There’s a difference when it comes to the Office of Prophet and the gift or anointing of Prophecy. Sharon Luzzi & Jana Rawling discuss the traits, attributes and character of the Prophet. ♥
There’s a difference when it comes to the Office of Prophet and the gift or anointing of Prophecy. Sharon Luzzi & Jana Rawling discuss the traits, attributes and character of the Prophet. ♥
Connection means we must be seen which means being courageous and willing to be imperfect and to be vulnerable.
We need a strong sense of love and belonging, which gives us a strong belief that we are worthy.
We need a strong foundation of love. Gaining a deep sense of worthiness will change our lives. To get there we need to know we are enough.
We must treat ourselves kindly. Letting go of who we thought we should be and allow God to intercept us and love us completely. We need to be willing to let go. ♥
Hardwired for Life’s community meeting group, Kingdom Foundations discusses the current acceleration of our Spiritual walks. We are always learning and growing in Christ Jesus and it feels like we are moving ahead rapidly. ♥
Co-creating with God is an amazing experience, though we create with Him all the time and don’t realize it. What does it look like to co-create today?
Except from book: Hardwired for Purpose: Blazing Trails to Follow God’s Lead from a Creative’s Perspective by Jana Rawling
My purpose was illusive. I was busy doing things that fulfilled a part of me, but I knew something was missing. I was searching for the missing pieces to the puzzle of my life, because I was coming closer to God and felt there had to be more. I had lived a turbulent past and as I watched the people at my church get involved in ministry I got hungrier. At this point in time I had no clue what having a personal relationship with Jesus was.
I said the sinner’s prayer many years before, but I didn’t understand that God, Jesus, and Holy Spirit wanted close relationship with me. I couldn’t wrap my head around actually connecting with Them on an intimate level. At the time, I didn’t think They would want to be close with me. I was a mess and had lived messy, so why would the God of everything care that much about me? I was sure He was too busy with more deserving people and bigger issues of the world.
I wanted to know my purpose. I was tired with my career and I wasn’t sure of what to do next. I hoped I would wake-up one day and have it all figured out. I thought if I just knew, I could jump right in and things would go better for my life from that point forward. I wanted to change my circumstances and felt deep down it was possible. I needed to get serious with God.
“For God loved the world in this way: He gave His One and Only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him will not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His Son into the world that He might condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through Him. Anyone who believes in Him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the One and Only Son of God.” — John 3:16–18
I learned so much from that hike , and I learned more over the next several years as I replayed the encounter with Holy Spirit and my imagination. I needed those years to receive the bigger message. I’m still learning from that day. I had to heal and mature as a child of God before completing this book, and I will probably add to it one day in the future. ♥
Except from book: Hardwired for Change: Healing Encounter Workbook: Creating Active & Eternal Change by Jana Rawling
When it comes to imagination, a lot of people have a seemingly impenetrable wall up. Religion or the church has taken verses in the Bible, especially the Old Testament, and used them for the brick and mortar.
Here’s an example: [God speaking] “Son of man, prophesy against the prophets of Israel who are prophesying. Say to those who prophesy out of their own imagination: Hear the word of the Lord!” — Ezekiel 13:2.
Taking this verse at face value, we must hear the word of the Lord to prophesy from. Scripture says the Word is Jesus, the sword of the Spirit and the foundation for our faith. We also see that some of the prophets were not speaking from a scriptural perspective and Ezekiel was admonishing them.
Imagination is just another tool for use to use to create from. When prophesying it’s critical to only speak what the Word or the Lord says, but as perfectly imperfect humans today we mix ourselves and our imaginations into our prophecies.
Look at this: [Apostle Paul speaking] “For we know in part, and we prophesy in part.” — 1 Corinthians 13:9. Paul is talking about love in this part of the Book. He is saying that love is perfect and eternal and that all other things of the world will pass away. The part of speaking words to someone from our fallen position, or the “knowing” part, will fall away as imperfect. The prophesying part comes directly from Holy Spirit and is perfect.
It’s important that we use our imagination righteously, or in-other-words, from a holy Kingdom perspective; Otherwise, we are going to hurt ourselves and others.
God, Jesus and Holy Spirit made us in their image according to Genesis 1:26–27. God is the Creator; therefore, we also create which separates man from angels and other spiritual and physical beings. The devil can only steal and use our ideas and power to create if we allow him to.
“So we do not focus on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.” — 2 Corinthians 4:18
We need our imagination to create and every human being is hardwired with this potential. Dictionary.com defines Imagination as a noun as “the faculty of imagining, or of forming mental images or concepts of what is not actually present to the senses.”
To develop a concept, we must think, process, analyze and organize the thoughts. People often stop thinking before solutions are found, which turns into worry and halts the Imagination and creative process.
There are two types of imagination as defined in psychology: 1) Reproductive Imagination is the ability to reproduce images stored in our memory when reminded through similar imagery, and 2) Creative Imagination as the capability to take prior experiences and composite something new to support a specific goal or solve a problem.
