When establishing a prophetic atmosphere in which revelation becomes more easily heard or seen, we always begin with intercession. We begin with aggressive, intense, and prolonged seasons of praying in the Spirit. We pray in the Spirit for one hour, intensely.
Even though some people cannot sustain praying in the Spirit more than ten or fifteen minutes at first and tend to slip into soaking as a posture for the remainder of the time, they should begin to develop the capacity to extend that initial prayer time until they can pray for one hour. As we do so, we have loud music to allow everyone to pray out loud, encourage people to pray aloud, in fact, with leader in charge or other leaders the leader designates praying in the Spirit in a microphone.
During this time of praying in the Spirit, we know what the people praying will be experiencing will be from and by the Spirit because they pray from and by the Spirit. They will sustain a season of SpiritFirst experience in which hearing and seeing will be much more likely to be spiritual experience. They will hear and see simply because they will have little else to hear and see, joining in the prayer.
If the leader sees that people step into something other than intensely focused praying in the Spirit, tending toward a worship response to the music, the leader should encourage and exhort them back to sustained praying in the Spirit the entire one hour.
After one hour, gather the people together and begin a process of sharing what they each heard or saw in the Spirit. They will immediately realize that Holy Spirit has been opening their eyes and ears to prophetic revelation. They will recognize a pattern in the revelations as the leader organizes the revelations into that pattern. They will see that Holy Spirit has an agenda for that season of intercession that can be prayed out or prophetically decreed.
In this way, nearly everyone who has actually prayed in the Spirit for one hour will have heard or seen something to contribute.
Then, the posture and authority of decree will enter into prophetically speech as the agenda is prayed out and declared with authority. Move the people from talking about what they heard or saw to prophesying what they heard and saw with authority.
Ask the question of yourself, “How many such prayer warriors can the kingdom afford to have?
Praying in the Spirit builds along the lines of edification so that it is improbably a person doing so for an hour, learning to sustain focused, intense praying in the Spirit can even avoid hearing and seeing the Spirit. Since this aspect of the SpiritFirst life is rather simply, the process we have described makes the realization of the experience easier by removing the human tendency to attempt to conjure up something by means of imagination or struggle with doubt about what they hear or see is actually from their own thoughts, not God’s mind.
This scenario diminishes unbelief while edifying the spirit, maturing both prayer and worship while opening the soul through the spirit to the reality of Spirit. It serves as the basis for increasing SpiritFirst function in the people so that they carry this capacity into public meetings, prayer meeting, personal prayer and worship, and every other ministry function that releases anointing.
When we have created a prophetic atmosphere, we have the basis for creating a prophetic culture. When we produce a prophetic culture, prophets will emerge who can train more and more people in the same way and expand the culture.
As we mature this culture, we continually engage in confrontation with limitations the adversary has placed within people that distract them from SpiritFirst living. We offer continuous spiritual experiences that challenge domination of the body or soul over the spirit of man so that SpiritFirst living overcomes these limitations in increasingly greater measure. This often brings people face to face with really personal, deep issues of the soul, but this confrontation of God’s design for their lives and the limitations of hell is a necessary part of discipling and transformation.
The method of the enemy is distraction that leads to substitution. The entire process of maturing prophetic experience, atmosphere, and culture involves the deeper work of personal transformation, the renewing of the spirit of the mind. That process will not experience greater success without SpiritFirst living.
