All right.
We having fun?
You're still awake?
Don't need that dream interpreted yet?
That's good.
You know, one of the things about interpretation that is, I think, vitally important to all
the revelatory gifts, you know, what's fun about the event, the dream life event, is
that it works for dreams.
It works for visions, the interpretation process, but it also works for learning how to interpret
your prophetic words.
Interpretation is vital to rightly interpreting what we're getting from God.
You know, you guys just used the gift of interpretation to deliver a prophetic word through a color.
You had to use the gift of interpretation.
You may not know you used the gift of interpretation, but you didn't just use the gift of prophecy.
You used the gift of prophecy in conjunction with the gift of interpretation at that moment.
And a lot of times, you know, Jesus came and he loved to speak in parables.
He loved to speak in signs and symbols.
He loved metaphors.
He loved pictures.
And he'd speak that way in this kind of mysterious language.
Well, it needed some interpretation many times so that those who had ears to ear, ears to
hear, and eyes to see could see and hear what he was speaking, what he was doing.
And I love that kind of invitation.
The language of mystery, whenever there's a mystery presented to us from God, it's an
invitation to come closer.
It's an invitation to learn more.
I just, I love that.
You know, a lot of people give prophetic words.
I saw a purple hippopotamus in a blue river, and a green eagle picked it up and brought
it to the yellow river, and they're like, okay, you know.
You got to speak people's language.
God's metaphoric, he's out there.
In some ways, like Sean Bull says, we're interpreting God.
Sometimes we're trying to translate what God just said into a language that the world can
understand.
And I know Kim went over protocols, and she did such a great job.
Good job, Kim.
I love you happening more and more, different spaces.
But I think one important thing is to speak the language of the person you're talking
to.
A lot of times what happens is we go out into the marketplace, and we speak churchy language
that no one understands.
And if we're speaking the wrong language, it may be a right word, but no one can understand
it.
And almost, in some ways, you know those apps where I can speak into the phone, and it'll
translate into Japanese for me so that you can talk to people?
You're like the phone for people.
God is speaking, and you become the translator so that the person in front of you can understand
it.
And I want to encourage you to begin to learn the language of the marketplace.
Learn the language of the people that you're speaking to.
I get to travel all around the world, and I always am trying to use language.
When I'm working with a translator, language that's readily translatable.
There's some words, there's some even kind of humor or even plays on words that work
in English, but it doesn't work in German, right?
It doesn't work in that language.
So I'm always like, hey, how can I speak in such a way that the person I'm delivering
this to can understand it?
It's so important.
There's so many people, hey, you know, God wants to blow up your life.
Well, you know, in church or maybe BSSM language, if you go to Bethel's School of Supernatural
Ministry, you're like...
Like, oh, we got whacked by God.
Well, you know, how does that translate?
God's going to blow up.
My life is already blown up.
I don't want to be blown up by God.
Are we giving God a bad image there?
God's going to whack you.
Well, maybe you come from, that person
comes from an abused background.
And now they've got trauma because of the language
we're using.
God's giving you a new wineskin, brother.
I don't know if you said something like that, did you?
Did you talk about that in Protocols?
OK.
God's giving you a new wineskin, you know?
And you're talking to a businessman.
And they have no church.
They've never been in church.
They're like, wineskin?
I thought you were a Christian.
Do you drink?
Like, well, Jesus did.
He said, don't be drunk with wine.
And he's like, I don't understand that.
Well, you could say the exact same thing,
just change the language a little bit.
God's giving you a new operating system.
You're using their language, something
that they can understand to comprehend it.
So we're growing at it.
How do you grow in it?
How do we train our people to grow?
We love to train.
We love to teach.
But if you teach all the time and don't actually
give the kids the ball, you could be a great coach.
But no one ever plays the game.
You're like, coach, could you just stop talking
and let us try it out a little bit?
That's why our teaching model is information,
but it's also connected to activation, activation.
And you know what we like to do as well
is it should be fun activation.
Now, it may be a little scary.
It may be like, I've never done this before.
Oh, no.
What am I going to do?
But it should have fun connected to it.
I'll tell you what.
People are surprised when they come to Bethel
and they experience us for the very first time.
They experience the prophetic for the first time.
The practical ways God speaks, the fun ways God speaks.
And we have people who come from all over the world.
And they may be huge influencers in their sphere,
whatever it is.
