raising up teachers who can train musi-
cians and worshipers.
I have broken this book into four sections, to organize the material
around the successive phases in which I learned it myself. But don’t lock
yourself into the assumption that God will teach you the same way He
taught me. The Holy Spirit is far too creative for that! Think of these
sections as four areas that are worth exploring, and it doesn’t really matter
where you begin. Here is what each section is all about:
 Stan Smith
ee eS

The Sound Of Many Waters. Singing in the Spirit is a great

entry point for people who want to move in prophetic song. It is a
prelude to the gift of prophecy, and holds us in a posture of
worship where we can listen for God’s voice. It also releases a
creative atmosphere of the Holy Spirit. We can sing in the Spirit
whenever we like.
David And Prophetic Lyrics. David is the outstanding figure
in scripture who sang spontaneously and prophetically. The
Psalms, a whole book of prophetic songs, can teach us how to
develop a richer flow of words as we worship in Spirit and truth.
The Trumpet Sound. The trumpet sound is the gift of
prophecy. It is God’s voice to the church, released only when He
chooses to speak. We who prophesy need to cultivate the disci-
pline of releasing prophecies with a clear, precise, unwavering
sound — like the sound of a trumpet.
Teamwork In Prophetic Song. God is the author of peace,
not confusion. As we mature in prophetic song, we learn to
develop teamwork with other ministries and to use prophetic song
to build up the church.

Each chapter ends with notes for worshipers and for musicians.
Prophetic song is rooted in worship, but not every worshiper is a musician.
Some of us can’t carry a tune, can’t play an instrument, and even find it hard
to keep the beat when we clap our hands. Worship starts with an attitude of
heart, and then goes on to find a way to express that attitude. If your singing
voice is so bad that nobody can stand to hear it, don’t forget that God loves
it. He loves you, and something about your voice will always touch him. As
far as God is concerned, the best singer in the world does not have a sweeter
voice than yours. Pay attention to the notes for worshipers. These are about
the heart: devotion, faithfulness, and intimacy.
For musicians, I have included a few things I’ve learned about
worship on guitar, piano, and keyboard. But never forget that if you get
the music right and your heart is wrong, you’ve missed the whole point.
Please don’t let these notes bind you. God wants to free you to soar in
high places in Christ. If the exercises in one chapter don’t help, forget
about them and try again in the next. Ultimately, prophetic song is nota
set of methods. It is a river that flows from the heart of God.
For Worshipers — Pick a Psalm at random. Look for the verses that
tell who God is. Worship God, lavishing him with thanks for who he is.
Look for verses that show you a side of God you have never noticed
 Prophetic Song

before. With a sense of wonder, sing or speak to God about what those
verses show you. Let the Holy Spirit show you more as you worship.
For Musicians — Choose a Psalm and sing it to God, making up the
tune as you go along. If the words of the Psalm inspire you to pray, add
your own words to the song. This is an exercise in childlikeness; don’t
worry about how good or bad the tune is.
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 PART ONE

The Sound Of Many

Waters

Singing In The Spirit

 Chapter 2

The Song Of Creation

SMR

Let heaven and earth praise Him.

(Psalm 69:34)

(5° once gave me a prophetic song that cut across the grain of how I
saw Him.
I was in my second year of ministry, teaching in a Bible school in
Ingersoli, Ontario. I was something of a whiz kid, ministering among
teachers and visiting speakers who were old enough to be my father, if not
older. I took a special pride (though I would not have called it that at the
time) in my uncompromising view of scripture. Many older preachers
seemed to have watered down their message in some way, but I held to the
black-and-white standards of scripture. I did not believe in the muddy
ethics or doctrines that are measured in shades of grey.
One Wednesday night, a student was leading worship in our midweek
service. I was sitting in front, playing guitar and worshiping when God
gave me a prophetic song. I don’t remember the whole song after all these
years, but the part I do remember went like this:

I have not created the world in black and white,

but in color;
I have not created the world with words alone,
but with song.

I don’t know what impact this prophetic song had on anyone else in
 Stan Smith
eee ee

the room, but it changed me. I realized my concept of God was too small.
I still believe, as I did then, that right is right and wrong is wrong; there
are definite black-and-white issues in scripture. But there is more to God
than that, and God poured a prophetic song through my own mouth to
launch a process of enlarging my vision of Him.

GOD SINGS AS HE WORKS

The Bible opens with the story of creation, where Genesis | gives us a
black-and-white outline. The Spirit of God was brooding over the waters,
and God spoke into the darkness, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
But then Job colors in the outline:

Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth? Tell
Me, if you have understanding. Who determined its measure-
ments? Surely you know! Or who stretched the line upon it? To
what were its foundations fastened? Or who laid its corner-
stone, When the morning stars sang together and all the sons
of God shouted for joy?
(Job 38:4-7)

What does it mean, that morning stars sang and sons of God shouted?
Scholars have come up with all sorts of guesses: that the stars and planets
made a musical sound as God set them spinning, that the “sons of God”
were angels or another order of created beings that existed before God
made man, or even that we who have been born again are the sons of God
and somehow were there. Whoever the morning stars and sons of God
really were, Job says they served as a celestial orchestra while God
measured the earth and fastened its foundations. Creation occurred not
with the black-and-white deliberations of a planning commission, but
with the colorful mood of a party.
Is it any different as God makes us into a new creation today? A
well-known verse in Zephaniah 3:17 says God is singing as He does His
redemptive works of salvation in our lives:

The Lord your God in your midst, the Mighty One, will save;
He will rejoice over you with gladness, He will quiet you in His
love, He will rejoice over you with singing.

Our God sings and rejoices as He saves us.

20
 Prophetic Song

Perhaps this is why prophetic song often broke out at decisive moments
in God’s redemptive history of Israel and the church. Immediately after
Israel escaped Egypt by miraculously crossing the Red Sea, Moses and
Miriam both celebrated the exodus with prophetic song. God marked the
birth of Samuel, the anointing of Israel’s first king, and the entire reign of
King David with prophetic song. One whole book of the Bible, the Psalms,
is devoted to prophetic songs. The Song Of Songs is a prophetic allegory of
the love relationship between Christ and the church. The virgin birth of
Jesus was celebrated with several prophetic songs. And the book of
Revelation is filled with songs. Prophetic song attends the highlights of the
story of redemption because our God sings as He saves us.

THE CREATION IS PRAISING GOD

While God is singing for joy as He creates and saves, the Bible says
all creation is singing praise to its Creator. Isaiah 44:23 shows heaven,
earth, mountains, and forests singing to God because of His works of
redemption:

Sing, O heavens, for the Lord has done it!

Shout, you lower parts of the earth;
Break forth into singing, you mountains,
O forest, and every tree in it!
For the Lord has redeemed Jacob,
And glorified Himself in Israel.

And Isaiah 55:12 repeats the theme:

For you shall go out with joy,

And be led out with peace;
The mountains and the hills shall break forth into singing
before you,
And all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.

As God is speaking His word into our lives, He leads us through a

world where the mountains and hills are singing and the trees are rejoic-
ing with them. Psalm 145:10 says, “All Your works shall praise You, O
Lord.” And Psalm 148 lists the variety of created things that praise God:
angels, all His hosts, sun, moon, stars, heaven of heavens, waters above
the heavens, sea creatures, depths, fire, hail, snow, clouds, stormy winds,

21
 Stan Smith
ee ae aE re ee ee es er, ee ee ee

mountains, hills, fruitful trees, cedars, beasts, cattle, creeping things,

flying fowl...then kings, all peoples, princes, judges, young men, maid-
ens, old men, and children. The thought of scripture is clear: all creation is
praising God, and we, as part of the creation, need to praise God too.
But sometimes we are the one part of creation that refuses to praise
Him. Jesus proclaimed this when He rode a donkey into Jerusalem, days
before His death on the cross. This was a time when God’s redemptive
purposes were about to take a giant step forward. All creation was strain-
ing for the opportunity to break forth in prophetic praise of its Maker.
Luke 19:36-40 says that as Jesus rode into Jerusalem, crowds lined the
streets, carpeting the road with their clothes and praising God with a loud
voice: “Blessed is the King who comes in the name of the Lord! Peace in
heaven and glory in the highest!” And some of the Pharisees called to
Him from the crowd, “Teacher, rebuke Your disciples!” But Jesus
answered, “I tell you that if these should keep silent, the stones would
immediately cry out.”
A few days later the crowds were no longer praising Him; now they
cried, “Crucify Him!” Within hours, Jesus was dying on the cross. Soldiers
cast lots for His clothes. The rulers, priests, scribes, and soldiers all made
fun of Him. The thieves beside Him derided Him, though one eventually
repented and asked, “Remember me when You come into Your kingdom.”
Peter had denied Him, and the other disciples were afraid to be numbered
with Him. Nobody dared to praise Him. So the gospel writers tell us the
sun turned its head, honoring the Son by refusing to countenance His
death. And Matthew 27:51 adds, “the earth quaked, and the rocks were
split.” Man refused to praise Him; therefore, the rocks cried out.

CREATION’S SONG OF PRAISE

As a student in Bible school, I became gripped with the thought that

all creation was praising God while man, made in God’s image, was
ignoring or abusing Him. This was not just an abstract idea; my own heart
was so unstable that I might stand in a morning chapel service, lifting my
hands and praising God, only to be irritated or angry with Him later in the
day because I didn’t like the way He was running my life. It showed me
the depth of my alienation from God.
On the campus at Pinecrest, I was surrounded with the beauties of
nature. We were in the Adirondacks. Pinecrest at that time owned about
150 acres of woods. We were so far from town that the air was clear and
pure; the night sky was brilliant with stars. One path in the woods would

22
 Prophetic Song

take me to a hill covered with moss, another led to a stream, and I could
always find a downed tree or a rock that would serve as a chair if I grew
tired of walking. Rabbits, chipmunks, birds, and even wild turkeys
crossed my path as I walked in the woods. I was surrounded with a
creation that was always praising God.
I couldn’t do this in winter, but when the weather was warm enough I
would take my guitar into the woods to praise God. Somehow, I was
inspired to listen for the song of nature and to join in with it. This was the
song of creation worshiping its creator. I tuned the guitar to DADDAD, a
tuning that eliminated chords and that could be made to sound like
singing in the Spirit. I would sit on a rock or a log and listen for the sound
of creation’s song. The wind would blow through the trees and I would
hear them clapping their hands, as Isaiah had described. I could get a
similar sound from the guitar by fluttering my fingers on the strings. A
bird would sing; I would try to capture its melody. Though the birds
seldom sang in the key of D, their songs still sounded strangely harmonic
when I played them on guitar. If I sat by a stream, I would try to pick out
the various sounds as water ran over this rock or that.
Most striking of all was the rhythm of nature. It wasn’t the thumping
one-two-three-four of man. It was the rhythm of waters breaking over the
rocks, of rain, of wind. The scripture often used wind, rain, or rivers to
symbolize the movings of the Holy Spirit: could it be that these created
forces of nature expressed the rhythm of their Creator? I tried to capture
these rhythms on guitar.
Years later, I was a pastor in metro-Detroit. Sometimes late at night I
would go to a park about a mile from home and walk along the Detroit
River. I would hear freighters going up and down the river. Behind me,
trucks would go through their gears and cars would speed up and down
the streets. Trains clattered and moaned a few blocks away as jets passed
overhead, reaching for Metro Airport. From time to time the night sky
turned orange as the steel mill upriver dumped its slag. All around me was
the power of man, yet it was all as nothing compared to the power of the
river that flowed quietly past. I have often sung my prayers, blending my
song with the wind and the river, letting God tune my heart to His rhythm
and power.

SINGING IN THE SPIRIT

The song that matches the sound of nature is singing in the Spirit. It is
a sound that contemplates and listens. Singing in the Spirit is rooted

aS
 Stan Smith
oo
EEE ee

primarily in seeing and hearing the Lord; therefore, it is not driven by the
rhythms and chord patterns of man. In this respect, it resembles the song
of nature.
I was a student at Pinecrest when God was first teaching me about
prophetic song, and He used two main teachers: the worshipers around
me who sang in the Spirit and the sounds I heard in the woods. If you
have been in a church that makes a habit of singing in the Spirit, God has
already begun to lay a foundation in your life for prophetic song. If you
have not, let the sounds of nature teach you.
Incidentally, you don’t have to fear that the sound of nature is a New
Age sound. I don’t know when or where singing in the Spirit originated,
but there are many testimonies about it in the history of revival. Here is a
quote from Signs & Wonders by Maria Woodworth-Etter, describing a
meeting held on June 27, 1913: “The voices were many, for all in the tent
seemed worshipping: the sound was one, the commingled sound of many
waters. No drilled choir could have kept in such harmony and unity, with
sweetest melody. The bandmaster was evidently the Holy Ghost.” [Signs
& Wonders, Harrison House, p. 270] The church had this sound first, long
before anyone had heard of the New Age Movement and long before the
technology was in place to record nature sounds and to blend them with
soft music.
There is much more to prophetic song than the sound of nature. There
are times when God gives rhythms and harmonies. But the formless sound
is a vital ingredient as we learn to sing the prophetic song of the Lord. On
one level, it is the simplest song to sing: we can pour out our words with
freedom, not locked into constraints of rhythm and meter. On another
level, it is the most heavenly. People who have had visions of heaven
consistently testify that heaven’s music sounds like many waters, and does
not have the steady beat of this world’s music. Ironically, this sound is very
hard to capture on guitar or keyboard because our musical training wants ©
to lock us into a steady rhythm. But it’s worth the effort it takes to learn.
Finally, nature can teach us the rhythms and harmonies that reflect
God’s character, but it can’t teach us the lyrics. Only the testimony of
Jesus can give the right words to our songs. The rocks cried out when
Jesus was crucified, but only the disciples could honor Him by putting the
message of the cross into words. Nature may give us the sound, but the
Scripture reveals God’s character and His works so we can worship Him
with words.
And this takes us back to the creation story in Job. The morning
stars, along with the rest of nature, have a song of praise for their Creator.

24
 Prophetic Song

The sons of God, with a song or with a shout, turn the testimony of Jesus
into lyrics. And God Himself moves among us, enthroned in the praises of
His people and declaring whatever He wants to do next. This is what
prophetic song is all about.
For Worshipers: In your private devotions, join the song of nature
and absorb its peaceful rhythm. Soak yourself in an awareness of God’s
unchanging grace. With song or just with speech, add your voice to the
sound of creation, praising and thanking God for His goodness.
For Musicians: Begin to play along with nature, using a rhythm
without counting. See if you can sing your prayers and praise towards
God without having to conform to a driving rhythm. Your song will take
on a rhythm that sounds more like speech than like a song.

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 Chapter 3

The Prophetic Anointing

SMR

Worship God! For the Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of

Jesus.
(Rev. 19:10)

S inging with nature and singing in the Spirit taught me several

valuable lessons during my days as a student at Pinecrest. The mini-
malist style of music helped me learn the difference between music that
was driven by my mind and music created by my spirit. There is some-
thing about the mind of a musician that always strives to create a better
sound, to achieve a personal best in the field of music. Though this is a
good trait in many cases, it can be deadly to life in the Spirit. It locks our
eyes on ourselves: our music, our talent, our creativity. The minimalist
style of singing in the Spirit can help us subdue our minds so our spirits
can begin to find expression.
I Corinthians 6:17 says, “He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit
with Him.” It is our spirit, the deepest part of our being, that is joined to
the Lord. David wrote that “deep calls to deep” because God calls us by
tugging at our spirits, the deepest part of us. Jesus said that out of our
belly — our innermost being — will flow rivers of the Holy Spirit if we
believe Him. We can find one scripture after another that tells us the Spirit
of God wants communion with our spirits.
So God used the ryhthmless and chordless style of music to begin to
train me to subdue my mind and to get into spiritual communion with
God. It felt like a slow process to me, for again and again over a period of
months I would catch myself getting more absorbed with my music than

27
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ee ee eee SSS

with the God I was trying to worship. I would snap myself back to the
simplest music I could play and pray a prayer that I must have had to pray
hundreds of times: “Lord, I don’t want great music; I want you.” Looking
back, I would call that period of months a breakthrough. I went into that
season a talented musician; I came out of it able to play a simple song
birthed of the Holy Spirit.
Subduing my heart was a vital part of this breakthrough, but there was
a second part that was equally necessary. I found the last phrase of
Revelation 19:10 and began to pray about it: “The Spirit of prophecy is
the testimony of Jesus.” I wanted to welcome the Spirit of prophecy in my
life. I began to understand that the Spirit of prophecy is interested in
Jesus. If I wanted to make Him feel at home with me, I needed to steer my
worship towards His favorite subject matter. So I began to welcome Him,
and He began to visit me.
What — or Who — is the Spirit of prophecy?

THE SPIRIT OF PROPHECY

First, the Spirit of prophecy is the Spirit of God. The Bible gives the
Holy Spirit many names, and each tells us something the Holy Spirit wants
to do in our lives. Romans 8:15 speaks of the “Spirit of adoption,” who
causes us to relate to God as our Father. In John 16:13, Jesus promised “the
Spirit of truth,” who will guide us into all truth. Romans 8:2 says the law of
the “Spirit of life” in Christ Jesus enables us to triumph over the law of sin
and death. In Ephesians 1:17, Paul prayed that God would give the
Ephesian church the “Spirit of wisdom and revelation” in the knowledge of
Jesus. These are all operations of the Holy Spirit, operations that are very
much at the heart of His character and personality.
And so likewise, the Spirit of prophecy is the same Holy Spirit who
moved the Old Testament prophets to speak in the name of the Lord. He is"
the personality behind the gift of prophecy and the office of the prophet in
the church today. In I Corinthians 13:9-10, Paul said the gift of prophecy as
we now know it will pass away — when that which is perfect is come, we
won’t need the gift of prophecy anymore. And in Ephesians 4:11-13, Paul
says the office of the prophet (and every other ministry) will no longer be
needed when “we all come to the unity of the faith and the knowledge of the
Son of God, to a perfect man, to the measure of the stature of the fullness of
Christ.” But the Spirit of prophecy is the person of God Himself, and will
never pass away. And whether we continue in any form of ministry or not in
the age to come, there will always be a fresh testimony of Jesus.

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 Prophetic Song

What insights can we glean about the Holy Spirit as we consider His
name, the Spirit of prophecy? A good starting place is to look at the
prophetic anointing revealed in the Old Testament. After all, the Old
Testament is the only Bible Jesus had. It was the scripture the early
church used. And it was the context that helped John understand the
words he heard on the Isle of Patmos: “The Spirit of prophecy is the testi-
mony of Jesus.”

THE PROPHETIC ANOINTING

In the Old Testament, people were dedicated to God’s purposes by a

process called “anointing.” This process of dedication is at the heart of
what the word holy means, for holiness means “set aside from common
use and dedicated to God’s purpose.” The name Holy Spirit indicates that
the Spirit of God is holy. He cannot have a deep relationship with anyone
who does not make holiness a priority. The anointed ones held holy posi-
tions, and therefore needed to be holy themselves.
Three groups of people were anointed in Old Testament days: priests,
kings, and prophets. Exodus 28-40 tells how God anointed the priests and
the tabernacle; I Samuel 9 shows the first king of Israel anointed by
Samuel the prophet. The act of anointing a priest or a king meant pouring
a container of oil over him. It was a messy job. Psalm 133:2 describes the
anointing of Aaron the high priest: “It is like the precious oil upon the
head, running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron, running down on
the edge of his garments.” It was messy, but it was also wonderful. It was
an initiation into a new dimension of serving God.
In I Kings 19:16, God told Elijah to anoint Elisha to be the prophet
who would succeed him. This was rare. While it was customary to anoint
each priest and each king when his ministry began, prophets did not
necessarily go through a ritual of anointing. Whenever someone was
anointed, it was understood that the anointing oil symbolized the Holy
Spirit, who would work to equip His anointed ones to fulfill their
ministries. While the prophets often missed out on the ritual of being
anointed with oil, they always received the substance if not the symbol:
the Holy Spirit. This was messier than the anointing with oil. Oil washes
off, but the Holy Spirit doesn’t.
Each of these anointings — priestly, kingly, and prophetic —
was unique. Each anointing set a person apart for a specific purpose; each
anointing was vital as God worked out His purposes in Israel.
Each represents an operation of the Holy Spirit in the church today.

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A good way to understand the prophetic anointing is to compare and

contrast it with the other anointings found in the Old Testament.
First, a prophet could come from any family in Israel, but the priests
and kings had to have the right lineage. The priesthood belonged to the
Levites. Only a man could be a priest; he had to be at least thirty years old;
he had to meet several physical and moral characteristics; he had to go
through a ritual to be anointed. The kings likewise all were the offspring of
David. Only one heir of David at a time could be king. So nobody could be
a priest or a king unless he was a man born in the right family. But the
prophets were chosen on the basis of relationship, not lineage. God chose
them because He saw something in them He could use. Prophets could be
men or women; they could have an honorable or a dishonorable pedigree;
they could be sophisticated or rustic; they could be young or old. They
dated their anointing from the visitation of the Holy Spirit, not from a ritual.
Consistently, they were people of the Spirit, no matter what it cost them.
Second, the prophetic anointing was spontaneous, not ritualistic or
political. In the last half of Exodus and all of Leviticus and Numbers, the
priests served God with ritual and repetition. There were sacrifices given
in a prescribed way at prescribed times. There were blessings they memo-
rized and spoke. The books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles likewise
show that the kings had to think politically and strategically to maintain
Israel’s peace and security. By contrast, the prophets lived in a relation-
ship with God where they heard a fresh word from God day by day. They
lived not by their own strategies but by God’s, obeying implicitly and
moving from one assignment to another. There was no threat of boredom
and little predictability, and their only security was God Himself.
Ideally, the three anointings worked together. In practice, there was a
tendency for each to degenerate. I Samuel opens with a generation of
priests who were corrupt, and this was a recurring problem in Israel’s
history. The books of Chronicles and Kings show that the kings all tended.
to compromise sooner or later, though some stood strongly for God at
least for a while. The prophets also were sometimes corrupted, and the
confrontations between true and false prophets form an ongoing theme in
the Old Testament. But of the three offices, the prophetic always bounced
back the fastest. This is because God did not have to confine his choice to
the dynasties that were already in place. Wherever He found someone
with a heart for Him, He could raise up a new voice.
In Acts 2, God ensured that He would always have a prophetic voice
in the church. When He poured out His Spirit on all flesh, Peter quoted
the prophecy given by Joel:

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 Prophetic Song

Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

Your young men shall see visions,
Your old men shall dream dreams.
And on My menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days;
And they shall prophesy.
(Acts 2:17-18)

This is God’s way of preserving Spirit-birthed ministry in the church.

And God is energizing the church to break out of the traditions of repeti-
tion and ritual, to hear and act upon the fresh word He is now speaking.
This is what the Spirit of prophecy is all about.

THE VERY PERSONAL TESTIMONY OF JESUS

The prophetic anointing centers on the testimony of Jesus. This can

be the testimony Jesus Himself is speaking or the testimony the Holy
Spirit is speaking about Jesus. Both are very personal, for God is reveal-
ing Himself to us.
In comparing the prophetic anointing with the priestly and kingly
anointings, we have seen several things about the prophetic. It centers not
on lineage but on a person’s heart. It has more of a spontaneous flavor
than ritualistic. It steers away from man’s careful planning and strategiz-
ing to tap into God’s plans and strategies; but God often reveals His strate-
gies step by step, which leaves us with unanswered questions when He
speaks. All these traits are part of the prophetic anointing, but the main
ingredient is that God reveal Himself personally.
God wants to reveal Himself. He is more personal than we are. It is
human nature to try to reduce the things of God to a formula, but there is
nothing impersonal and mechanical about Him. So our first step is to get
away from impersonal talk about Him and into face-to-face dialog with
Him.
Sometimes we fall into the trap of living frustrating and fruitless
lives because we identify the traits that define a prophetic life, and then
we try to cultivate them. We try to be radically devoted, just as the
prophets of old were. We try to banish all ritual so we will be free to
move with the promptings of the Holy Spirit. We float from one unde-
fined situation to another, trying to abandon human strategizing to be led
by the Spirit. We can do all these things without ever quite becoming
prophetic because we have reduced the prophetic anointing to a formula,

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and we are so busy looking at the formula that we’ve forgotten to center
on Jesus.
I had an embarrassing experience during a ministerial internship at
Pinecrest Retreats in Setauket, Long Island. Jewel Courtney, a prophetess,
was coming to minister for a weekend. I arranged to be the driver who
would pick her up at her last stop and bring her to the retreat center. It
would be my first opportunity to spend time one-on-one with someone
prophetic, and I was hoping to receive a prophetic impartation. At the last
minute, I was given another job to do and someone else did the driving. I
was frustrated. “Lord, I’ve lost my chance to spend time with Jewel
Courtney and get an impartation of the prophetic anointing. How will I
ever become prophetic if You don’t make room for me to spend time with
the prophets?”
He replied, ““You could always spend time with Me.”
And I fired back, “But Lord, You don’t understand. Jewel has the
prophetic anointing...”
As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I realized what I had
said. I felt stupid, but I was glad God had exposed the false assumption in
my heart. God does use other prophets to impart the prophetic anointing
to us, but He wants our eyes on Him, not on the other prophets. God knew
that, within a year, He would lead me into a four-year apprenticeship with
a prophet in Canada. But He wanted me to understand that He was and is
my source, not the people He uses.
Having said that, there are two principies that have helped me
immensely as I have sought the prophetic anointing. The first is basic to
the new covenant: Jesus lives in us. If He lives in us, sooner or later He is
sure to speak through us. This doesn’t mean every word we speak is the
word of God, of course. But it does mean that if we will honor the pres-
ence of Christ in us and expect Him to speak through us, sooner or later
He is sure to do so.
The second principle is similar: Jesus is the Holy Spirit’s favorite
subject matter. It is good to pray and to invite the Spirit of prophecy into
our lives, but if we want to make Him feel at home we need to center our
prayers on Jesus.
All through the Bible, the Holy Spirit was centered on Jesus.
Sometimes He had the prophets speak clearly of the Christ who would
come, as in Psalms 22 where David proclaimed the redemptive work
Jesus would fulfill on the cross. Sometimes He gave them prophecies
about their own situations which had a later fulfillment in Christ — for
example, Isaiah’s prophecy that a virgin would conceive a child was given
 Prophetic Song

first to speak to the king of Judah, and then later took on the greater
significance of the virgin birth of Christ. And sometimes He moved the
saints of the Old Testament to live through a situation that was a parable
of the coming Christ — for instance, the story of Abraham offering his son
on Mount Moriah is a picture of the Father offering His Son on Calvary.
Whatever these experiences meant to David, Isaiah, and Abraham, the
Holy Spirit etched the testimony of Jesus into their lives. Jesus was
always on His mind.
This remains true in the New Testament, as many passages attest. A
good example is in John 16:13-14, where Jesus described the character of
the Holy Spirit:

When He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He will lead you into all
truth; for He shall not speak of Himself...He will glorify Me,
for He will take of what is Mine and declare it to you.

