I like the sound of that.
We're going to head over and some bible numbers
that we got from people watching the broadcast.
Go ahead and tell them why you're mad
about what you're feeling,
and then we're gonna take you back into the studio
with your guys and we'll catch up with you
and you'll get the benefits of that."
So first up, the buffet,
all of our speakers this week and asking them questions
and just gleaning wisdom from them.
It's been so, so fun.
Awesome.
Today we have Bethany Hicks with us.
I am so excited to just chat with you.
It's so fun.
Yay!
I know, it's so exciting.
And your message yesterday was incredible.
Oh good.
It was incredible.
I have to say, I'm sure most of you feel this way too,
but as I was listening to that,
I just felt like this is,
I don't know if there's a more important message
for our generation than knowing our identity.
It is so obvious there's an identity crisis.
It felt so, so timely.
It was just powerful.
It's so good, yeah.
I'm glad you feel that way.
I know a lot of, there's a kind of like a lot of buzzwords
out there about identity and identity.
And I don't know that people always know
what they're talking about, to be honest, you know?
And so one of the things that we've really been
just going after is like, okay, you know,
we all have people trying to give us identity,
but really what matters is who God says we are.
And how do we discover who God says we are?
Like, you know, even as you guys know,
I shared yesterday from like the scriptures,
like I know I'm a child of God.
I know I'm a saint, but what does that actually look like?
How do I actually believe that that's part of my name?
Those are some of my names, but then this is the key.
I feel like, as we talked about yesterday,
it's just the uniqueness.
Like we're not just all this generic,
like God's not just a vanilla God, right?
Like we're not all the same.
We all have the same heritage,
but we all have unique calls within that.
And I think that is, to me, is such a key
for discovering your heavenly identity.
But also I believe it's a powerful equipping tool
to help shift people that just don't know who they are.
Right? I mean, how many people do you know,
even within the church?
Come on, are you guys?
How many people know, like,
how many people know people in the church
that still don't know who they are, right?
And I think that's the beautiful thing is like,
I think on our journey on life, it's actually,
this is what I believe.
Our journey in life is actually discovering
who heaven says you are and living from that place.
Like, and so again, knowing his thoughts towards us,
getting rid of some, unlearning those things
that others have told us, you know?
I mean, we've heard some powerful testimonies
already from that.
It's so true.
I love the story you've been told about your son, Ethan.
I think that's how you said that you told him
you're not strong to be a bully,
but you're strong to be a protector.
Yes.
It's so powerful because you really do start to believe
what you hear other people saying about you, right?
Absolutely.
And it's funny, I so resonated with that.
My mom also used to do the same thing.
She was like fanatic about what our names meant.
And my name, my full name's Alexandra.
And so she would always say,
you are a victorious defender of mankind.
Come on.
You're not just a defender, you're victorious.
But it's something that still so deeply rings true to me
when you hear those things that you can grasp.
Oh, that's who I am.
That's my identity.
And often we're not in environments where we are told
or we have lies that we start to believe about ourself.
Absolutely.
That you kind of shared about yesterday.
Yeah.
So powerful.
There was a guy who came up to me at the end
and his last name is Goodenough
and he was just sharing with me.
He's like, my whole life I was told,
you're barely good enough or not good enough.
Like people would use his last name
and instead of like, hey, you're good enough.
It's like, no, you're not good enough.
And so even just that false name,
even just in what we were doing yesterday
was really healing for him.
And you know, I didn't even mention this yesterday,
but I was thinking about this for you guys too,
as you're equipped, not only with who God has called you
to be, but also taking these tools,
speaking the truth to people around you.
See, this is the thing, like, let's say for example,
you're not saved yet, right?
And I am trying to reach out to you
and you just told me your name is Victorious.
What does your mom declare over you?
Victorious Defender.
So as a friend, let's say you're just walking
and all kinds of things.
I can be like, wow, I just really see
that you are such a Victorious Defender.
Like, and then you look for that in her life.
Like you start.
to call out the treasure.
You don't necessarily have to say,
God says you are a victorious defender.
You know why?
Because I didn't say this yesterday,
but I believe the truth of heavenly identity
would cause something inside
to start resonating with that truth.
And it would start to displace lies.
Like I believe as you just speak that over people,
it'd be like a seed that would go in the heart.
And you know how I think I talked about this
on the first day, guys.
Remember when I was talking about
striking the chord of a guitar
and it would entrain with the piano chord.
Remember you guys, I was talking about that.
It makes the same sound.
So if you are making the sound over someone
that heaven is saying who they are,
I believe something within them,
even if it's buried really deep under all those lies,
it's gonna come to life
and it's gonna begin to start resonating
with the truth of who heaven says they are.
And I believe like as you continue to do that,
it's gonna rise to the surface.
And I believe it could bring a radical transformation.
That's incredible, that's incredible.
I was feeling God on that.
I don't know if anyone else was,
but again, you guys, even just, this is the other thing.
Start declaring who God says you are over yourself, right?
Don't just like think it, declare it
and even write it out, you know?
And actually we're gonna do activations today
when I'm running the activations.
I'm gonna give you some practical tools
to be able to prophesy using your name
or using the names of other people.
They're very biblical, very powerful,
but I'll share with you guys some tools on how to do that
because I really wanna see the body of Christ
come into the fullness of who she was and who she is.