And we sit down with them.
And by the end, they feel like they're friends with us
and friends with God.
They didn't know it could be so practical, so loving,
so caring, so personal.
It's colorful.
I mean, if kids wouldn't have fun doing what we're doing,
then we're probably doing it wrong.
We used to do a thing called Treasure Box Prophetic.
And as a communicator, I want to learn how to communicate well.
And as a communicator, I want to grow in communication.
I love that model that was given to us at creation,
the creation story that what was in God's heart,
God the Father's heart, Holy Spirit's brooding
over the waters.
And what's in God's heart, all of a sudden, He speaks.
And Jesus Christ comes out and the Word creates.
And there's such a partnership there.
And with one word, things were created.
I'm like, I want to learn that in communication.
You want to know the best way to start that?
Force yourself to speak to young kids in their chapel.
Force yourself to communicate.
This is why teachers are brilliant with communication
many times, because they know how
to speak people's language.
They learn voice inflection.
They learn cadence, rhythm.
They learn how to break rhythm.
They learn body language.
Why am I so animated up here sometimes?
Why?
Because I'm speaking to people and I
want to keep them engaged.
They learn this thing, eye contact.
They learn engaging the audience and pulling them in.
All those things are vital.
This is what we're doing in the prophetic.
Kim K, come here.
Many times, we can give words, right?
And they can be powerful.
They can be impactful.
But sometimes, the way I deliver it
is more important than the words I'm delivering.
Because they're interpreting something I mean I could be like
Yeah, I I feel like I feel like
Jesus loves you
Yeah, yeah, I yeah
Jesus Jesus loves you
I'm like, is that a question? Is that a statement? Like what is that? Like I are you constipated like what?
You know, we make it so hard
But if if Kim K stand in here in front of me and I've got a word like that
And I've got a word like that
Then that I can't contact the tone of my voice
See a lot of times what we do in the prophetic is we don't match the emotion that God gave it in
We match our own emotion
Like just because you're a weeping prophet doesn't mean you need to weep every time I'm like
This is supposed to be an encouraging word and you're like
And
God's like you're coming into a season of joy amazing things. It's like
Coming into a season of joy
So beautiful
You know, I'm like I'm not matching what God is releasing to Kim
God loves you so much
So proud of you so proud of you. You see that difference
It's it's it's really important our delivery speaks a ton you're good you can stay with me or you could go sit down
It's so important a good example of it years ago we had a
couple of billionaires fly in on their private jet and they flew in and and we we set up a
private session for them with some of our prophetic teams and and
Usually like
Kim said, you know, we break up when we're we're doing sessions. We're already always in a team
We're doing it together. And so we had two gentlemen
Giving prophetic words over these people and they were friends of mine. And I I said, hey, would you do me a favor?
You have a context for God and who we are
But there's a lot of people we minister who have zero context for that. So would you give us feedback afterwards and
and
the one lady we were
Prophesying over said hey there. I
Can I give you some feedback? Yeah. Yeah, please give give me some feedback for our teams. I want to hear this
she said well we had this guy and
He's his words
were
We're super accurate and he's given me these words and they're amazing but his partner was like
He wasn't even engaged he was like disengaged almost like gave the body language like I don't believe what this guy's saying
And she says the problem was everything this guy was saying was super accurate
And she said, you know what happened when it came to his time to prophesy
Even though his words were accurate. I couldn't receive any of them
There know you're awesome and you're my disciples because your prophetic words are accurate
Is that what scripture says?
Because
You do signs and wonders and miracles
No, it's they'll know that by the love for one another you have and
if we're not actually
engaging with and
partnering with that
We're actually giving other people permission not to listen to our words
That's why love love that foundation is so important to what we do in the prophetic if you don't have love then then you're not
a
disciple of God
You're not a friend of God. So why would they listen to a word? That's from Ben Armstrong. I
Got a prophetic word from Ben here. Who's Ben?
I've got a prophetic word from God and
And so we get to display love and all this these are all practical things
hopefully that's
Exactly what you came here for
The practical of this stuff, give me the nuts and bolts like Kim said, like I want to do something with this,
like give me the steps. This is the steps stuff, but it also carries a ton of heart.
And I want to kind of
take you to a story in Acts chapter 9 and
I'm going to do a few things for a couple minutes and have my good friend Dr. V, the smart one of the group,
come up and talk about some practical things we do with serving our global community.