It is the tender and loving nature of the Holy Spirit to point away from
Himself and towards Jesus. If we want to welcome the Spirit of prophecy
in our lives, we too need to make it a habit to look away from ourselves
and to see Jesus. Where the Old Testament prophets looked forward to the
coming of Christ, we in the New Testament days look back at what was
accomplished in the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus while we also
look forward to His second coming. We can find truth by searching the
scripture, and then we can invite the Spirit of truth to explain it to us. This
is our part. His part is to unveil Jesus to us, and when He does, we know
God not just by our scripture research but by revelation.
Typically, this is how we get saved. Someone preaches truth, and the
Spirit of God makes it real to us and converts us. But some of us hunger
for a deeper conversion. We long to know God personally, as the prophets
of old did. We want to live in the fire of the Holy Spirit, as the early
church did. If you want more of the Holy Spirit, center your attention on
Jesus, His favorite subject matter. Build your prayers on the truth about
Jesus — who He is, what He has done at the cross, what He has promised
to do in the church. Center your worship on Jesus. The more you fill your
mouth with the truth about Jesus, the more welcome the Spirit of
prophecy will feel.
For Worshipers: Worship God by proclaiming truth about Jesus.
Explore who Jesus is. Make declarations and ask questions. Invite the
Spirit of prophecy to fill you with the testimony of Jesus. Don’t use this
principle as a formula by which you might try to manipulate God; instead,

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approach Him with humility and openness. As He begins to fill your

worship, it will take on a richness your mind cannot produce.
For Musicians: Make it a point to dial down your music so you will
be more conscious of Jesus than of your own playing. When you catch
yourself losing sight of the Lord and growing more interested in your
music, stop yourself and go back to simpler music and a renewed focus on
Jesus. Be patient with yourself. It will get easier as you continue.
 Chapter 4

God Is Seeking Worshipers

IVR

The hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will
worship in Spirit and truth: for the Father is seeking such to
worship Him.
(John 4:23)

B efore I was ready to stand in the church and sing a prophecy, God
taught me about prophetic song in worship. The simplicity of
singing in the Spirit freed me from the need for musical innovation so I
could devote my attention to the Lord Himself. As I would focus on the
testimony of Jesus, I would sometimes find lyrics that went into much
more detail than usual. Were these lyrics prophetic? I hoped so, but I
wasn’t sure.
This was in the early 1970’s, a time when there was little prophetic
training in the church. People simply had to step out and give a prophetic
word, which then would be judged by the elders. I did not have the confi-
dence to prophesy. But as I was searching the scriptures, I began to see
worship as a safe place to test the waters. In worship, we can learn to be
led by the Spirit. We don’t have to be afraid to make a mistake because
our audience is God, not man. If I prophesy, I’m claiming to be the voice
of God to man, and a mistake can do a lot of damage. If Iworship, I’m
simply a man honoring God. In worship, there is room to soar in the high
places of the Spirit in a prophetic anointing. But worship is also valid
when we have little or no inspiration and don’t feel the anointing of God.
This was what I needed: the freedom to go as high as I could in the things
of God, without the demand for a perfect performance.

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ee

In John 4 we find God’s invitation into this freedom, in the story of

Jesus and the woman at the well. The story begins when Jesus sent the
disciples ahead to buy lunch and then sat down by a well in the heat of the
day. A woman came to the well with her bucket, and Jesus asked for a
drink. And while she marveled that He was willing to speak to her even
though He was a Jew and she a Samaritan, Jesus began telling her about
living water and then supernaturally told her the story of her life. “Sir,”
she said, “I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this
mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one
ought to worship.” And Jesus answered,

“Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither
on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You
worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for
salvation is of the Jews. But the hour is coming, and now is,
when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and
in truth; for the Father is seeking such to worship Him. God is
Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and
truth.”
(John 4:21-24)

In the four gospels, this is the earliest account of Jesus’ talking about
the flow of the Holy Spirit in our lives. The living water is the Holy Spirit,
who empowers us to worship God in spirit and in truth. But notice this
combination — spirit and truth. When the Holy Spirit proclaims truth, it is
prophecy. And when the Holy Spirit becomes a fountain of living waters
within us, empowering us to enjoy spirit to Spirit communion with God,
He is walking us into prophetic worship. The Father is actively seeking
those who will worship in spirit and truth. Prophecy is the place where
spirit and truth meet; therefore, true worship needs to be prophetic.

MUSICAL PRUNING

When Jesus talked about worship in spirit and truth, He said nothing
about music. This tells us we can expect God to prune our musical skill at
times. God may prune us by disciplining us to use or avoid certain styles;
He may humble us by holding us below our level of skill for a season; He
may shut us away from public performance and keep us in secret prayer
and worship. In each of these disciplines, God wants our first love for
Jesus Himself to overshadow our love of music or our ego-need to be

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admired as musicians. The ultimate objective of this pruning is that our

music will become more Spirit-led, and we will bear more fruit.
Jesus said we have to lose our lives to find them, and I have seen this
principle work in prophetic song. The first time I was asked to prepare a
song to sing in the church, I felt God wanted me to sing a spontaneous
song with the guitar tuned to DADDAD. I had been singing in the woods
day after day, trying to keep my heart focused on the Lord rather than
music. I knew I could not practice the song because it would have to flow
spontaneously. I decided to sing Psalm 46, trusting God for the tune as I
went. I remember praying, “Lord, if you don’t give me a tune, I’m going
to strum this guitar and sing the whole Psalm on three or four notes.”
Sunday morning arrived. Dying on the inside, I stood up to sing. I
was surprised that the first two lines went fairly well, but my imagination
told me I couldn’t keep it up. I tried to shut out these thoughts and keep
my heart focused on God Himself. Somehow, the song tumbled out with
a nice melody and meter. I was astonished to receive several compli-
ments after the meeting was over; someone asked me where he could
learn the song and I replied, “Get the tape.” I had feared the music would
be so bad that everyone would know it was spontaneous, but I’m not sure
if anyone did.
This was my first experience of singing a spontaneous song in public.
The discipline of turning my heart away from music and towards the Lord
in my own devotions had felt like a pruning. Ironically, that same disci-
pline enabled me to overcome the fear and doubts that were assaulting my
mind when I sang in public. First love had pruned my music in secret so I
could bear more fruit in public.

INSPIRATION FOR PROPHETIC LYRICS

First-love is the key not only to prophetic music but also to prophetic
words. Many people are hungry for the prophetic — the power, the
mystique of knowing things nobody else knows, the sense of having
God’s last word in an argument. These are all issues that can quickly
become tainted with pride. God has wisely hidden the Spirit of prophecy
in the testimony of Jesus. If we want the Spirit of prophecy, we will find
Him not in our speculations about the future but in Jesus Himself. I
Samuel 2:30 says an unnamed man of God prophesied over Eli, “Those
who honor Me I will honor, and those who despise Me shall be lightly
esteemed.” So God has hidden the Spirit of prophecy in Christ, to be
found only by those who prize Him.

a7)
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The prophetic wells spring up out of intimacy with Jesus in two ways:
by revelation of who He is, and by the secrets He tells His closest friends.
There is a world of difference between knowing Jesus and merely
knowing about Jesus. In one of the holiest moments of my lifetime, I saw
this difference clearly one day while eating lunch in a restaurant with
other preachers. One had studied in seminary and gained a lot of intellec-
tual understanding of God’s word but had done little to let God breathe
life into his learning; another had also studied a lot in his personal devo-
tions, and was a man of prayer with a passionate hunger for an intimate
walk with Jesus. “Sometimes I wonder about Jesus,” said the seminarian.
“There are a lot of other faiths with other Bibles. Is Jesus really as special
as we like to think?”
The other preacher poured out a detailed and intimate answer:
“There’s nobody else like Jesus.” He quoted one scripture after another,
then told how each scripture had touched his life. As he spoke, his eyes
filled with tears and God’s presence began to fill the restaurant. All chit-
chat at the other tables stopped; everybody was listening to him. And the
seminarian’s eyes were full of tears, too. “You’re right,” he conceded.
“Jesus is special.”
One man had devoted his life to knowing about Jesus, but the other
had devoted his life to knowing Jesus intimately.
Intimacy with God is the key to prophetic revelation. Genesis 18 tells
a classic story that shows how intimate friendship with God produces a
prophetic life. God and two angels were planning to bring judgment to
Sodom and Gomorrah, but first they stopped to visit Abraham. Abraham
prepared a meal for them, and God renewed His promise to give Abraham
and Sarah a son. After dinner, the angels were eager to get on with the
trip, but God lingered. “Shall I hide from Abraham what I am doing...?”
He said. And the rest of the chapter tells about Abraham’s intercession for
the cities and for his nephew Lot.
There is a friendship with God so intimate that He tells us what He is
doing. In John 15:15, Jesus talked about it —

No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know

what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all
things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you.

This intimacy with God is the key to our having prophetic insight to
sing. God shares His heart with His friends. A first-love for Him will put
us in position to hear whatever God wants to say.

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 Prophetic Song

THE PURE IN HEART SEE GOD

How do we get to know God so intimately? There is a cycle of inti-

macy that increases and accelerates. In Matthew 5:8, Jesus mentioned the
first part of the cycle: “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God.” The more our hearts are pure, the better we can see and get to
know God. Then in II Corinthians 3:18, Paul describes the second part of
the cycle: “We all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory
of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to
glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.” Our hearts are purified as we see
Him, and as our hearts become more and more pure, we can see Him
better.
Often we feel powerless to purify our own hearts, but we can at least
choose to focus on Him. Sometimes when I have been in despair about
my own impurity, I have found encouragement in II Chronicles 16:9 —

For the eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole
earth, to show Himself strong on behalf of those whose heart is
perfect towards Him.

God is not, looking for someone with a perfect heart. He’s looking for
someone with a heart “perfect towards Him.” We can turn even the most
imperfect heart towards Him. And this choice, this act of the will, will
often get us into the cleansing flow of the waters of life. Even at our
worst, we can choose to turn towards God and to worship Him. And as we
persevere in worship, the Holy Spirit touches our hearts and the worship
begins to flow. If we repeat this process consistently, slowly but surely we
come into intimacy with God.
I’ve learned to pray a simple prayer as I seek intimacy with God:
“Lord Jesus, where are You right now? And what are You doing?” The
Holy Spirit likes to reveal Jesus.
Sometimes I have prayed that prayer after church, when people were
milling around and visiting one another. And somehow the Holy Spirit
would draw my attention to somebody, maybe giving me a glimpse of His
heart to encourage someone who was going through a battle. So I would go
to this person to pray or just to visit for a few minutes, and God would
release His presence and peace. Though I tend to be socially backward at
times, a glimpse of Jesus changes me and helps me become more outgoing.
Sometimes I have prayed that prayer when I was locked in bitterness
and unforgiveness. Seeing Jesus in the problem brings a complete change

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of perspective. Sometimes I’ve seen the price He paid to forgive me;

sometimes I’ve seen Him walking away from the pain and the problem
and calling me to follow Him; sometimes I’ve seen how a sovereign God
is turning the situation for good. Whatever the Holy Spirit reveals as I
look towards Jesus, it always purges my bitterness and releases heaven’s
peace, joy, and love. The more we see Him, the more we will change and
be like Him.
As we have more and more of these small glimpses of Jesus, our inti-
macy with God grows. Our lives start becoming prophetic because the
Holy Spirit repeatedly applies the biblical truths about Jesus to our lives.
And our first love intensifies.
Only God can pour His Spirit into our lives, and we can’t force Him
to do it. But we can choose to turn towards Him, whether we are at our
best or our worst, and we can focus our attention on what the Bible says
about Jesus. Focusing on truth about Jesus is an invitation for the Spirit of
truth to visit us, and His presence is living water.

THE MIX OF SPIRIT AND TRUTH

These were the realities I saw in scripture in the early 1970’s when I
was seeking God for the prophetic anointing. I didn’t think I was very spir-
itual, and it seemed unlikely that I would get a profound revelation. I hesi-
tated to tell anyone I had found how to cultivate the prophetic anointing.
But I knew I could not go wrong if I continually sought God for more of
the Holy Spirit — Jesus told us in Luke 11 that the Father will give the
Spirit to all who ask Him. And I couldn’t go wrong if I kept my lyrics
centered on Jesus. I decided to wait for outside confirmation before I
would dare to say I had sung a prophetic song.
The outside confirmations began to come. Sometimes as we sang in
the Spirit in church, I would sing the essence of a prophecy someone
would give later in the meeting, or an outline of the sermon that would be
preached. Was this coincidence, or was I starting to sing prophetically?
Sometimes as the singing in the Spirit would die down, I would continue
to play the guitar softly with the rhythmless and chordless sounds I had
learned to play. The church would wait for a few moments and someone
would prophesy with great power. Had my playing had anything to do
with releasing the prophecy? At first, these experiences were happening
once or twice a month, and I could not be sure whether I was starting to
sing prophetically or if it was mere coincidence. As time went on, the
experiences became more numerous and I began to realize God was

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teaching me how to roll out a red carpet to welcome His prophetic

anointing.
Over the years, I have found the recipe of Spirit and truth to be as
profound as it is simple. It is my job to find out what the Bible says, and
to center my mind on truth. Only the Holy Spirit can make that truth come
alive. When I sense the movings of the Holy Spirit, I speak or sing truth.
Almost always, truth takes me to a higher dynamic of the Spirit. If I feel
dry and unanointed, I start declaring who Jesus is. Usually, the Holy Spirit
comes on the scene and His river begins to flow.
Somehow, these little experiences have added up to transform my life.
Today, wherever I go, I am received as a man with a prophetic ministry.
But I began as someone hopelessly out of touch with the things of the
Spirit.
If God can do it with me, He can do it with anyone.
For Worshipers: Worship is a safe place to mix Spirit and truth.
Whether singing or praying, ask the Holy Spirit to anoint you as you offer
the Lamb, Jesus Christ, to the Father. Worship God for who He is, for what
He has done, and for the promises He is still working out in your life.
For Musicians: Music is part of our priesthood. Take time to sow to
the Spirit in secret, singing in the Spirit in your personal devotions.

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 Chapter 5

Living Water
G af, O)

Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.

(Revelation 22:17)

‘es is no question that God has made living water available in

Christ. But exactly what is it? What must we do to drink? And how
does it connect with prophetic song? For the answers to these questions,
we need to turn to the writings of John.
Anyone who reads the New Testament is struck with the unique
sound of John’s voice. His Gospel sounds different from Matthew,
Mark, and Luke. As he wrote about Jesus, he told anecdotes the other
Gospel writers overlooked, using language that sounds different from
theirs. For centuries, Bible scholars have wondered why John sounds so
different from Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Many have been content with
the explanation offered by Clement of Alexandria around 200 A.D.,
presumably a tradition that had been handed down orally: “Last of all,
John, perceiving that the external facts had been made plain in the
Gospel, being urged by his friends, and inspired by the Spirit, composed
a spiritual Gospel.’ Most scholars believe John wrote his gospel
between 90 and 100 A.D., at least twenty years after the other three
Gospels had been written.
John may have based his “spiritual gospel” on the revelation he
received on the Isle of Patmos, for the book of Revelation includes several
themes that don’t appear in Matthew, Mark, and Luke but that do appear
in John: the Word or Logos of God, the Lamb of God, the Door to the
Father, and living water. Many scholars believe John saw the Revelation

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ee

before he wrote his Gospel. If so, the visions of Revelation would have
stirred John’s memories and added new insights about what Jesus had
done and taught.
Of all the writers in the New Testament, John has a unique insight
about water. The other Gospels and Acts mention baptism in water; Paul
and the writer to the Hebrews sometimes allude to the ceremonial uses of
water in Jewish rituals; Peter writes about Noah’s flood, which he then
relates to water baptism. But John alone mentions “living water” or
“water of life,” which he usually identifies as a symbol for the Holy Spirit.
Only John tells us that “three bear witness on earth: the Spirit, the water,
and the blood.” (I John 5:6-8) John has a special message for us about
living water, and how it will bear witness to Jesus on the earth.
A concordance shows four main places where John talks about living
water: in John 4 with the woman at the well, in John 7 during the Feast of
Tabernacles, in Revelation 22 where he saw a vision of the river of life,
and in three scenes in Revelation where he describes God’s voice. These
passages will show us that God has made prophetic song available to the
whole church.

JOHN 4 - THE ACTION OF LIVING WATERS

We’ ve already looked at the theme of John 4, the living waters Jesus
likened to worship in Spirit and truth. Prophecy is the Spirit proclaiming
truth. But there is another thought in John 4:14 that also connects with
prophetic ministry:

Whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never
thirst. But the water that I shall give him will become in him a
fountain of water springing up into everlasting life.

The words “springing up” suggest first an artesian well or a spring.

The water doesn’t just sit in a pool at the bottom of a shaft, waiting to be
hauled up in a bucket. This water springs up like the water in a fountain.
But there is more to “springing up” than just water. As seen in I
Samuel 9:9, there are two main Hebrew words for prophet, a prophet and
a seer. The word prophet is nabi, a word that likens prophetic speech to a
bubbling or springing up. Sometimes the word suggests the explosive
quality of wine after it has fermented, a belch after a big meal, or even
vomiting. The act of prophesying therefore is a bubbling up of a prophetic
word, releasing an internal spiritual pressure. This is in contrast to the

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more detached ministry of a seer, who simply looks into the heavens and
reports what he sees.
The prophetic word is alive and active. It does not sit, placid and stag-
nant, like the rainwater trapped in a barrel. It has a life of its own. It
springs up and overflows.
Was Jesus thinking about the Hebrew word for prophecy when He
told the woman at the well He would give the thirsty a fountain of water
springing up into everlasting life? Judge for yourself. As soon as the
woman asked Him for the water, He prophesied — He told her about the
men she had married and the man she was living with now. Her first
sample of the living water was a prophetic word that pinpointed the main
area of sin in her life. Surprised at being confronted, she turned the
subject to worship, and Jesus began talking about prophetic worship,
worship in Spirit and truth.
Someone has said Jesus got his wires crossed, telling Nicodemus the
theologian about the new birth and telling the woman at the well about
worship in Spirit and in truth. But perhaps this is exactly the point: living
water is given not for theologians to discuss, but to revive the parched
souls of those who have lived in the desert of sin and death.
So in John 4, we see three themes linked together: living waters, a
prophetic “springing up,” and worship in Spirit and truth.

JOHN 7 - RELEASING THE LIVING WATERS

The three themes in John 4 reappear in John 7, but to see them clearly
we have to consider the background of the chapter. The story occurred
during the Feast of Tabernacles, also called the Feast of Ingathering. In
Leviticus 23:33-43, Moses had spelled out the laws governing the feast.
Each year, the Israelites were to dwell in booths for seven days, celebrat-
ing God’s faithfulness as He had led them through the wilderness, and
also celebrating that year’s harvest season. Over the years, the ritual had
grown to include jubilant praise and worship, which accompanied a daily
procession to the Pool of Siloam. There a priest filled a golden pitcher
with water to bring back to the Temple and pour out, along with a vessel
of wine, as a drink offering. The daily outpouring of water was under-
stood to symbolize the outpouring of the Holy Spirit that would attend the
coming of the Messiah. This happened every day for a week.
So it was in the context of this feast, with its exuberant worship and its
daily drink offering, that Jesus stood on the last day of the feast and cried,
“If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me,

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as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.”
John would later add that this water is the Holy Spirit. John 7:37-39)
The Holy Spirit flows like a river from believing hearts. And against
the backdrop of the feast with its exuberant singing of the Psalms with
musical instruments, Jesus once again spoke about the waters of life in a
context of worship. Faith — believing — trusting God — is all part of our
worship.

REVELATION 22 - THE RIVER’S SOURCE AND

FRUITFULNESS

Jesus promised in John 7:37 that rivers of living waters will flow out
of the hearts of those who believe, “as the Scripture has said.” This has to
refer to the vision of Ezekiel’s Temple in chapters 40-48, a passage that
details how the glory of God will return to Jerusalem. Ezekiel 47 tells
about a supernatural river that flows from the altar and grows larger and
deeper the further it flows. The river brings life, watering the trees whose
fruit is for food and whose leaves are for medicine.
In Revelation 22, John saw the same river flowing from the throne of
God and of the Lamb. It too was a river of life, watering trees that bore
different fruits every month and whose leaves were for the healing of the
nations.
Ezekiel saw the river flowing from the altar, the place of worship.
John saw the river flowing from the throne, the place of Jesus’ Lordship.
But in John 7:37, Jesus showed the river flowing from the hearts of those
who believe in Him. Faith releases the river of life, the river of the Spirit.
The heart of a believer is the altar where God is worshiped, the throne
where Jesus rules.
This means every Christian is meant to be a miniature of Ezekiel’s
Temple and of the New Jerusalem. This is not to say there will be no-
historical fulfillment of these prophecies. But at the Feast of Tabernacles
in John 7, Jesus focused not on end-time events but on a more immediate
fulfillment of prophecy: that every Christian is meant to be a well from
which the waters of life bubble up and flow out. The waters nourish the
tree of life, and the leaves of that tree are for the healing of the nations.
A few months ago, I saw this principle in action in a prophetic
conference. We were focused on prophetic intercession; several strong
prophetic voices were there, as well as two prophetic worship teams. The
presence of God was growing stronger and stronger as the meetings
progressed.

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I had been learning that the presence of God is a healing presence,

and it occurred to me that God might have already healed somebody
during the conference even though we had not been ministering healing. I
was given a few minutes in the last meeting to ask the congregation of
about three hundred, “Has anyone been healed during the meetings?” Two
people had — one had come to the meetings with terrible pain in his legs,
and was healed during worship the first night.
So I told the people, “The fact that God has already healed two people
without anyone’s praying for them tells us it is the presence of God that
heals, not anyone’s gift of healing.” And on that basis, I prayed a quick
prayer for healing. Several people were healed instantly of pains in their
backs and joints, and it’s impossible to know during the meeting if people
have been healed of things like cancer, diabetes, heart trouble — they need
time to get medical tests that confirm that a healing has taken place. So I
suspect God took care of some of these diseases as well.
I have often prayed the same prayer in other meetings and seen no
results at all. But this meeting was different because several hundred
people had been pouring out the sound of living water for several days.
The atmosphere of God’s presence brought miracles of healing, even
though we hadn’t spent our time teaching about it.
As we worship God with prophetic song, the glory of God will flood
our gatherings and people who don’t even have a healing gift will pray
simple prayers for healing, and God will answer with power.

REVELATION 1, 14, and 19 - THE SOUND

OF MANY WATERS

John 4 and John 7 describe the action of the living waters, a release of
the Spirit spoken through us. Revelation 22 echoes the prophecy of
Ezekiel and shows the effects of living waters, healing. In three more
passages in Revelation, John describes a voice, likening it to the sound of
living waters.
The first passage is Revelation 1:15, and describes the voice of Jesus:
“His voice as the sound of many waters.
The second passage, Revelation 14:1-3, says this:

Then I looked, and behold, a Lamb standing on Mount Zion,

and with Him one hundred andforty-four thousand, having
His Father’s name written on their foreheads. And I heard a
voice from heaven, like the voice of many waters, and like the

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SS
ee ee

voice of loud thunder. And I heard the sound of harpists play-

ing their harps. And they sang as it were a new song before the
throne before the four living creatures, and the elders, and no
one could learn that song except the hundred and forty-four
thousand who were redeemed from the earth.

Clearly this was a prophetic song. The redeemed were singing,

accompanied by harps. The sound of many waters was the “voice from
heaven,” and the song was new and unlearnable — a spontaneous,
prophetic song that can’t be learned by human study and talent. Only
the Holy Spirit can give this song, and He can give it only to the
redeemed.
And then one more time we find this sound of many waters, coming
from a multitude who have gathered to praise Him:

And I heard, as it were, the voice ofa great multitude, as the

sound of many waters and as the sound of mighty thunderings,
saying, “Alleluia! For the Lord God Omnipotent reigns! Let us
be glad and rejoice and give Him glory, for the marriage of the
Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready.”
(Revelation 19:6-7)

It is no surprise that this sound of many waters sometimes refers to

Jesus’ voice and sometimes to the voices of His people. Jesus lives in us.
Not every word we speak is the word of God, of course. But it would be a
strange thing indeed if Jesus lived in us and never spoke through us.

WHAT ARE THE LIVING WATERS?

In these four groups of scriptures, John has told us several things

about living water:
(1) John 4 — Living water “springs up” like a prophecy. We can
release it by worshiping God in Spirit and truth.
(2) John 7 — The “river of life” is a river of the Holy Spirit, flowing
through those who believe. Jesus taught about the river of life during the
Feast of Ingathering, which suggests that the river of life is meant to
flow in the context of exuberant worship, and in the gathering of the
harvest.
(3) Revelation 22 — The “river of the water of life” flows from God’s
throne. This vision amplifies Ezekiel’s similar vision, where the river

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flows from the altar. The source of the river therefore is the place of
worship or the place of Jesus’ lordship.
(4) Revelation 1, 14, and 19 - These three passages all speak of a
“voice of many waters.” Revelation 1:15 clearly identifies this voice as
the voice of Jesus. Revelation 14:1-3 and 19:6-7 both show this same
voice coming from a multitude of people, and they were worshiping.
These passages suggest that this sound of many waters is in fact the voice
of Christ in us, enabling us to worship God in Spirit and truth with a new
song that can’t be taught or learned. He sings it through us, and it springs
up prophetically.
All these passages tell us the same thing: the river of the Holy Spirit is
a prophetic river, often expressed in worship. The sound of a heavenly
multitude worshiping God is the same sound as the voice of Jesus
Himself.
This means we can taste the word of God in our mouths, if we are
thirsty. We don’t have to be pious; the woman at the well wasn’t, but God
anointed her testimony to trigger a citywide revival. We don’t have to be
perfect, but we do need to fill our mouths with the testimony of Him who
is perfect — Jesus. Only God can produce and release the living waters, but
we need to choose to take a drink.
It’s up to us to start worshiping and praying, filling our mouths with
the truth about Jesus. As we do, the Holy Spirit will begin to mix with the
truth we are declaring. He will lift us into a higher experience than we
could ever manufacture, and will lead us into intimacy with God. We will
often begin in our own strength, but then the Holy Spirit will energize us.
We will be like an airplane taking off: earthbound for a few moments as
we build speed on the runway, then lifted by the wind of the Spirit into a
new dimension.
This river has been available for two thousand years. Though other
generations may have overlooked the waters of life, we are living in days
of harvest, a Feast of Ingathering. It is time for a drink offering of the
Holy Spirit to be poured out on the altar. But now we don’t have to walk
to the pool of Siloam to fill a pitcher with water. God has filled our hearts
with living waters that bubble up through our worship, and we pour out a
prophetic song that no one can learn because God gives it spontaneously.
For Worshipers: Faith is the ingredient that enthrones God in our
hearts, and the river will flow from His heart. Your faith, and especially
your expectancy, will determine how much or how little of the Spirit will
flow. Meditate on what Jesus has done for you at the cross. Believe He has
risen from the dead, to pour His words through you.

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For Musicians: Add an ingredient to the lines written to worshipers:

trust God to pour a song through you. Expect God to play you as you play
the instrument.

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 PART TWO

David’s Songs Of The

e STI
Prophetic Lyrics
 Chapter 6

The Spontaneous Song

SVR

Sing to the Lord a new song!

