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1 Corinthians 12:7–10; 1 Corinthians 14:1–5; John 4:16–19; Acts 27:21–32; 1 Thessalonians 5:20–21
What does it actually look like to hear God's voice for someone else? The morning after Elan's first Holy Spirit Intensive, Pastor Max Lyons gives a hands-on teaching on three prophetic gifts from 1 Corinthians 12: words of knowledge, words of wisdom, and prophecy. Through his own stories and biblical examples, he explains how God speaks, how to test a word, and why every believer should ask for these gifts to build up the church.
Key takeaways
- The gifts of the Spirit are for every believer, and the one who prophesies builds up the church, which means building up people.
- A word of knowledge reveals something past or present you could not have known naturally; a word of wisdom adds an action to take; prophecy speaks to the future.
- Every prophetic word must agree with Scripture and be humbly tested. Prophetic ministry should build up the church and must never be used to manipulate or control people.
- Operating in the gifts is like exercising a muscle: you have to be willing to be uncomfortable and not very good at first, and you miss every shot you do not take.
- Most people do not receive words of knowledge, wisdom, or prophecy simply because they do not ask; ask God with the motive of blessing others, not looking spiritual.
Message notes
A supernatural God who still does miracles
Pastor Max Lyons opens with testimonies from Elan’s first Holy Spirit Intensive the day before: people filled with the Spirit for the first time, words of knowledge for specific physical needs, and shoulder, inner ear, and knee conditions healed after prayer. Elan Church is a Holy Spirit-led church that believes God still works supernaturally through His followers. This message is not a persuasion piece but a practical how-to, more like a jiu-jitsu class than a college lecture: teaching first, then breaking into groups to minister to one another.
Three gifts worth desiring
From 1 Corinthians 12, Pastor Max focuses on the word of wisdom, the word of knowledge, and prophecy. Paul says to earnestly desire the spiritual gifts, especially prophecy, because the one who prophesies builds up the church. Since the church is people, operating in these gifts means building up people.
Kirkuk: a word of knowledge
At nineteen, a brand new believer, Pastor Max kept hearing the word Kirkuk as he fell asleep, wrote it in his journal, and began praying over it. A month later a friend confessed over an 11 p.m. Denny’s dinner that after leaving the military he felt responsible for the death of the man who replaced him on a mission and had nearly taken his own life. The mission had been in Kirkuk, Iraq. Pastor Max showed him the journal, told him God must love him, and the friend gave his life to Jesus in the parking lot. A word of knowledge is knowledge acquired from God by supernatural means about something past or present, and it often complements healing. Jesus models it with the woman at the well in John 4. Pastor Max also recounts emailing himself at 3 a.m. in Sydney in 2013 that his hosts Josh and Priscilla were expecting a girl; two days later a pregnancy test confirmed it.
A word of wisdom and a prophecy
A word of wisdom is supernatural wisdom about the present or future that includes an action to take. Paul exercises it in Acts 27 when he tells the sailors that unless the men stay with the ship they cannot be saved. Pastor Max recalls a conference speaker who told a man not to board his flight home but to go to the hospital, where an urgent condition was found. Prophecy speaks God’s message about the future, as Jesus did in predicting the destruction of the temple, fulfilled in AD 70. Pastor Max once sensed God had a surprise for a heartbroken friend within six months; six months later the friend was dating the woman he would marry.
How God speaks
God can speak however He wants, but Pastor Max names ways God has spoken to him: through His word, through dreams, through visions and mental pictures while praying, through a burden, as with Nehemiah, and most often through an impression or inner voice, like the whisper to Elijah.
Guidelines for testing a word
Prophecy must always align with the word of God; two married people who took similar dreams as permission to leave their spouses were not hearing from God. We should not despise prophecy but test everything, remembering that we prophesy in part, which is why Pastor Max says “I think God is saying” rather than “thus saith the Lord.” A word may confirm what God is already speaking, but every word should be weighed carefully against Scripture rather than accepted simply because someone claims it is from God. He jokes about a Bible college student who announced God had told her she would marry his friend. Prophetic ministry should strengthen, encourage, and comfort. Scripture also includes prophetic warnings, such as Agabus’ warning of famine in Acts 11:28, so a prediction of hardship is not automatically false.
Build the muscle and ask
Using his CrossFit story of dislocating a shoulder on his first kipping attempt and pressing on anyway, Pastor Max says that to become good at something you must first be willing to be not so good at it. Quoting Wayne Gretzky, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” Most people do not receive prophetic words because they never ask, and James says we do not have because we do not ask, or we ask with wrong motives. The motive must be to bless others. The message closes with the room breaking into groups of four or five, pairing experienced and inexperienced people, to wait on the Holy Spirit and encourage one another. For anyone new, sharing a Bible verse or a kind word is a great place to start.