All of our online learning stuff, our platforms there.
And then after our session, we'll have the wonderful Lindsay Ryman. Most of you were at the conference.
You would have seen her bio and her information and maybe you even went to her Prophetic Labs breakout.
She's really brilliant. Her third year was with me as well.
I'm like, there's a pattern here. Dr. V did his third year with me as well.
I mean, I pick good people. I mean, they actually more pick me and they show up.
And, you know, when Lindsay was in school, she came and was like,
I need to connect with you and I should maybe tell you a little bit about that whole deal.
But she's like, I've got these ideas and I'm like, well, let's do it.
Why don't you do your third year with me and your whole third year we'll be developing this stuff.
And and we just got to a spot this last year where we could bring her on staff and actually pay her to do stuff.
Praise the Lord. This lady has sacrificed so much.
Her house burned down during the car fire, a crazy loss.
But this lady has been so faithful with nothing.
And it's so good to see that God has set things up for her benefit in this season.
So we'll get to hear from her and all this crazy stuff called Prophetic Labs.
And maybe some acoregia testimonies and a little bit about solutionaries and, oh, deep stuff.
Right. Let's talk about a deep story. Acts chapter 19.
Years ago, I was in my office doing a little devotional and I don't know how you read or do your devotions.
Mine are like this. I read a portion of scripture and it's almost like you have a heartbeat monitor on you.
And I have this thing, you know, and it goes boop, boop, boop, you know, and you're reading and it's just normal.
And then all of a sudden there's a big spike in the heartbeat monitor.
And and maybe your heart starts racing a little more.
Something just triggers or or or even maybe the heart beat monitor slows.
I'm looking for a difference. I'm looking for something that does.
Oh, that's I just moved from the Logos, the written word into Rhema.
The God breathe word. OK, I'm now in the breath of God here.
This is this is the living word that I'm in.
And I was I was doing devotions one day and I love reading that way.
And I'm doing some devotional reading and and I come across the story in Acts 19.
Remember the story of the seven sons of Sceva?
Anyone ever heard of that story? I'll set the scene here.
You've got these seven sons of Sceva and the high priest and and and this guy's, you know,
obviously a high priest has got a relationship with God, right?
Seven sons of Sceva. And they're hearing all of this miraculous stuff,
this super cool stuff that's going on. People are getting saved.
People are getting healed. People are getting delivered.
There's a prophecy going on. There's all kinds of stuff.
We're in the book of Acts. Come on. This is like high five God miracles everywhere.
I'm signing up for that. This is amazing. This is incredible.
Sons of Sceva are like, I want to get in on some of that action.
And they're like, well, how do we do that?
Again, this is a little paraphrase, BIV, Ben's International Version.
You can go read it yourself to get the exact. But, you know, I'm putting it in.
Our day and age, you know, Seven Sons of Sceva,
they're like, wow, this is awesome.
Hey, if we could just do what Paul's doing,
that would be incredible.
He keeps casting out demons.
Hey guys, you see that guy over there
who's demon-possessed?
Hey, why don't we do this?
Why don't we cast out a demon?
Well, we gotta figure out how to do it.
There's gotta be a formula, right?
There's gotta be some way.
Well, let's figure out what Paul, oh.
Hey, every time Paul does his stuff,
he does it and he says the magic words.
And one of the brothers is like, what magic words?
What are you talking about, man?
Yeah, I figured out the magic words.
Paul says, in Jesus' name.
Ooh, all right, we got this.
High five, bros, let's go do it.
And these seven young men go out to cast out a demon.
They're like, okay, we're gonna do this.
This is gonna be awesome.
We're gonna do this stuff.
And they try and cast out the demon
and they use the magic words.
In Jesus' name.
And something unique happens in that moment.
Something that doesn't happen when Paul says in Jesus' name
and the demons talk to these guys and say, oh, you know,
hey, we know Paul and we definitely know Jesus.
Yeah, but who the heck are you?
How about we just beat the snot out of you?
And they give them such a severe beating
that they run away naked and bleeding.
Have you ever got your clothes beat off you?
That seems like a severe beating.
That seems pretty severe.
That seems pretty intense.
They're like, those magic words didn't work.
I don't, what's going on?
And in that moment, as I'm reading the Bible
and I'm reading this story, I hear God ask me a question.
