The Gift of Prophecy is a supernatural communication from God to an individual or a group of believers. Host Patti Brunner explains this gift from a personal viewpoint on Truth of the Spirit episode Prophecy-Charism of Communication with God. For audio and video links or to read the script, please continue reading.
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When I was asked to provide a podcast in 2018, I immediately turned to the Lord for advice. There is no way I could have followed through with our Truth of the Spirit podcasts of over 200 episodes without the Lord’s guidance. If you are a regular listener, you know how often I share “the Lord told me this”. This is possible though the Charism of Prophecy. Today’s episode looks at this gift of the Holy Spirit with a personal viewpoint.
Welcome to Truth of the Spirit and Prophecy-Charism of Communication with God. I am your host, Patti Brunner. Looking back I realize that Prophecy is the first extraordinary charism of the Holy Spirit that I received and that this gift manifested many years before I understood anything about charisms.
The Gift of Prophecy is a supernatural communication from God to an individual or a group of believers. It is an anointing given by the Holy Spirit. Prophecy is speaking of the mind and heart of God to His people. Prophecy can manifest through a vision, words, and thoughts or be prompted by a form of physical sensation to alert us to listen. A person yielding to this gift must listen and expect that God will speak, and always yield to authority for discernment.
The prophet Joel wrote 400 years before Christ in Chapter 3 verse 1: “It shall come to pass I will pour out my spirit upon all flesh. Your sons and daughters will prophesy, your old men will dream dreams, your young men will see visions.” 400 years later, after the first Pentecost the apostles were accused of being drunk. They were not drunk on wine; they were under the influence of the Holy Spirit. In Acts Chapter 2 they explained their exuberance by remembering those words of Joel and saying, 16 “No, this is what was spoken through the prophet Joel: 17 ‘And in the last days it shall be, God declares, that I will pour out my Spirit upon all flesh, and your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, and your young men shall see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams; 18 indeed, and on my menservants and my maidservants in those days I will pour out my Spirit; and they shall prophesy.” NAB
The apostles knew exactly what happened to them. The Lord prepared them. I guess I wasn’t as good at paying attention before it happened to me. When the Lord called my name in the night when I was a young mother, like he did to Samuel, I knew it was the Lord but I didn’t know that it was due to a gift of grace called prophecy. That awareness did not come for about 20 years and only after the Holy Spirit manifested in the Charism of Healing and after someone taught me about the charisms of the Holy Spirit.
If you are thinking that the gift of prophecy is all about telling the future, let me help you learn the truth. The Gift of Prophecy is primarily hearing God’s voice speak to you. Does that surprise you? Generally speaking, when we pray, we do the talking and God does the listening. Since in prayer we are conversing with God, doesn’t it make sense that sometimes He would do the talking and we would do the listening? The Lord told me today, “The gift of prophecy is about listening and responding. The ministry of this gift is listening and sharing. Everything that comes forth is not ‘earthshattering’ but it does shatter the hardness of heart and the barriers that cause blindness to Truth.” The Lord said, “Prophecy melts the heart like the fire on a candle melts the wax and the flame burns brighter.” The Lord said, “Prayer is one-way communication. It is good. By faith you reach out to God. By prophecy you allow God to respond and reach out to you.
I was mentored in the charismatic gifts through prayer group meetings. People shared their gifts as they prayed for one another. And we gathered in silence before the Lord, after a time of praise, often words of Prophecy came forward. I felt prompted, for a season, to record these prophetic utterances. One particular night when the theme was the Gift of Prophecy, I wrote down these words that the Lord shared with us and through us, “Come into my heart my children and walk and talk with Me. Feel my peace and be with Me—my light to all.” Another person spoke of a sense that we are “melting into one pool of the Lord which becomes a river”. Another spoke, “The Lord tells us to “let go of the world and lay it on the cross”. “Concentrate on Me and not of the world.” Then someone felt prompted to lead the song “Peace is Flowing Like a River.” Another spoke, “I called you by name to be here tonight to be with Me.” Another, “Feel my peace, feel my love.” And “We do not have to carry around worries; it is placed at the foot of the cross.” These prophetic words of communication from the Lord are not “earth shattering” but they allowed us to be aware of God’s presence and his love for us. They shattered the hardness of heart and the barriers that cause blindness to Truth. They “melted our hearts like the fire on a candle melts the wax and the flame burned brighter.”
Through the Holy Spirit’s Gift of Prophecy the Lord can manifest his constant presence in your life. We are often blind to the omnipresence of God. In our second grade mentality we think God is present only an hour a week on Sunday. When we can quiet the ‘world’ in our head and heart and listen, we can communicate with the Lord.
The Lord knows that at times I feel socially awkward. The Lord knows everything about all of us! Last fall I was praying and I heard the Lord say, “My Child, as you reach out to others, as difficult as it is for you at times, know that I am with you.” My response was, “Thank you O Lord for always being with me. I have noticed that in recent years the autumn has been a dry time for me. I also notice that you always rescue me with a Divine Moment that triggers my heart to flow with love and gratitude. Jesus, I trust in You!” These few words from the Lord gave me the encouragement to say “yes” several times in the following days to reach out to others. It resulted in the hearing of a Eucharistic miracle experienced by a friend, witnessing a healing miracle take place in the midst of young mothers, and a chance to spend an evening of fellowship with charismatic travelers. Last month the Lord gave me the boldness to facilitate several Synod Listening sessions including one with my family.