So good, I see Leo and Lauren saying,
I needed to hear it.
So good, I love that.
So good.
So I have a question for you.
Yeah.
I think that, you know,
often in our prophetic environments,
we hear the words or we hear the phrases,
prophetic destiny and your prophetic identity.
Yeah.
Is knowing your prophetic identity
and knowing your prophetic destiny,
one, I guess I have two parts to this question.
Yeah.
Is it the same as knowing your identity?
Because we also hear your identity in Christ,
is that the same thing or is it different?
And then second part of that question is,
is it, do you just know your prophetic identity
all of a sudden?
Is it kind of this encounter you wake up one day
and you, oh, these are the plans I'm gonna have
for the rest of my life?
Or is it kind of unveiled to us
throughout the course of our life?
That's a beautiful and big question.
I love that you just asked that.
I will say that I think a lot of people
are looking to, for their purpose or their destiny
before knowing who they are.
And I think that's why people get really stuck
because they're like,
what am I gonna do for the rest of my life?
And like, that's actually the wrong starting question
because you do from the place that you are, right?
And so, so, so I believe,
I think the prophetic identity and prophetic destiny,
the prophetic being, who does God say you are?
Your heavenly identity.
That's the truest thing about you in the universe.
Come on, we all have other identities
that have been put on us.
So I wouldn't even use identity.
I would say even my heavenly identity
because again, this is who you are.
So like, for example, Gideon,
I mentioned him a little bit yesterday,
but Gideon was hiding in the wine press
and then an angel of the Lord shows up and says,
he says, Oh mighty man of valor, you are a mighty warrior.
Okay, he'd never fought a battle.
He was literally hiding.
What was happening?
Heaven was coming and revealing to him,
this is who you are.
It's not who you will be.
It's who you already are.
And then Gideon's response, his choice was,
do I start to see myself the way heaven sees me
so that I actually can step into that identity
and then start fulfilling my destiny.
And that to me is honestly,
I believe this is why the enemy is so,
he fights against identity so much
because they're intricately connected.
Like that story you shared with my son,
it's like God made him strong to be a defender
of the defenseless and he is living.
So that's who he is.
And now he's flowing from that place into his destiny.
Because that's who God created him to be.
And so it's honestly, it's a journey.
It's a discovery.
It's a beautiful conversation,
but I do believe that there are practical tips,
practical and prophetic tips
that we can learn to discover who God says we are.
We have lots of tools and prophetic company.
I know Bethel does as well.
We have prophetic processing.
That's a huge key.
Deanna has a great book called The Good Fight
that allows you to process your words
and discover within your prophetic words
that you've received.
Oh, this is an identity word.
Like anytime you get a word,
anytime you get a word within your words,
look for identity key phrases.
They would say things like, you are this.
Like, I see you as a pioneer.
I see you as a forerunner.
I see you as beloved son of the Lord.
Okay, those are what?
Those are actually all identity words.
Those are words from heaven,
speaking into who he created you to be.
So I do believe it's absolutely connected.
Our identity in Christ is,
I think that actually speaks even more to our last names,
like I was talking about yesterday.
It's kind of our family name.
It's like who we are, we're children of God,
we're co-heirs with Christ, right?
We're citizens of heaven.
So I feel like that is what that speaks to.
And then the uniqueness of your own personal,
like why you're on the earth today.
I think prophecy and of course,
the prophetic meaning of names
really speaks powerfully to that.
That's really good.
I woke up this morning actually feeling like,
I'm gonna take a risk a little bit.
But I woke up feeling a little bit
like there might be people on this call
that have felt like they are supposed to have it
already all figured out.
Like they're supposed to know because they're prophets
or they're highly prophetic people,
they are supposed to already know their prophetic identity,
their prophetic destiny.
And they feel like they've maybe been behind.
Like there may be late bloomers,
like they haven't got it all figured out yet.
And there's been pressure.
Like I'm supposed to know this.
If that's you, give us a wave, raise your hand.
We're gonna pray for you today.
Yes, okay, see lots of waves.
Great, I love that.
Amazing.
How about you pray for us?
Praying about the-
The pressure falling off.
Oh yeah.
Yes, Lord.
Father, I just actually wanna speak right now
to the lie that you've missed it.
In Jesus name, you have not missed it.
One of the things that I love that our senior leader
from the mission, the church I came from
was that you are the perfect age
for everything that God has called you to do.
And so like right now, I feel like that's even like
some of you feel like that you've missed it
because maybe you had an opportunity in the past.
Maybe you feel disqualified like Peter did
because he felt like he blew it by denying Jesus.
And so he felt like he was disqualified.
I wanna tell you, you are not disqualified.
You are qualified because this is your last name.
You are in Christ.
You are righteous because you are in Christ.
And so you are qualified.
In fact, I just feel like there's something on this.
I want you guys to put your hands on your heart
and I want you to repeat after me.
Say, I am qualified.
I am qualified because I'm in Christ.
It is not about you guys.
It is not about what you did or didn't do.
It is about Jesus Christ and what he has done for you
and you believing who he says you are.
And so Father, right now, God, I just declare right now
that there would be a clarity
to recognize who you say they are, Father God.
I pray, Lord, that there would be even just downloads.
And you know, one of the things I like to do too
is ask people like, hey, what do you see as a gift in me?
What do you experience when you're around me?
What's a good thing?