(Psalm 98:1)

I anyone in the Bible was a prophetic singer, it was David. There were
prophetic songs before David, and there was a revival of prophetic
singing among the sons of the prophets in the days of Samuel. But more
than anyone else in the Bible, David embodied prophetic song.
Among all the prophets of the Bible, David is the only one whose
prophecies were all musical. David was gifted as a warrior, a king, an
administrator, a musician, and a prophet. But God created him with an
odd weakness: he often needed to consult another prophet to hear
whether to fight the next battle or not, and how to order the affairs of his
kingdom.
You would think that if a man were a prophet, he wouldn’t need
others to help him hear the voice of God. But David knew better. He knew
his own prophetic gift enabled him to see the eternal nature and purposes
of God, but he needed the insights of other prophets to help him discern
God’s plans in day-by-day matters. This may be why their prophecies
weren’t included in scripture and David’s were. God used the other
prophets like Nathan and Gad to address the issues of their own day. God
used David’s psalms to speak to every generation. David’s prophetic
songs became even more relevant after the Messiah came, as the early
church found Jesus’ death, burial, and resurrection in the Psalms.
There were many prophetic singers in the Old Testament, but none
can match David’s vast range of musical and poetic styles. Many of the

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Psalms begin with a line giving musical direction: “To the Chief
Musician,” someone who must have directed a band or a choir; “On
stringed instruments,” calling for a team of musicians; “On an eight
stringed harp,” giving direction for an individual player. Sometimes the
Psalm is called a “meditation” or a “teaching” or “to call to remem-
brance” — and while these phrases don’t give us clear musical direction
today, they must have when first written. Some of the Psalms are set to a
particular tune. And then besides all this musical diversity, the Psalms are
also poetically diverse: some are complaints, some are hymns of praise,
some recount Israel’s history, some are a cry for deliverance, some are
teachings. The diversity of David’s prophetic worship tells us prophetic
song in today’s church will include many different styles and themes.

WERE DAVID’S SONGS SPONTANEOUS?

The Hebrew name for the book of Psalms is Tehillim, one of ten
Hebrew words used in the Old Testament for praise and worship. Many
people are teaching that this word means “spontaneous songs,” though
most Bible dictionaries or Hebrew lexicons don’t say so. Nevertheless,
three things suggest that the Psalms probably were spontaneous: the root
of the word tehillim, the historical context of David’s ministry of
prophetic song, and a recurring commandment in the Psalms.
The word tehillim is the plural of tehillah, which literally means “the
object being glorified” with the secondary meaning of a “song of praise.”
Like singing in the Spirit, it is a song that is more focused on who God is
than on musical style. It is derived from the root word halal, which means
“to praise God clamorously, to make a fool of yourself praising God.”
This is not one of the quiet and reflective words for praise, but a word that
denotes an overflow of emotion. A tehillah therefore was not just any
song of praise, but it was a song of raw emotion and unrestrained passion
for God.
If we had nothing but the word tehillah, we might not think David’s
songs were necessarily spontaneous. After all, a well-known song can be
sung passionately and clamorously. But we can’t quite understand the
nature of David’s songs without also looking at the historical context.
Scripture mentions the “sons of the prophets.” The commentaries agree
that these were ecstatic prophets who rose into an altered prophetic state
and blurted out their prophecies, sometimes in song and sometimes in
speech. As we trace their progress through scripture, we can be sure they
influenced David.

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During the ministry of Samuel, the sons of the prophets crop up

repeatedly. They played a role in Saul’s becoming king, as Samuel
prophesied:

You will meet a group of prophets coming down from the high
place with a stringed instrument, a tambourine, a flute, and a
harp before them; and they will be prophesying. Then the Spirit
of the Lord will come upon you, and you will prophesy with
them and be turned into another man.
(I Samuel 10:5-6)

This group of musical prophets carried an atmosphere of the Holy

Spirit, and when Saul stepped into it, he prophesied even though there
was not a prophetic calling on his life. It was so out of character for him
that everyone joked, “Is Saul also among the prophets?” And the word
they used was nabiyyah, the word that speaks of a prophet whose word
bubbles up spontaneously.
David too spent time with Samuel where the musical prophets were
meeting, and presumably he received an impartation from them. But
David maintained a deeper and more lasting relationship with these
prophets than Saul ever did. Saul was content to have a prophetic expe-
rience, and then to get on with his life. David wanted a prophetic life.
He never seemed to be jealous of someone else’s prophetic gift or
ministry; he simply wanted to dwell in God’s presence. As he said in
Psalm 27:4 —

One thing have I desired of the Lord, that will I seek: that I
may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life, to
behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in His temple.

This was David’s passion, his first love.

So David’s ministry began when Saul had been rejected as king, and
demonic fits would beset him. David was called in to play the harp, sooth-
ing Saul. This tells us David had already begun to play under the anointing,
and it’s possible that he had received an impartation through the sons of the
prophets who surrounded Samuel. But David wasn’t content to settle for
an experience. He did everything he could to maintain and honor the pres-
ence of God in his life. As a result, David became a prophet.
There is no question therefore that David’s roots lay not just in musi-
cal talent but in the prophetic anointing. His role models were prophetic

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musicians who sang spontaneously with unbridled passion for God. So

when the lexicons tell us the tehillim were clamorously joyful songs of
praise, we need to interpret that definition in the light of David’s times,
not ours. Not every part of every Psalm was spontaneous — for example,
some Psalms begin with a note that the words should be sung to a tune
that everybody knew. But prophetic spontaneity definitely was a large part
of David’s music. And towards the end of David’s life, he hired prophetic
musicians to maintain the spontaneous prophetic tradition of worship in
the Temple.
There is another evidence that the Psalms were spontaneous songs:
six times they tell us to “sing to the Lord a new song.” The most literal
way we can fulfill this command is to sing to God spontaneously.
Probably this is how the sons of the prophets would have understood the
new song.
We don’t have to try to recapture the times of the sons of the prophets
to move in prophetic song. In every generation, people of the Spirit have
to make an effort not to be conformed to the worldview of their day, but to
be transformed as God renews their minds. David’s devotion to God
moved him to do things that seemed strategically foolish: when he refused
to lift his hand against King Saul, when he made a fool of himself dancing
before the Lord, and when he insisted on paying full price for the thresh-
ing floor of Ornan the Jebusite because he would not give God a sacrifice
that had cost him nothing. David was not just a product of his day. Like us
today, David had to resist the pressures of his own generation in order to
maintain a spiritual life.
So David went out of his way to make room for the presence of God
in Israel. He brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem, gathered
materials and bought land so the Temple could be built, set the priests in
order, and established a team of prophetic musicians who would serve
God with prophetic worship. Then he gave Solomon the design for the
Temple and instructed him to build it:

All this, said David, the Lord made me understand in writing,

by His hand upon me, all the works of these plans.
(I Chronicles 28:19)

Interestingly, the new covenant has overturned most of David’s

pattern: the priesthood, the sacrifices, the veil, the ark. But one part of
David’s pattern has survived: prophetic song. We find it not only in the
early church but also in the pictures of heaven John gave us in Revelation.

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ee

As David had to do, we need to make room for Spirit-led, spontaneous,

prophetic song in the church.

MAKING ROOM FOR SPONTANEOUS SONG

I Chronicles 25 lists the singers David appointed to serve God in the

Temple, and many of them were prophetic. Church leaders today will
have to be equally proactive in making room for prophetic song in the
church. Just as David did, we need to blend spontaneity with order.
Order starts with boundaries: a right time and place for spontaneous
song. In areas other than prophetic worship, we have already made room
for spontaneity in the church. A prayer meeting may focus on a certain
theme, but then the people are free to pray whatever is in their hearts as
long as they stick to the subject. A testimony service makes room for
people to tell whatever God has done for them, but it is understood that
the testimonies will fall within a certain format. In a cell group, sponta-
neous participation is encouraged, but it is usually directed by an
outline.
There are several places where prophetic song can fit in a typical
church service. Many churches include singing in the Spirit in their
worship services, and make room for people to speak or sing prophecies
when the Holy Spirit gives them. Some churches have begun to blend
prophetic song with intercession, deliberately blurring the lines between
prayer and worship just as Jesus did in the Lord’s Prayer. Some congrega-
tions let the worship teams minister in song while altar ministry is taking
place.
Order also includes God-given surprises and interruptions. A worship
service may run longer than expected if God gives someone a prophetic
song. The gift of prophecy may inject an unexpected theme into a meet-
ing, and the preacher may feel called to change the sermon to reflect what
the Spirit of God is saying. A prophetic song can also lead to an
unplanned altar call or prayer time. If we want to make room for
prophetic song, we need to be flexible.
Church leaders also need to invest in the core values of prophetic song,
Spirit and truth. True worship is not just a song, but a lifestyle. Every aspect
of discipleship is part of our worship: prayer, building our lives on the word
of God, learning to be led by the Holy Spirit, giving, evangelism, missions.
Spontaneous worship will be shallow if the church has only a shallow
appreciation of the manifest presence of God; spontaneous worship will be
superficial if the church has a superficial grasp of the word of God.

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PROPHETIC AND POETIC FORM

We can make room for prophetic song in the church by including it as

part of our order of worship, by being flexible enough to let God surprise
us, and by cherishing the presence of the Holy Spirit and the proclamation
of gospel truth. One more thing is vital. We need to make room for
prophetic musicians to grow, and for the whole church to grow with them.
The Psalms challenge us to rise into a higher dynamic of worship than
what most of us have known so far.
When I first encountered singing in the Spirit, I was overwhelmed at
the liberty and intensity of singing to God from the heart. But as time
passed, I noticed a discrepancy. The people around me were singing the
same phrases over and over again: “Hallelujah! We praise Your holy
name. We bless You, Lord. Worthy is the Lord! Holy! You are wonderful!
Glory, glory to God!” There is nothing wrong with these phrases, of
course. But I couldn’t help noticing that they didn’t have the same flavor
as the Psalms. Even now, as I open my Bible to a page chosen at random
in the book of Psalms, I find words like these:

But God is the judge: he puts down one, and sets up

another.
(Psalms 75:7)
You, even You, are to be feared; and who can stand in Your
sight, once You are angry?
(Psalms 76:7)
Will the Lord cast off forever? And will He be merciful no
more?
(Psalm 77:7)
In the daytime also He led them with a cloud, and all the
night with a light offire.
(Psalm 78:14)

When is the last time you heard words like these when the church was
singing in the Spirit? And when is the last time you have sung such words
yourself?
As you study the Psalms, you will find all the phrases we have been in
the habit of using: “Holy is the Lord, we worship You,” and so on. But you
will also find a richness of content. The Psalms are an example of the sort
of prophetic content God wants to pour into our worship and prayers. This
idea may seem overwhelming at first, but there are two easily identifiable

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patterns in the Psalms that will help our spontaneous worship take shape.
These patterns are like the general form of a testimony service, a prayer
meeting, or a cell group: because the basic pattern is already in place, it is
easy to be spontaneous.
The first pattern in the Psalms is that each song sticks to a theme.
David didn’t just spit out lines at random. He took a theme and explored
it. Some of the Psalms explore an aspect of Israel’s history; some start
with a need and find God’s answer; some focus on one of God’s
attributes. There are a lot of questions in the Psalms, and some of the
Psalms reveal a change of heart as David worshiped God. But each Psalm
centers on a theme. Your singing in the Spirit will become richer as you
allow the Holy Spirit to unfold a theme as you worship.
The second pattern is a Hebrew poetic form, parallelism. The Hebrew
poets didn’t rhyme their words as we do, but they rhymed their thoughts.
This means they often found two ways to say the same thing. If you look
back at the four verses I quoted at random from the Psalms, you will
notice parallelism in each.
I would not encourage anyone to try to prophesy in this style. If
we’re prophesying, we need to let God have His say without trying to
force it into an artificial pattern. But as a way to develop a flow of spon-
taneous song, use parallelism in your own private devotions. Open your
Bible and sing a line of scripture, then sing a response in your own
words: the same thought in different words, how God’s word makes you
feel, or how different God’s word is from the attitudes of others around
you. This will accomplish several things at once. You will be basing your
worship on the words of scripture. You will be opening your heart to God
spontaneously. And somewhere along the way, you are sure to stumble
into the river of life, and the same Spirit who inspired the scripture will
also inspire you. Eventually, you’llcatch yourself adding not just one but
several lines at a time.
It takes courage to be spontaneous because we won’t always be at
our best. We may make mistakes, sing or play something unpolished, or
sound trite. But investing in spontaneity in worship and prayer is invest-
ing in intimacy with God. Lovers may take the time to write poems for
each other, but most of their conversation is unplanned and unrehearsed.
Like David, we need to center our lives on our passion for Him who first
loved us.
For Worshipers: In your personal prayer time, stick to a theme and
work through a chunk of scripture, using parallelism. If it helps, sing
along with a recording of your favorite instrumental music.

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For Musicians: Take your instrument and do the above exercise,

using new melodies. You will find your hands running to familiar patterns,
but trust God to help you get out of a musical rut. From time to time, let
the musical pattern dial down and let your voice define the new song; then
let the instrument catch up with your singing.

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 Chapter 7

Spontaneous But Skillful

SMR

Sing to Him a new song; Play skillfully with a shout of joy.

(Psalm 33:3)

See song can be skillful. David played skillfully, and his

words in Psalms 33:3 tell us God wants us to play skillfully too.
So far, we have contrasted musical skill with first-love.
Unquestionably, talent and skill can become idols in our lives. But having
established that, there remains a right way to develop musical skill for
singing in the Spirit, for spontaneous worship, and for prophetic song.
God Himself wants to teach us to play and sing, and maintaining first-love
with Him is the key to our learning more.
I have known many musicians who have had God help them learn to
play skillfully. It’s common to hear a musician testify that when the
anointing is strong in a service, he or she can suddenly play things that
were out of reach before. The most unusual example I have ever seen of
this is a woman who watched the organist play in tent meetings. “I
watched her for about a month,” she told me. “One day the Spirit came on
me and I knew I could play. I’d never played before in my life, but I
walked to the organ, sat down, and started playing — exactly as I play
now.” Using two keyboards and the foot pedals, she had a complex and
rhythmic style and could electrify the church with her playing. God had
supernaturally taught her.
I have never had such an extraordinary experience in having
God teach me how to play, but I have gotten to see God stretch people’s
musical abilities. I’ve seen guitarist’s hands stretch to reach chords they

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had never reached before, I’ve heard beginning flute players suddenly
play with new clarity and complexity, and I’ve been surprised to watch
my own hands start dancing wildly across the keys of a piano. I was in a
meeting where someone sang a prophetic song in an operatic voice. The
next day I was talking to a woman who asked, “Did you hear the woman
who sang the prophecy last night?” I said yes. She said, “I looked around
to see where the voice was coming from. Then I realized it was me!”
If we put God first and give music a secondary role, His anointing
will often enlarge our skill. David experienced this. In Psalms 144:1, he
says, “Blessed be the Lord my Rock, who trains my hands for war, and
my fingers for battle.” It might seem at first that he’s talking here about
his skill in wielding a sword or a bow. But as the Psalm unfolds, David
says nothing about actually going into battle. Instead, he says in verse 9,
“JT will sing a new song to you, O God; on a harp of ten strings I will sing
praises to You.” Many musicians have claimed these verses in faith, trust-
ing God to teach them to do spiritual battle through spontaneous
prophetic song.
In Matthew 11:28-30, Jesus has promised to disciple us. These are the
words of the same God who taught David’s hands and fingers to make war:

Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will
give you rest. Take My yoke upon you and learn from Me, for I
am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your
souls. For My yoke is easy and My burden is light.

Where “rest for your souls” is concerned, I can testify that I have
found far more satisfaction in prophetic song than in songs that spot-
lighted my own talents. God created music for fellowship, not for perfor-
mance. Music is a heavy burden when we use it for ego gratification.
Music is wonderfully fulfilling when it becomes a vehicle for God’s love.
Christ our Teacher stands ready to equip us with the skill we need as
prophetic musicians. There are three very different types of skill He wants
to give us: ability on the instrument, prophetic lyrics, and discerning the
mind of God at a given time. If we become adept in any of these we will
have a lot to offer the body of Christ.

TECHNICAL ABILITY ON THE INSTRUMENT

To play spontaneous music, we have to improvise. Therefore, people

who play by ear find it easier to get started in prophetic song than people

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| neath cece a neste ali aS a

who don’t. People who play only by reading music sometimes feel
disqualified for prophetic song because they don’t improvise. But each
style of playing has its own advantages and challenges as we reach for
prophetic music. Either way, we need to let God teach us. Natural ability
alone can’t produce prophetic song.
People who already know how to play by ear may find it easy to get
started playing songs spontaneously before the Lord. But initial success
soon becomes a rut if we don’t let God teach us. First, we can confuse
spontaneous song with jamming. They are similar because both require
improvisation, but the likeness ends there. Jamming is talent driven;
prophetic song is fueled by first-love. Jamming focuses on music;
prophetic song focuses on Jesus. Second, people who play by ear often
lock themselves into a musical rut, staying within a comfortable musical
style. This is not necessarily bad, but it can leave us able to convey only
one or two moods that might be on God’s heart. It’s as lovely but limited
as though an artist had to paint a landscape with only three colors. If we
play by ear, we will need to let God stretch us to enlarge our repertoire.
People who play by note have more to work with than those who play
by ear, but they may find it harder to get started. Because they have
always played sheet music that is professionally written and arranged,
they may recoil from their first improvisations because they sound
amateurish and childish. If they can break through this barrier and make
themselves improvise, they will find they already know a variety of musi-
cal patterns they can draw upon. People who have a background of musi-
cal training will play with more variety, texture, and richness than those
who don’t. The discipline of playing by note has made them the painter
with the complete set of paints.
Whether we play by ear or by note, the learning process is the same:
we must humble ourselves, ask God to teach us, and then get out of the
comfort zone of what we already know how to play and stretch to learn
something new. It takes humility for a person who plays by ear to learn a
new style. It takes humility for a person who plays by note to improvise. It
is tempting to run back to the familiar, safe style that comes to us easily.
If you play by ear, ask God to teach you. Play along with other musi-
cians, whether live or recorded. Playing alone, there is nothing to break
you out of the rut of your own personal style. Don’t try to outplay the
people around you, but try to make them sound good — this is an exercise
in humility, and God gives grace to the humble.
If you play by note, take time to improvise. This will be so embarrass-
ing at first that it’s probably best to do most of this improvising alone.

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Keep it simple in the beginning. Be patient with yourself. As you ask God
to teach you, He will.
There will come a point when you lose your self-consciousness and
become aware of the presence of the Holy Spirit. Suddenly you will catch
yourself playing things you never played before. The anointing is a great
teacher.

PROPHETIC ABILITY WITH LYRICS

Words don’t always come easily when we want to sing to God from
the heart. Your church may or may not make room for singing in the
Spirit, but either way, you will grow the fastest if you sow to the Spirit in
spontaneous song in your personal devotions. In church or at home, there
are several things you can do to prime the pump so prophetic lyrics can
bubble up in your life.
First, don’t try to prophesy; just try to reach for God. There are several
things to sing about: who God is, what He has done in your life lately, or
what you need Him to do in your life right now. Because the Spirit of
prophecy is the testimony of Jesus, you will sometimes find that as you
sing the truth about Him, the Holy Spirit will give you words and you will
realize that you are no longer singing to God; God is singing through you.
Second, sing in tongues and trust God for interpretation. I
Corinthians 14:2-4 says that we are speaking to God when we speak in
tongues, and we edify ourselves. Sometimes our minds are blank or
distracted, but as we stir ourselves to speak or sing in tongues, an under-
standing about Jesus begins to crystallize in our minds. Usually this
understanding is a passage of scripture, and at first glance it may seem
irrelevant to our immediate needs. But as we begin to sing the scriptures
and the vision of Jesus that is gripping our hearts, God often surprises us
as we discover that His fresh word to us is a key that unlocks the situa-
tions we are facing.
Third, open the Bible to a favorite passage of scripture and use it as an
outline for your prayers and songs. Sing what the Bible says, then sing
your reaction to it. It’s not necessary to maintain a strict line-for-line
symmetry as you sing to God this way, but the important thing is to estab-
lish a rhythm of scripture and response. You may need a paragraph of
scripture before you can think of a line of your own to add, or one line of
scripture may trigger ten lines from you. Don’t be afraid to let the form of
your song become a bit ragged around the edges. The goal is not musical
perfection, but freedom in the Spirit.

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There will be times when you will have to stretch yourself to sing,
working to come up with words. There will be other times when the Holy
Spirit’s presence will give you lyrics effortlessly. Both experiences are a
normal part of developing a flow of the Spirit of prophecy in song. The
difficult times are good for us; they remind us of what we can and can’t
produce. The times when God sings through us are wonderful also; they
open our spirits to the river of God and release God’s song through us.
In our private devotions, God accepts us not because we are anointed
with the Spirit of prophecy but because we are washed in the blood of
Jesus. Whether we are walking in revival power or dry as a desert, it is
always appropriate to worship God. Play your instrument as you sing to
God from the heart, or sing along with a CD or Christian radio. Sing to
God when you are in your car. If you are in a church that sings in the
Spirit, let God take you into a richer flow of Christ-centered lyrics. At any
time, God can suddenly lift you into a higher dynamic of worship and
start singing through you.

DISCERNMENT OF THE “MOOD” OF THE SPIRIT

God does not have moods like our moods, but unquestionably there
are times when one style of worship is more appropriate than another.
There is a time for a shout of triumph, a time for a song that is pensive, a
time for rejoicing in God’s goodness, and a time for intercession. Like
the tribe of Issachar who had “understanding of the times to know what
Israel ought to do,” we need understanding of God’s seasons so we will
know how to approach Him in our personal devotions and also in the
church.
A first step in developing a sense of timing is to be aware that it
matters, especially in church services. I was a student at Pinecrest in 1974
when God visited the school with an unusual sense of His presence. Many
of us developed an explosive style of worship at that time — if called upon
to lead worship, we would stride to the front, face the congregation, and
bang out the songs with startling authority. The first notes were as sudden
and unexpected as a cannon blast, and God seemed to use it to jolt His
people out of lethargy. We danced and shouted until our faces were red
and sweat was streaming. Often the guitar players started with six strings
in a service and ended with two.
As time wore on, this explosive approach didn’t work any more. The
congregation would stare at the worship leader, as though a Martian had
landed in the church and started thrashing a guitar and shouting a song.

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What had originally been Spirit-led became the hollow but exhausting
efforts of man to make God move. I had to learn this lesson the hard way.
The things of God can’t be reduced to a formula. There is no special
secret by which we can make God move. We had learned one pattern God
was willing to use for a while, but eventually we had to learn to be flexi-
ble enough to connect with whatever new thing God wanted to do.
We each have a favorite style and mood, but we need to seek God
for sensitivity so we will know how to flow with what the Holy Spirit
wants to do at a given time. This sense of timing often centers on the
needs and faith of the people who have gathered. Sometimes God wants
to break people out of a rut; sometimes He wants to meet them in a
familiar way. Only through prayer and listening can we discern the mind
of the Holy Spirit.
We also need to pay attention to divine interruptions. None of us is
on the inside track with God, where we will always know in advance
what God is going to do. God will anoint others to do things we don’t
expect, and we need to be flexible enough to reset our agenda and go
with God.
These principles are vital in church services, but we can learn them in
our private devotions. God wants to teach us to be sensitive to His Spirit.
When you take time with God, ask Him to show you how He wants you to
approach Him. Don’t just automatically assume that your habitual way of
seeking God is best. Here are a few ways He has called me to approach
Him over the years:

By acknowledging my weaknesses and asking Him to fill

them with strength. This has required me to be very honest and
transparent with God, but it has proved to be a recipe for refreshing.
By praising Him because He is worthy, even when I am
under pressure. Sometimes we try to use praise and worship to
manipulate God, so He will give us a breakthrough. It rarely
works. There is a time to stand in the midst of trouble and rejoice
in Him because of who He is and what He has done for us —
whether He does anything about our present needs or not.
By thanking Him. Thanksgiving is a great faith builder.
Looking back at God’s faithfulness in the past will stir us to trust
Him in the present. Often a time of thanksgiving will release a
surge of spiritual power.
By declaring His word. We can overcome the forces of dark-
ness as we declare what God is speaking. God honors faith; it is

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impossible to please God without it. At times, the best way to

worship is to declare what we believe.
By repenting. When God calls us to repent, the best way to
honor Him is with a tone of reverence and submission. Psalm 51
is an example of a confession of sin released through song.
With stillness. Sometimes God’s presence overwhelms us
with awe, and it is inappropriate to use words at all. “Be still, and
know that I am God.” (Psalm 46:1) If you sense that your words
or music will take away from the atmosphere of God’s presence,
be still.

This list could go on, but look back over your own experience and add
to it yourself. The important thing is to let God teach us. If we are locked
into just one or two moods in worship, we need to let God expand us. If
every worship service must start fast and end slow, we need more sensitiv-
ity to the Spirit. If we know a formula for worship, we need to repent of it
and ask Jesus to take control in a new way.
For Worshipers: In your personal prayer times, sing spontaneous
songs by singing along with CDs or tapes. Sing lines of harmony and
response that are not in the original song. Paying attention to the mood of
the song being played, sing new lyrics that match.
For Musicians: Play any of your favorite worship songs, and add a
spontaneous part here and there. Add to the lyrics, rework the tune while
staying with the song’s chord pattern, or take the chords and melody in a
new direction. Pay attention to the mood.

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The Song That Starts With Need

IVR

To You, O Lord, I lift up my soul.

(Psalm 25:1)

A home or in the church, a time of worship can be either alive or

dead. What makes one worship service so different from another?
It’s not a question of how loud and fast the music is; lively music can ener-
gize us one time and drain us the next. It’s not a matter of how tender and
intimate the lyrics are; they can release our first love one time and numb us
the next. The decisive issue is change. A time of worship can change us or
leave us untouched, and it can also change the “mood” of God. If you look
back at the memorable times of worship in your own life, you will notice
that each was a time when something moved or changed in your heart or in
the heavens. This sense of movement is what prophetic song is all about.
When I first came to Christ, I used to ask God why He put so many
stories in the Bible. Wouldn’t it have been better just to give us a clear and
systematic theological book? One section might have told us about God,
another would have spelled out exactly what He requires of us, and still
another would have given us a concise picture of heaven and hell. It took
me twenty years to appreciate that the stories are necessary because God
is relational by nature. He is not content to give us a theology book with
all the answers laid out for us so we can know what to do without ever
getting to know Him. He is vitally interested in the process of our coming
to know Him. In each of us, He is writing a story.
The Bible reveals a lot of prophetic ministry that was a back-and-forth
dialog with God. God said this, man said that, God said something else

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again, man talked back — and in these stories, somebody always changed.
Sometimes it was man, as when God called Moses at the burning bush.
All through Exodus 3 and 4, Moses came up with reasons not to do what
God was calling him to do, and God answered them. By the time Exodus
4 draws to a close, Moses is a changed man: he is on his way to Egypt, to
confront Pharaoh. There were other times in the Bible when the prophets
argued with God and God changed His mind. In Exodus 32-33, Moses’
intercession caused God to turn from judging Israel. A relationship with
God is meant to bring change in heaven and earth.
You and I may not pray a prayer that changes the history of a whole
nation, but if we pray for something as small as a vacuum cleaner and
God provides it, we have spoken to God and He has responded. And it
may not be a burning bush experience that thrusts us into a ministry that
changes world history, but if we go to God depressed and fearful and He
speaks to us and we emerge from His presence with joy and victory, God
has touched us and we have changed.
This is what prophetic song is all about. We don’t just stand at a
respectful distance and sing theological truths about God; we caress Him
with worship. He doesn’t just sit comfortably in the heavens observing us
from afar; He looks for opportunities to respond to our worship and to
intervene in our lives. Prophetic worship is dynamic, not static; relational,
not theological.
David’s Psalms are alive because he often came to God with his
pain and pressures, and he sang until God brought change. This reality
is what the old-timers call “praying through,” for David sang until he
broke through his circumstances and connected with God’s intervention.
His songs tell a story. They reflect movement, from one condition to
another. And because they are the song book of the Bible, they show us
that God treasures music where He can meet with us and write His
redemptive story.
Prophetic song makes us not just spectators in the kingdom of God,
but participants. Let’s look at an example in the life of David.