Ben, why do you say in Jesus' name when you pray?
I could feel it.
I could feel the two by four about to slam down on my head
like the revelation bump, you know?
I knew, I'm like, oh, oh darn.
I feel correction coming.
I feel a course correction coming.
Why do you pray in Jesus' name?
Well, I was taught to pray in Jesus' name.
Well, yeah, yeah, it's in the Bible.
Pray this way.
Okay, okay, but he says, why do you pray in Jesus' name?
I said, well, because then the devil
will have to listen to me.
He says, oh, really?
Have you ever prayed in Jesus' name and said the words
and nothing ever happened?
You ever been there like praying for someone
on the healing line or going to get a prophetic word
or whatever and you're like, in Jesus' name.
And nothing happens.
So you change your inflection.
I said, in Jesus' name.
Oh, you don't understand my accent.
In the name of Jesus.
In the name of Jesus, come on.
It's almost like, hey, devil, listen to me.
And then he says, why else do you pray
in the name of Jesus?
I said, well, then I think you'll show up
and you'll help me.
You'll do something.
He's like, oh, you're trying to convince me?
You know, Jesus, in the name of Jesus?
Come on, Jesus, don't you see?
Don't make me look bad.
In the name of Jesus, get over here.
You know, it's like the little brother
who goes after the bully, you know,
and then is like hoping his brother comes and backs him up.
Brother's like, bro, you call on this yourself.
Like, you're gonna have to deal with this.
And this was these sons of Sceva.
And God told me in that moment, he said,
Ben, praying in Jesus' name was never about words.
It's about a position of relationship.
Now, I'm not saying it's bad.
I'm just saying in Jesus' name.
I'm not saying don't ever pray that way again.
I'm great with you praying that model and doing that.
But it has to be not just, oh, hey,
I go to Bethel Church.
Bill Johnson has a relationship with God.
He does it this way, so I do it that way.
You know, they had a high priest as a father.
You can't rely on your parents' relationship with God.
You gotta have your own relationship with God.
Yeah, well, hey, I know that guy, Paul.
I seen him.
I sat under his ministry once.
So obviously, I got an impartation.
Now, it's about relationship.
And all of what we do and everything in all of the gifts
flows from that relational capacity with God.
And I just wanna get deeper.
I wanna go further.
And I would say this.
Be careful that we don't prostitute our relationship
with God by going to God and trying to get intimate
with him so he'll give us a gift.
Yeah.
Yeah, and that's a pretty intense statement.
I get it.
And maybe we wouldn't say that we're doing that,
but maybe we get the cart in front of the horse
a couple of times.
Maybe we get that thing, like, okay, I just need,
how do I grow in my, I just need to get deeper with God,
and then I'll be able to wow him at prophetic conference.
You know?
Could we potentially do that?
Yeah.
I want the power and the weight of my words
to come from a deep, abiding relationship with God.
And that's what we all want, and I know you all want that.
And it's beautiful.
And it's so important for us that in this season,
we would be those ones who are intimate with him
and that we wouldn't rely on all the other stuff.
Of course, we get impartations.
Oh, that's cool.
I was like, oh, my clock, I gotta give Ralph 15 minutes,
but I, it's Ralph in 17.
I'm like, oh, I'm already out of time.
Lord, I spoke too slow.
Maybe everything just like, God froze time.
But we need to make sure we do that.
And that's our passion, that's our desire,
that's in everything we do, in every way we train,
and everywhere we go, people are like,
oh, teach me how to do this stuff.
I'm like, hey, how about we teach you the heart
of this stuff?
Because if you get that part right,
the rest of this stuff is really good.
We're gonna activate you, we're gonna practice in this,
but the biggest training I think we all need
is in the heart and the foundation of things.
And then we get to build, we get to explore,
we get to create, we get to innovate with God
and have all kinds of fun with doing that.
We get to innovate with those things.
I never finished treasure box prophetic, did I?
You're like, what is that?
What's treasure box prophetic?
So with the kids, what we would do is at chapel,
I'd bring in a treasure box,
and I'd put all kinds of weird little knickknacks in there.
And then what we would do is we'd call a student up
to reach in the treasure box and pull one out.
And then we'd get another student,
maybe they're in fourth grade,
and they come up and they pick up something
and maybe, oh man, it's a paperclip.