People you trust, because sometimes
if you're not around a prophetic community
or if it's hard to,
because I know a lot of people that's real
for a lot of people.
One of the ways you could do that
is ask people that you trust and love like,
hey, what are some of the best qualities about me
that you're experiencing?
And people are like, oh, you're always so joyful.
Or you're just, I feel so much peace
when you walk in the room.
Okay, that's part of something that you carry.
It's part of like, you might be a peace bringer
or peacemaker or for, you know,
if you are a joy, a joy bringer, what does that mean?
As an identity, you know, you have authority
to walk into situations of mourning or depression.
And you can be like, I'm in the room.
I'm a joy bringer.
Just my very presence is here.
It's gonna shift and break the atmosphere of depression.
And so again, the next step
to really not just discovering your name,
it's owning it as well.
It is owning who God says you are
and believing who He says you are
and knowing like, hey, I'm the right person for the job.
Right now, I'm showing up.
I love that.
Wow, that is powerful, right?
I'm like, I received that for myself.
I'll take that.
So good.
Well, thank you so much, Bethany,
for joining us this morning.
It has been so fun.
And thank you guys for joining us.
We will be back tomorrow for our last coffee chat.
I hope you have the most wonderful fourth day
of School of the Prophets.
We'll see you around.
Hey guys, it's been so great to be with you.
We'll see you in a few minutes.
you
You
Check-check good morning. Good morning
Good morning. Good morning
We greet you all today. Good morning
Good morning to you and you and you and you and you and you just singing for you this morning
Oh, I love you too whoever said that I do
Thank you
Why don't you look at someone and say it's a good morning
Mmm
Hello Tisa, yes
Good to have you in Reading Tisa you made it all the way here. What a gift
How was community group this morning
You
Know it's so amazing
We have found every year be at School of the Prophets
Be at School of Ministry be at School of Ministry online that it is the group
Sessions where you guys get to gather and connect that are some of the most powerful times of the whole experience
You know, sometimes you think you're coming for a teacher and then you realize I came for my neighbor that lives in Tennessee
Who's touching my life because God is flowing through them and I found someone
You know, have you ever felt like no one else is like me anybody felt like that
Yeah, my whole life and then you meet someone you're like, there's someone else on the planet that gets me anybody
Amen
If that is not a mark of the Prophet, I feel like a lot of prophets often feel like where do I fit?
Right. Amen. You know what you do fit
sometimes sometimes though forerunners a little different than followers, so
It's not because we're actually disconnected sometimes it's because the Lord is taking us somewhere that we get to take people into which is very exciting
Amen
Okay, now that you settled down a bit. I'm gonna make a quick announcement. Is that okay?
So tonight at 6 p.m. Some of my favorite human beings Chris and Kathy Vallotton will be doing a book signing
For their books Kathy wrote a book called the good the God and the and the ugly
This book was written because Chris got up here and preached a bunch of stories wrong. And so Kathy thought no, I'm joking
Chris would share often parts of stories and people would be asking for more and Kathy
Wrote just it's a book just of stories from their family how God moved through their family lessons. They learned it's a wonderful book
And then Chris's book spiritual intelligence. He shared about it already here today both those books
They're doing a book signing. It'll be in the South Lobby, which is that little Lobby on this side
6 p.m. If you'd like them to sign you can go over to the bookstore or to our conference book table
Which is back there. I believe is am I correct? Amen. It is back there
And you can grab a book make sure you do that before the signing. They're not gonna have books at the signing table
So grab a book somewhere in the duration of today and take it to get signed and then
caveat is
That you can get a hardcover
book of
Poverty riches and wealth. I believe it is. Am I correct? I'm doing this off memory. So poverty riches and wealth hardcover for $5
Only for our conference members in person and online
So if you are a conference member and you want to get that book, I feel like that's a relic a hardcover
Poverty riches and wealth that is one to have for the books. I tell you so if you want to get that for five bucks
That's for you to Hallelujah. Amen
Are you guys alive?
Okay, wonderful. You can't I'm like you kind of staring at me for a bit. So I want to make sure Ben gets up here and
and really gets to
Gets to go for it with you guys. So what I'm gonna have you do
I'm trying to figure it out. I've got five minutes
Do you know what can I tell you something once I went to I've done it twice actually
I went to go speak at one of our revival groups
Which is like 60 something people and any time I try to speak I sung
So for an entire hour and a half I sung everything that I was saying
because anytime I try speak I'd feel that I'd feel the anointing dip and so I'd have to be like I was
Again, the angels are in the room, we welcome them.
Hallelujah.
Why don't you put out your hands right now?
Literally, oh, you're doing it with me, okay, so what?
Why don't you stand right now?
Eh, de, de, de, de.
Oh, God, we invite you to come and speak.
Open our eyes, open our ears to hear and see you.
Let our minds be open to the revelation of the spirit.
Stir our spirits for more of you.
Let the tender voice of heaven
whisper the mysteries of the kingdom.
Oh, he reveals the mysteries of the kingdom
to his friends, we're your friends, Jesus.
We love your heart, Jesus, we wanna know,
we wanna know you.
So anoint, Ben, to reveal mysteries.
So touch our hearts to receive mysteries.
Let our friend give us the mysteries.
Yeah, God, we thank you for Ben Armstrong.
We thank you for this mighty man of the spirit.
God, I thank you for his stewardship of this message.