PRAYING THROUGH IN PSALM 56

Its introduction tells us Psalm 56 is connected to a difficult event in

David’s life, when he and his men were in a precarious situation in Gath. It
chronicles a battle within his heart as he sought God’s intervention in his
circumstances. It includes a prayer God did not answer, then a surge of faith
as David considered God’s character. It ends with David’s proclaiming a

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victory that had not happened yet. The easiest way to follow David’s
process of praying through is to break down the Psalm, following the drama
as David faced his inner battles and outward pressures. But we have to start
by considering the background.
Background. Ever since the prophet Samuel had anointed David as
the next king, David had lived with constant trouble. There had been a
brief season when King Saul had tried to use David in Israel’s army. But
after David’s victory over Goliath, some of the women had begun to sing,
“Saul has slain his thousands, and David his ten thousands.” This had
provoked Saul’s jealousy, and he had begun to try to kill David. This had
eventually forced David to run for his life.
Then about four hundred men had joined David, and sometimes they
were more of a liability than an asset. They were unarmed and had
nowhere to go, but they had to eat. With Saul breathing down their necks,
David had decided to move his men just outside the southern borders of
Israel. And there, he was captured by the Philistines.
A High-Pressure Circumstance. I Samuel 21:10-15 tells the story.
David was waiting outside the gate of Achish, the king of Gath, and some-
one overheard the king’s servants saying, “Isn’t this David, the king of the
land? Didn’t they sing about him in the dances, saying, ‘Saul has slain his
thousands, and David his ten thousands’?” David realized Achish might
put him and his men to death. I Samuel 21:12 says David “was very much
afraid of Achish the king of Gath.”
So before he met the king, David began to sing. He may or may not
have had a harp to play, but the preface of Psalm 56 links the song to this
experience:

To the Chief Musician. Set to “The Silent Dove in Distant

Lands.” A Michtam of David when the Philistines captured him
in Gath.

The tune of this song is lost to us today, but its title suggests a melody
that expressed the terrible loneliness that must have gripped David. Perhaps
David felt like the dove, far from home and too sorrowful to sing — we all
have times when our pressures make it hard to worship. But David was no
dove; he was a man of war. As he sang the song, something in his heart
chose to shift gears, to begin adding his own words, and to sing to God:

Be merciful to me, O God, for man would swallow me up;

Fighting all day he oppresses me.

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My enemies would hound me all day,

For there are many who fight against me, O Most High.

The Inner Battle. Though David was afraid, he reached for the right
attitude. He knew he was called of God and anointed to be king. He had
seen God help him fight victoriously against Goliath and the armies of the
Philistines. So David chose not to fear:

Whenever I am afraid, I will trust in You.

In God (I will praise His word),
In God I have put my trust;
I will not fear. What can flesh do to me?

But David lost round one of his inner battle. His enemies were terri-
bly visible; God was invisible. This was a matter of life and death; Achish
might kill him within minutes. His mind went back to his problems.
Circumstances. As David took another look at his circumstances, he
had an idea what God should do:

All day they twist my words;

All their thoughts are against me for evil.
They gather together, they hide, they mark my steps,
When they lie in wait for my life.
Shall they escape by iniquity?
In anger cast down the peoples, O God!

“Lord, it’s time for you to get mad at my enemies and wipe them
out!” This was a prayer God did not answer. David saw only the present
moment, but God saw that Achish and the people of Gath would become
the answer to next year’s prayer — they would provide refuge for David
and his men in the final months of the reign of King Saul.
Looking At God’s Character: David continued to sing, building his
prayer for deliverance on the character of God:

You number my wanderings;

Put my tears into Your bottle;
Are they not in Your book?
When I cry out to You,
Then my enemies will turn back;
This I know, because God is for me.

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In God (I will praise His word),

In the Lord (I will praise His word),
In God I have put my trust;
I will not be afraid. What can man do to me?

This is the turning point in the Psalm. As David took his eyes off the
situation and looked at God’s character, his faith woke up and he saw
what God would do: “When I cry out to you, then my enemies will turn
back. This I know, because God is for me.” He no longer doubted the
outcome of the situation; he said “I know” what God will do. And he no
longer asked for God to wipe out his enemies; he now knew they would
turn back.
Prophesying His Imminent Victory. David now realized that God
would preserve his life so he could fulfill his commitments to God. The
psalm ends:

Vows made to You are binding upon me, O God;

I will render praises to You,
For you have delivered my soul from death.
Have You not delivered my feet from falling,
That I may walk before God
In the light of the living?

A Change Of Circumstance. And then David came up with the idea

that saved his life. He put on an act, letting his saliva run down his beard
and scrabbling like a dog at the king’s gate. When Achish saw it, he said
to his servants, “Look, you see the man is insane. Why have you brought
him to me? Have I need of madmen in my presence? Shall this fellow
come into my house?” (I Samuel 21:14-15) And with this, David and his
men made their escape.

PROPHETIC SONG BRINGS CHANGE

Psalm 56 brought two changes: one in David’s heart, and the other in
his circumstances. The first verse of the Psalm is a cry for deliverance and
the last verse is a proclamation of victory. This change in David’s inner
history released the change in his outer history.
David’s idea to feign insanity was probably an answer to the prayer he
sang. Three separate biblical principles worked together as David sang
Psalm 56: the Spirit of prophecy gave him the song, praise is often a key to

Ue
 Stan Smith

victory, and David declared the victory by faith before he saw it happen.
First, we know the Spirit of prophecy was working in David at that
time because the song he wrote in Gath is part of the Bible, and all scrip-
ture is given by inspiration of God. This tells us the Holy Spirit was
present. Throughout scripture, the Spirit of prophecy has often given
strategies that effect God’s purposes in the earth. This was the same Holy
Spirit who showed Gideon how to select and then use three hundred men
to drive out the thousands of Midianites arrayed against them. This was
the same Holy Spirit who would show the church in Damascus how to
save the life of Saul, by lowering him in a basket by night over the city
wall. The Spirit of prophecy often gives prophetic strategy.
Second, the Bible is full of stories where God brought deliverance
when man began to praise Him. Jehoshaphat’s victory in II Chronicles 20
is one well-known example; another is the story in Acts 16 of the earth-
quake in the Philippian jail when Paul and Silas were praising God.
Third, David declared his deliverance before he saw it. We know
David sang Psalm 56 before the outcome of meeting with Achish was
known, for he sang another prophetic song about his brief visit to Gath,
Psalm 34, and in this Psalm the preface makes it clear that he sang it after
Achish sent him away:

A Psalm of David when he pretended madness before

Abimelech, who drove him away, and he departed.

Psalm 34 tells about God’s deliverance after it happened; Psalm 56

tells about God’s deliverance before it happened. This principle of declar-
ing the end result before it happens is a key to faith, and it is prophetic by
nature because it declares the future. I Samuel 17:45-47 shows that David
had already used this principle when he had faced Goliath.
So Psalm 56 set three biblical principles in motion: allowing the
Spirit of prophecy to fill the atmosphere, praising God in a hopeless situa-
tion, and declaring God’s deliverance before it happened. These ingredi-
ents were all in place when David came up with the idea that saved his life
and the lives of his men. They were not a response to a teaching on faith;
they were the bubbling up of the Holy Spirit when David opened his heart
and confessed his weakness before God.
It is interesting to study the fourteen Psalms that have a preface
linking them to David’s life. Sometimes they were rooted in need, and
sometimes they celebrated a victory. They reveal a change happening in
David's heart as he worshiped, and often the matching story in Samuel or

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Chronicles shows that an unusual deliverance followed. If God did it for

David, He will also intervene in the church as we learn to worship God
with prophetic song.
Many of David’s Psalms don’t have a preface linking them to an event
in his life, but they almost always carry a sense of movement from fear to
faith, from despair to hope, from emptiness to purpose. The common
ingredient in each song is that he sang until he saw the Lord. This is what
we need to do as we worship God. We need to sing about our needs until a
vision of Jesus grips us and inspires faith. This process of moving from
our weakness to God’s strength and our foolishness to His wisdom is at
the heart of what the new covenant is all about. In our darkest moments of
need, the Spirit of prophecy wants to enlighten us with the testimony of
Jesus. If we will serve God with stark honesty, He will meet us with His
equally honest reply. It will move us from despair to purpose, from fear to
faith. Prophetic worship is honest worship, in Spirit and truth.
For Worshipers: Worship God by being very transparent about what-
ever you are going through. Tell him about your victories, and as you do
so, zero in on the points where you see His works. Pour out your
complaints until all the complaint has drained out and heartfelt praise
emerges. Begin to let a time of worship involve the progression from a
self-centered to.a Christ-centered vision.
For Musicians: In this process, the instruments need to be servants.
The instruments should not drive the transformation; they should follow it
and give definition to it.

75
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 Chapter 9

Prophetic Song In The New

Testament
G af G)

DES legacy of prophetic song seems to have died out soon after
his death. ,
Judges 2:11-19 describes a cycle that recurred in Israel’s history.
The Israelites would compromise and fall into idolatry, and God would
chasten them by allowing another nation to overrun them. They would
pray for God’s help, and God would raise up a leader who would bring
first reform and then deliverance. But then eventually the leader would
die, the people would drift back into idolatry, and the pattern would
repeat itself.
The Babylonian captivity put an end to Israel’s dalliance with idola-
try, but the same cycle has marked the history of the church, with the
one difference that we have fallen not so much into idolatry as into
tradition and formalism. God has set anointed leaders in the church, and
they have served their generations well. But after their death, the
church has replaced the wells of living water with monuments to past
revivals.
During Jesus’ ministry, the spontaneous prophetic songs of David had
become ritualized. Tradition determined what Psalms should be sung at
what time. This might have been the heritage of the early church, but the
outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost guaranteed that the
church would come to birth in a blaze of prophetic glory. While the phase
“prophetic song” does not appear in the New Testament, several passages
seem to refer to it.

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 Stan Smith

PROPHETIC SONG IN THE NEW TESTAMENT

The New Testament uses three Greek words for “sing” or “song” —
psalmos, humnos, and ode.
Each of these three Greek words can refer to the traditional sort of
worship used in the church today or to spontaneous prophetic song. Here
is a list of passages that clearly refer to prophetic song, and a few that can
be interpreted either way.
1. Paul’s singing with the Spirit. (I Corinthians 14:15)

I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the under-
standing. I will sing with the Spirit, and I will also sing with
the understanding.

For his singing with the Spirit or with the understanding, Paul uses
psallo, the word that normally means either one of the biblical Psalms or
a piece of music accompanied with an instrument. The context of the
chapter shows that he is writing about tongues, interpretation, and
prophecy. To sing in tongues is to sing a spontaneous, Spirit-given lyric in
a language we don’t understand; to sing an interpretation is to sing a spon-
taneous, Spirit-given song in a language we do understand. This, by
nature, is a prophetic song.
2. The Psalm in the church. (I Corinthians 14:26) Paul lists the
psalmos as a form of ministry within the church:

How is it then, brethren? Whenever you come together, each of

you has a psalm, has a teaching, has a tongue, has a revela-
tion, has an interpretation.

This verse could mean many things: that someone wanted to speak
about one of the Psalms, that someone wanted to sing a Psalm, or even that
someone wanted to sing a new song prophetically. Because I Corinthians
14 deals with tongues, interpretation, and prophecy, it is possible that
Paul’s use of the word psalmos here refers to a prophetic song. If so, this
verse would suggest that some members of the body of Christ are responsi-
ble to cultivate a steady stream of inspiration in the new song, just as others
are responsible to dig in the scripture for fresh revelation to preach.
3. The song of Jesus in the church. Hebrews 2:12 quotes Psalm
22:22 to reveal Jesus singing in the church. Taken literally, this passage
refers to prophetic song:

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I will declare Your name to My brethren;

In the midst of the congregation I will sing praise to You.

This verse uses the Greek word humneo, which is a hymn. What does
it mean, that Jesus stands in the midst of the church to sing hymns to the
Father? Does it mean He stands invisibly among us, adding His praise to
ours? Does it mean that when we sing a hymn, He somehow sings
through us? Both of these meanings are possible, but so is one more: that
Jesus Himself sings a new song through us. Such a song must be
prophetic, for whatever Jesus declares in song can be nothing but the
word of the Lord.
4. The sound of many waters in Revelation. Revelation 5:9 says the
twenty-four elders “sang a new song” when Jesus took the scroll and was
about to open the seven seals. Likewise, Revelation 15:3 shows a group of
people who “sing the song of Moses, the servant of God, and the song of
the Lamb.” These heavenly songs are prophetic by nature.
Another scene in Revelation talks about song, and several details in
this passage suggest that the song was prophetic:

And I heard a voice from heaven, like the voice of many

waters, and like the voice of loud thunder. And I heard the
sound of harpists playing their harps. They sang as it were a
new song before the throne, before the four living creatures,
and the elders; and no one could learn that song except the
hundred and forty-four thousand who were redeemed from
the earth.
(Revelation 14;:2-3)

Several lines in this passage describe prophetic worship. The voice

from heaven was “like the voice of many waters,” and this sound is the
sound of living waters, the rivers of the Holy Spirit that flow from the
hearts of believers. The song was a “‘new song,” and no song is newer than
a song given spontaneously by the Holy Spirit. Likewise, “no one could
learn that song” because the song was given spontaneously.
If many of the songs in heaven are like the song in Revelation 14:2-3,
it means the prophetic songs God gave to David and to the sons of the
prophets were a sample of the kingdom of heaven. It means the early
church should have experienced prophetic song with the outpouring of the
Holy Spirit, for Jesus had preached that the kingdom of heaven had drawn
near. And it means that when we pray for God’s kingdom to come and His

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ee ne eS SS SS eS

will to be done in earth, as in heaven, we are asking Him for a prophetic

anointing in our worship.
5. Paul’s words to the Ephesians and Colossians. These two
commandments are almost identical:

Be filled with the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms

(psalmos) and hymns (humnos) and spiritual songs (ode),
singing (hado) and making melody (psallo) in your heart to
the Lord.
(Ephesians 5:18-19)

Colossians 3:16 echoes this thought:

Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom, teach-
ing and admonishing one another in psalms (psalmos) and
hymns (humnos) and spiritual songs (ode), singing (hado)
with grace in your hearts to the Lord.

Paul told the believers in each church to sing: in Ephesus, because

they were “filled with the Spirit;” in Colosse, as they “let the word of
Christ dwell in you richly in all wisdom.” These two verses give us a
recipe for worship in Spirit and in truth, which is prophetic worship.

THE PROPHETIC STATE

When Paul said our songs overflow from being filled with the Spirit,
he knew the role the Holy Spirit played in the lives of the Old Testament
prophets. They repeatedly testified that the Spirit of God came upon
them and set them in an altered state, where they saw visions or began to
prophesy. In I Samuel 10:10, “the Spirit of God came upon [Saul], and
he prophesied among them.” Isaiah 48:16 tells how his own prophetic
ministry had been launched: “Now the Lord God and His Spirit have sent
me.” Ezekiel 2:2 says, “the Spirit entered me when He spoke to me, and
set me on my feet;” and Ezekiel then received his commission to be a
prophet. Joel prophesied that God would pour out His Spirit in the last
days and make His people into a prophetic people.
The “word of the Lord” was another expression often used in the Old
Testament when God raised up a prophet. I Samuel 3:21 says, “The Lord
revealed Himself to Samuel in Shiloh by the word of the Lord.” The book of
Hosea opens with these words: “The word of the Lord that came to Hosea.”

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Obviously, we can’t assume every biblical reference to the “word of the

Lord” is talking about a prophetic word. The word of God can be taught,
preached, read, or studied without our ever having a prophetic experience.
But at the same time, the prophets understood the “word of the Lord” as a
fire too hot for the intellect to handle. The phrases about the Spirit and the
word of God routinely crop up when the prophets tell how their ministries
originated.
The Bible clearly speaks of a prophetic state, an altered or ecstatic
state. In Acts 2, Peter thought the onlookers might think the disciples
were drunk when God poured out His Spirit upon them. Several times in
the New Testament, we find the apostles were in a “trance” — the Greek
word is ekstasis — when the Holy Spirit came upon them and gave them
new prophetic insight, often radically changing their outlook. Peter went
into a trance in Acts 10:10 when he saw the vision of the sheet and the
animals as God sent him to take the gospel to the Gentiles. In Acts 22:19,
Paul says he was in a trance in the temple when God told him, “Make
haste and get out of Jerusalem quickly.”
Paul may have experienced this prophetic state often, but he learned
that there was a time and place for it. In II Corinthians 5:13 he said, “If
we are beside ourselves (ekstasis), it is for God; or if we are of sound
mind, it is for you.” There is an appropriate time to have the Spirit and
the word of the Lord put us in a prophetic state, where we can see and
hear things we would otherwise miss; and then there is a time when the
proper agenda is to take the Spirit-birthed word to people in as credible a
way as possible.
Paul further addresses this theme in I Corinthians 14, the chapter
devoted to the order and discipline for the gifts of the Holy Spirit. I
Corinthians 14:15-16 says,

I will pray with the spirit, and I will also pray with the under-
standing. I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with
the understanding. Otherwise, ifyou bless with the spirit, how
will he who occupies the place of the uninformed say “Amen”
at your giving of thanks, since he does not understand what
you say?

We need to treasure all manifestations of the Holy Spirit, but some are
appropriate in our personal devotions while others are needed in the
assembly. In the church, tongues should lead to an interpretation so every-
one can benefit. Our being in a prophetic state likewise should lead to

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clear prophetic expression. And by this same progression, we should

expect our singing in the Spirit to lead to the gift of prophecy at least
some of the time.
David never got to read I Corinthians 14, but he walked in its truth.
The sons of the prophets who ministered with Samuel were ecstatic
prophets: they sought God and went into a prophetic state, and then would
sing, dance, or prophesy. Their anointing was contagious; when it touched
Saul, he became another man and began to prophesy. But few of their
prophecies were recorded in scripture. By contrast, David stood head and
shoulders above them because he clearly released the testimony of Jesus in
prophetic song. Sometimes he sang out of his own need until he could see
God. Sometimes he looked back at what God had been doing and saw the
ways of God. Always, first-love was the hallmark of David’s ministry. As
he treasured God’s presence, the Holy Spirit used the needs and events in
David’s life as an excuse to start talking about Jesus.
God will do the same with us. Sometimes we will pray in tongues and
edify ourselves; sometimes we will go into a prophetic state as the Holy
Spirit comes upon us; sometimes we won’t understand what God is doing
in us. But at other times, God will anoint us to give a prophetic word or
song with great clarity — as David did, and as Paul did.

THE MESSIANIC PSALMS

We live in days like David’s: the sons of the prophets are all around
us, and each has a message. It is important to remember that the heart of
prophetic ministry is not in prophetic phenomena — how detailed a word
of knowledge someone gives, how accurate a prediction someone speaks
— but in the testimony of Jesus. Many of the prophecies in the Old
Testament meant one thing to the prophet but another to us. For instance,
David began his prayer in Psalm 16 with a request for God to preserve
him. By the time he got to verse 10, he said:

For you will not leave my soul in Sheol,

Nor will you allow Your Holy One to see corruption.

Did David understand that he was prophesying of Jesus’ resurrection?

Possibly not, for I Peter 1:11 says the Old Testament prophets were
“searching what, or what manner of time, the Spirit of Christ who was in
them was indicating when He testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ
and the glories that would follow.”

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David simply understood that he was speaking by the Spirit, and that
his words meant more than he could understand. And so it is with the
prophets of today. God is speaking to the church. The prophets know God
is Saying more than we are managing to hear. We need to pay attention to
the messianic aspect in the prophetic words God is speaking. If we look
only at the accuracy and the detail of prophetic words, we may miss the
point. The Spirit of prophecy wants to reveal Jesus.
Just as David foretold in prophetic song many things about the first
coming of Christ, the same Spirit is sure to foretell things about the
second coming of Christ as the prophets release the voice of the Holy
Spirit. But do we understand what God is speaking through us? Probably
not. David zealously held on to a spiritual agenda that God considered a
side issue: building God a house. God sent the prophet Nathan to tell
David, “Build Me a house if you really want to — I never asked for a house
— but I’m going to build you a house that will stand forever.” So David
assembled the materials and laid out the plans for the Temple.
The Temple was destroyed a few centuries later, but the throne of
David has been established forever in Christ.
We share David’s blind side. The Spirit of prophecy is speaking
through our own lips to reveal Jesus, and we tend to receive these
prophetic words in the context of modern church life. God may be telling
us something greater than what we can see. As Paul said in I Corinthians
13:9, “We know in part and we prophesy in part.”
Hebrews 2:12 says Jesus wants to sing through us to the Father. John
says there is a new song in heaven that sounds like many waters, and these
waters are the release of the Holy Spirit through us. Paul says to be so
filled with the Holy Spirit that we go into an altered and prophetic state —
and then we will sing to God and to one another. And he says we can sing
in the Spirit and with the understanding. Prophetic song did not die out in
David’s day; it belongs to the church.
We need to be careful not to allow our understanding and traditions to
substitute for the fresh wind of the Holy Spirit. Our traditional under-
standing of Christ falls short of the majesty of the glorified Son of God.
As the Spirit of prophecy bears witness to Jesus, we will understand the
scripture more literally than ever before — and we will see Jesus with new
clarity; and seeing Him, we will be changed.
For Worshipers: Look for Jesus in worship services. Where is He?
What is He doing? In your own words, sing or pray the thoughts from
scripture that apply to the situation. Trust the Holy Spirit to give you more
insight as you worship.

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 Stan Smith

For Musicians: As you look for what Jesus is doing in worship

services, adapt your playing to harmonize with what you see Him doing.

84
 PART THREE

The Sound Of The

‘Trumpet
Prophecy In Song
 Chapter 10

The Gift Of Prophecy In Song

HMR

I was in the Spirit on the Lord’s day, and I heard behind me a

loud voice, as of a trumpet.
(Revelation 1:10)

| eae to prophesy can be a messy experience. In one sense of

course, nobody ever “learns” to prophesy because either God gives
a word or He doesn’t. But there is a valid process of learning how to
recognize when God is speaking and how to give the word appropri-
ately. And this is where I struggled back in the mid-1970’s when I
was a Student in Bible school, starting to find a release of the gift of
prophecy.
My biggest problem was that when God spoke to me, I was never sure
if it was really the voice of God. I would seek out the people who prophe-
sied and I would ask, “How do you know if the word is from God or from
you?” And they would tell me, “You just know.”
It was never that simple for me. Whenever I thought God was giving
me a prophetic word, something in my mind would always come up with
a good reason to believe the word wasn’t really of God. And the gift of
prophecy is not a light matter. In Old Testament days, a person who gave a
false word was stoned to death. While I knew the church wouldn’t stone
me to death for a mistake, I wondered where I would stand with God if I
said “Thus says the Lord” and then gave a word that had come not from
God but from my own spirit.
In those days God gave me a prophetic word about once a month. The
anointing would be so strong that I would tremble uncontrollably, and ifI

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grabbed the metal folding chair in front of me and tried to steady myselfI
would soon have the chair rattling against the floor as well. I would pray,
“Lord, if You want me to prophesy, have the worship die down and give
me a moment of quiet so I can give it.” Almost immediately, the worship
would subside and an expectant hush would fill the room. And still shak-
ing, I would pray, “Lord, is this You, or is this me?”
Usually I didn’t give the word. When the meeting was over and the
time to prophesy had passed, I would look back and realize that God had
indeed given me something to give. Then the word I hadn’t given would
trouble me for days afterwards. I still remember one of them: “What price
is too high to pay for the movings of My Spirit?”
I was a slow learner, but eventually I caught on. The signals were
clear. I would wait for a strong prophetic anointing, which almost always
made me shake violently. I would wait for a quiet spot in the meeting so
people would be able to hear the word when I gave it. As I was giving the
word, it would unfold and develop beyond the little bit God had given me
to get me started. And when it was over, I felt a wonderful sense of relief.
So every few weeks I would prophesy, and then one day God gave me
a prophetic song. By now I was on staff at Pinecrest Retreats in Long
Island and involved in an afternoon session during a retreat weekend. We
were worshiping, and I had my guitar in hand. As I sensed a nudge that
God wanted me to prophesy in song, I said to Him, “All right; I need the
anointing.” Slowly but surely I began to shake, and I waited for the power
to build up before I put my hand to the guitar. By now I was trembling so
terribly I could hardly finger a chord, and my voice shook like my hands.
With great unction I croaked out the song, doing my best with my uncon-
trollable hands and singing. When it was over, people looked at me with
astonishment. They knew God had said or done something, but nobody
knew quite what.
I felt restless about it and got a chance a few hours later to go outside
to pray. God was waiting for me. “That could have been beautiful,” He
said. That’s all He said, and it’s all He had to say.
In the next few weeks I prayed for a different set of signals to tell me
when it was time to prophesy. Would it be possible to feel the anointing,
then ask God to take the anointing off of me and put it on the song? This
prayer felt almost blasphemous at the time, and I had never heard of
anyone praying like this. But neither had I heard of many people proph-
esying in song. I took my life in my hands and told God I wanted the
anointing on the song, not on me — I simply couldn’t play and sing if I
were shaking.

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0 tee a tc lla RR

The next prophetic song bubbled up in a Sunday service. About two

hundred fifty people were present and I didn’t have a microphone, but I
was on the platform with my guitar. I felt the anointing, and said, “All right
Lord. Take the anointing off of me and put it on the song. When You do,
I'll start singing.” Immediately the anointing lifted. It was one of the scari-
est moments of my life, but I began to sing. My voice came out strong and
clear, and somehow it carried through the whole room. The presence of
God swept in, and the meeting rose to a new level of anointing.
This was the day I learned to release the voice of the Lord in song not
as the sound of many waters but as the sound of a trumpet.