Okay, and then we invite one of the other students
to come up and stand up in front of them,
and we say, give them a prophetic word
based on the paperclip.
What?
Yeah, what can you do with a paperclip?
Well, you can hold things together.
Oh, so what do you think they do with relationships?
Maybe they're the glue that holds things together
in relationship.
What else?
What else do you do with it?
Well, I can bend the paperclip and I say,
on those movies where they they use the pay-per-click and they they pick a lock
I'm like oh awesome so they have an ability to maybe unlock things for
people yeah and I see I see a lock on their heart oh they're able to unlock
people's hearts that's beautiful that's amazing it's simple activations that are
fun and we can do and I most of you in here raised your hands when I said how
many of you are parents there's a ton of you well we could create this kind of
normal in our own home prophetic community starts there home I can
remember we would always have people over at the house fun times we'd have
them over for dinner someone coming and some minister from somewhere and we have
them over to our house and we have dinner and and the kids are out having
fun and they'd run in the room and we say Kiki do you see anything for these
guys nope and they run away and I didn't wait what Heather and I in were really
intentional about was hey don't force them to do something give them
opportunities to do something sometimes like I see you in a Minnie Mouse dress
and you've got those big ears what's that mean to you baby nothing and then
we would interpret and we'd partner and she'd run play or you know one of the
other kids like I see a flower over here I see a purple petunia and and this is
what it means and sometimes they'd be like holy cow I where did that
vocabulary even come from crazy stuff crazy crazy kind of stuff but it was
it was never a pressure thing it's funny yeah if you're at the conference there
was a moment where I had Haley go pick a couple of people out of the overflow so
we could prophesy over them and and and I had a word formulating and my
daughter's on the front row let me check your phone I'm like I'm like I'm
old but not that old and I look at the phone and she says I see a parrot over
them I see a parrot over them and and I'm like okay she sees a parrot I'm
like this is exactly what we did when they were kids exactly what we did and
and and I I started prophesying over them and releasing a word and as I
released the word I'm reminded of the parrot and I'm like hey my daughter said
she saw a parrot over you guys Maddie what does that mean she's like I don't
know because really at that moment she didn't know she just saw that and at
that moment when she said I don't know all the sudden things started coming and
then she spoke with authority I mean she didn't even have the mic but everyone in
the room pretty much could hear and she declared things with power and authority
because of what not because of dad's relationship because she has her own
relationship but where did she get that relationship she got it in our home as
we grew that up see where we do family ministry here not family pressure
ministry you're all gonna do this although there are some structures like
hey we go to church welcome to the club that's part of our family you know you're
gonna go to youth group have fun do whatever you want a youth group but
you're going you know there were some things that were non-negotiables it's
been a little bit of a different season you know my my daughter Kira has her own
home now in in in the city and and Maddie is night 19 and and she still
lives at home but she's got a job and with when kovat hit and shut everything
down shut church down it was like oh now I can work on Sundays because there was
no church on Sundays and we could watch it and that kind of stuff but then their
schedules got messed up and it's like Oh church ah Sunday morning church
doesn't work okay well where are you gonna find church
I think there are some things that you can put in,
but what I'm saying with that is that we wouldn't put
weight and pressure on our kids to be somehow
super spiritual or, you know, the pressure on those.
It should be a thing where it's out of an overflow.
I mean, and even in their play, it's like,
yeah, they're gonna learn kindness and respect
and all those things.
But it was so important and so beautiful to see how
when you do that, if you train up a child in the way
they should go, when they're old,
they will not depart from it.
It's in them.
Even though they may be making choices,
going other places, your kids may be somewhere else
doing something, it's still in them.
And it's ringing inside of them.
The voice of conviction really saying,
hey, you were made for more.
There's more.
It'll continually be there.
It will, in some ways, haunt them.
Really, it will.
Job 33, it says, in a dream, in a vision in the night,
when deep sleep falls on men, as they slumber in their beds,
he'll even terrify them.
One version says, terrify them with warnings
to keep them from the pit.
To keep them from stumbling into the grave.
This is important.
God pursues us with this stuff.
And I love you guys as parents,
your relentless pursuit of your children.
And we call all of those who are away, back home.
In Jesus' name.
Okay, eight minutes.
Oh, I've got a lot of notes.
Dr. V.
I think in our culture, in what we're creating continually,
is we wanna take big risks in places
where people know you and believe in you.