God, we don't come just to receive information,
but we open our hearts to receive an impartation.
For you teach what you know, but you impart what you live.
And God, we thank you.
We're about to receive a lifestyle
of connection and intimacy with you.
And we get to step in through the door
that Ben has created through friendship with you.
We honour this prophet, we honour this prophet
in Jesus' Name, Amen.
Why don't you cheer for Ben?
Thanks, Ben Armstrong.
I'm just gonna adjust this real quick.
Could I get a stool?
Jeez.
The answer is yes before you even ask.
Yeah, that's right, right?
Okay, holy spirit.
Got some testimonies coming in of people healed.
Someone got healed of vertigo last night
with that ear thing.
Yeah, I can't, it's on my phone.
I'll share some more testimonies with you later.
But God's healing people, that's just what he does.
He rocks up in the room, he is healer.
And so when he shows up, people get healed, right?
Great miracles happen when we increase our awareness
of his presence and his goodness.
Holy spirit.
Mahene, atah, shtutaneh, piki.
The person of God is in the room.
So we'll talk today, we'll spend some time talking
on this theme of prophetic reformers.
And I'm gonna take an emphasis on interpretation
because I believe it is a skillset
and it is a mandate that is on us.
And if we want true reformation,
we need to be skilled in interpretation.
Revelations 11, 15, and I believe this is part
of our reformers mandate is that the kingdoms
of this world become the kingdoms of our Lord
and his Christ.
That's reformation.
That's the, your kingdom come, your will be done
on earth as it is in heaven mandate.
That is it.
And you know, in Genesis chapter 40, verse eight,
when the cupbearer and the baker come to Joseph
and they're frustrated because they know they had dreams
that are gonna affect their life.
They know they had a powerful dream
and they're really concerned.
And then they come running to Joseph and say,
Joseph, we had these dreams,
but there's no one to interpret our dreams.
Panic.
I know that sound
because some of you run up to me every day.
Ben, I need someone to interpret my dream.
I know it's from God.
I need help.
Right?
That's normal.
Joseph responds, does not all interpretation belong to God?
Does not all interpretation belong to God?
Now, I want to say this.
It doesn't just say,
does not all dream interpretation belong to God?
So interpretation is a broader theme
than just dream interpretation.
But there is a skillset
that if you will learn dream interpretation,
it will translate into a wisdom for other realms,
other parts of information that are released.
It will change the way you prophesy
because how many of you know,
many times in prophecy, we're prophesying,
but we're seeing, we're getting a revelation.
I saw a purple hippopotamus in a blue river
and a golden eagle picked it up
and dropped it in a yellow river.
You're welcome.
You know, that might work at School of the Prophets.
Oh, I could, I'm tracking with you.
Any place else, they're like,
like that's creeper status.
Like you're just like, well, who is that?
What, what does that mean?
Great, you got a revelation from God,
but without the interpretation of that,
it doesn't actually land or have its intended purpose.
It doesn't land or have its intended effect.
And so there has to be a level of interpretation
that comes into our revelation.
Sometimes it comes with an encounter.
It's not just a prophetic word.
Maybe it's an encounter with God.
Okay, I've got to have some context.
What's God speaking in this?
What's God doing in this encounter?
And what's it unto?
So in prophecy, in interpretation, in dream interpretation,
in dream interpretation, the revelation is the dream.
Right?
In an encounter, the revelation is the encounter.
Sometimes that encounter needs in a vision
that the vision would be the revelation,
but it maybe needs some interpretation.
And then we move on.
If it's a prophetic word, we have the revelation,
the interpretation, and then we get into something
called the declaration.
And I add on that side, on the side of that
is declaration or intercession.
Because sometimes the prophetic words that we receive
aren't for declaration.
They're actually for an intimate exchange with you and God.
And you say, God, what's important to you
I'll now make important to me through intercession.
And intercession transforms me until I become the word,
and then I can reproduce the word.
And the last portion of that would be application.
How do I apply this?
How do I apply this to my life?
See, we don't need just interpreters,
because otherwise Pharaoh and all of Egypt
and all of the known world would have died
if we just had an interpreter in Joseph.
Pharaoh has a revelation.
He has a dream, right?
Seven fat cows, seven lean cows.
The seven lean cows come up out of the Nile,
eat the seven fat cows, and they look even worse.
Well, bummer for you, Pharaoh.
You're gonna have seven years of great harvest
and seven years of famine.
And those seven years of famine are gonna swallow up
all of the seven years of great harvest.
See you later.
I don't want just interpreters in here.
Like if we're gonna be reformers,
we need divine application.
We need someone who takes ownership,
declares the word over the king,
and saves nations, not just a nation,
saves nations of the world by saying,
hey, you know what, Pharaoh?
You know what you should do?
In those seven years of great harvest,
you should store up a fist.
of everything so that when the seven years of famine come,
you don't die.
Pharaoh's like, oh,
that's not wisdom from the earth.
That's wisdom from another realm.
And he recognizes that wisdom
and it changes everything inside of Pharaoh.
And Pharaoh says, you're the one to administer this.
And I'm telling you right now,
we are in a season where kings are dreaming,
where leaders of huge influential places are dreaming
or having encounters, but are there interpreters there
so that the solutions of heaven can be released on earth?
Because some of them, they're getting there
because of their place of authority,
because of their place.