THE TWO VOICES OF JESUS

Revelation 1:10-15 describes the voice of Jesus in two ways: as the

sound of many waters and as a trumpet. The sound of many waters is the
voice of Jesus through a multitude (Revelation 14:2, 19:6) when they are
not all speaking or singing the same thing at once. The trumpet voice is
the clear and directive voice of Jesus, often speaking a prophetic
command. Both are the voice of Jesus, but the two different sounds reflect
two different ways He speaks as He speaks to two different audiences.
Generally, the sound of many waters is the voice of Christ in us,
addressing the Father. The trumpet sound is the voice of God towards
man. It is the same Jesus who uses both voices. Jesus, the mediator
between God and man, is one with the Father in heaven and one with us in
earth. He is our voice towards God and God’s voice to us.
In John 7:38, Jesus promised that rivers of living water will flow out
of us if we believe. How many Christians are praying or singing in the
Spirit right now, worldwide? Perhaps millions are praying in secret right
now. Some are in prison for their faith; some are in multi-million dollar
mansions. Some are in meetings where hundreds or thousands of people
are lifting their voices at once, singing or praying in the Spirit. Wherever
they are, each individual is a fountain of the water of life. God Himself is
singing or praying through them. This voice is the voice of Jesus in the
earth, as the sound of many waters.
When a group sings or prays in the Spirit together, their audience is
God. Therefore, nobody is trying to speak or to listen to each other. It is a
distraction if someone tries to be heard, for it is a time when everyone is
listening for the personal and intimate voice of God, not the voice of man.
To man, this sound of many waters is a hodgepodge. To God, it is no
different than if we were all praying or singing to Him at home — He is big

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enough to sort out the voices and give personal attention to each of His
children. Singing or praying in the Spirit maximizes the one-on-one rela-
tionship between God and man.
If singing or praying in the Spirit is so individualistic, why should we
do it together in the church? The answer is simple. Our individual rivers
may not always seem like much, but when we let them flow together they
can release a powerful atmosphere of the Holy Spirit. This atmosphere in
turn will help release the river through people who might not get into the
flow otherwise. It will deepen people’s wells and stretch their capacity to
move in the Spirit.
As God’s presence intensifies, He begins to speak, reminding one
person of a scripture, assuring another that his sins are forgiven, and
wooing another into renewed first-love. Most of this revelation is
personal and not necessarily meant to be shared. Because everyone is
singing or speaking at once, each person can maintain an intimate dialog
with God.
But then God may prompt someone to prophesy. This is the trumpet
sound, the voice of Jesus speaking to the church clearly and decisively
through one individual. It is meant to be heard. Therefore, the person proph-
esying should wait for a lull before giving the prophecy. This is partly out of
a reluctance to interrupt the prayers and worship others are pouring out to
God, but it also allows the group to shift gears and prepare to listen to what
God wants to say prophetically. The trumpet is meant to be heard.
The sound of the trumpet demands a different protocol than the sound
of many waters. When God speaks prophetically to man, it is appropriate
for the church to listen silently. When churches are just starting to make
room for God to speak prophetically, they often find that the congregation
gets excited and drowns out the prophetic word with their shouting and
praising. The leaders have to teach the church to be quiet and attentive
when God is speaking so they can hear what He has to say. Then after
God has spoken, it may be appropriate for the whole church to pour out
their hearts again in prayer or praise.
The church needs leaders who can discern when it is time for us to
speak to Him and when He wants to speak to us. A true sense of divine
order will make room for both. When it is time for the sound of many
waters, it is time for all to participate and it is inappropriate for anyone’s
voice to dominate. When it is time for the sound of the trumpet, the whole
church needs to become quiet so they can hear God’s word.
The sound of many waters therefore is Jesus’ voice helping the whole
church pray or worship in the power of the Holy Spirit. The sound of the

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trumpet is Jesus’ voice to the whole assembly, and the trumpet is the
person He speaks through. We need both in the church. The more we
allow the river of God to flow in our individual lives and in the church, the
more room we will make for prophetic inspiration. The flow of God’s
river will slowly but surely equip people to prophesy.

FORMING A CLEAR WORD

How do we know when God gives us a prophetic word? Are there any
biblical hallmarks that will tell us when to prophesy? The Bible doesn’t
necessarily give us a one-two-three checklist we can use to decide what to
do with a word we think we’re hearing from God, but it does show several
valid patterns by which God gave prophetic words to His people. These
patterns will help us identify when God is nudging us to prophesy.
The first pattern is for God to interrupt whatever we are doing and
then to command us to prophesy. Many of the Old Testament prophets
started this way: Moses at the burning bush, Jeremiah with his vision of
the almond branch, or Ezekiel with his vision of the wheelwork by the
river Chebar. The king of Israel grew impatient with Amos’s prophesying
and commanded him to go back home to Judah and prophesy there if he
wanted. Amos replied,

I was no prophet
Nor was I a son of a prophet,
But I was a herdsman
And a tender of sycamore fruit.
Then the Lord took me as Ifollowed the flock
And the Lord said to me,
“Go, prophesy to My people Israel.”
(Amos 7:14-15)

This pattern is clearcut, but it happens rarely in scripture and is prob-

ably the least common pattern among prophetic ministries in the church
today.
A second pattern is a prophetic awakening. Isaiah 50:4-S talks about it:

The Lord God has given Me

The tongue of the learned,
That I should know how to speak
A word in season to him who is weary.

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He awakens Me morning by morning,

He awakens My ear
To hear as the learned.
The Lord God has opened My ear;
And I was not rebellious...

The pattern here is an awakening. When we wake up from sleep,

the world wrapped up in our dreams disappears as the world around us
comes into view. A prophetic awakening works the same way: the world
around us becomes the lesser reality as the realities of heaven come into
view. This is an altered state of consciousness, and it can happen with or
without outward physical manifestations. When God awakens us to the
realities of heaven, we may hear His voice or see a vision. Sometimes we
just “know” something we didn’t know before; heaven’s perspective
somehow gives us new knowledge. Jesus probably lived this way, experi-
encing one awakening after another, which enabled Him to do what He
saw the Father doing and to speak what He heard the Father speaking.
When Jesus talked about working “while it is yet day,’ He may have been
talking about this prophetic awakening Isaiah described.
The capitalized pronouns in Isaiah 50:4-5 tell us this prophecy fore-
told the ministry of Jesus. If Christ lives in you and me, we can begin to
trust the Father to awaken us just as He awakened Jesus, and lift us into a
prophetic state.
Another pattern is very subtle and easy to miss. In Deuteronomy 32:2,
the beginning of one of his prophetic songs, Moses describes it:

Let my teaching drop as the rain,

My speech distill as the dew,
As raindrops on the tender herb,
And as showers on the grass.

Moses likens his prophetic words to rain and dew, and his tone
suggests a gentle shower — maybe even a heavy fog — rather than a
violent rainstorm. One phrase is particularly suggestive: “Let my speech
distill as the dew.” How does the dew form on the grass in the morning?
There is not a moment when the dew suddenly appears, as though
somebody had thrown a bucket of water on the lawn. Dew forms by a
subtle process and the process itself is almost unnoticeable, but the
result can strike us suddenly: the grass is wet! Prophetic words often
form in our hearts like dew on the grass. We don’t really notice the

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process, but as we linger in God’s presence we suddenly realize we have

a word to give.
So here are three very different ways a prophetic word can form: by a
command, by an awakening, or by distilling like the dew. And we should
add a fourth: as we speak in tongues and trust God for the interpretation.
Each of these four patterns can occur with or without music, but they are
more likely to happen if we give ourselves to praying and singing in the
Spirit. This gets the taste of the river of life in our mouths, and the voice
of Jesus sounds like many waters. It is prophetic in the sense that God is
present and even singing through us, but we aren’t yet ready to say, “Thus
says the Lord.” As we linger in God’s presence however, in one way or
another God gets us into an altered state. He commands us or awakens us
or distills a word. Suddenly we know we have something to give, a
prophetic word that sounds clear as a trumpet. If we are musicians, we
may want to give the prophecy in song.
For Worshipers: Begin to expect a clear prophetic word to emerge
from seasons of worship. Assume that as we sow to the Spirit in the sound
of many waters, God will use one or more of his people to speak clear
direction to the church.
For Musicians: Sow to the Spirit by singing in tongues. Trust God to
give you interpretation as you go. In the beginning, don’t try to come up
with a prophecy you can give to the church. Look for a song of worship
that will give you a clearer vision of Jesus, or a prayer that speaks
prophetically into your own life. This will cause you to emerge in
prophetic gifting. Prove all things and hold fast that which is good. Look
for correction, and for confirmation. You’II learn a lot from both.

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God’s Song Is Creative

; EV)

The Lord is my strength and song.

(Exodus 15:2)

M4 ESS creativity and God’s creativity are completely different.

How might a musician write a song about darkness? A country
singer might explore the help-me-make-it-through-the-night theme; a jazz
or rap musician might write about an inner-city pimp or drug-dealer; a
classical music composer might use a brooding and dissonant sound to
convey the moral darkness of the times. But God’s song about darkness
was entirely different. Job 38:7 says there was a musical background —
“the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy”
— as God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light.
Musical creativity conveys the mood or feeling of what is. God’s
creativity brings into being what is not. When God calls us into prophetic
song, He is inviting us to let Him merge His creativity with ours.
God’s creative power can work through prophetic song in many ways.
Genesis | shows two principles that worked together as God spoke His
creative word into an atmosphere of the Holy Spirit. Genesis 2 shows
another principle, when Adam named the animals God had created. Paul
tells us in II Corinthians that a work of new creation is taking place in the
church today. And throughout the scripture, we see God’s creative power
released in history when His people proclaimed what He was saying. All
of these creative principles can work together with prophetic song.
Hebrews 11:3 describes the one main principle that all of God’s
creative works have in common:

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Through faith we understand that the worlds were made by the

word of God, so that the things which are seen were not made
of things which are visible.

In other words, every visible thing was made by the invisible God.
And when He puts His creative word in our mouths, He will somehow
change the visible world. He might change our attitude or our circum-
stances; He might transform our churches or communities; He might heal
an individual miraculously or bring revival to a nation. But in each case,
the visible world is affected by the invisible word of God. His power
knows no limits.

HOW GOD CREATED THE WORLD

The first three verses of Genesis show two principles of creation

working together:

In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The
earth was without form, and void; and darkness was on the
face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the
face of the waters. Then God said, “Let there be light”; and
there was light.

The Spirit of God hovered, and into this atmosphere God spoke.
Many people see the trinity in this passage: God the Father spoke God the
Word into the presence of God the Holy Spirit, forming the universe. This
suggests that the Spirit’s presence alone did not effect the creation, but
neither did the voice of God alone. The atmosphere was necessary so the
creative word could do its work, just as a seed needs to be planted in the
right kind of soil.
By singing in the Spirit, we can cultivate an atmosphere of the Holy
Spirit in our prayer closets or in our churches as we release the sound of
many waters. But the presence of God alone will not automatically
produce the breakthroughs and victories we are looking for. Into this
atmosphere must come the sound of the trumpet, the clear prophetic
declaration that will command light to shine in the darkness. We some-
times hear testimonies of miracles that happen in God’s manifest presence
without anyone’s speaking a word, and sometimes we hear of someone
who felt no anointing but used simple faith to command a mountain to
move — and it did. Either principle can work without the other; God is

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God, and can do anything He likes. But the creation story in Genesis 1
shows God using the two principles together. We will experience more of
God’s power as we learn to do the same.

NAMING THE ANIMALS

God left a small part of the creative process for Adam. While Genesis
1 looks at the creation of the universe, Genesis 2 zooms in on the creation
story as it worked in one man, Adam, in the garden of Eden. Genesis 2:19
says,

Out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field
and every bird of the air, and brought them to Adam to see
what he would cail them. And whatever Adam called each
living creature, that was its name.

Our culture is very casual about names. But when the Old Testament
was written, Hebrew culture assumed that naming a thing or a person
gave it its identity. Moses therefore would have understood that Adam’s
naming the animals was not just a casual or whimsical exercise, like the
way we would.name our pet dogs and cats. Adam gave each animal its
distinct personality or mindset. God may have put the biological package
together, but He then allowed Adam to put the finishing touch on His
creation.
When God the Creator made Adam in His own image, Adam was
destined to become a creator too. The first step for Adam was not to make
something out of nothing, as God had done in Genesis 1, but to add defi-
nition to what God had already made. This was an entry-level creative
step for Adam, and we too can begin here as we learn to flow with God’s
creative power. For us, it is not a matter of naming animals but of naming
the experiences we are going through. Joseph renamed his story of
betrayal and injustice when he said, “You meant it for evil, but God meant
it for good.”
It takes prophetic insight to rename our own experiences, identifying
the good God is bringing out of what looks like a mess. But God’s
prophetic renaming of an experience can bring deliverance. I saw this
happen with my mother years ago. She is a free-lance writer and had sent
out several proposals, each of which was rejected. She was starting to
panic, for writing was her livelihood. But then she visited a friend who
said, “Charlotte, you know that God is closing these doors because He’s

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about to open a better one.” This simple reinterpretation of the facts

relieved my mother’s fears, for this new name called the facts an evidence
not that she was failing but that God would show His faithfulness. He did;
within a few days, she had a new project to work on.

THE NEW CREATION

Naming the animals was Adam’s starting point, but Paul suggests that
God’s creative process will deepen as we grow in Christ. II Corinthians
5:17 says God has made a new creation in Christ:

If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have

passed away; behold, all things have become new.

In a theological sense, God has already finished the work of the new
creation in Christ. In the sense of what we experience, He is still creating
the new creation as He personalizes this work in each of us. As with the
creation story in Genesis 1, the Holy Spirit is essential if the work of the
new creation is to move forward. Paul writes about it in II Corinthians
3:3-9 and tells us the ministry of the new covenant relies fully on the work
of the Holy Spirit:

Clearly you are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written

not with ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of
stone but on tablets offlesh, that is, of the heart...God made us
sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but
of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life...if the
ministry of condemnation had glory, the ministry of righteous-
ness exceeds much more in glory.

Paul is telling us the ministry of the new covenant must be in the

energy of the Spirit, not in the deadness of the letter of the word: the letter
of the word will only point out what is wrong in our lives, but the Spirit of
the word will create God’s righteousness in our hearts.
Anything short of the ministry of the Spirit falls short of being true
new covenant ministry. We cannot afford “dead” preaching that merely
sets forth correct theological information. True ministry must be truth that
has come alive with the energy of the Holy Spirit. In II Corinthians 4:6,
Paul makes it clear that the work of the gospel in our lives is a creative
work:

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For it is the God who commanded light to shine out of darkness

who has shone in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge
of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

As co-creators with God, we are called to speak into the darkness of

lives — of our own lives and of the lives of those we minister to — and
command the light of the gospel to shine. Sometimes we do so with
preaching, sometimes with the gift of prophecy, and sometimes in song.
Here is one more scripture to show that God shares the further work
of creation with us:

I am the Lord your God, Who divided the sea whose waves
roared — the Lord of Hosts is His name. And I have put My
words in your mouth; I have covered you with the shadow of
My hand, that I may plant the heavens, lay the foundations of
the earth, and say to Zion, “You are My people.”
(Isaiah 51:15-16)

God is looking for people who will let Him put His creative word in
our mouths.

THE CREATIVE POWER OF PROPHETIC SONG

I saw God’s creative power work through a prophetic song in India.

An Indian pastor had invited several Americans to work with him in evan-
gelistic meetings. I have had several opportunities to preach in the open
air, but these meetings stood out because of an unusual musician.
We had three meetings a day for a week, and worshiped with Indian
songs sung in Telugu. The worship team played a keyboard, a set of west-
ern drums, and a set of tablas. In the morning and afternoon meetings,
people from the congregation would come to the platform and lead an
Indian hymn, usually with no other accompaniment than the tablas.
Though I could not understand the words they sang, I began to learn some
of the musical patterns and tunes.
Out of a dozen or more singers, one was different. He played three
tambourines, setting two on the table in front of him and cradling the third
close to his face so he could let the microphone pick up the tambourine
along with his singing. He kept an Indian rhythm going with his right
hand — boom boom WHOOSH! — boom boom WHOOSHP! - and danced
as he sang. His voice rang out with strength and precision, and his melody

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used a scale that is more complex than anything that could be played on a
piano. At the end of each verse he played each of the tambourines — boom
boom boom! — and then put down the one he had been playing and
selected another. He looked eccentric, with his three tambourines and his
funny little dance.
But not to the Indians. Whenever he sang, the crowd was electrified. I
couldn’t help noticing that he had a musical anointing that stood head and
shoulders above the rest. I wanted to understand the words, so between
meetings I asked the host pastor about the musician. “He was totally blind
from birth,” said Pastor Philip. “He has been a musician all his life. About
two years ago he was in one of our meetings, and he received 75% healing
of his sight. He has become a Christian and taken baptism. He sometimes
comes and sings at our conventions.”
‘Whenever he sings, the people seem to go wild,” I said. “The song is
different from all the other songs — more complex. What’s he singing
about?”
Pastor Philip answered, “He has written a special song for these meet-
ings right here and right now. He is singing that Jesus Christ has come to
this city; that the blind will see and the deaf hear; the sick will be healed;
people will find forgiveness of sins and everlasting life. This is a special
song, Brother; it is just for these meetings.”
By the end of the week, the words of the song had come to pass.
Miracles of healing had happened in every meeting, and we learned
several people had been healed of cancer. Hundreds had come forward
every night to receive Christ, and later several churches were formed with
the new converts. Would the meetings have been as powerful without the
song? We’ll never know.

THE SONG OF VICTORY

Many of the prophetic songs recorded in scripture were victory

celebrations, and at first they came after the victory had been won.
Exodus 15 records Moses’ song after Israel’s deliverance from Egypt
and Judges 5 gives us Deborah’s song after Barak’s victory over Sisera,
captain of the Canaanite army. These songs “named the animals” by
making the victories into tokens of how God would give Israel more
victories in the future.
But as Israel’s history unfolded, the language of victory often took
another form. Sometimes God and the prophets spoke of future victory in
past tense. A doubtful person might look ahead and feel uncertain about

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the outcome of the upcoming battle, but in God’s mind the outcome was
already settled. One example of this pattern is the story of the fall of
Jericho. Every day for a week the Israelites, obeying God’s command,
had marched around the city. On the seventh day they made the loop
seven times, and meanwhile the impregnable walls still stood. And then in
Joshua 6:16, Joshua gave the command: “Shout, for the Lord has given
you the city!”
“Has given?” The walls were still standing. But Israel gave the shout,
the walls collapsed, and then Israel saw their victory.
Moses and Deborah sang prophetic songs that celebrated and inter-
preted the victories God had already given them. But several centuries of
victory language — “God has already given victory” — worked in the
minds of Israel and changed their worship. From his youth, David grew
accustomed to calling a battle already won before he even began to fight
it. Notice his proclamation of future victory in I Samuel 17:45-46 when
he faced Goliath:

You come to me with a sword, with a spear, and with a javelin.

But I come to you in the name of the Lord of hosts, the God of
the armies of Israel, whom you have defied. This day the Lord
will deliver you into my hand, and I will strike you and take
your head from you. And this day I will give the carcasses of
the camp of the Philistines to the birds of the air and the wild
beasts of the earth, that all the earth may know that there is a
God in Israel.

David spoke in future tense here, but he clearly declared the end of
the battle before he even began. This was a creative word like God’s
command, “Let there be light,” and it created future history for David, for
Israel, and for every man and woman of faith who has found inspiration in
the story. David continued to use this principle in many of his psalms,
declaring victory while the future still looked uncertain.
The church today sometimes faces a Goliath, and we assume that if
we can just get more of God’s presence with us, victory will surely result.
So we sing and praise, lifting our voices like the sound of many waters,
and we have a good time in God’s presence. But then when the dust
settles, nothing has changed. Goliath is still parading himself and mock-
ing us and our God. What went wrong?
We have gone through only one phase of God’s creative process. We
did the right thing when we made room for God’s presence. That’s how

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God created the world: His Spirit was brooding on the face of the waters.
But there’s another step to creation, the clear trumpet-voice of Jesus that
commands impossible things to happen. Sometimes it comes by the gift
of prophecy and sometimes it is a command of faith. But the same invisi-
ble God who created the visible world by His word is creating other visi-
ble things — the downfall of Goliath, a revival in India — as He speaks or
sings His creative word through us.
Expect God to use you in a strong prophetic gift. He’s given you
everything you need to move in it. God is looking for people He can use
to further the work of His new creation. He wants you.
For Worshipers: In your singing in the Spirit, praise God for
promises He has made in your life. Sing about His subduing obstacles that
stand between you and the promise, and especially about His grace subdu-
ing your heart and bringing you to a life of total abandonment in Him.
For Musicians: Match the tone of your music to the various stages of
the process as you sing about promises, subduing obstacles, and surrender
to God.

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You CAN Prophesy!

SMR

Christ in you, the hope of glory.

(Colossians 1:27)

QO: human nature plays many nasty tricks on us, and our hunger for
God can set us up for a pattern of self-defeating spiritual activity.
On one hand, we long for God’s transcendent touch. We want to experi-
ence something from heaven, not from earth; we want to see what He can
do in our lives, and not just how we can maximize our human abilities. On
the other hand, something in us wants to identify “Four Steps To A Move
of God” or “How To Trigger Revival” or “Faith Principles That Will
Release The Voice Of God.” At best, we hunger for the dominion Adam
lost when he sinned; at worst, we want to learn to manage God.
So far in this book, we have looked at several activities that will set
the stage for the Spirit of God to move. We can worship God by singing
in the Spirit. We can sing in tongues. We can pour out our hearts to God,
telling Him about our problems and His great faithfulness. We can sing
classic biblical truths about Jesus. We can sing spontaneously, reaching
for God with a new song. These are all good activities, and they can cata-
pult us into high places in the Spirit. But we can do all these things with-
out ever quite breaking through into the prophetic, where God himself
begins to speak or sing through us. God wants to give us more than we
know how to reach out for. He wants to overwhelm us with grace.
When I was a student in Bible school, I wondered if God would walk
me into the richer blessings I read about in scripture. In my thinking,
these blessings seemed reserved for people more spiritual than me. I kept

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ee
eee eer

hoping for a traveling prophet to come to the school and give me a word,
“Yea, My son, I have called thee into the heights of glory and revelation,
and thou shalt prophesy,” but the word never came. Only as I rammaged
in the scripture did I receive any evidence that God would ever let me
experience the things of the Spirit.

YOUR INHERITANCE

I have never had any reason to believe my destiny is greater than

anyone else’s in Christ, but these scriptures have released prophetic gift-
ing in my life, and they can do the same for you.
1. Everyone can prophesy. In I Corinthians 14:31, Paul says, “You
can all prophesy one by one, that all may learn and all may be encour-
aged.” This passage simply means what it says.
In Numbers 11, Moses was exhausted with the cares of the people.
God told him to gather seventy elders at the Tabernacle, then “I will take of
the Spirit that is upon you and put the same upon them.” So Moses called
the seventy men, God came down in a cloud of glory and put His Spirit
upon them, and they all began to prophesy at once. Two of the elders had
stayed home but their names were on the roster, and as the Spirit fell on
them they suddenly began prophesying. Someone heard them and came
running to tell Moses, “Eldad and Medad are prophesying in the camp.”
Joshua, Moses’ protégé, said, “Moses my lord, forbid them!” Then Moses
sighed, “Are you jealous for my sake? Oh, that all the Lord’s people were
prophets and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them!”
This wasn’t just Moses’ wishful thinking; this is what God wants too.
2. The Holy Spirit is poured out to make us all prophetic. What
Moses was longing for happened in Acts 2, when a hundred twenty
disciples were praying together in an upper room on the day of
Pentecost. Suddenly they heard a sound like a mighty rushing wind, and
tongues of fire sat on each person in the meeting. They all began to
speak with other tongues, preaching the gospel in more than a dozen
foreign languages.
Some of the onlookers thought the disciples were drunk, but Peter
stood up to put the record straight. “This is what was spoken by the
prophet Joel,” he said, and then he went on to quote:

And it shall come to pass in the last days, says God,

That I will pour out of My Spirit on all flesh;
Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,

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Your young men shall see visions,

Your old men shall dream dreams.
And on my menservants and on My maidservants
I will pour out My Spirit in those days;
And they shall prophesy.
(Acts 2:17-18 and Joel 2:28-29)

The Holy Spirit will make us into a prophetic people, seeing visions
and dreaming dreams. And God is speaking prophetically through ordinary
people — people who are sons or daughters, servants or handmaidens. The
promise is not reserved for an elite few, for God is pouring out His Spirit
on “all flesh.” Nor is it available only to the people of the first century, for
in Acts 2:39 Peter said, “The promise is to you and to your children, and to
all who are afar off, as many as the Lord our God will call.”
3. Jesus commanded us to ask the Father for the Holy Spirit, and
told us God answers prayer. In Luke 11:9-13, Jesus said,

Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock,
and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives,
and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be
opened. If a son asks for bread from any father among you,
will he give hima stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will he give
him a serpent instead of a fish? Or if he asks for an egg, will he
offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give
good gifts to your children, how much more will your heavenly
Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him!

Jesus made it a priority to teach the church to pray for the power and
presence of the Holy Spirit. I have read a lot of books about prayer, but
few have said what Jesus taught: that God means to give us whatever we
ask for. He taught this consistently during His ministry, especially in His
long teaching about prayer and the Holy Spirit in John 14-16. Then again
after His resurrection, Luke’s gospel tells us He commanded the church to
tarry in God’s presence, waiting for the Holy Spirit to clothe them with
anointing and power:

Behold, I send the Promise of My Father upon you; but tarry in

the city of Jerusalem until you are endued with power from on
high.
(Luke 24:49)

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When the early church obeyed this commandment, God poured out
His Spirit upon them and made them into a prophetic and apostolic
congregation. This divine empowerment is vital if the church is to fulfill
the rest of its commission, spreading the gospel and discipling the
nations. And as Peter explained in Acts 2, the Holy Spirit is poured out to
make us into a prophetic people.
4. God commands us to seek the gift of prophecy. I Corinthians
14:1 says, “Pursue love, and desire spiritual gifts, but especially that you
may prophesy.” And again in verse 39 we read, “Therefore, brethren,
desire earnestly to prophesy, and do not forbid to speak with tongues.”
The word “desire” is a strong word, zeloo, which means “I desire
fervently or zealously.” The root word, zeo, means “I boil.” This tells us
God wants our desire for spiritual gifts to rise to a furious boil. We have
sometimes thought a ho-hum attitude was spiritual: “I’m available; God
knows where I live; if He wants to give me a word, He knows where to find
me.” Yes, God knows where to find us; but He’s looking for people whose
desire for the gifts of the Spirit is boiling hot, not room temperature.
If we couple Paul’s words in I Corinthians with Jesus’ words in
Luke, we get the clear picture that we will receive the things of the Spirit
if we ask God for them; we will find if we seek; and if any locked doors
block our progress in spiritual matters, God will open them to those who
knock.
5. God doesn’t have to decide whether to give you the things of the
Spirit. He’s already decided. Ephesians 1:3 says, “Blessed be the God
and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiri-
tual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ.” Don’t focus here on heaven,
which seems far away; focus instead on Christ, who is closer than your
next breath. And notice that the scripture says not that God will bless us
but that He already “has blessed us” with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
God has already heard the prayers you’re going to pray three or ten or fifty
years from now, and He has already decided to answer. The answers to
your prayers, present and future, are in storage in the heavens. The delivery
system for those answers is that you abide in Christ, and He in you.
Maintain your oneness with Christ, and all spiritual blessings are yours.
What do these blessings include? This book is not long enough for a
complete list, but in this short paragraph I will list a few. Do you need ears
to hear what the Spirit is saying? Those ears are yours in Christ. Do you
need more boldness so you can speak up when God prompts you? It’s
yours in Christ. Do you need to be awakened to the things of the Spirit?
It’s yours in Christ. Do you need more faith? It’s yours in Christ. Do you

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 Prophetic Song
RT A

need to have your heart cleansed of impure motives? It’s yours in Christ.
If it is a spiritual blessing, God has thought of it already and made it avail-
able to you in Christ.
6. The master key to everything is Christ in you. These seven
words from Colossians 1:27 can equip you for every challenge you'll ever
face and every ministry you'll ever undertake: “Christ in you, the hope of
glory.”
You need nothing else. If Jesus lives in you, He will think His
thoughts in you, speak His words through you, and work His works
through you. Conscious abiding in Christ is the root system for all the
things of the Spirit.
These scriptures tell us we can have the prophetic gifts of the Spirit
working in our lives. Does the Bible tell us what to do to cultivate them?