So that's where we do a lot of practice
is one another, hands on,
so that when we're doing a prophetic lab
for some potential world leader or whoever it is,
that we're not, we haven't already practiced it.
Like, we wanna practice this stuff.
It's the mature, right?
Through practice and repetition.
We wanna practice this stuff on a continual basis.
Try and do your biggest risk stuff
in the church where there should be a lot of grace.
With individuals in the church
where there should be a lot of grace.
Because what are you trying to learn?
I'm trying to learn the voice.
Put it that way.
Hey, I'm practicing here in the voice of God.
Is your name Simon?
No, it's Sheila.
All right, I got it wrong.
Thanks for letting me take a risk.
I jest.
Just making sure you're awake.
You like my sense of humor, so that's good.
It only pushes me to do more.
It's like, oh, they laughed at me.
Let me give another one.
Then it turns into bad dad jokes.
And my daughters text me, dad, stop.
I hear all my dads laughing.
You're like, yeah, I love that.
I love those dad meme stuff.
I send them all to my kids.
They're like, dad, stop sending me those.
I'm like, you know it's true.
Oh.
So we want to take risks.
But it's like, it's funny because we do have
a school of ministry here.
And risk sometimes looks even weirder in our environment.
And they, God bless our students.
Sometimes, sometimes we've had times where
our students decide, I'm gonna take the biggest risk
and jump up on the table in In-N-Out Burger
and start preaching.
Yeah, probably not the best place to do that.
You know, I'm gonna get, let's just go get
blasted in the Holy Spirit at Applebee's.
And it's like, that's actually illegal
to be drunk in public.
Right?
Right, so why is it legal for you to go
and get drunk in public in the Holy Spirit?
And I get it, if God falls on you, you can't control that.
But there's a lot of that that we can control.
And we want to be careful that we're not burning our.
bridges with our community. How about you prophesy over them with your tip?
I've seen so many people like, oh, they try and prophesy over the waiter or the waitress,
and they give this profound prophetic word and leave a janky tip.
How's that? Yeah. Don't be that guy. I'm just talking practicals. I'm just talking
real life prophetic here. I'm just talking, this is what maturity looks like, is to learn
these different ways. My wife is brilliant at the prophetic, and it comes out through
handwritten cards. She sends 20 to 30 handwritten cards every week. And so she's like, just who's
highlighted. She keeps notes in her phone like, oh, so-and-so was highlighted this week,
and I was looking at this, and so it spoke this to me. And they're like, how did you know?
Oh, my goodness. And it's the right thing at the right time. She brings prophetic in her
photography. One of her mottos in her professional photography, and most of her stuff is outside the
church, is called capturing the heart. She wants to capture the heart of who people really are.
Some years ago, she was photographing a couple, and as she was clicking away,
she saw a banner flash over their head in the Spirit. So she sees this banner flash over the
head, and it said, five years of marriage left. Now, if we're not careful, we do prophetic stupid
in that moment, and we just declare whatever we saw.
Now, Heather took that picture. She saw five years of marriage left, and she thought, not on my watch.
She thought, no, whether that's the law of sowing and reaping, and she's seeing the results of
what the relational investment in each other is right now, they're on a bad track,
or whether it was the devil's intent, or whether God was just giving her information. She's like,
hey, based on that information, what's my job? What do I do? These aren't believers. I can't
bring this up. What do I do? I start taking a photo, and every photo, I am working to invest
in connection that drives that declaration away. Create the type of connection that transforms
that situation. She did that. Seven years after that, she gets a call, and it's the gentleman
of this couple, and he says, hey, we have three kids now. Can we have a photo shoot with you?
And she's interested. She's interested in like, I wonder what happened, you know.
Where have you been? What happened? I haven't seen you guys in forever. Last time, you know,
we did photos. It was just you guys. Now you have three kids. What happened? And he proceeds
to tell her, you wouldn't believe it. We were on the road to divorce when we did our photo shoot
with you, but a couple weeks after, everything changed in our life. I got a new job. It shifted
everything. We're more connected than we've ever been in our life, and it was just everything
shifted. Can you prophesy with your camera? Yes, you can. Like, can you shift atmospheres? That's
what we do everywhere we go. I would much rather you be a person that shows up, and every time you
show up, an environment changes, and maybe you didn't even speak a word.
Sometimes we get so enamored with the prophetic word
that we don't become the prophetic person.