It doesn't matter if they're righteous kings and queens,
righteous leaders.
God has actually appointed them
as leaders over those nations.
And it's our job to get behind them to value them.
This is big.
Well, what about, yeah, but,
you know, what if I don't agree with my leader?
But this was Nebuchadnezzar.
But this was Nebuchadnezzar and this was Pharaoh.
Like, look at Daniel, look at Joseph.
These were some of the wickedest rulers
of the time of that day and age.
Yet we have a Daniel who has an attitude
that transforms everything.
I love, I love his attitude,
the heart posture that he had.
Then Daniel went to Ariok,
who the king had appointed to execute
the wise men of Babylon and said to him,
don't execute the wise men of Babylon.
Take me to the king and I will interpret his dream.
See, Daniel was not doing interpretation
just for his benefit.
He actually cared for those that he was
appointed to lead, for those around him.
He could have been in competition
because a lot of times competition just says,
yeah, kill those guys so I can look awesome.
What makes you look awesome
is when you actually serve everyone else.
Daniel's response in Daniel 2, 27 and 28,
no wise man, enchanter, magician, or diviner
can explain the king this mystery,
but there is a God in heaven who reveals all mysteries.
And listen to this, he has shown you, King Nebuchadnezzar,
what will happen in the days to come.
Your dream and the vision that passed through your mind
while you were lying on your bed,
this is so that you'd know what God has.
He valued the king in such a way
that when he brought interpretation,
and I wanna highlight this,
Nebuchadnezzar said to the wise men and enchanters,
you tell me my dream and the interpretation.
And the wise men and the magician said,
hey, no, no, no, King, you tell us the dream
and we'll tell you what it means.
I wanna tell you, I think that Nebuchadnezzar said,
no, you tell me the dream and the interpretation
because I'm so tired of me telling you my dream
and you manipulating it to mean whatever it wants
for your benefit.
He's like, we're not doing that anymore.
You're not gonna manipulate me.
I'm so tired of it all being about you
and not being about the benefit of our nation.
Come on, this is so important.
This is so important
because the posture of our heart
actually opens us up to more accurate interpretation.
And this is a realm that I'm so passionate about.
I wish, well, I don't wish,
we already have a school for it.
So, Dream Life School of Interpretation,
which is in March,
and you'll hear more about that tomorrow,
but we're gonna scratch and sniff something today
that is gonna make your appetite want more and more.
And that is what School of the Prophets is.
This isn't like the landing spot.
This is one step onto a lifetime of pursuit of God.
in many different areas and hopefully this gets you
so excited and passionate.
I don't want just one Joseph or Daniel running around.
Listen, I get tired of interpreting all the time.
Interpreting encounters, interpreting prophetic words,
interpreting patterns, signs, trends, all this stuff,
interpreting dreams.
I don't wanna be the only one doing it.
What if we had a whole generation?
I believe God's raising up a Joseph and Daniel generation
right now of interpreters, those who are 10 times wiser
than everyone else out there and they have the ability
to interpret dreams and visions.
The ability to do that.
And I believe we are gonna be 10 times wiser.
Let me just talk to that thing we talked about
about psychology and I know we were talking
about hypnotism but here's a difficulty in psychology.
In traditional psychology, let me give you the definition
of traditional psychology.
It is the scientific study of the mind and behavior.
Psychology includes the study of conscious
and unconscious phenomena including feelings and thoughts.
What's missing?
That's right.
It's missing a whole realm which is the spiritual realm.
And as long as we do that and we use Jungian
or Freudian style of interpretation,
it actually relegates only to a portion of wisdom
and it doesn't actually bring the full wisdom.
If God is not included in it, we are missing something.
And that's the scary part that Chris and Dano
are talking about is we gotta be careful
but God is raising up his psychologist right now.
I'm telling you, there are people who are so passionate
about this and so passionate about God
and bridging the spiritual and the physical world
rather than trying to say, oh, you had some spiritual thought
you thought it was spiritual.
Oh no, no, that's just in your brain, you're crazy.
No, you're actually crazy if you don't acknowledge
the spirit realm.
It's so vitally important.
It's impossible.
All interpretation belongs to God.
God is the revealer of mysteries.
And I believe Chris saw a black panther walk through here
last night and I believe a portion of that
is actually connected to God raising up mystics again.
Amen.
Dano gave a definition about mysteries
and it would have been secrets in the Old Testament
and then translated mysteries in the New Testament.
But those who are passionate about the mysteries of God,
about the mysteries of God, and let me just say this.
I'm passionate about the mysteries of God.
However, my passion for the mysteries of God
are only because I'm actually passionate about God.
My definition of mystics is this,
one who through intimacy with God
reveals the secrets of God.
That's good.
It's through my intimacy with God
that I learn more about him.
And he is the mysterious one.
He comes shrouded in the clouds.
Why?
Because it's an invitation to intimacy.
And as I get intimate with him, I learn more about him.
It's like my wife, Heather.
Heather, will you wave to everyone?
This is my baby.
Heather Armstrong.
My wife, Heather, I know things about her.
No one else knows.
Why?
Because we're intimate with one another.
The more time I spend with her,
the more I actually think like her.
The more that when I'm in a situation
and someone asks me a question,
I'm not thinking just with the mind of Ben Armstrong.
I'm also thinking with the mind of Heather Armstrong.
And I'm also thinking with the mind of Christ.
