Last July a large part of my journey of faith was receiving prophetic words and words of encouragement at the Well, a ministry that Pihop runs every Saturday night. The accuracy of these words and the situations they spoke to really emboldened me to continue stepping out in faith and confirmed to me that I was on the right path.

Just a couple months later I am now involved at Pihop and at the School of Supernatural Ministry that is being run there.  God has been slowly but surely building my confidence in my own prophetic gifting and my ability to speak into people’s lives encouragement from God and also receive accurate words of knowledge.  “Words of knowledge” are just a fancy term for knowing something you should not be able to know through the Holy Spirit. An example of this is when Jesus tells the woman at the Well that she has five husbands; He did not know her and there was no way He could have know her past apart from the Holy Spirit. One of the biggest principles being drilled into my head is that you have to give away what you have received.  When Jesus sends out His disciples he says “Freely you have received, freely give.” (Matt 10:8 )With all of this in mind it was a no-brainer that I should start volunteering at the Well and now serve regularly twice a month there.

On the 16^th of this month I experienced a lot of breakthrough in this area.  The prayer servants pray for an hour before we begin ministering to people and A.J., the overall leader of the Well ministry, brought up Romans 12:6, specifically the part where Paul encourages believers to “prophesy according to the measure of faith God has granted you.” A.J. encouraged us to pray for a new measure of faith and boldness that night.

God had been slowly building my faith in the prophetic and my spirit was really moved by what A.J. shared.  I realized that I was scared I would share a bad prophetic word and it would turn people off from Pihop, from God, from the Holy Spirit or prophesy and I might look like an idiot.  This fear was keeping me from sharing things that could have been incredibly encouraging and faith-building words for other people. So I just went for it.  I prayed, “God I want accurate words of knowledge and the boldness to take a risk and share them.”

That night I had several very specific and accurate words of knowledge.

To a man in his later years I felt that he was judging himself and his life by worldly values and standards for success. I shared that God wanted to remind Him that God intentionally chooses the ignoble and unwise of this world to be His people in order to shame the wise of this world, that God wanted Him to accept and stand firmly in His place in the Body of Christ, whatever that was and that he should not continue to judge him by worldly standards of success because these standards come from people that do not know God.  Of course a follower of Jesus might feel like a failure if they judged themselves by the values of other people.  While this word was general in that I think a lot of people could apply it to their own lives, to the person I was ministering to it was truly impacting and right where he was at and he told us as much as he was leaving.

To a woman I told her that I saw her in a classroom and I just knew it was an ESL classroom.  I really thought I was making this up or confused because my mother is an ESL teacher.  However, sure enough, at the end of the session she confirmed she had taught ESL.

The craziest actually probably happened with the second person we were ministering to that night.  Immediately as a young man sat down I felt his brother had died.  In my head I said, “Are you kidding God?  Am I seriously going to share that with this person? This is not slow-pitch anymore…”  For me this was exactly what I had prayed for, an accurate word that required faith and boldness to actually share.  The loss of a sibling is not a general thing that everyone can connect to.  As I continued to pray I got the sense it might not have been a blood brother but a Brother in Christ, that is a close friend.

Eventually I shared that I felt he had lost a brother, and that while I was unsure if this was a blood brother, or a brother in Christ, and I was not even sure if this was a physical death or a painful separation, the message God was conveying is that He too has lost loved ones and knows what it feels like and God would comfort this young man in that loss.  The man’s facial expression did not change and I was all but certain I had just given an inaccurate word.

As the man got up to leave we handed him a feedback form and he asked if he could just give us immediate feedback.  We agree and he said, “You’ve all been right on…” And then he pointed to me. I was certain he was going to continue “…except for you…I don’t even have a brother!” But what actually happened was that he shared he had lost a friend and confirmed that the word was accurate.

I literally fell back in my chair relieved and excited. I am continue to serve at Pihop and want to receive more accurate words that speak encouragement into people’s lives.  I hope to eventually feel very comfortable and confident enough to do this outside of the Well and use the words of knowledge God gives me to minister outside of Pihop and in the highways and byways of life.