One who just, I naturally strengthen people. I naturally encourage people. I don't wake up in
the morning. They're like, okay, Ben, what are we going to do? High five God. Okay, who are we going
to prophesy over? Okay, yeah, Starbucks lady. All right, what's the word? All right, one, two,
three, break. Let's go. Like, I don't do that. I just go through life trying to be the most
encouraging person I can possibly be. I try and be the most loving person I can possibly be.
I can't get everyone, but I can touch a lot of people and maybe it's the Starbucks lady
maybe it's my mechanic and
It's that moment where you see something and God's highlighting something and maybe it's just hey
You're amazing. Thanks so much for serving me today. You do so good at it. I really like my cappuccino today
Oh
Did you know I just needed some encouragement
Because I'm prophetic
Dr. V why don't you you come let me pray over you
In this because this is this is our context. This is a this is how we train. This is how we equip
This is how we do it. And and we don't want you to go away. It's like well, I don't have a prophetic community
I don't have a prophetic church. I'm like you have a family like you have people around you. You have friends start creating it there
Start creating it in the thing. You're well
They don't let me prophesy in church. Okay. Well, you've got a job
Someone asked me the other day. Well, I'm in this church and they they they're there's only the the prophet
I'm like great great. Don't be a prophet. Just be the most encouraging person in the environment
Be the encourager give words of
encouragement and
Pretty soon. Everyone's going to come to you and say oh my goodness. All of your words came to pass
You you're a prophet in our environment
Changes everything just change the semantics change the word. My mom used to train in in school. She was the vice president
principal Bethel Christian School and
And
But she taught a lot of curriculum for public school teachers and and they're like, how do we create an environment like that?
But don't do the religious stuff. Why don't you just create a culture of encouragement?
Okay, how do you encourage each other reach in the box pick out an object now?
How do you encourage that person in front of you with that object?
You're teaching them to prophesy. You're just not calling it prophecy. I
Guess just be smart with it. Dr. V. Save me
All right, you're gonna have a seat this little portion is gonna be short
but I want to tell you just a little bit about myself so, you know who is talking up here as
Venice said my name is Ralph Veenstra
I was born originally in the Netherlands lived there for about 12 years and then our family
Immigrated to Canada where my mom and my siblings still live, but I've been a few other places in the world
I felt called to the ministry when I was already in high school and
As Ben has referred to I'm a pastor in the mainline Reformed Church. That's where my credentials are
I grew up in the Reformed Church because I grew up in the Netherlands and that's one of the main traditions over there
and so obviously
those traditions are not known for the Holy Spirit and prophecy and things like that, but
When I went to Calvin Seminary
That's where actually the Lord started speaking to me and I'm gonna make a long story short
Just so you get a snapshot of who I am
But served five years in the Dominican Republic
With my wife as missionaries there and I basically had two different jobs. I
Equipped pastors and evangelists who were national pastors and evangelists
So that was part of my job. The other part of my job was to teach at the National Evangelical University
So I taught in Spanish preparing students and professionals either for ministry or they were already in ministry
But they wanted to get equipped so that lasted about five years thought I'd be there much longer
But the Lord took me back to North America. I ended up in a
large mainline Reformed Church in Southern California served there as an associate pastor and
Was in charge of pastoral care there as well as a lot of the adult ministries
but what I ended up doing a lot is
just mobilizing people for ministry because that's what I love to do is
You know when people get engaged and they serve they become part of something and they become alive and I just love doing that
so
after 12 years the Lord brought that to an end because I thought I'd be there much longer too and
Then sent me up here and like many others it was only going to be here for a year
But now we're going on 10 years
And
In terms of the team the prophetic team that I'm a part of that
I'm privileged to be a part of because it was never my goal to stay here. It's just that the Lord
open up a way, and I made it clear to me that was my calling right now.
Again, I'm doing a couple of different jobs.
We'll talk about the online platform in just a minute because we really want to resource you.
And you're here, and that's awesome.
We go some places on some of our ministry trips, but we're limited by that, and even more so with COVID.
And so the best thing we can do is make things available online throughout the world.
And that way, not only do you have access, but maybe the places that you go back to, you can introduce others as well.
But also, just over the last couple of years, I've had a real passion for developing people in their prophetic calling.
So some people, they know they have a call to be a prophet.