So I have multiple conversations going on in my head
at any given time.
I love Steve Backlin.
He says, you're crazy if you don't talk to yourself.
And you're also crazy if you don't talk to your wife
in that conversation as well.
So we're talking about interpretation and that intimacy with God.
There is a place of intimacy that also makes you think like God.
Can you get that type of relationship with God?
I think so, because Samuel had it.
He had that kind of relationship and that kind of trust that it said that of Samuel,
God let none of Samuel's words fall to the ground without accomplishing them.
What does that mean?
When Samuel spoke, God was like, oh, that sounds like my voice.
I would say something like that.
I would do something like that.
We're going to do that, because that's actually in my heart.
You know me that intimately.
I'm going to follow that thing.
And I want us to grow in that level of intimacy with him and connection with him.
And as we do, it's going to be less about, oh, let me map out your dream and let me figure
out the interpretation.
No, you'll think like God thinks.
Here's the deal.
I do a whole course on dream interpretation.
We give you a different style of interpreting dreams and all this stuff, and you can go
through that and you can practice that.
But when it comes to dream interpretation for me, I don't whiteboard my dreams.
I don't white paper your dream and try and figure it out.
It's just, I think like God.
Now, I'm not trying to brag.
My wife says I have a gift on my life, which, you know, you want to trust your wife.
Amen.
She says I have a gift, which I do, but I also have a skill that I've learned through
practice and repetition.
I do it so much that it's second nature.
I do it so much that in a dream, I'm interpreting my dream.
How do you do that?
Because I train my subconscious mind through my conscious mind.
I'm training myself.
There are times where I have dreams and I go to interpret the dream, but God is standing
right next to me in the dream as I'm watching myself do the dream.
We're standing outside and he's interpreting the dream for me.
All interpretation belongs to God.
Some years ago, a prophet emailed me a dream and said, hey, could you interpret my dream?
And I looked at the dream and instantly I knew 95% of that dream.
I was like, yeah, yeah, I know that.
And there was one component of the dream, one symbol in the dream that wasn't literal.
It was symbolic.
And I was like, okay, what is the meaning of this?
And I was racking my brain.
I couldn't figure it out.
Just couldn't figure it out.
And I was so frustrated and that night I lay on my bed and I'm like, Lord, I need wisdom.
I need your help with this one.
I really believe God was hiding it from me.
Because there is a point where you think you can get really good at something and do it
independent of God.
And then you just rely on your skill, not your relationship.
And then you forget the voice.
And I can't do that without the voice.
So I'm sitting there laying on my bed and I'm like, God, I need your voice.
I need your wisdom because my wisdom is lacking.
And not five minutes later, my wife walks into the room and did something she had never
done in her marriage.
She says, I feel like I need to pray over you right now that you would, that God would
give you wisdom in a dream tonight.
She didn't know what I was racking my brain about.
I hadn't told her about it.
She lays her hands on me, prays over me, wisdom in a dream, and I drop into a sleep.
I go to sleep and in the dream, I get the interpretation of this other person's dream.
And I'm like, so in the dream, I'm laying face to face with this prophet and his wife.
And I said, well, the dream means this.
And I begin to lay out the dream.
And then I said, or it could mean, and the wife says, stop.
That's what the dream means.
It was a beautiful moment.
It reminds me of Daniel, remember, with Nebuchadnezzar's dream.
In a vision in the night, he got the dream and the interpretation.
And I love those moments, but we cannot independently get so good at something.
And that's what secular dream interpretation does.
I can gain a skill set apart from God.
Yeah, guess what?
does, it pollutes the interpretation. It's man's wisdom, but we're not looking
for a man's wisdom. We're looking for God's wisdom. Let's look at someone's
life real quick. Jeremiah. Jeremiah chapter 1 verses 4 through 15, and I'm
gonna read all this because I think it's important. The Word of Lord came to me
saying, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set
you apart. I appointed you as a prophet to the nations. Alas, sovereign Lord, I
said, I do not know how to speak. I am too young. Let's throw in, I am too young or
I am too old. Yeah, but the Lord said to me, do not say that. Don't say you're too
young. You must go to everyone I send you to and say whatever I command you. Do not
be afraid of them, for I am with you and I will rescue you, declares the Lord. Then
the Lord reached out his hand. He touched my mouth and said to me, I have put my
words in your mouth. See, today I appoint you over nations and kingdoms to uproot,
tear down, to destroy and overthrow, to build and to plant. The Word of the Lord
came to me. What do you see, Jeremiah? I see the branch of an almond tree, I
replied. The Lord said, you have seen correctly, for I am watching to see that
my word is fulfilled. You know what's unique here? This is the first time I see
in the Bible a play on words. Because almond branch in the Hebrew language
sounds like watching. And God used a play on words to actually interpret
something that was going on. You may have a dream and destiny, your friend destiny
shows up in your dream and you're hanging out with destiny and doing all kinds of things
with destiny. And maybe, just maybe, your friend isn't your real friend destiny. Maybe
God's talking about your destiny. Chris Vallotton shows up in so many people's dreams and they
all come to me and say, hey, could you introduce me to Chris Vallotton? Because I was friends
with Chris Vallotton in my dream. And I was at his house and I saw pictures of it. It
was the same house. So I know I'm supposed to be friends with him. No, maybe you're supposed
to be friends with the prophetic. We want to be careful that we don't always make things
literal that are actually symbolic. An interpretation is real important. And so we see this interpretation
same thing and God's training Jeremiah. What do you see? I see an almond tree. I replied
and the Lord said, you have seen correctly for I'm watching to see that my word is fulfilled.