Last fall when I asked the Lord to strengthen me and to help me with a particular weakness of wanting to binge watch a series, the Lord responded, “My Child, these small struggles prove your need for God’s mercy. As you offer your distress, turn to Me for help, and pray for others my Spirit shall fill you with my peace. Perfection awaits in eternity in the glorious Kingdom of God in heaven. Not so much perfection is found,” the Lord said, “on earth except when the beholder sees the glory.” The Lord said, “Look for the glory of God in the smile of a child, in the beauty of a flower or a color-filled autumn tree. Notice how fleeting these moments can be but the memory resides in your heart with the emotion of joy.” The Lord said, “As you battle the longing to binge recognize it as a desire to escape within yourself. It cannot bring lasting joy nor peace. Step aside by finding a physical activity. This will refresh your mind rather than numb it.”
The Lord does not just address problems. Last month I was talking to the Lord about an idea for a faith centered family game and the Lord said to me, “My Child, the imagination of mankind comes from being created in the image of God—My image. Life is much more than what you experience with your five senses. Imagination helps you to hope, to plan, and to plot a course toward heaven. The dullness of the heart and mind can be fired by the Holy Spirit towards the potential of creation.
Certainly the Lord uses our imagination during visions. Through the Holy Spirit’s Gift of Prophecy we can see in our mind’s eye the inspirations of God. Truth of the Spirit has shared some of the journal recordings of Blessed Anne Catherine Emmerich and her visions of the life of the Holy Family. Servant of God Luisa Piccarreta has shared her visions of Christ and her conversations with the Lord. I am currently in a zoom group discussing her “24 Hours of the Passion”. We spoke of her diary on the Divine Will in an episode of Truth of the Spirit, The Gift of Living in the Divine Will of the Father. It is available at PatriarchMinistries.com/125. These prophetic visions of private revelation inspire us to grow in faith through our imagination. Throughout the history of the Church so many saints have shared God’s truth by words and visions through the Charism of Prophecy —and some of these are earth shattering!
St. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 14: “1 Pursue love, but strive eagerly for the spiritual gifts, above all that you may prophesy. 2 For one who speaks in a tongue does not speak to human beings but to God, for no one listens; he utters mysteries in spirit. 3 On the other hand, one who prophesies does speak to human beings, for their building up, encouragement, and solace. 4 Whoever speaks in a tongue builds himself up, but whoever prophesies builds up the church. 5 Now I should like all of you to speak in tongues, but even more to prophesy. One who prophesies is greater than one who speaks in tongues, unless he interprets, so that the church may be built up.”
I am very dependent on the utterances of the Lord. He builds me up. And as I am built up I am able to ask Him to guide me in building up others. As I mentioned at the beginning, the Lord guides me through the Charism of Prophecy each week as I prepare this podcast. There is no way I could have come up with so many different episodes on my own. It has been my experience that traveling evangelists have a main topic that they share at missions or conferences. As they move on down the road they repeat their key message, often telling the same stories and examples. What a blessing it is to hear what the Lord has done in their lives! I remember when I first started helping with Living Life in the Spirit seminars, each of our team members shared the same teachings, basically, as we traveled to various parishes for the week-end sessions. But the Lord was stretching me with something different for each parish, to touch on something specific that they needed to hear to be open to the Holy Spirit. Many times the Lord would change my talk at the last moment. Rarely could I give a talk without detailed notes. Over the years that continued as I spoke at classes, meetings and retreats and as I wrote articles and books. Every time the Lord taught me something new to say I would spend a lot of time researching the teachings of the Church to verify and discern the private revelation. Then I saved the file. I was able to use these as a base for Truth of the Spirit episodes. Now, through this internet ministry, we are able to have a “bank” of teachings so that whoever needs to hear a particular word from the Lord can be inspired to listen to a particular episode. Many of your comments have given witness to that happening!
Each time I listen to one of our past episodes of Truth of the Spirit, I recognize the words the Lord instructed me to use. I have discovered that the words of the Lord continue to have an effect on me long after they are written. I can pick up one of my journals from last week, last year, or 20 years ago and the utterances from the Lord still give me encouragement and guidance. The Lord instructed me to write a book for Advent and one for Lent that used his words from my past journals. Each Advent I continue to use “Advent Pearls” as a meditation. Each day seems fresh and just what I need that day to grow closer to Him and the Kingdom of God.
Before we wrap up this episode, are you wondering about those words of Prophecy that the Lord first spoke to me, over forty years ago? The Lord simply said, “Patti, take care of my people.”
You have been listening to Truth of the Spirit and Prophecy – Charism of Communication with God. I am your host, Patti Brunner. We invite you to listen to our various episodes on the Gifts of the Spirit on our Truth of the Spirit YouTube Channel and are available on our website PatriarchMinistries.com. We go into different details about the Charism of Prophecy on Part 2 of the Extraordinary Gifts of the Spirit series available at https://www.PatriarchMinistries.com/12 . That audio episode also includes a prayer for the release of the gifts and the Charism of Prophecy within your own life. You can read the script of today’s episode at PatriarchMinistries.com/204. And then come back for more. With the Holy Spirit there’s always more! Amen.
Other suggested episodes:
https://www.PatriarchMinistries.com/12 Charism of Prophecy Part 2 of Extraordinary Gifts of Grace Series
https://www.PatriarchMinistries.com/84 Listening to the Voice of God
https://www.PatriarchMinistries.com/85 Recognizing God’s Voice
https://www.PatriarchMinistries.com/194 The Whispers of God
https://www.PatriarchMinistries.com/195 Did God Say That