And some people know they just called to the prophetic, but they don't know exactly what to do with that
or how to channel that or what exactly to focus it on.
And so I've just kind of started experimenting with that this year with some of our third years as well,
the third years in the School of Ministry.
I see a couple of them here today.
And it's just been really fun.
And again, we just move with the Holy Spirit, and he gives us ideas.
We try different things, and then we just kind of refine it.
But that is one of my passions.
I just love to pour into people and resource them.
Because when you're working with adults, you know, you make choices, you make decisions,
but a lot of times you just need somebody to come alongside you or say,
hey, you know, take this class or do this, and this will help you.
And so that's really what I love to do.
And so if we can just pull up the first slide right now.
I've given a couple of slides to the back.
We have an online learning platform, and it's at ecourses.bethelprophetic.com.
If you can't write that down, it doesn't matter.
In your little pamphlet, you have a section that says Stay Connected,
and our website is bethelprophetic.com.
It's right in here.
So if you get to that website, you will just click on the tab called Courses,
and that will take you right there as well.
But basically what you're going to find there, I think we've got about 20 courses right now.
You're going to find Foundations in the Prophetic.
You're going to find our Basic Dream Interpretation class.
Then you're also going to find Advanced Prophetic Courses.
You're going to find Advanced Dream Interpretation.
We have some Prophetic Fitness Exercises.
We used to do a lot of Prophetic Community Chats
where we'd have different people like Donna DaSilva and other prophetic leaders in our environment.
We'd have them come in for an hour interview where Ben would interview them,
and we videotaped that. That's all available.
We also have some classes on Prophetic Intercession.
Some of the seminars that we do like this one today, we've done it several years in the past.
Stewarding Encounters, which usually happens after Open Heavens,
as well as Dream Life, which is coming up again.
We film all of these, and then we put them on our online platform.
If we can go to the next slide.
If you end up signing up, then the way we've made it available to people, there are different options.
You can buy the courses, but that's not actually the best way to go.
The best way to go is to subscribe.
For $14.99 a month or for $149 for the whole year,
you basically have access to everything that we have online.
It's kind of like Netflix.
As long as you subscribe, you have access to everything.
Once you stop subscribing, you don't have access to anything.
As long as you subscribe, you have access to everything that's there,
as well as anything that we develop and then put up during that time.
Then you can simply subscribe to the courses that are there.
That means also we're trying to impart a lot of information today,
and we're not even getting through all of it,
but you can go back to past seminars and get that same information there.
Each year, it's slightly different.
We all have different speakers.
We touch on things in a slightly different format, so all the resources are there.
Also, the courses that people view the most are Foundations in the Prophetic
and the Basic Dream Interpretation because that does lay the foundation.
If you're interested in dream interpretation,
there's a whole bunch of courses in Dream Life that you can take.
If you're more interested in just getting more advanced in the prophetic itself,
we've got Foundations in the Prophetic, Advanced Prophetic,
and then anything else that you want to take.
We just want to make that available to you so that there's resources out there for you
that once you go for BSA, hey, where do I go next, or how do I get started?
There are places for you to get equipped.
who go back to your church or you have others
who are interested, you can point them to a resource.
And sometimes people will say,
well, what do you teach in your course?
And I just tell them, sign up for our course,
you know, watch the course,
and you can go through the material,
and then if you wanna teach it,
we don't, we really don't suggest
that you just watch the videos.
It's like, you take the material as a teacher,
you go through it, you make it your own,
you contextualize it with your own examples,
and if you're in a different country, a different culture,
you know, you just tweak it to the way
your people will understand it and hear it.
But that's the best way to know,
okay, what do you guys teach?
And you know, how can we equip the people in our community?
That's the best way to do it.
If your leaders have any questions about,
oh, what are you gonna be teaching?
Or, you know, you can go through this or show them,
you know, these are some of the foundations that we have.
So basically, this is a huge resource
that we're making available to you.
We've been working on this for the last three, four,
five years, and we just keep adding to it.
But we just want you to know about it
so that you're looking for more resources
that's available to you.
All right, we are just gonna take a very short break
right now, about 10 minutes.
You can go to the restroom, you can get some more coffee,
get something to drink, but then be back promptly
in your seats in 10 minutes,
because we're gonna have the wonderful Lindsay Ryman.
All right, God bless you.
All right.
♪ He's in the way, he's in the way, he's in the way ♪