The word of the Lord came to me again. What do you see? I see a pot boiling. That is boiling.
I answered. It is tilting towards us from the north. The Lord said, from the north disaster
will be poured out on all who live in the land. And I am about to summon all the peoples
of the northern kingdom, declares the Lord. And he goes on from there. Let me just tell
you, interpretation here was connected to the voice. It's not separate from the voice.
I've got to have the voice of God. If I'm interpreting, oh, I got a pain in my neck.
God must want to heal necks. Yeah, unless he doesn't want to heal necks. Are you listening
to the voice? Or are you just listening to experience? Oh, I saw Chris do that. He felt
a pain in his neck. So obviously it's a word of knowledge for healing until it's not. Some
years ago I was with a group and some good friends of ours, Young and Hannah Kim and
Young and Hannah are some great friends. They cook really well. And they usually like
to invite us over for dinner when any of their friends or pastors were in town. And I always
knew it was a little bit of a bribe. It was a little bit of like, hey, if I can get Ben
and Heather over here and I feed them, then they'll prophesy over my friends. So I always
knew, okay, Young and Hannah want us to prophesy over their friends. Right, baby? And so, so
we.
We rock up to the house and we get there and we finish our meal and it's amazing, it's so good.
And all of a sudden I get pain in three vertebrae in my neck.
And I'm having an internal conversation, not an external conversation.
Right away I said, oh God, does one of them have a problem with their neck?
Do you want to heal their neck?
And he said, no.
Okay, well what is that?
He says, they don't have support as the head of the church.
And there's three broken spots there and I'm actually restoring and bringing
three new couples to support them as the head of the church.
Okay, okay.
So I said, okay, hey, do you guys feel supported as the leaders of the church?
No, we haven't felt supported for a long time.
I said, I see three new couples who are going to come in and support you.
They're like, they just moved here, we know exactly who they are.
It affirmed and confirmed.
And then all of a sudden I felt instant pain in my kidneys.
And I'm like, oh, do they have kidney problems?
Like what's going on?
Internal conversation.
God, what is this?
And God said, there's no one to filter out wrong wisdom in their church.
And I'm raising up two new kidneys for them.
I'm raising up two new people to filter toxins from the body.
And I shared that and they're like, we know exactly who those two are.
What did it do?
It confirmed and affirmed something that they thought,
they didn't know exactly how they fit,
but it actually put a place for those people.
But we gotta be careful.
Like we're receiving information all the time.
And if we're not careful, we just think it's this.
The old phrase, hey, if you hear a negative word over someone,
you see the dirt in someone's life.
Just prophesy the opposite.
That is, I get it.
Prophesy the opposite if God's not saying anything or just don't say anything.
Seriously, we're not looking for dirt.
And the dirt isn't always an indicator of what God is doing.
It's an indicator of the devil's response to what God is doing
because the devil cannot create.
So now I've got to figure out, well, God, what are you releasing?
Yeah, well, there's a spirit of suicide in the room.
I could feel it.
Let's just go after suicide.
Yeah, you could do that.
And then, oh, we're just gonna release life because that's the opposite.
Maybe, but maybe God's releasing purpose.
So I need to gear in on what God's releasing.
And then I release that.
And that actually defeats the spirit of suicide
without me even talking about the spirit of suicide.
And I don't want to get too much into spiritual warfare,
but wrong interpretation actually gets us fighting with the wrong kingdom.
And it's the nature of distraction.
The enemy loves to distract us.
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil by doing good.
My job is to figure out what God is creating and releasing.
That's what prophets do when they come into the room.
We're interpreting all the time.
What's going on?
Devil's doing something.
Okay, yeah, of course.
High five.
Yep, you saw the dirt.
Demonic kingdom, pride filled.
Look at me, look at me, look at what I'm doing.
Get distracted, fight me.
No, God, what are you doing?
See, accurate interpretation always lies with God.
It always points his attention, affection towards God.
I have to have that continually.
I walk in a room and I'm saying, God, what are you doing?
Not, what's going on in the room?
There's a spirit of suspicion that has crept into the prophetic for a long time.
I'm not a devil hunter.
I'm a kingdom establisher.
That's reformation.
The reformation that we're looking for is actually interpreting what God's doing in a moment.
It's transforming people.
Dano did it with the businessman.
Let me, I'm not going to prophesy over you.
Let me interpret one of your experiences.
He introduced him to God.
Some years ago, we had a family.
a pre-believing family come to our house.
And they wanted to share with us
half of the communion elements.
A bottle of wine.
They're halfway there.
And the lady, we're having a conversation
and out of the blue she says,
I had a crazy dream last night.
I said, oh, do you have dreams often?
Yes, I do.
Do you ever feel like they mean something?
Could they mean something?
I don't know.
I said, do you ever have things
where you think of something and then it happens?
Yeah.
I said, you might have a prophetic gift.
What's that?
Well, if you were one of my students
in the school of ministry,
I'd tell you about being able to recognize the future
and I'd tell you about dreams and dream interpretation.
And if you were one of my students, I'd say,
yeah, your dream could mean something.