THE FORMING OF A PROPHETIC WORD WITHIN US

“Tf you abide in Me, and My words abide in you, you will ask what you
desire, and it shall be done for you.” These are Jesus’ words in John 15:7.
This verse is talking about answered prayer, and it certainly echoes
the theme in Luke 11 where Jesus taught us to ask, seek, and knock in
prayer — especially for more of the Holy Spirit. This verse also provides a
recipe for the prophetic gifts and anointing. Abiding in Him means that
we practice His presence day by day. Letting His word abide in us is a
process where we keep His word in our minds, like a pot of soup simmer-
ing on the back burner. From time to time we take off the lid and stir it,
tasting the broth. The process can’t be hurried.
As we fill our hearts with scripture, we need to be careful to seek the
Spirit and life of the word if we want to cultivate the prophetic anointing.
A theologian will try to analyze the scripture, viewing it in the context of
the times when it was written and trying to discern the intent of the word
when it was first given. This is a good way to study and it can help us
form sound doctrine, but it stops short of producing a prophetic voice. A
prophetic grasp of the word will surpass a mere intellectual understanding
of doctrine; it will also grasp the Spirit and life of the word. The word of
God has a life of its own.
How should a scientist study a frog? One takes a dead frog and
dissects it, studying its various parts. Another studies a living frog in its
natural habitat, observing its habits and way of life. Both studies are valid,
and the findings of each scientist complement what the other has
observed. But for whatever reason, the tendency in western culture has

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 Stan Smith

been to study God’s word by the dissection method: going into Greek and
Hebrew words, studying the culture in Bible days, comparing scripture
with scripture. This is a valid way to study, and I’ve included it in writing
this book. But it is incomplete by itself. The word of God is alive and
powerful. We can’t possibly understand what it is all about if we only
dissect the dead letter. We have to watch the word work in its natural habi-
tat, transforming people’s lives and shaping history. This is the prophetic
aspect of the word.
It takes time to develop a prophetic grasp of the word. It takes
repeated encounters with the Spirit of revelation, breathing God’s life into
scriptures we think we already understand.
Paul went through this process. In Galatians 1:11-12, he says,

But I make known to you, brethren, that the gospel which was
preached by me is not according to man. For I neither received
it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came through the revela-
tion of Jesus Christ.

We can be sure Paul learned some of the facts of the gospel from man.
Ananias ministered to him a few days after his conversion; Paul was a
member of the church in Damascus, and must have heard the gospel
preached there; Paul already knew the Old Testament before he met Christ,
for he had studied under the respected rabbi Gamaliel. He probably saw
Jesus crucified. He had access to the facts of the gospel. But the early
church fathers assert that Paul spent several years in Tarsus, making tents
and seeking God, before he was launched into his apostolic ministry. It was
a season of receiving the gospel by revelation, a time when the Spirit of God
took the facts of scripture and of the gospel and wrote them in Paul’s heart.
Perhaps this is what the command to “tarry in Jerusalem” was all
about. It wasn’t just a passive time of waiting. It was a time of reflecting
on the words Jesus had spoken and of abiding in Him as best they knew
how. When God poured out His Spirit on the day of Pentecost, scriptures
that had been a riddle suddenly became clear and Peter and the others
were able to preach with authority. They had lived with Jesus for several
years, but had never really known and understood Him until they received
illumination from the Spirit of prophecy. By meditating on His words,
they had prepared themselves for the outpouring of the Spirit. The Holy
Spirit showed them what the words and works of Jesus had meant.
The church today needs to tarry. Early in the Pentecostal revival,
people used to “tarry” and wait for the Spirit of God. People in the Latter

108
 Prophetic Song

Rain movement often used the phrase “waiting on God.” In the last few
years I’ve heard people talk about “soaking” in God’s presence. Whatever
we call it, the reality is the same. As we consciously dwell in God’s pres-
ence, there will be times when the manifest presence of God overshadows
us and imparts the Spirit and life of His word to our hearts.
There are no shortcuts. I can’t give you a method that will automati-
cally make you prophetic. But Acts 2 says it is God’s heart to make you
prophetic; Jesus says you can ask the Father for the Holy Spirit and you will
surely receive; Paul tells us to seek prophetic gifts then tells us God has
already given them to us in Christ. Quality prophetic ministry is birthed
when we soak in the presence of God, allowing Him to take the scriptures
we already know and to write them in our hearts by the Holy Spirit. We can
sow sparingly or abundantly, and we will reap accordingly. You can have
the best, if you’ll invest your life in the Spirit and word of God.
For Worshipers: There is a time to push ourselves to step into bless-
ing, and a time when we can rest and God will carry us. Look for
moments when you can make the switch from singing out of your own
effort, and can step into His. Growth in prophetic song will mean that we
will step more and more into God’s control.
For Musicians: There will likewise be moments of incredible virtu-
osity as God assumes control of your playing. You may suddenly catch
yourself playing things you couldn’t play before. You may have a flash of
insight that teaches you how to do things you’ve never done before.
However it happens, the key to a steady flow of God’s song through you is
to not let the music distract you from Him.

109
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 Chapter 13

Singing The Unlearnable Song

oKAARe

No one could learn that song

(Revelation 14:3)

|Pa 14:1-5 tells about a new song nobody can learn, which is
an excellent description of prophetic song.
Most of us.are used to the songs we can learn: someone writes a piece
of music, then we learn to play it, practicing it again and again until it
sounds right. Prophetic songs involve a different process: God gives the
inspiration and we pour out the song, and we don’t get to practice because
it flows spontaneously. Nobody can learn a prophetic song because the
rocess of learning is totally different from the process of receiving”
rophetic inspiration. ites. vil) “ve
ese unlearnable prophetic songs can drop into our hearts in many
different ways, but I’m going to list three. God can give us (1) a “song
within a song,” dropping His prophetic anointing on a song we already
know. God can give us (2) the prophetic song of a seer, where He gives us
the whole song at once and then we sing it. Or He can give us (3) the
prophetic song that bubbles up spontaneously, where we receive the inspi-
ration line by line.

THE “SONG WITHIN A SONG”

I have coined the phrase “song within a song” to describe something

many of us have experienced. Someone can lead a song everyone already
knows, and the Holy Spirit floods the church. Then when we sing the

111
 Stan Smith

same song a week later, it is cold and dead and flat. We can learn music by
rote and play it again as often as we like, but the anointed “song within a
song” that transforms lives is beyond our grasp. We can’t learn it; we
can’t produce it at will; we can’t turn it on or off.
Anyone in the church can see this pattern, but it is especially madden-
ing for a worship leader. When God moves in an extraordinary way in a
worship service, the musicians have to ask themselves, did I do something
right that made this happen? If so, what was it? Will I ever manage to do it
again? It is terribly but wonderfully humbling to realize that we don’t
always know what buttons to push to release the Holy Spirit in the church.
At least two scriptures in the New Testament describe these times of
anointed worship:

In the midst of the assembly I will sing praise to You.

(Hebrews 2:12)

Jesus Himself sings through us, and it is His presence that makes
these times of worship so memorable. And they are times of refreshing
and restoration, as we see in Acts 3:19:

Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blot-

ted out, so that times of refreshing may come from the presence
of the Lord.

God refreshes and restores us in these times of worship, cleansing our

hearts, enlarging our vision, and adding something of God’s image to our
lives.
This is one level of the “new song” of Revelation 14:3, the song that
“no one could learn.” The song is unlearnable because it is more than
notes and lyrics. It is the presence of God, singing through us. Even in
churches that claim the prophetic is not for our day, the God of grace will
sometimes give us the unlearnable “song within a song,” to refresh our
hearts with the song of heaven.

THE SONGS OF THE SEER AND OF THE PROPHET

I Samuel 9:9 mentions seers and prophets:

an Formerly in Israel, when a man went to inquire of God, he spoke

thus: “Come, let us go to the seer”; for he who is now called a

112
 Prophetic Song
(et sey el cr

prophet was formerly called a seer,

For the person hearing someone prophesy, this distinction doesn’t

really matter. Both a seer and a prophet give the word of the Lord. But for
the person who is learning to flow in prophetic gifting, the distinction is
useful because it reveals two very different ways God gives prophetic
inspiration. Basically, a seer sees a picture and reports what he or she
sees. A prophet, as defined by the Hebrew word nabiyyah, allows the
prophetic word to bubble up so so spontaneously that he may not know
what iis going to come out of his is mouth. The seer receives an entire word
in aflash of revelation and iss responsible to discharge it; the prophet is
responsible to allow the word to unfold in a flow of spontaneous
revelation.
I have never heard of anyone’s “seeing” a prophetic song. But I have
received whole songs in a flash of revelation, and then as I played and
sang the song, I felt I was remembering it rather than creating it — even
though I had never heard the song before in my life.
For instance, a few years ago God dropped a song in my heart in a
split second. I went to my keyboard and tried to play what I’d heard, but
couldn’t get it right because it was in a new style and the music was
beyond me. Then in a dream that night, a teacher took me through the
song again and again until I could play it. I woke up, went to the
keyboard, and within an hour was playing it.
I received this song the same way God sometimes gives a word to a
seer: in a split second I heard a melody that lasts more than a minute,
complete with chords and rhythm. And God often speaks prophetically in
dreams — in this case, He gave me a music lesson. But though the song
may have been prophetically inspired, the song itself is not a prophecy. It
is not a “Thus-says-the-Lord” word to be given to a specific group of
people at a particular time. I can sing this song whenever I like. God may
or may not choose to put His prophetic anointing on it.
Generally, the strongest prophetic words are delivered on God’s
timetable, not man’s, and the anointing is usually strongest when we are
closest to the source of inspiration.

LIVING WATERS AND THE TRUMPET

Because the sound of many waters and the sound of the trumpet are
both prophetic, most people who are open to receiving one are quick to
receive the other. People who frequently prophesy will tend to have a
ee ee ee —S is
a ae

113
 Stan Smith

eee

spiritual sensitivity. _
oP,

ee nl

But there are severe ences between the two sounds. The first is
a matter/of whose will is involved.)We can have the water of life whenever
we want, as Revelation 22:17 tells us:

Whoever desires, let him take the water of life freely.

But as II Peter 1:21 says,

ee Prophecy never came by the will of man, but holy men of God
spoke as they were moved by the Holy Spirit.

The gift of prophecy works when and if God awe to move us, and
not before. God has trained some people to gi whenever they
want — we’ll look at how that works in a moment — a even then, there is
‘asense that the prophet isnot taking the initiative, butfollowing orders.
Evenenif wehavesuchTlucnay Tatheprophetic sift,there remains adistine
tion between the gifts that operate at our own will and the higher level of
the gift, which operates only when God chooses.
Second, the sound of many waters is almost always our prophetically
anointed voice speaking to God. The sound of the trumpet is God’s voice
addressing man. Paul makes this distinction in I Corinthians 14:2-3 as he
contrasts speaking in tongues with prophecy:

< He who speaks in a tongue does not speak to men but to God,
for no one understands him; however, in the spirit he speaks
mysteries. But he who prophesies speaks edification and
exhortation and comfort to men.

—
Speaking in tongues is prophetic — we speak
ee ree
ystery t i
language given to usspontaneously. We can speak in tongues S neneee
Wwe like.
like. Pr
Prophecy iis God sf
speaking to man.
~
Third, each sound is likely to lead to the other because each is one side
of conversation with God. God wants a relationship with us where we talk
—— ae

to Him and He talks to us. Jesus, the Mediator between. God andman, |

114
 Prophetic Song
ee

prophetic words. Jesus tak with the sound of man

waters; Jesus brings the Father’s h trumpet.
Recently I experienced both sounds. Before attending church, I
prayed that the pastor’s message would speak directly to me. It did: the
pastor preached that God sets valiant men to stand with us when He
anoints us to complete a task. I went home and began to pray for men and
women who can stand with me in intercession and other helps as I set
myself to fulfill the ministry God has given me. God helped me pray, and
showed me how to sow into the relationships He wants to give me. Then
I was at a ministers’ luncheon a few days later, and a prophet from
England prophesied over me that God is bringing other ministers into my
life. So in a matter of several days, I had a conversation with God: Jesus
spoke God’s word to me through a preacher, spoke my response to God
in prayer, and then gave me God’s response through the gift of prophecy.
This is how God wants to use you in prophetic song and in other
prophetic gift ip you with the sound of many waters so
you can sing a prayer or a song of praise on behalf of the church, and
then with the trumpet sound of prophecy so God can speak to the church.

PREPARING TO SOUND

If you want God to use you in the prophetic gift, give yourself to the
livingwaters. You can have the waters of life whenever you want, and
God’s prophetic touch will t
begin t to work in your life. At the same time,
be aware that there are varying levels of inspiration. God rarely gives
His highest and best inspiration to those who give less than theirhighest,
and best to Him. This is the issue >of first-I
-love éagain, Whenever
we want,
~we can have thewaters of life. But how often do we bother to let them
flow? qe
~~ In I Corinthians 14:2-4, Paul tells usa
we speak mysteries
ee
to God and
edify ourselves “when we speak intongues, though
poses:
v
we don’ atunderstand
what we are saying.But thenaswe have taken time to pray in tongues,
aul says in ICorinthians 14:13-15 —

Therefore let him who speaks in a tongue pray that he may

interpret. For ifIpray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my
understanding iis unfruitful. What is the conclusion then? I will
pray with the spirit, andI will also pray with the understand-
‘ing. I will sing with the spirit, and I will also sing with the
understanding.

115
 Stan Smith

We._
These verses suggest a progression from tongues to interpretation
start dry and unspiritual, but as we pray in tongues we edify ourselves
Whéle we
point where
~antil we Teach @point Canreceive
Wecan theinterpretation.
Tecelve the this.
Interpretation Atthis
point, God begins prophetically communicating to us.The great marvel of
*K e waters of
tongues and interpretation is thatitenables us to reach for the.
life whenever we are thirsty and to ascend into aprophetic: awareness, of
_what Godisdoing, peas
he ane
~~ This is not a matter of putting God in a box. We have to depend on
Him every step of the way. If we try to manipulate God with tongues and
interpretation, thinking we can use scriptural principles to make God
speak to us, God_may think it best toresist our pride and tell us nothing.
SK We need tofappreciate tongues)and ‘bfecpretalon Yorwnat tieaerate
- God has chosen to make Himself accessible, but we need to be careful to
approach Him with humility and love. He has not made Himself vulnera-_

Tongues and interpretation are living waters, available whenever we

God, the interpretation is obviously spoken to God as well. Sometimes in

the church we hear tongues, followed by an “interpretation” that is God’s
IK voice towards man. Technically, this isn’t an interpretation of the tongues,
but it’s tongues followed
by a prophecy.
~The overall tenor of ICorinthians 14 is that we need to progress
from teaites(OM gues
interpretation
IESEW
with
TITifarpretatio tb
toiprO
prophecy.
aNeLPARE
ThisRGRES
isn’t
always a one-two-three Esequencey bacthet pointGMGTCMEE a
_ expression thatcan’t beunderstood to
Sa
t one that can.. Some days we will
Ee
PERE eeecnee

us higher. |
Some people develop an intimate walk with God where they can
prophesy whenever they want to. Yes, Peter tells us prophecy comes not
_ by the will of man but by the will of God. But as one prophet told me,
4K “We can always prophesy; God is always speaking.” When such a person
prophesies “whenever I want to,” it is still a response to the God who has
first chosen to speak. Perhaps Paul had this in mind when he wrote in
a Romans 12:6—

Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given

to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in propor-
tion to our faith.

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 Prophetic Song
ee

When I first began to prophesy, I couldn’t believe God was prom ting
me unless I shook from head to toe. Ihad |small
aa proportionof faith, and
prophesied accordingly. But the person whoknows God is always speak-
ing and prophesies accordingly has a much larger proportion of faith,and
will therefore have a greater prophetic flow.

7 But again, a note of caution. The gifts of the Spirit are grace, and
grace calls attention to God’s greatness, not ours. Nothing turns sour K
“faster than the prophecies ofsomeone whose attitude ts.“Look at me! I’m
anointed! I can prophesy — whenever I want!” A mature
aoe
ministry does notnokwant
Wantto toprophesy
prophesy unless
unless it
itwill
willbe
Si
prophetic
beedifying. AAseasoned
seasoned Any
Hero
prophet
rieacai
can sre whenever hciever heheoror she
siewants,
Gantsbutathesitates
losis to todo
doso
oo
unless it
unless it will
will accomplish
accomplish God’sGod’s purpose. 3A
With T I was
was a child,
childcT I wasn’t
wasn rellowed
allowed to use a power saw. As a young
man, I became free to use a power saw whenever I want. But why on earth
would I want to use a power saw unless I’m trying to build something?
People would think something was wrong with me if I went out in the
garage and ran the power saw every few hours,just to prove I could do it,
The same is true with prophecy.
0
ee

REACH FOR GOD

It is not up to us just to decide to blow the trumpet, but we do need

to _
stir ourselves to reach for the living waters. There are several ways we can
O it. We can worship in Spirit and truth. As the Father seeks such people,
He is likely to choose from among such worshipers when He chooses to
sing or speak to the church. We can sing as David sang, beginning with
self and ending with God’s singing through us. We can sing about Jesus —
‘the Spirit of prophecy is the testimony of Jesus. As Jesus is the Holy.
En ari
vcreent ject
sematter,
ar the
the son
soneg about
aoa Jesus
Tosacan very quickly
‘become
the song Jesus sings through us.
Our goal is to progress from self-effort to the river, then back and_
4 forth between the river and the trumpet.
pet. We want to speak tto God and then
ever
hear Him speaking back; we want to open our hearts to Him and then
er eee ener en CT

have Him open His heart to us.

or Worshipers: The best way to train yourself to move in prophetic
song is to sing in the Spirit daily in your personal devotions. Some days
you won’t get very far. Some days you'll get into the river, and will sense
the energy of the Spirit carrying you into a higher place of worship. Some
days you will be aware that a song from God has formed in you and that
God is giving you revelation as He sings through you.

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 Stan Smith

For Musicians: Though God will give prophetic inspiration to the

tunes and rhythms you play, think of your music as a ministry of helps
designed to release the prophetic word. When God moves someone to
sing or to speak a prophecy, be careful not to drown out the words with
music. But continue playing softly in the background — this will help
maintain the prophetic atmosphere in the meeting.

118
 PART FOUR

Using Prophetic Song

Maturity And Teamwork
 Chapter 14

Involving The Whole Church

SNR

Those members of the body which seem to be weaker are

necessary.
(I Corinthians 12:22)

I:is tempting to leave prophetic music to a few well-trained experts, but

God values the voice of all his children equally. Therefore, we need to
make room for the whole church to worship God in prophetic song.
Whenever God sounds a prophecy — with or without song — we need
to give the microphone to the prophet so all can hear. But most prophetic
singing will be worship, the sound of many waters. This releases the
manifest presence of God in the church. And it calls not for talented
soloists, but for the whole congregation to participate.
At the same time, there may be a few individuals in the church who
are eager to grab the microphone so they can be heard whether they are
anointed or not. How do we make room for the whole body of Christ to
move in prophetic song without turning the church over to musical chaos?
Several principles from scripture will help us find the answer.
First, not all meetings in the church have the same format and
agenda. Acts 2:46 says the early church met in the temple and from
house to house, which suggests two very different styles of ministry. Our
Sunday morning services reflect the early church’s temple meetings,
where the proven ministers conducted most of the service. But the meet-
ings from house to house were personal and informal, providing opportu-
nities for people to take their first faltering steps in new gifts of the Holy
Spirit. In today’s church, there are many ways we make room for this
 Stan Smith
Neen
EEE eee ee ee ee

kind of spontaneity and informality: in cell groups, in adult Sunday

school classes, in workshops at seminars, or during the ministry times at
the altar after the preaching. The important thing to understand is that on
one hand, not every church service is meant to be open for everyone to
sing a spontaneous solo; but on the other hand, we need to make room
somewhere in the church for people to step out in prophetic song.
In I Thessalonians 5:12-21, Paul expands on this thought with a list of
apparently disconnected exhortations. Many of them apply to making
room for prophetic song in the church:

Recognize those who labor among you. (Verse 12) The word
“recognize” literally means “to know by observation.” Just as
the congregation needs to watch the church leaders and learn
from their example, church leaders need to watch the church
and look for signs that God is releasing new gifts among the
people. Great strength will be added to the church as leaders
coach people who are coming into new expression in the
things of the Spirit.
Warn those who are unruly, comfort the fainthearted, uphold
the weak, be patient with all. (Verse 14) The unruly will try to
take over the meeting whether God has led them or not. The
fainthearted and weak need encouragement — “You can do it!”
It takes pastoral wisdom and patience to bring out the best in
each member of the church so the whole congregation can
flow with the Holy Spirit.
Do not quench the Spirit. (Verse 19) There are two ways to
quench the Spirit: by never allowing the congregation to move
with God spontaneously, or by expecting it all the time.
What is edifying in one meeting is out of order in another. It
takes wisdom, discernment, and maturity to act on this
commandment.
Do not despise prophecies. (Verse 20) I love the movings of
the Holy Spirit and I love the gifts of prophecy, but I have
sometimes despised prophecies. In the wear and tear of
making room for God to speak, we will see well-meaning
people make a lot of mistakes. It can reach a point where it
seems to be more trouble than it’s worth. If you are in such a
season, obey the Bible and don’t despise prophecies. Ask
God for the real thing, not what man makes it into, and then
let God walk you into a season of fulfillment. The day will

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 Prophetic Song
mere a eee

come again when you are very thankful for the gift of
prophecy.
¢ Test all things; hold fast what is good. (Verse 21) God
commands us to receive prophecy cautiously. He is not
offended when we take time to evaluate what we are hearing.
False prophecy will not survive being tested, but real prophecy
will.

This comes back to the thought of knowing them that labor among us:
some people will develop a track record of having a word in season that
edifies the church. These are the people we need not just in home meet-
ings but also in the larger gatherings, releasing the whole church in the
river of God. And in prophetic song, these are the people who will be able
to lead the whole church in prophetic worship. There are several types of
song where this may happen.

THE CHURCH NEEDS SIMPLICITY

If the whole congregation is to participate in prophetic song, it will

call for simplicity, not virtuosity. There will be times when prophetic
musicians will move in dazzling musical skill under the anointing:
singing spontaneous songs that rhyme, playing amazing riffs or chord
patterns, or pouring out a musical prophecy that floors the church with
convicting power. These are moments when Jesus speaks with the trumpet
sound, using one person to give His word to the church. But when we
want to see the whole church step into the river together, a simple musical
format is needed so everyone can participate.
One simple format is singing in the Spirit, and there are several ways
to do it. We can sing to an accompaniment of a major chord with its rela-
tive minor — for instance, a C and A minor chord. For more variety, some
worship leaders are using a loop of two to four chords to create a simple
pattern so the whole church can worship spontaneously. Many song lead-
ers today are using the last line of a song as a musical pattern for singing
in the Spirit; as the congregation repeats the line again and again, people
begin to break off from its melody and sing from their hearts.
A second format is antiphonal singing, like a responsive reading
where the pastor reads one line and the congregation reads the next,
except now it is in song. Psalm 136 is an example: the psalmist sings line
after line to thank God for His works, and the congregation responds,
“For His mercy endures forever.”

123
 Stan Smith
ae ee en ee ee ee

An antiphonal song accomplishes two things at once. Because it

includes a line or chorus simple enough for the whole congregation to
sing, it includes everybody. This causes the church to become participants
rather than spectators. It then accomplishes something else: it gives the
whole church an opportunity to make a united prophetic declaration of
faith. One can put a thousand to flight and two can scatter ten thousand,
but what can happen when the whole church makes a prophetic proclama-
tion together?
I try to use antiphonal singing a lot in prophetic song because I want
the congregation to get involved. Often God gives me a chorus we can all
sing together, and then I prophesy the verses. Once I was given a
prophetic song in which I sang each line and the congregation repeated it.
The styles vary.
A third format is a simple one or two line song the whole congregation
can learn quickly and sing together. I was in a church in Canada where the
pastor’s son began to sing this line: “Lord, I want to carry your presence,
wherever I go.” The song had a sweet, heart-melting quality, and from time
to time we sang a new line. In Detroit, I have often seen Kim Clement sing
“T saw Satan fall like lightning from heaven.” This time the style was pop
music and the tone was an in-your-face declaration. Though these two
songs had very different styles and moods, they had several things in
common. They were simple enough for everyone to sing together. They
were prophetic because they expressed what God was doing then and
there. And they drew the whole church into a united declaration.
A prophetic song can combine these different formats or create new
ones. However the different styles may mix and match, the ultimate
purpose is to make room for the whole congregation to be immersed in
the prophetic atmosphere.

THE CONGREGATION MUST OWN THE ATMOSPHERE

The musicians and worship leaders alone can’t guarantee an atmo-

sphere of the Holy Spirit. God goes where He is welcome. Sometimes
there is a richer anointing on worship practice than on the service itself.
This can occur when the congregation has come to expect that they will
show up in church and the worship team will bring the presence of God.
We need to teach the congregation not to be passive about God’s pres-
ence, but to welcome Him actively. And this is why we need to do all we
can to include the whole congregation in worship. Man looks at the qual-
ity of musical performance, and this tempts us to use only the most gifted

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musicians in the church. But God looks for hearts that turn towards Him.
Therefore, the whole church has a part to play in releasing an atmosphere
of God’s presence.
Atmosphere is important. Genesis | tells us the Holy Spirit created an
atmosphere before God spoke the word, “Let there be light.” In the
church, the atmosphere of the Holy Spirit is vital as God deepens His
work of the new creation within us. The whole church can learn to be like
the sons of the prophets mentioned in Samuel and Kings.

THE SONS OF THE PROPHETS AND CONVERSION

The sons of the prophets were prophetic musicians who seem to have
lived ahead of their time. It would be another thousand years before God
would pour out His Spirit on all flesh and “your sons and your daughters
shall prophesy,” or until Paul would tell the Ephesians to “be filled with
the Spirit, speaking to one another in psalms and hymns and spiritual
songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” Yet the sons
of the prophets lived in these New Testament realities in the days of
Samuel, Saul, David, Elijah, and Elisha.

