Ilya, what are your thoughts on kind of beginning to operate in that?
Yeah to summarize even what all of you were saying, Romans 12:3 speaks to me
very clearly. It says, "That by the grace given to me," it's NIV version.
"I say to every one of you: Do not think of yourself more highly than you ought,
but rather think of yourself with sober judgment, in accordance with the faith God has distributed
to each one of you." We have to understand where we are at with our faith, with our walk with God.
We have to be sober minded about it. That means like what Ivan just shared,
if you never pray for somebody and their pinky got better, probably stepping out and praying
for somebody in a wheelchair is out of your faith level. They start going to the mortuary
for the dead people. It's kind of like lifting 300 pounds. If you never lifted it, it's gonna
fall back on you. Oh wow. Yeah, yeah. I know, and then what happens is you're setting yourself up
for multiple disappointments which destroy your faith and the people that you're praying for. And
so Apostle Paul says listen, think of yourself in accordance of the level of faith that is in you.
The revelation that you have, because according to the revelation, we have the faith. And so we
all know that God can do the impossible, but do you know that God can do through you the
impossible. That's a whole different story. And so in my personal life and when I teach people,
especially in the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the prophetic, word of knowledge,
operating in those things. I tell people, develop a track record with God. In my personal life,
on my phone since the time of iPhone 2007, I had a note on my iPhone that was labeled a tracker,
and still do. That's labeled: My track record with God. And any impressions that God would give me,
I would write them down and date them, and I would test them. I started personal in my personal life,
and then I had literally hundreds of things that the Lord spoke to me. And whether they were right
or wrong, I would write them down. When I was wrong, I would evaluate them and I'd check, and
I asked Holy Spirit, "Where did I get it wrong?" Maybe I didn't hear correctly, maybe I did not
sense correctly, and I would learn that way and I would have a track record with God. Many people,
they get out to slay Goliath before they even attempted to go against a lion and a bear. I
mean before they even attempted to scare a wolf away. And so David before he faced Goliath and
he won a big, giant, public victory, he had many private victories. And so I encouraged people that
are learning to hear God, learning to operate in the gifts of the of the Spirit, learning to
step out by faith, is that before you take a giant leap, maybe just start crawling first. Bible,
everywhere we've seen in the Bible, God is a God of progression and so we need to learn to
progress in our spiritual giftings with God. We need to learn how to progress and walk with God,
and walk out our faith. When it comes to spiritual gifts like prophecy, word of knowledge,
word of wisdom. I always tell people, you have to learn how to deliver that word. So I teach people
to you know you start with the shotgun and then you go to a sniper rifle. Meaning you start wide
and then you start narrowing things. Sometimes people, they see these seasoned prophets come
out and you know call out the name, and then the phone number, and this and then go straight
deep into the problem that the person has. And we get so inspired and we want to start doing that,
I want to be like the sniper rifle. We want to go just one shot, one kill. But it takes years
and years and walk with God, our faith being built, many tries and fails, until we learn to
hear God and interpret His voice clearly. So when it comes to like the prophetic gifts, the word of
knowledge, start wide. What I mean by wide, how I practice you know sometimes like God would show
me through word of knowledge, some person has a specific issue. Let's say it's in their body,
in their organ for example, maybe. It's a kidney or something. But I would come out and say, "Hey,
I sense there's an issue in your abdominal area." "Oh, yes, yes. I do." "What's the issue?" "Okay,
it's a kidney." Okay so now I'm confirmed what I've been seeing or what the Lord had been telling
me, that that person has a kidney issue. Now my faith and confidence goes up and then if there's
something more the Lord wants to say, I am more confident that I'm hearing the Lord. The person is
more confident and their faith build up that I am hearing from the Lord. And then slowly but surely
you start wide and you start narrowing down and you start building your faith, the person's faith,
and you start building a track record with God. So start wide and then start narrowing down
with your experience, and in the ministry with the person. But you have to start somewhere,
you're gonna make mistakes. Some people say about practicing like prophetic and
the word of knowledge, and say, "What do you mean by practicing? Is that something
that can God make mistakes when God speaks?" No. God, when God speaks He always speaks
correctly, He always speaks true. But His voice gets filtered through our soul.
So through our emotion, through our will. It gets filtered through our experiences,
through our understanding, through our revelation of the Word and when it gets down
sometimes it's filtered too much. It loses the content of the original thing. And so
when we practice we mean that we learn to deliver the word more clearly, we learn to hear God more
clearly, and apply, bring an application more clearly and that comes with practice.
That's such a good, good wisdom. I would highlight as well few things and one of them is I think one
of you guys have read already, Romans 12:6. And it says that, "Having then gives differing
according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them," and then it says," if prophecy,
let us prophesy in proportion to our faith." So I want us to see the two things in beginning to
operate in the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Not just even beginning, honestly, it's just the
wisdom to use that all the time: according to the grace and according to faith. Meaning sometimes
there's grace in the room, you feel the grace and sometimes no grace. But the faith is there. Inside
of you there's that boldness, I'm gonna go for it. God gives me that. It's important to minister
within the limits of God's grace. All of us have a measure of God's gift and we have to know that
measure and try to stay within that measure. If you're just starting out, God is giving you
grace to heal some diseases and give words of knowledge, stay in that lane. Don't embark on
something super crazy right away. Let the Holy Spirit increase that grace measure first, before
you take those risks. Now, Apostle Paul was called to the Gentiles, 2 Timothy 1:11, Acts 13:46-47,
Acts 18:6 and Acts 18:11-13. God made it clear that Paul, Gentiles; Peter, Jews. It's interesting
that everywhere Paul went, he gravitated toward the Jews and he always got beaten by the Jews.