The Imagination, like everything else, can be used for good or evil. Scripture is very black and white about this subject. We are either for or against Jesus. The gray areas are here on earth and are where love can be inserted to ensure the good rises to the top.
Another way to ensure we are acting and reacting in godly ways is to repent and renounce ungodly, unrighteous behavior.
We can then choose to sanctify our righteous Imagination for God’s Kingdom on earth. Holy Spirit is more than happy to fill me with new and improved godly behaviors and attitudes.
We must position our heart in Christ Jesus toward right motives in our attitudes and emotions. Emotions are not who we are, they are mere tools for understanding where we are at in our life or in that moment. Emotions surface from the subconscious mind and rule our beliefs and motives.
It is important for me to maintain right motives every day. When we do, we can more easily walk in God’s Spirit.
Here’s a simple prayer for our imaginations to work from a Kingdom point-of-view:
Holy, Holy, Holy!
Father God in Heaven, I thank You for my imagination. I thank You for creating me with an imagination to be capable of co-creating with You in my life and in the lives of others. Thank You for giving me a greater capacity to imagine greater things. I ask forgiveness for using my imagination in ungodly ways. Please, heal myself and others where my unholy use of my imagination was destructive.
I bind the ungodly part of my imagination to never be used again as it is already bound in Heaven, and I loose creativity in my newly sanctified imagination to reflect the love and goodness of God.
I decree my imagination is purified, cleansed and covered with Your blood Jesus, to be sanctified and made most Holy unto You. I decree my imagination is righteous and blameless serving only Your Kingdom. I thank you for reminding me when needed to place my imagination and the things I use it for at Your feet.
Thank You Lord for Your immense love, Amen. ♥
Psalm 31:5: “Into your hands I now entrust my spirit. O Lord, the God of faithfulness, you have rescued and redeemed me.”
The practice of ministering to the human spirit has grown in popularity in the past couple of decades. Arthur Burk, founder of Sapphire Leadership Group (www.theslg.com) is one of the pioneers of this healing method which has proven effective; producing fruit beyond his spiritual great-grandchildren.
Ministering to the human spirit has been controversial so let me give you our perspective: We are strongly for it because we have received personal healing from it for over 10 years. There are more than 150 verses on “spirit” to study in the Bible, so we encourage you to develop your own theology on the subject.
That said, let’s look at some Scripture:
Body, soul and spirit are distinctly separate from each other in these verses confirming that we are made 3-in-one, a trinity after the image of God, Jesus and Holy Spirit. Our body, soul and spirit are enmeshed with Holy Spirit when we become Spirit-filled. We can’t separate our spirit from the Spirit of God.
Our spirit has seven portions, and again this is something we know of from experience. Scripture alludes to this, but we have no hard-and-fast Word yet (See Isaiah 11:2 and Revelations). The seven portions are modeled after the seven grace-gifts or redemptive gifts found in Romans 12:6 which are Prophet, Servant, Teacher, Exhorter, Giver, Ruler and Mercy (We are not referring to the gifts in other portions of Scripture.).
We will have a dominant grace-gift and the others will vary in size and shape, for lack of a better description. This imbalance can cause challenges and sin in one’s life. Some portions may need a lot of healing and ministry while others don’t. Our goal in ministering to the human spirit is healing to become more like Jesus.
Ministering to the human spirit is powerful and asking for permission before engaging in the seven portions is a great practice. We can always bless someone else’s spirit but the deeper work, in our opinion should be approached like we would a deliverance or counseling session with the person present. The work can be done face-to-face or not once permission is granted to minister to the seven portions.
These are some guidelines for ministering to the human spirit:
We challenge you to write seven letters in seven days to each portion of your spirit. Write, “Dear Prophet, etc.” Below are a few topics related to each portion with verses to get you started, or you can find one of your own or wait and listen to Jesus.
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We are made in God’s image; He creates and so do we. It’s time to step-up and stand in who we are made to be, and a big part of that is to exercise our creativity. First, we need to understand it.
Creativity is defined on Wikipedia as: a phenomenon whereby something new and somehow valuable is formed. The created item may be intangible (such as an idea, a scientific theory, a musical composition, or a joke) or a physical object (such as an invention, a literary work, or a painting).
A phenomenon. What a great word to use for the Creative Spirit. When we engage in creativity we are healed, we are informed, we are enlightened, we escape into all the devil hates about humanity. We find solutions for all manner of life’s problems and we learn to love from God’s perspective. Yes, creativity can do all of that.
We must understand that artists aren’t the only creative people on the planet. They have talents and skills focused on art industries, but they are not alone. Mothers and fathers are creative in parenting, Mechanics are creative in building, pilots are creative in flying, chefs are creative in cooking, doctors are creative in healing, and list goes on. As a matter of fact, you are creative too.