H
The sons of the prophets carried an atmosphere that changed lives.
‘SS God said Saul would become “another man” in the presence of these
singing prophets. He did — when he came within reach of their prophetic
songs, he immediately began to prophesy. The presence of God awakened
his ear to hear God’s voice.
We need this anointing in the church today.
But we also need to commit ourselves to the things of the Spirit. Saul
was content with a once-in-a-lifetime brush with God, and his conversion
went only skin deep. He took a passive role in his encounter with God: he
met the prophetic musicians and their anointing touched him. But he
never cultivated the presence of God in his own life.
David was not content just to be touched by the sons of the
prophets, but he also committed himself to their sort of ministry. He
developed an abiding relationship with God, and did everything he
could to stay in God’s presence. As a result, he stands out in Israel’s
history as the only king who ended as well as he began. Cultivating an
atmosphere of God’s presence will force us not to settle for a superficial
conversion like Saul’s.
Each of us has a bit of Saul in us. We don’t always want to take the
time to pour out our hearts to God in worship. Sometimes we're content to
go through the motions of a church service without really bothering to put

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our hearts into it. The sons of the prophets probably had their bad days
when their worship sounded disjointed and chaotic, just as we sometimes
have bad days in our churches as we seek to learn to make room for the
Holy Spirit. It’s awkward when people are first learning to move in the
Spirit; they can make embarrassing mistakes. And a spontaneous song
may be monotonous or amateurish. All these factors can erode our
passion for the movings of the Holy Spirit.
I’m sure David had to deal with these same issues. But David chose to
commit himself to the presence and Spirit of God, and his life is a model
of the growth we will experience if we too make it our top priority to
dwell in the presence of God. David was not a better man than Saul — he
may have even been worse. But David knew he needed the Spirit and
word of God to save him from himself.
In I Samuel 15, Samuel confronted Saul’s sin and Saul answered with
evasion and denial. When Samuel announced that God would tear the
kingdom away from Saul and give it to another, he replied, “I have sinned;
yet honor me now, please, before the elders of my people and before
Israel...” Saul was focused on appearances.
Years later, the prophet Nathan confronted David with his affair with
Bath-Sheba. No doubt David considered the possibility that God would
take the kingdom away from him, as He had done with Saul. But David’s
prayer is recorded in Psalm 51:

Behold, You desire truth in the inward parts,

And in the hidden part You will make me to know wisdom...
Create in me a clean heart, O God,
And renew a steadfast spirit within me.
Do not cast me away from Your presence,
And do not take Your Holy Spirit from me.
(Psalm 51:6, 10-11)

David was not concerned with appearances — he made public confes-

sion of his sins. Nor was he concerned with his role as king — he prayed
instead for a deeper conversion, and feared the loss not of his position but
of the Spirit of God. He understood that God is a God who looks into
hearts. David’s cry was for a deeper heart relationship with God.
As long as he lived, David gave himself to prophetic worship.
Something in the prophetic sound fulfills the words of Psalm 42:7, which
says “Deep calls unto deep at the noise of your waterfalls.” The prophetic
sound reaches into the deep places within us and releases the wells of the

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Holy Spirit — to convict the lost, to heal the sick, to deliver the captives, to
restore the brokenhearted, and to prophesy. It blesses others, and it
converts us.
So we need to do all we can to include the whole church in prophetic
song. Some can’t even sing, but at least they can learn to worship by
speaking, dancing, or lifting their hands. Some will never pour out the
trumpet sound of a prophecy for the whole congregation, but they can
release the sound of many waters by singing in the Spirit. The important
thing is that everyone can do something as an act of their own will to
welcome the presence of God. And the more actively they contribute to
the atmosphere of God’s presence, the more deeply they will be changed
as God speaks into their lives.
For Worshipers: Pray for God to release the atmosphere of heaven in
the church; don’t expect the musicians to do it by themselves. God will
feed those who hunger and thirst for Him. Your hunger for God can also
create an atmosphere where God can move.
For Musicians: Cultivate heaven’s atmosphere wherever you go and
whatever you do. Practice the presence of God. God is looking at your
heart, not your musical technique. Expect God to give times when you
will play simply so you can serve the whole congregation as they
worship; at other times, God will enlarge your ability so you can serve the
congregation by singing and playing for them.

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 Chapter 15

Releasing Other Ministries

G f G)

Then it happened, when the musician played, that the hand of

the Lord came upon him.
(II Kings 15:3)

hen asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, George Leigh

Mallory answered, “Because it is there.’ Some people hunger for
prophetic song for the same reason. Something in us sees the mountain
and knows we are destined to climb it.
But for many in the body of Christ, prophetic song seems like a side
issue. What does it have to do with taking the gospel to the lost? How
does it tie in with the task of discipling people? How does it connect with
counseling and inner-healing? Or with church administration? Prophetic
song may seem as irrelevant as climbing a mountain halfway around the
world, especially to pastors who have a flock to feed. So what is the point
of prophetic song?
Prophetic song can be a catalyst that will release or augment other
ministries. We have looked at the role of prophetic song in the lives of
Saul and David, but the story of Elisha illustrates how prophetic song can
trigger other operations of the Spirit.

“BRING ME A MUSICIAN”

II Kings 3 tells about a confederation of three kings who went to put

down a Moabite rebellion, and found themselves caught in the desert
without water for their troops and animals. The king of Judah asked for

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a prophet, and the king of Israel led them to Elisha. Elisha took one look
at the three kings and snapped, “As the Lord of hosts lives, before whom
I stand, surely were it not that I regard the presence of Jehoshophat king
of Judah, I would not look at you, nor see you. But now bring me a
musician...”
Was this musician one of the sons of the prophets? Scripture doesn’t
say, but we do find Elisha associated with the sons of the prophets in
several anecdotes listed in II Kings 2-8. It seems likely that Elisha’s musi-
cian was chosen from among the musical prophets serving in the tradition
laid down in Samuel’s day. If so, he was able to release his own prophetic
anointing which in turn jump-started Elisha’s. But if he was just an ordi-
nary musician, it suggests that the sons of the prophets had already estab-
lished a link between anointed music and the gift of prophecy. Whoever
he was, this musician somehow released a prophetic Ses t which
then unlocked the prophetic gift in Elisha.
Elisha was one of the greatest prophets in the Old Testament, but for
some reason he needed a boost before he could prophesy. Perhaps he
needed music to help quiet his heart; perhaps his motives were wrong and
he needed to take time for an inner cleansing; perhaps God simply told
him to call the musician. Whatever the reason, II Kings 3:15-16 says,
“And it happened, when the musician played, that the hand of the Lord
came upon him. And he said, “Thus says the Lord: ‘Make this valley full
of ditches...’” And the word of the Lord went on to tell the kings how
they could win a great victory. The kings obeyed, and the prophetic word
of God came to pass.

MUTUAL SUBMISSION

The story of Elisha, the musician, and the kings is a model of what
God wants to do in the church today. It is the story of a miraculous victory.
that could not have happened unless three very different ministries had
respected each other, submitted to each other, and worked together to hear
from God and to do what He said.
The kings submitted to Elisha in several ways. First, they came to him
and acknowledged that they needed his ministry. Then when he called for
a musician, they humored him. Finally, when he gave the word of the
Lord, they acted on it — and this meant putting their thirsty troops to work
digging ditches all day in the desert, because Elisha prophesied that God
would fill the ditches with water overnight.
Elisha submitted to the kings by choosing to pray about their agenda.

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He had not been praying about their battle plans and he didn’t seem to
approve of what they were doing. Nevertheless, he respected their anoint-
ing as kings and agreed to look to God for a word. But he knew he needed
help. He could not manufacture a prophecy, but he knew how to reach for
the word of the Lord. He called for a musician, trusting that as he played
and sang, God would speak.
The musician also submitted. Imagine what it was like to stand before
the prophet and three kings, knowing that it was his job to play until God
gave Elisha a word. It seemed crazy! But he served the prophet, played
his music, and released the prophetic anointing so Elisha could then over-
shadow him.
Without mutual respect, the miracle could not have occurred. If the
kings had not respected Elisha’s prophetic ministry, they would not have
sought him out, nor would they have waited patiently when he needed a
musician. If Elisha likewise had not respected the musician, he would not
have been able to prophesy to the kings. If the musician had not respected
Elisha, he might have refused to play, or he might have insisted on giving
the word himself.
Many churches today are missing God’s fullest victory because they
won’t give the musicians room to be led by the Holy Spirit. And many
prophetic musicians today have limited their effectiveness because they
have failed to appreciate and respect the anointed teachers, evangelists,
and pastors who do things that are neither musical nor prophetic. We
need each other. None of us can bring about God’s full purposes by
ourselves.
What sort of mutual respect and submission needs to happen as the
church makes room for prophetic musicians today? It will follow several
lines.
Prophetic musicians need to respect and submit to pastors or
whoever is in charge of the local ministry. By nature, prophetic people are
very focused on hearing from God for themselves. This trait is the strength
of prophetic ministry, but it can also be a weakness. Elisha could have told
the three kings, “Sorry; God isn’t speaking to me about your armies in the
desert. I have nothing to say to you.” Instead, he served. As Elisha’s exam-
ple demonstrates, prophetic people need to be willing to do their best to use
their gifts to help other ministries fulfill their God-given assignments.
Pastors need to make room for prophets and prophetic musicians.
The kings must have thought Elisha looked pretty flaky as he called for
the musician, and pastors will sometimes feel flaky as they make room for
the prophetic gifts in the church. As pastors “prove all things and hold fast

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that which is good” among the prophetic people God has set in their lives,
proven prophetic voices will emerge that will help the pastor find God’s
purposes and strategies.
Prophetic musicians need to submit to the congregation.
Prophetic musicians sometimes get lost in the Spirit and the rest of the
church can’t keep up with them. The songs may be too new or too
complex or too spontaneous. It’s important to remember that God values
the tone-deaf just as much as He values musicians. Prophetic musicians
need to be faithful to lead the whole church into worship, and not just to
perform for them.
The church needs to make room for prophetic musicians.
Sometimes they will play something the rest of the church can’t sing;
sometimes a spontaneous song will be rough around the edges and won’t
have the polished sound of a well-rehearsed piece of music. But the
prophetic atmosphere released by Elisha’s musicians will cause the
prophets to prophesy and the preacher to speak with creative power. The
whole church will benefit from the anointing the prophetic musicians
bring.
Prophetic musicians need to submit to one another, allowing God
Himself to orchestrate their music. More about this in the next chapter.

ANOINTED FOR AN APOSTOLIC MISSION

In Luke 4:17-18, Jesus defined His mission by reading the words of

Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon Me,

Because He has anointed me to preach the gospel to the poor.
He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted,
To preach deliverance to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty those who are oppressed,
To preach the acceptable year of the Lord.

This list encompasses the apostolic mission of the church. And just as
the musician and the prophet released the kings to move into God’s
victory, prophetic song will release and augment the other ministries of
the church. Here are a few examples.
1. Preaching the gospel. Anyone who has done the work of an evan-
gelist knows that evangelism is more than just preaching and conducting

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an altar call. Evangelistic work also includes awakening people’s interest

with the convicting power of the Holy Spirit.
Prophetic musicians are taking their instruments outside the church:
to open air meetings, to weddings, to restaurants, to coffee houses, and
even to bars. The new sound of prophetic song grips some people as noth-
ing else can. The song alone doesn’t always lead people to Christ, but it
often prepares the ground for the evangelist.
2. Healing the brokenhearted. Sometimes an individual or the
whole church is hurting and shaken, perhaps because of a death or some
other tragedy, and perhaps nobody wants to speak it aloud but everyone is
wondering, Where was God in all this? Anyone who has faced this kind
of grief knows that words often make matters worse, no matter how
doctrinally sound they may be. Prophetic song is particularly suited to
these matters because music can be a wordless language. As almost noth-
ing else can, a prophetic song can be the arms of God that embrace the
broken hearted.
I once went through a valley so dark it was unbearable to think I would
have to live through it. I was blessed to have several excellent counselors
who spoke into my life, and many friends faithfully prayed for me. But
there were also some profound moments of healing through prophetic
song, sometimes at church and sometimes in my own prayer closet.
Counselors have to be careful not to get into a co-dependent relation-
ship with those they help, and this is where worship and singing in the
Spirit come in. In prophetic worship, we can be surrounded with a crowd
and still can get alone with God. The healing that occurs when the
brokenhearted spend time one-on-one with God is vital to the overall
healing process because it fosters a healthy dependence on God and
helps wean us from what might become an unhealthy dependence on the
counselor.
3. Bringing deliverance to the captives. Healing and deliverance go
hand-in-hand with prophetic song. When King Saul was troubled by
demons, David’s ministry in prophetic song often brought relief, though
the song alone did not bring full deliverance.
In the past few months I have seen prophetic song pave the way for
deliverance ministry to take place easily and effectively. It may have been
that the anointing of God was present, and broke the yoke. Or it may have
been that we sang in the Spirit and got honest with God.
4. Bringing recovery of sight to the blind. This touches at least two
operations of the Holy Spirit: physical healing, and the opening of our
eyes in spiritual vision.

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Because prophetic song focuses on Jesus, it also brings healing. Just

as Moses’ generation was healed of the poisonous snakebites when they
looked at the brazen serpent, we can be physically healed as we behold
Jesus during times of worship.
Likewise, our singing in the Spirit will release a prophetic atmosphere
that will cause us to see visions. Sometimes these visions are the seeds of
a prophecy we are meant to give to the church. More often, they are not
for the whole church, but for us. These visions are very personal: they
iron out the wrinkles of our emotional upheavals, they impart wisdom for
our relationships, and they can even give practical guidance in our work.
Whether the visions are for us only or for us to share with others, the
important point is that the Holy Spirit opens our eyes to see things God
wants to show us.
5. Bringing liberty to the oppressed. Many churches are learning to
use prophetic song as a platform for intercession. One of the best-known
ministries doing this is the Harps And Bowls ministry Mike Bickle has
pioneered through the International Houses Of Prayer.
I saw an unusual form of intercession through prophetic song when
Kim Clement was in Detroit. It was Devil’s Night, the night before
Halloween. It had become a tradition in Detroit that people would burn
down abandoned houses. There were so many fires each year that tourists
would visit from out of town and check into high-rise hotels to watch the
city burn. Firemen would also come from out of town to help our fire
department cope with the many fires.
Kim’s bass player, Charlie, led us in a rap song: “J-E-S-U-S is in
effect — With Jesus by my side, we’ll keep the devil in check!” Again and
again we repeated the song throughout the evening meeting.
I turned on the TV the next day to watch the news — how bad was
Devil’s Night this year? They interviewed Mayor Archer, who said, ““We
kept the devil in check last night. The number of fires was normal. There
was no Devil’s Night.”
6. Preaching the acceptable year of the Lord, or as some transla-
tors put it, the year of God’s favor. For each of us, the year of God’s
favor is the year when we personalize the gospel: Jesus didn’t just go to
the cross for the whole world; He died for me! But after we come to
Christ and begin to get our lives cleaned up, there is a question each of
us has to face at some point: can I ever be anointed? Am I called just to
warm a pew, or does God want to use me? This is another area where we
need to discover the year of God’s favor and find our place in the body
of Christ.

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Singing in the Spirit helps because it teaches us to flow in the anointing.

It is one thing to know Jesus of Nazareth was anointed; it is quite another
to be able to say, “I am anointed.” Singing in the Spirit gives every
believer the chance to learn to overcome condemnation and negative feel-
ings to break through into the anointing. This is vital preparation for
anyone who will later be involved in any other ministry and taking the
gospel to the needy.
The Christian who learns to say “I am anointed” is the Christian who
learns to take the presence of God outside the sanctuary. The year of the
Lord is a season of abiding in God’s presence, both inside and outside the
meeting. It is a season when we can meet God in a conference, in our
prayer closet, at work, at school, at the ballpark, or at the mall.
This anointing is too great to be confined within church walls, and the
acceptable year of the Lord cannot be confined to meeting times. God
wants every Christian to be able to say, “I am anointed,” and to carry His
presence wherever we go.

THERE IS MORE...

There are many other ways prophetic song can release and augment
other ministries. Sometimes while singing in the Spirit, I have received
wisdom to help me counsel when I was a pastor. Lately I have had God
show me administrative things while I was worshiping — I don’t under-
stand how it works, but as I sing spontaneously to Him I suddenly know
how to handle business problems that have come up. Sometimes I get
stuck when I’m writing, but when I sing in the Spirit God breaks through
the logjam and shows me what to do. God wants to give us wisdom and
creativity in the arts and in business.
Why bother with prophetic song? Some of us want to get involved
just because it is there. Something in us comes alive in prophetic music.
But we need to outgrow the phase of seeing prophetic song just as some-
thing that fulfills us. It is that, but it is also something more. It is one of
God’s tools that brings deliverance and healing. God will use it to
command deserts to blossom like the rose, and broken down places to be
repaired and inhabited. We who are prophetic musicians need to use our
gifts to edify, exhort, and comfort the church.
And those of us in the church who are non-musical or who are new to
prophecy need to make room for prophetic musicians. Prophetic music
isn’t everything. It isn’t meant to replace the preaching of the gospel, the
prayer of faith for needy people, or the very practical ministries of helps
 Stan Smith

that keep the church doors open. But it is a tool that can help with nearly
every ministry. Most of all, it will facilitate a more intimate walk with
God for every Christian. And this is what church is all about.
For Worshipers: Cultivate the grace of mutual submission. Sow to
the Spirit by making room for prophetic musicians in your life and in
the church. Don’t expect their ministry to accomplish everything God
wants to do, but allow their ministry to strengthen what God has called
you to do.
For Musicians: Just as you have been sowing to the Spirit in personal
times of worship, sow your ministry of prophetic song into the church.
Embrace the principle of mutual submission. Aim not just for the anoint-
ing that will bring out your musical best, but for an anointing that will
bring out the best in the evangelists, pastors, counselors, and intercessors
around you. And when the prophet needs a musician, count it as an honor
to release the prophetic anointing — then get out of the way so the prophet
can bring the word.

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The Worship Team

SMR

God is not the author of confusion, but of peace.

(I Cor, 14:33)

Awe team can develop synergy — an anointing greater than just

the sum of its parts. Of course, it’s absurd to imagine that the
anointing could be measured; the anointing is the energizing touch of
God Himself in our lives, and He is a person beyond all systems of
measure. But half a dozen very ordinary Christians who learn to
worship together in prophetic song can release the presence of God in
an extraordinary way. When we think of unity, we often turn to
Psalm 133:

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is

For brethren to dwell together in unity!
It is like the precious oil upon the head,
Running down on the beard, the beard of Aaron,
Running down on the edge of the garments.
It is like the dew of Hermon,
Descending upon the mountains of Zion;
For there the Lord commanded the blessing —
Life forevermore.

God has reserved a special anointing for teams who learn to serve
Him together, especially in prophetic song.

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em

But there is also a special chaos reserved for prophetic musicians who
try to minister together but who haven’t taken the time to invest in team-
work. I got to participate in an evening of worship where we threw all the
worshippers on the stage at once, hoping for prophetic worship; we ended
up with an anointing much less than the sum of its parts.

A PAINFUL LESSON

The host of the meeting invited three people or groups to lead worship
one after another. He told me, “You have the anointing for prophetic
worship. At some point, could you get all the musicians on stage and lead
them in a prophetic song?” I said yes. I knew the host church’s worship
team was outstanding, and I had often seen them perched at the edge of
prophetic song. There was another lady who would lead part of the
worship that night; I’d never heard her play or sing, but I’d heard she was
anointed. I knew there would be a couple of musicians with me for my
part of the service, and we had worshiped together before. So we had a lot
of good people uniting to worship God — what could go wrong?
I led the second set, and everything we sang was entirely spontaneous
for about forty-five minutes. As we finished, the worship team who led
the third set came in. They had had to come late because of their work
schedules. They quietly set up their instruments as I finished leading our
last song. Their set lasted for close to an hour.
So each part of the worship service went well. Each person or team
had a slightly different flavor, but diversity is part of the joy of the body of
Christ. We flowed from song to song with almost no speech between
songs — nobody introduced anybody, nobody preached, nobody told “why
this song is special to me.” We had worshiped without intermission for
more than two hours, and then it was my turn to go back to the platform.
When the third team didn’t leave the platform, I assumed this was
when we would all worship together. Or maybe the worship team wanted
to lead one more song. I stood at my keyboard and waited.
The leader of the worship team looked at me, and his glance said, “Go
ahead.” So I began to play a chord loop that would be simple to follow on
guitar and bass. I nodded towards the worship team leader to invite him to
start playing along, but he didn’t understand my signal and, as I later
learned, couldn’t hear what I was playing because of the acoustics of the
monitors. There was a young man to my left however with an electric
guitar, and he could hear my keyboard and he understood my signals, so
he began playing lead guitar. This got the bass player started, but again

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the acoustics bedeviled us — I was craning to hear the bass over the guitar,
and it almost seemed the bass player and I weren’t playing the same song.
By now, the drums were playing.
I tried to pull it all together with singing. This excited the bass and
guitar players, who played louder. The drummer followed suit. By now
the music was becoming wild and chaotic. I decided to lower my volume,
hoping the others would do the same. Instead, another singer stepped into
the vacuum and belted out a song. I don’t know what it was; I couldn’t
hear the words on the monitor. We all got louder and louder, and several
of us sang. When we finally ran out of steam, the meeting was over.
I was mortified. What I’d hoped would be a time of flowing together
in the prophetic anointing had become the worst part of the meeting. The
sad thing about it was that the whole meeting had been an evening of the
sublime presence of God, reawakening first love — and we had ended it
with a romp.
I’m telling this story because the problems we encountered illustrate
what we needed to do to invest in teamwork: we should have adjusted the
monitors so we could hear each other, gotten to know each other, taken
time to develop signals so we could communicate without breaking the
flow of the Holy Spirit, taken time for teaching so we would all under-
stand what we were trying to do, and used the selah principle so God
could steer us once we got started. These principles are all needed when a
team flows together in prophetic song. Let’s take a closer look at each.

WE NEEDED TO HEAR EACH OTHER

The first and most obvious reason we needed to hear each other was
that the musicians have to play by ear because prophetic music is sponta-
neous. As someone starts playing, the rest of the team has to hear what is
played so they can accompany it.
But we also needed to hear each other so we could draw inspiration
from one another. As the Holy Spirit gives someone a fragment of a
song, it can spark the next fragment in someone else. God may move the
sax player to play a tune, then someone else starts singing the words.
The words in turn might inspire the drummer to play a rhythm, which
would inspire the bass player to play a new pattern — and then a new
sound on the keyboard — another melody — more words — it goes on and
on.
I have often seen one little line of melody break a meeting open and
release a powerful flow of the Holy Spirit. A prophetic music team will

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watch for the anointing on one another, to echo it, harmonize with it, and
respond to it.
This is the musical version of doing what Jesus said He did, in
John 5:19 —

Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of

Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He
does, the Son also does in like manner.

If I on the keyboard realize there is an unusual level of inspiration on

something another musician just played, I have perceived what the Father
is doing. I need to do what I see the Father doing and play whatever seems
most appropriate to showcase the sound He is anointing.
If the musicians can’t hear each other, many of these prophetic
musical fragments will be lost.

WE NEEDED TO GET TO KNOW EACH OTHER

When I have gotten to know other musicians, I have sometimes

noticed that a certain sound works like a key to unlock the river of life in
each one. Some people respond to major keys and others to minors; some
need a simple chord pattern and others open up to something more
complex; some prefer a quiet and meditative sound while others respond
to the sound of joy and dancing.
A group of musicians who don’t know each other well can still flow
well together if they listen to one another and practice mutual submission.
But if I see that the Spirit of God is resting heavily on a singer and I know
that a certain type of sound is likely to release her in song, I can play the
sound that she seems to respond to and watch her break open with the
river of life.
This is not meant to work as manipulation. Prophetic song doesn’t
work if we treat it like a performance. But this principle is another way
we can do what we see the Father doing — we play the sound that is close
to the heart of the person God is anointing. When the team knows, loves,
and honors one another, it is a joyous privilege to play the sound that will
bring out the best in each musician.

WE NEEDED A CHIEF MUSICIAN

David dedicated many of his Psalms to “the Chief Musician.” Many

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churches have identified someone as the worship leader, psalmist, or

minister of music, often on the basis of talent and musical ability.
In prophetic worship, the chief musician does not necessarily need
to be the best musician in the group. The chief musician should be the
one who is sensitive to the Holy Spirit and who comes to know the
people on the team well enough to be sensitive to their strengths and
weaknesses.
We often think of a music team as a lead musician who is backed up
by other instruments and vocalists. In prophetic worship, God Himself
is the lead musician and everyone on the music team is one of His
instruments. Whatever the skill level of each musician, God can play
each instrument equally skillfully. The chief musician needs to be the
one who can best discern which person God is playing moment by
moment.

WE NEEDED TEACHING

Prophetic song doesn’t happen by accident. Without training, many

musicians won’t know the difference between prophetic song and
jamming. They will fall into the rut of turning spontaneous worship into a
talent show. |
The shift from musical performance to prophetic song requires teach-
ing so the musicians will all work from the same assumptions. Most of us
have worked from the assumption that God anoints musical excellence,
and therefore we have known nothing else but to play and sing as skillfully
as we can. By contrast, prophetic song assumes that God will anoint the
testimony of Jesus; therefore, the main skill needed in prophetic song is
not musical ability, but the spiritual ability to perceive where Jesus is right
now, and what He is doing.
It doesn’t take much teaching to get a group of musicians to flow
together in prophetic song. If the musicians have any maturity at all in
Christ, they already know many of the principles that release the song of
the Lord: getting our eyes off ourselves and seeing Jesus, submitting to
one another, first-love.
When teaching becomes too analytical, it paralyzes people. The
teaching that releases prophetic song is like the voice of a coach preparing
his team for a game. A good coach might remind the team of a few plays
but then will inspire them — “You can do it!” True, we dare not presume
that every time we begin to sing, we are pouring out a profound prophetic
song. But we do have the freedom in the new covenant to sing a new song

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TTT SS aSISInESSSEESEESSESEEESSE

to the Lord, and because Christ lives in us we can expect Him to sing
through us.
WE NEEDED THE SELAH

The little word selah pops up in many of the Psalms and in the book
of Habakkuk, seventy seven times in all. Most commentators believe it
represents a musical pause, perhaps to allow the congregation a moment
to reflect on the meaning of the words they are singing, or to mark the
beginning of a new stanza.
From what I’ve seen of prophetic music teams, I’ve come to believe
the selah is a moment when the musicians pause to wait on God for a
fresh surge of inspiration. Fresh inspiration may come with words or with
melody, but it comes when we stop doing our own thing and take time to
look for it.
Worship leaders develop habits, and God often uses them. Some of
us like to start a song quietly and slowly build momentum, gaining speed
and volume as we go. Some like to end each song by singing it quietly
and reflectively. These can be good patterns, but they are often much
more monotonous to the congregation than to the musicians. God is
creating a hunger in the church for a higher level of divine orchestration,
and some of these patterns are starting to seem more like gimmicks than
worship.
Human nature being what it is, we could make the selah into another
gimmick. Merely inserting pauses into our music will not guarantee a
higher level of anointing. Unless the musicians themselves develop a
prophetic lifestyle, the selah will be only an irritating piece of ritual. But
if the musicians have an ear to hear, a selah will be a highly creative inter-
lude that opens the door for the Holy Spirit to take the church into a
higher level of inspiration.
Probably the first time I noticed the selah-principle was when I was a
student in Bible school. I began to notice that singing in the Spirit some-
times seemed to come in waves. As we began to sing, the Spirit of God
would anoint us slightly. Then the singing would die down and would
almost end, only to flare up again with new strength and purity. I noticed
that the second wave of singing in the Spirit was often far more anointed
than the first.
The main principle of the selah is very simple: that the momentum of
fleshly excitement or exuberance cannot carry into high places in the
Spirit. But if we will let our own emotions subside, the Holy Spirit will
graciously take us higher.