What would have happened if he would have went straight to the Gentiles? Gentiles didn't beat
him. It was the Jews that beat him all the time. You don't see Peter being beaten by Jews like
that. He always ended up with the Gentiles because the Jews rejected him. He got beaten by them and
so I'm not saying, I am not a scholar in this and I do not know all the counsel of God. But kind of
looking from the side and thinking, okay, why don't you just go straight to the people that,
why don't you stay within that lane that the Lord has called you and just go from there. When we
step out of the grace or the faith in ministering the gifts of the Holy Spirit, what begins to
happen is that we can experience a certain maybe setback and certain disappointment. And so how do
you increase that grace, is honestly start with the private devotion and then take it to public
risks. And so, if your public risks is not founded in your private relationship, very soon that
public risk might lead to a ruin. Let me say that again. If you're publicly taking risks for God,
but you have not grounded yourself privately in a relationship with God, you might throw these
stones and you're gonna keep missing the Goliath. And so David's public risks were grounded in his
private relationship. So if you want to increase the measure of your grace, you want to increase
the measure of that faith, do it privately with God. So that when you step out publicly you don't
take reckless risks but you take justified. Now they look like risks to other people,
to you it's a justifiable risk, why? Because it's backed up by a private devotion. The other part
as a pastor, I want to mention as a pastor and all of us here being today in a local church,
when you're ministering in a local church you must respect the culture of the church you're
ministering. The Bible says in 1 Corinthians 14:29, "Let the prophet speak, two or three, and
let the others judge." Each church has a different culture. Learn the culture of that church. Some
churches are more prophetic, others are more prayer driven. Some are very Evangelistic and some
are Apostolic. The biggest mistake you can make is to come to a church and try to change the culture
with your gift, based on what you've seen in your previous church or based on how things work in the
church that you attend. Honor the culture and you will earn the right to be heard in that church or
be received. Just because you have something to say, you have a gift to minister to the church,
it doesn't mean you have the right to be heard. You can change the culture slowly, but every church
culture can change and it will change, only slowly. Because we've had these guys who would
come in and sometimes, one of them particularly. Great man, friend of mine actually, come in. He's
a prophet. And so and in the previous church that he's from, you know if you're a prophet, you have
a word, you run straight to the front and you grab a microphone and it's like an open season,
anybody who has anything to say. But again, those churches are very small a lot of times and that's
their protocol. So he comes and during worship he's like, you could see he's getting a deposit,
okay. Because he's yelling and screaming and like very, very loud and I'm like looking in the back.
I'm like yep, prophet got connected and he's one of the old school prophets you know. So yeah,
so he comes to me and he's already like shaking, okay. Like in our church, if you
shake, we cast demons out of you. So and he's not understanding that we're not a prophetic church,
we're more of a deliverance church. So I'm thinking looking at him and I'm thinking,
which spirit is this? I'm discerning the spirits and he's like, "Pastor [speaking in tongues]. Pastor [speaking in tongues].
Pastor, can I deliver the word?" And so like every other word is speaking in tongues and I'm thinking,
I was like this guy. He's like, "It's taken over me. I can't control it." And to me that's a sign,
if you can't control it, like something is. Spirit of God is the Spirit of self-control.
If you can't control it, like I'm scared if you grab a microphone what's gonna happen? And so
and I was like, "Buddy, come over here. I was like sit down." And it was very painful because
part of me is like, Vlad, you're quenching the Holy Spirit. Vlad, you're not letting the
Holy Spirit speak. You know and I sit on that and I said, "Listen." I said, "What is the Holy
Spirit saying?" And he says, "I don't know. He will only say it when I grab the microphone."
And I was like, I don't know buddy, that, I'm like that okay and I was like, "Well I'm not giving you
a microphone," and so then he calm down, he went back. And honestly I battled, because as a pastor
I was like, man, did I just quench the Holy Spirit because I'm scared. I'm not like shaking like this
under the power of God. He's shaking, but it's kind of a routine thing that he has, and so he did it again.
And then you know kind of like calmed him down and say, "Hey in our church," I was like,
"if you have a word you know submit it to me, let me know. We have a church, we have a protocol,
we have an order and let me know and I'll let you know to release it." I was like, this is what I
told him, I said, "Our church won't receive that word." The reason why, they'll think you're crazy.
I said, "Our church will think you have a demon." So I was like, "It will fall on flat
ears." I was like, "Just come to our prayers. Let people actually see that you're normal and
that you don't need deliverance and maybe go through our deliverance prayer line, so that
we can be confirmed that you actually don't need deliverance." And then and I was like, "And maybe
next time when you have a word, like don't act like you got electrocuted. Just come normally
and just speak normal and stuff." So again but that's the way in our church, and some churches
like that's the way you deliver a prophetic word, is that you come out and you shaking
uncontrollably. You can't control anything, it comes out of you and in that church, probably
that is normal and that's how it's perceived that it's a prophetic word. And so and it's not about
Holy Spirit, as much as it's the vessel that He's using and the culture of the church that those
vessels are being used. That's why the Bible says, let one do that and the rest of the people judge.
Don't just simply say, "Oh, God said," we can't even like digest it, we can't even dissect it,
we can't even judge it because he said, "thus says the Holy Spirit." Yeah I'm not doubting
the Holy Spirit. I'm just doubting the vessel that sometimes He could use. We can judge the prophetic
words, we can compare with the Scripture and we can compare it, like is this true? Especially if
it reveals with things in the past, instead of just like blindly saying, "Oh yeah, it must be
God." Because I mean then we have these people who would come up and like, "Hey, God told me
to marry you," and like this other person already has three children and is living happily with the
husband. And so like we have to be very careful with that and and honor the church culture.