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As we worship, we need to pause and listen to God just as much as

we need to sing and shout to Him. As we learn to listen, God will surprise
us and delight us with a richer anointing. Sometimes He will steer us in a
new direction: prayer, prophecy, an altar call, an exhortation. Spirit-led
worship never grows old and stale; it is always fresh.

INVESTING IN TEAMWORK

When I failed to invest in teamwork, our night of prophetic song fell

far short of what God could have made it. Because we couldn’t hear each
other, we couldn’t flow with the inspiration God gave first to one and then
to another. Because we didn’t know each other very well, we didn’t know
how to bring out the best in each other. I did not give clear direction to the
group — I did not want to interrupt the flow of the meeting by taking a few
minutes to teach about prophetic song. As a result, I broke the flow of the
Spirit even more. And because most of us didn’t know about the selah, the
only thing we knew to do was to play louder and louder.
On the bright side, the exercise took us out of our comfort zones and
stretched us a little. We made a joyful noise to the Lord, which is certainly
scriptural.
But we never quite managed to make room for the Holy Spirit to be
the Chief Musician among us. As a result, there were several vocalists
who were frustrated because God had given a prophetic song — and there
was no opportunity to sing it. The music was too loud.
There is no way to go back and lead the meeting all over again. All we
can do is learn from the experience. And in the end, this is how we learn.
For Worshipers: As you watch for God to play someone in the
church, do what you see the Father doing and speak what you hear Father
speaking. When it is appropriate for you to worship, echo or respond to
what God has sounded through another. The SELAH principle means that
when the music dies down, it may not be the end of what God wants to
say and do. Keep your ears open for the voice of the Spirit when a lull
takes place in a time of worship.
For Musicians: Pay close attention to particularly anointed musical
phrases. As you hear an extraordinary anointing on something someone
else sings or plays, echo that phrase in your own playing.
In personal devotions, pay attention to the rhythm of the waves of
spontaneous song. When things die down, look to God expectantly and
see if He will send another wave of inspiration. Sometimes it will come
with an entirely new sound.

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”
 Chapter 17

Centered On Jesus
G Wf, G

The kingdom of heaven is like a merchant seeking beautiful

pearls, who, when he had found one pearl of great price, went
and sold all that he had and bought it.
(Matthew 13:45-46)

(5“ has given us access to the greatest commodity in the world: His
presence and His word.
Years ago I attended a pastors’ breakfast in Detroit’s Downriver area.
My church was still meeting in a storefront, and mine wasn’t the smallest
church represented at the breakfast. Most of the pastors were struggling
financially; our whole area was struggling because the steel and auto
industries were going through a shaking and many of our people were out
of work.
One of the pastors had heard about the layout of an internationally
known evangelist’s office. “He has a grand piano that cost $30,000, so he
can drop whatever he’s doing and take a few minutes to worship whenever
he wants,” he told us.
“Thirty thousand dollars!” someone exclaimed. “I could find a lot of
better things to do with thirty thousand dollars than to buy a piano!” And
for the next few minutes, we discussed the extravagance of big ministries,
and what we could do with thirty thousand dollars.
I have to admit, I agreed with the tenor of the conversation. I was
struggling to plant a church, and received my meager weekly paycheck
only two or three times a month. But suddenly God dropped a thought in
my heart:

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Thirty thousand dollars isn’t much to spend for a piano. A good piano
helps him get in the Spirit when he worships. And when he gets in the
Spirit, he hears things from Me that are worth far more than thirty thou-
sand dollars. One word from Me can pay for ten pianos. And I can give
him a word that moves him to hold a crusade that wins thousands to
Christ. A thirty thousand dollar piano is one of the best investments this
man could make.
We don’t all need a thirty thousand dollar piano to bring out the best
in us, but I’ve looked at money a little differently ever since that day. I
didn’t have thirty thousand dollars to spend on a piano then, and I don’t
now. But the conviction has stayed with me: the best investment we can
make is to do everything we can to make room for the presence of God,
and to build our lives on the words He speaks.
Perhaps this is why God called David “a man after my own heart,” for
David consistently paid the price to treasure God’s presence and His
voice. Three things stand out about David. First, he did something King
Saul never did: he made it top priority to bring the Ark of the Covenant to
Jerusalem, the capital of Israel. Second, he was always careful to base his
actions on the word God was speaking. And third, he made provision for
the presence and the prophetic word of God to be maintained in future
generations in Israel.

DAVID LOVED THE PRESENCE OF GOD

The Charismatic movement has been characterized by lavish praise

and worship, and naturally we have turned to the life of David in our
search for how we can worship God in Spirit and truth. One story about
David has done much to define the Charismatic churches: the story of
David’s bringing the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.
From the days of Moses to Samuel, the tabernacle of Moses was the
center of Israel’s worship. Exodus 25-40 says God dwelt in the Holy of
Holies, the innermost chamber in the tabernacle, where He sat on the
mercy seat which was part of the Ark of the Covenant. Nobody was
allowed to see the Ark except the high priest, who entered the Holy of
Holies once a year on the Day of Atonement. The high priest went
through much preparation, for he might drop dead in God’s presence if he
entered the Holy of Holies unprepared. The presence of God therefore
was effectively hidden away from the rank and file of the Israelites. As
long as the Ark was in the tabernacle, all Israel knew God was present
among them. But His presence was unseen and out of reach.

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This continued for several centuries, until the days when Eli was the
priest. Samuel was just awakening to his prophetic calling when Israel got
into a war with the Philistines. Israel lost the first battle, so the elders of
Israel decided they would bring the Ark into the next battle, reasoning that
this would give them God’s presence and would guarantee their victory.
But God refused to be manipulated. Israel lost the battle and the
Philistines captured the Ark.
Immediately, the presence of God became a torment to the Philistines.
They sent the Ark back to Israel with a trespass offering. The Israelites
kept the Ark first on a large stone at Beth Shemesh, then later in Kirjath
Jearim. There it stayed for twenty years.
Then David became king, and he decided to bring the Ark to
Jerusalem. His heart was right, but his plan was wrong. He had it
placed in an oxcart, and as they began the pilgrimage to Jerusalem,
II Samuel 6:5 says —

Then David and all the house of Israel played music before the
Lord on all kinds of instruments made offir wood, on harps, on
stringed ,instruments, on tambourines, on sistrums, and on
cymbals.

Then the oxen stumbled and Uzzah put out his hand to steady the Ark,
and immediately he was struck dead. David was angry and afraid, and
stopped the procession and parked the Ark. In the next few months, David
learned that the law of Moses required that the Ark be carried on the
shoulders of the priests. With a new understanding of God’s order, David
once again set about to bring the Ark to Jerusalem. Here is how II Samuel
6:12-14 describes the procession:

David went and brought up the ark of God from the house of
Obed-Edom to the city of David with gladness. And so it was,
when those bearing the ark of the Lord had gone six paces,
that he sacrificed oxen and fatted sheep. Then David danced
before the Lord with all his might...”

When the Ark eventually arrived in Jerusalem, they “set it in its place
in the midst of the tabernacle that David had erected for it.” (II Samuel
6:17) David offered burnt offerings and peace offerings, and served a
meal to the whole multitude of Israelites who had come to worship with
him. The tabernacle of David was nothing more than a tent, and there the

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Ark remained until the days of Solomon. For David had set his heart on
building a Temple so the presence of God could remain in Jerusalem
always.

DAVID LOVED THE VOICE OF GOD

Like many of the kings of Israel, David respected the prophets and
looked to them for God’s guidance. David knew he was anointed to lead
Israel into battle, and yet his story reads like a child’s game of mother-
may-I. Whenever David faced a battle, he consulted either a prophet or a
priest with the Urim and Thummim and asked, “Shall I fight this battle?”
Again and again they answered, “Fight the battle; God will go with you
and give victory.” Once in a while they also gave battle plans. David
would not let the people go into battle without a word from God.
But David had an unusual relationship with the prophets, because he
was one. Whatever his relationship with Samuel and with the sons of the
prophets, he embraced their values and often poured out his heart in
prophetic song. He gave us most of the Psalms, and the Spirit of prophecy
in David’s life poured out the testimony of Jesus. The early church often
quoted the Psalms as they preached the gospel.
The scripture names two times when David appointed worshipers,
usually chosen from among the Levites. Perhaps some of these Levites
were taken from among the sons of the prophets. It began with those who
brought the ark to Jerusalem:

Then David spoke to the leaders of the Levites to appoint their

brethren to be the singers accompanied by instruments of
music, stringed instruments, harps, and cymbals, by raising
the voice with resounding joy. (I Chronicles 15:16)

Then a few chapters later, I Chronicles 25 names the musicians who

were appointed to maintain the ministry of worship in Solomon’s temple,
and verses 1-7 show that David intended the worship not to become a
dead ritual but to maintain the prophetic flavor he had seen among the
sons of the prophets:

Moreover David and the captains of the army separated for the
service some of the sons of Asaph, of Heman, and of Jeduthun,
who should prophesy with harps, stringed instruments, and
cymbals...The sons of Asaph were under the direction of

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Asaph, who prophesied according to the order of the

king...Jeduthun, who prophesied with a harp to give thanks
and praise to the Lord...All these were the sons of Heman the
king’s seer in the words of God...So the number of them, with
their brethren who were instructed in the songs of the Lord, all
who were skillful, was two hundred and eighty eight.

These prophetic musicians wrote most of the songs in “Book Three”

of the Psalms, Psalms 73-89.

DAVID PAID A PRICE FOR THE ANOINTING

God’s anointing is not cheap. It’s free — no amount of money can buy
it. But it’s also costly — it will cost you everything you have.
David continually poured out all he had for God’s anointing.
When he was anointed to become king of Israel, Saul was still on the
throne. Saul became jealous of David’s anointing and tried to kill him.
David ran for his life, but he refused to lift his hand against Saul
because Saul was God’s anointed. Even though Saul blatantly misused
the anointing of God and lived in an increasingly backslidden state,
David never, stopped respecting the anointing in Saul’s life. This
wasn’t just a matter of being loyal; David literally risked his life to
honor the anointing on Saul.
Sometimes God does not entrust a higher anointing to us until we
learn to respect His anointing on others.
It didn’t stop there. We have already seen that David set up an order of
prophetic worshipers in Israel. But David didn’t just pay for someone else
to do it; he did it himself. In times of personal pressure, David often
prayed for more intimacy with God when it would seem he should have
been asking for personal safety and deliverance. Psalm 27 is an example;
if you read the whole Psalm, you’ll see that he is praying in a context
when he was surrounded with enemies and was tempted to lose heart. And
yet in all this pressure he prayed,

One thing have I desired of the Lord,

That will I seek:
That I may dwell in the house of the Lord
All the days of my life,
To behold the beauty of the Lord,
And to inquire in His temple.

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David was a man who sold all he had to buy the pearl of great price.
Sometimes we too need to seek not deliverance from our pressures, but
more of God.
David refused to treat God’s anointing as a cheap commodity. Toward
the end of his life, David saw a vision of an angel standing with a sword
drawn over Jerusalem because God had brought judgment. God told him to
buy the threshing floor of Ornan the Jebusite, and to offer a sacrifice there.
David might have seized the threshing-floor, for he had led the
campaign when Israel drove the Jebusites out of Jerusalem and captured
the city. When David came to buy the threshing-floor, Ornan quickly
realized he was in a vulnerable position and offered to give it to David,
along with oxen for burnt sacrifice and wood for the fire. But I Samuel
24:24 says David replied, “No, but I will surely buy it from you for a
price; nor will I offer burnt offerings to the Lord my God with that which
costs me nothing.”
We can’t buy the anointing with money, but what we do with our
money demonstrates the value we place on the presence and voice of God.
David demonstrated that worship and prayer was his top priority.
But now we are in the same position David was in. It is not Ornan the
Jebusite who offers to pay the price for our worship; it is Jesus Himself
who has poured out His life so we can freely receive the Holy Spirit. We
have nothing to offer the Lord but the free gift He has given us. Shall we
give Him an offering that costs us nothing?

THE PRICE FOR INTIMACY WITH GOD

Jesus has paid the whole price, and in a legal and theological sense,
there is nothing we can add to His finished work. But in the sense of rela-
tionship, the only way we can receive His free gift is to offer Him the
same. He has given us all of Himself, and we must give ourselves wholly
to Him. This is the lifestyle David modeled, and his prophetic songs were
the overflow of his devotion. The quality of our prophetic songs likewise
will depend on the intimacy with God we cultivate.
Here are a few ways we can give ourselves wholly to Him:

¢ Sing in the Spirit a lot. We can’t always guarantee that the

next song we sing to God will be prophetic, but we can choose
to serve Him with songs that are heartfelt and spontaneous. He
has given us the wells of living water and promised to pour
His river through us. Whether we reach the prophetic heights

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or not, we need to worship Him with the sound of living

waters.
¢ Love God Himself more than we love the music we play
and sing for Him. Spontaneous song sometimes is ragged and
unpolished. A musician will sometimes experience an inner
tug-of-war when singing spontaneously because the artistic
drive for perfection will strain against the devotional drive to
be transparent before God. The anointing for prophetic song
grows with the hundreds or thousands of small decisions to
love God Himself more than our songs about Him.
¢ Build our prayers and worship on the words of scripture.
The scripture is God’s prophetic word to us. If we want to
grow in the prophetic anointing, we must not neglect the
prophetic word He has already given us. Use parallelism to
apply the words of scripture to your own life.
¢ Center on Jesus. There is a need for strategic words from God
that help us find victory in our day-to-day struggles, but David
centered more on the timeless truths about God Himself. These
can be more strategic than we realize. The Spirit of prophecy is
the testimony of Jesus. The point of prophetic ministry is to
reveal Jesus more clearly than ever before.
¢ Cultivate mutual submission when we serve His people
with prophetic song. Prophetic song is not a talent show. We
are not the musicians who sing and play the instruments. God
is the musician who plays, and we are His instruments; God is
the singer, and we are His voice.
¢ Remember that prophetic song is a means of rolling out a
red carpet to welcome and to honor the presence of God.
The perfection of the music is secondary to the release of His
presence. Our welcoming God’s presence can serve as a Cata-
lyst that will bring out the best in other ministries.

When God created the world, He sang. When He saves His people, he
rejoices over them with singing. Prophetic song celebrated the exodus,
Deborah and Barak’s victory, a reshuffling among the Levites in Samuel’s
day, the establishment of the kingdom of Israel, the inauguration of the
sons of the prophets, and the birth of Christ. Paul sang in the Spirit in the
apostolic age, and the early church was filled with the Spirit and sang
spiritual songs. John heard the heavenly choirs singing a new song that no
man can learn.
 Stan Smith

Today, prophetic song is springing up worldwide. There is a general

restlessness in many of the churches, and we are sensing that God is doing
something new among us. Some of us have caught some glimpses of what
that new thing may be, but all of us know He is doing more than we can
understand. As we serve God with prophetic worship, prayer, and song,
we are a Sign of a great redemptive work God is doing. We don’t have to
understand it any more than John the Baptist understood his own calling.
For the words he used to describe himself are the words that describe
what we are doing when we sing prophetic song:

I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness:

Make straight the way of the Lord.

We must decrease; He must increase.

For Worshipers: Let God Himself be your aim. Soak yourself in His
presence. Cultivate an awareness of His presence wherever you go, and
whenever you do something, do it as unto Him.
For Musicians: Get in the habit of surrendering your talents and abil-
ities to God. Become so satisfied with Him that you don’t care whether
He uses you or another musician. Pray often that He will take you in hand
as David took up the harp, holding you close to His heart — whether He
puts his hands to the strings or not. Love the closeness to Him more than
the song He plays through you.

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 Chapter 18

Prophetic Song: The Gateway To

Glory
GMeo

The glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see
it together; for the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
(Isaiah 40:5)

QO: the years, God has touched my life with His glory from time to
time. When I was younger, I saw this as evidence of a high calling.
But I’ve learned that my experience is fairly commonplace — many in the
body of Christ today have had these same experiences. I’ve come to
believe that this reflects not the greatness of those God has touched, but
the greatness of God’s purposes in the day we live in.
I want to end this book by writing about three times when I have met
the glory of God, because these three incidents tell a story. The first
happened when I was in my early twenties, fresh out of Bible school. The
second happened less than two years ago, when I produced a prophetic song
CD. And the third happened a few months ago, in Israel. I believe these
three incidents outline where God is taking the church in prophetic song.

Two Rivers And One Cloud

I was twenty-two years old, serving in a ministerial internship at

Pinecrest Retreats in Setauket, Long Island. I was in a prayer meeting I
didn’t want to attend — it was a special meeting, called for a purpose I
suspected God couldn’t bless — and I was there not because I agreed with

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the program, but because God convicted me to go. In my heart, I began to

look for Jesus. Suddenly, I saw a vision:
I saw the Lord, seated upon His throne. Out from the throne flowed
two rivers, a river of water and a river of fire. Instinctively, I understood
that the waters represent the things we would call God’s refreshing, renew-
ing, and blessing. The fire was everything we would call His judgment.
They both moved forward from the throne of God, angled so they
would flow apart for a short distance before they turned and crossed each
other. Where they crossed, the water and fire mingled violently, as though
each were trying to extinguish the other. A great swirling cloud arose, and
it reminded me of the steamy smoke I’ve seen when throwing buckets of
water on a campfire. The cloud stood at the place where the rivers crossed
each other; the two rivers then continued to flow past that point. The rela-
tionship between these two rivers, and the fiery cloud they produced,
immediately stamped a conviction upon my life:

To the same degree you are willing to let God’s fire burn in your life,
you will see the release of God’s blessing.

I Thessalonians 5:21 commands us to “Prove all things; hold fast to

what is good.” So I immediately asked God for scripture. I had heard a lot
of preaching about the river of living water in Ezekiel and Revelation, but
I'd never heard anything about a river of fire.
But next day, I found the river of fire in Daniel 7:9-10 —

His throne was a fiery flame, its wheels a burning fire; a fiery
stream issued and came forth from before Him.

And as the context of Daniel 7 tells us, this river of fire is the power of
God’s kingdom subduing the nations of this world.
Before I was ready to get involved in subduing nations, I needed the
fire of God to subdue me. So over the years, I’ve come back to God again
and again, asking for the fire of the Holy Spirit to purge my heart.
And as I’ve read the scripture in the years since that vision, I’ve begun
to understand what I saw. The cloud that led Moses’ generation looked
like a cloud by day and a fire by night, because the cloud was made of
both elements. This was the smoke that filled the house when Isaiah saw
the Lord. And Ezekiel described the violence of the cloud when he
described it as a “fire engulfing itself.” This same fiery cloud produced
the sound of a mighty rushing wind on the day of Pentecost.

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And if there is any place in scripture where the judgment and blessing
of God come together, it is at the cross. So it is little wonder that Joel used
these words that Peter would quote when God’s glory met the hundred
and twenty disciples in the upper room:

I will show wonders in heaven above

And signs in the earth beneath:
Blood and fire and vapor of smoke.
(Acts 2:19)

Both the water and the fire are the works of the Holy Spirit, to accom-
plish in us what Jesus paid for when He shed His blood at the cross. The
blood of Jesus and the glory of God are inextricably linked.

Making The CD

While I was writing this book, my wife JoAnn kept telling me, “I
think God is saying He wants you to make a CD that will illustrate what
you’re writing about.”
I told her it was impossible and presumptuous: you can’t just get a
group of musicians together and announce, “Now we will all prophesy in
song.” Nevertheless, I kept it in prayer — nothing is impossible with God.
What if God did want me to make a CD of prophetic song? What kind of
songs should be on it? Though I wasn’t sure it would come together, I
held it before God in prayer, and I waited.
Then as I wrote the book, I began to see how to record the CD. I saw
the clear distinction between the sound of many waters, which is the
church’s anointed song as we reach towards God, and the sound of the
trumpet, which is the gift of prophecy. We can release the sound of many
waters whenever we want, but only God can sound the trumpet of His
prophetic song.
This distinction freed me from the fear of presumption. I can choose
to sing and play something spontaneous; God still has the freedom to
decide whether to make it prophetic.
But I still had another problem: how to produce the recording. I didn’t
have a music team to work with, and I know nothing about recording. I
couldn’t even imagine how to begin such a project. I continued to pray
and wait.
Then I received a call from Pastor Clint Glenny, of Word of Grace
Church in Las Vegas. Would I come to his church to lead three nights of

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worship? His worship team would help me, and would produce the CD —
they had the equipment, the know-how, and the anointing to do it. But I
was still uncertain. I didn’t want to lead the team at Word Of Grace
through a disappointing experience. So I asked Clint, “What if God
doesn’t choose to make it prophetic?”
Clint laughed. “The worst that can happen is that we spend three
nights worshiping God.”
When JoAnn and I arrived in Las Vegas, the sunset caused a cloud to
look almost exactly like the cloud I had seen in the vision more than
twenty years earlier. The cloud stood tall, like a golden pillar, and seemed
to be made of fire. I pointed it out to JoAnn and said, “That’s what the
glory of God looks like.”
So our three nights of worship in Las Vegas turned out to be three
nights of glory. God stretched us all, taking us to new places musically
and prophetically. God gave repentance and deliverance to some of us,
and a renewed sense of vision and calling. The Spirit of revelation was so
heavily upon us that most of the singers had more songs to sing than time
would permit. We were like fishermen who came home with a good catch,
and with stories about the ones that got away.
I had prepared a list of things I’ve written about in this book: the
rhythmless and chordless sound of singing in the Spirit, the selah,
antiphonal singing, and so on. I hoped God would give us these sounds,
but I felt strongly that I should allow God to take the meetings wherever
He wanted them to go. As it worked out, God gave several examples of
each sound. We recorded six CDs, which I then boiled down to one.
But the glory of God touched us in those three nights, and has
touched us in other meetings and conferences since then. I believe we are
in a season of major progress in God’s redemptive purposes, and God is
celebrating His works with prophetic song. God is visiting the church
with His glory — and prophetic song is the gateway.

Prayer For Israel

If prophetic song is the gateway for glory, it will release both compo-
nents of the glory of God in the church — the fire and the water. The fire of
God is sent to make history, whether bringing deliverance to an individual
or subduing whole nations, as Daniel saw in his vision. The water of life
brings encouragement and refreshing to those of us planted as trees of
life, and as John said in Revelation 22:3, “The leaves of the tree were for
the healing of the nations.”

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ier

So in November, 2002, I received an e-mail from Clint, asking if I

would participate in a fifty hour prayer meeting at Mount Carmel
Assembly in Israel. The situation in Israel was grim. They expected
America to go to war against Iraq, and they expected Iraq to attack Israel
with chemical, biological, or even nuclear weapons. The Israeli govern-
ment had issued gas masks to all its citizens. Clint was calling for forty
musicians and intercessors to pray for God’s intervention for Israel and
for the Islamic nations. God is not willing that any should perish; He
wants all to find life in Christ.
About thirty of us managed to go in early January, 2003. Mount
Carmel Assembly is located on the site where the fire fell when Elijah
confronted the prophets of Baal. The congregation of four hundred is a
third Jewish, a third Arab, and a third Gentile — and they are a testimony
of God’s power to make us one in Christ. Our fifty-hour prayer meeting
began with a Shabbat service as Pastor David Davis preached, “Prepare
for war.” And then our five teams of musicians and intercessors began to
pray, with each team leading five two-hour shifts until the prayer meeting
was finished.
Our prayer meeting ended, and we all went home. I sometimes
wondered, Did my going to Israel make any difference? Or was it just a
nice idea, a romantic whim that cost time and money I could have spent
better elsewhere?
Then in March I saw the news, that America had begun its “shock and
awe” campaign in Iraq. Day-by-day, I watched to see if Iraq had fired
missiles into Israel. When America took Baghdad, I began to realize there
might never be any missiles. Then one day we received an e-mail from a
friend in Israel, telling us that the government had said the need for gas
masks had passed.
I’m sure our team was one of many who went to Israel to make inter-
cession — I know firsthand of two others, and I’m sure there were many
more. Add to this the prayers of the churches in Israel, as well as the
prayers of Christians all over the world.
In my thirty five years as a Christian, I have explored the theme of
how we can affect history as we pray for the nations. Scripture plainly
teaches that God answers prayer. I am sure that Iraq’s failure to send
missiles into Israel was an answer to prayer.
But if God answered our prayers, it was because He sang and prayed
through us. We were like the three friends He invited into the garden of
Gethsemane, to watch with Him: we worshiped and prayed, but He did
the hard part. We were a few people among many who got to roll out the

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red carpet for the King of glory, welcoming His presence in the history of
the middle-east. Psalm 24:7-8 describes it —

Lift up your heads, O you gates!

And be lifted up, you everlasting doors!
And the King of glory shall come in.
Who is this King of glory?
The Lord strong and mighty,
The Lord mighty in battle.

As we step into prophetic song, we open the gates for the King of
glory to come in. On an international level, prophetic song is opening the
gates for God’s intervention in history. In our cities and regions, God is
using prophetic singers to welcome His manifest presence into the
church. And as He comes into our personal lives, He touches the well-
springs of our hearts and deepens the cleansing and healing work of our
conversion. As Isaiah 60:1-2 says,

Arise, shine;
For your light has come!
And the glory of the Lord is risen upon you.
For behold, the darkness shall cover the earth,
And deep darkness the people;
But the Lord will arise over you,
And His glory will be seen upon you.

As never before, the King of glory is coming in.

158
 More About Prophetic Song
HR

Visit Stan Smith’s website at www.gospelsmith.com —

¢ To order the CD that illustrates what this book has taught,

e For more articles about prophetic song,
¢ To order teaching tapes about prophetic song,
¢ Or to book Stan for conferences, workshops, or ministry in
your church.

Stan’s website also tells about other ministry projects unrelated to

prophetic song.
Also visit his wife JoAnn’s website at www.thealphabuddies.com to
see her imaginitive and colorful books for children.

159
Printed in the United States
27253LVS00002B/88-93
: i 994 671241
4
 God is releasing a new sound in the church worldwide—prophetic .
song. Prophetic song is spontaneous, given fresh by the Holy Spunt. It
i8 powerful, releasing an atmosphere of God's presence in the church. It
is intimate, drawing us into face-to-face and heart-to-heart encounters ;
with God. 4
This book is broken into four main parts. Part One centers on the
sound of many waters, which is released when believers in the church
mingle their voices in free worship. Part Two focuses on David and his
~ legacy of prophetic song lyrics in the book of Psalms. Part Three deals
with the gift of prophecy in song. And Part Four tells how to give
prophetic song its place in the church.
Prophetic Song: Gateway to Glory will help pastors, prophets, worshipers,
and intercessors fulfill their roles in the new sound God is releasing
worldwide in His church.

STAN SMITH is uniquely qualified to write about prophetic song. After receiving the =
baptism in the Holy Spirit in 1969, Stan began singing spontaneous songs of worship as he ?
played guitar. He attended Pinecrest Bible Training Center in tunstate New York, where he a8
was gripped with a longing for intimacy with God. F ed four years as
teacher in a Bible school and seventeen years as a p led worship.
As a pastor, Stan was able to watch the long-ter ministry in his
congregation; therefore, he can write about prophet
In 1999, Stan resigned as pastor so he could tra ng in churches,
conferences, and workshops. In 2002, Stan produce im songs that were
sung spontaneously. (encom
Stan and his wife JoAnn live in California.

ISBN 1-S94b71-

9 "781594"671241