Well, can I tell you my dream?
Sure, tell me your dream.
Well, I had this dream that I was sitting there
with a pet rat and this pet rat had braces on its teeth.
And she said, I didn't want this pet rat.
And I kept trying to give it away.
No one would take the pet rat.
I tried to give it to my sister.
And she's like, no, I'm not taking that thing.
And I'm left with this pet rat.
Does that mean something?
I said, well, if you were one of my students,
I would say, yeah, that potentially means something.
She's inquiring, what am I doing?
I'm allowing her to receive something without telling her,
hey, this is what it means.
Here's what's going on.
I said, what do rats do?
Well, they eat things.
Like, obviously the rat was negative in this dream
because she's trying to get rid of it.
She didn't like it.
So it's not a positive thing.
It's not a positive pet rat.
When you think of rats, you think of disease.
You think of devouring food, getting into the food
and spoiling the whole thing.
I said, I have a question.
Have you ever had moments in your life
where whenever you get a good thing,
it seems like something breaks down,
something steals that away.
You just get money and then a car breaks down.
And she's like, all the time.
Like, yeah.
Well, I said, is this something
that has potentially been normal
in your family for a long time?
Because she was trying to get rid of the rat to the family.
And she says, yeah.
I mean, for as long as I can remember,
this type of stuff has always happened to our family.
And I said, if you were one of our students
in School of Supernatural Ministry,
I'd say, potentially,
there's something called generational curses.
Have you ever heard of those?
No, what's that?
Said, well, you know, scripture says
the sins of the father in the Old Testament
will be visited on the son up to the fourth generation.
But it also prophesies in Old Testament
that if the father is unrighteous and the son is righteous,
he won't have to pay for the sins of the father.
So if we think generational curses
have a right to be there, we empower them to be there.
They actually don't have a right to be there.
Because Christ came to redeem us from the curse of the law,
for it is written,
cursed is any man who hangs from the tree, right?
So he became the curse for us
so we didn't have to pay for generational curses.
But if I think, oh, well, grandpa had it,
grandma had it, dad had it,
it's just what our family has to deal with.
It's my cross I need to bear,
so I burden, it's just what we have to deal with.
No, you don't have to deal with that.
You don't actually have to.
Now, it's a familiar spirit at that point
when it comes to you and says,
hey, let's party like our family's partied, right?
Your family partnered with this for their whole life,
why don't we partner with this?
If we don't know we can say no to that,
then a familiar spirit becomes a generational spirit.
And I tell her about this and I said,
but you know, I would tell her.
our students that Jesus Christ came and he paid a price
so we don't have to have those.
Well, how do I get rid of the generational spirit?
I said, well, we just, I would tell our students,
you just break agreements with that lie.
That, see, you thought the best you could do
with that rat, the devouring spirit,
was to put braces on it.
I'll just try and control it.
I said, are you ever frustrated
because this has never happened to your sister?
She's like, yeah, it is not fair.
Yeah, because your sister never partnered with that spirit.
She actually chose not to do that.
So if you were one of my students,
I'd lead you through a prayer and we'd get rid of that
and then we'd ask God for the truth.
And we, and she's like, okay, let's do that.
I'm like, well, I would have them pray a prayer like this.
And if you feel comfortable with that,
why don't you just pray that prayer?
Well, this lady gets incredible breakthrough,
incredible breakthrough, all from a dream.
Dreams are one of the most evangelistic tools possible
to introduce people to the kingdom of God.
If you look at the patterns throughout scripture,
it happening all the time, throughout scriptures.
When Jesus rocks up on the scene,
when Jesus wants to do something incredible,
it's usually marked with dreams and visions,
some kind of prophetic happening.
And if we're not paying attention,
we miss out on the ability to win people to God.
And I'm not like, oh, I'm trying to win you to God.
Look at the way that Daniel functioned with Darius.
Oh, King, I wish you would live forever.
Hey, I'm gonna do all these things.
And it's always for the benefit of the other.
And every time the King would come back,
give Daniel gifts and worship the God of heaven.
Darius actually said, hey, everyone,
you should revere the God of Daniel.
This is the true God of heaven.
This is important, pay attention.
This is amazing, all from a dream.
Here's what I find about dreams
that are vitally important to us,
is dreams get behind people's defenses.
A prophetic word, it originates from God, yes,
but I am the mediator in between,
it comes through me to another person.
And especially in non-believers or pre-believers,
there can be a certain level of suspicion of that source.
But when they received it themselves, the revelation,
it does something inside you.
And science says this, science says your brain
doesn't know the difference between a dream and real life.
The same chemicals are released in your brain
that actually get you so emotionally attached
sometimes to dreams.
It's like, I know this is important.
Nebuchadnezzar knew it was important.
This is important.
Pharaoh knew it was important.
And because of that, when the right interpretation came,
they weren't gonna argue it.
It was like, yeah, this is totally God.
It is such a powerful tool to introduce people to God.
Absolutely.
So I'm training myself through practice and repetition.
I'm doing this on a regular time.
And you know, what's amazing is we as prophets, this team,
we're actually being generous with the gifts,
and the gifts of the Holy Spirit and the gifts of Christ
that are on our life.
And we're being generous and we've practiced them.
And there is not just,
you're not just getting knowledge here,
you're getting true wisdom.
Wisdom is knowledge and the ability to apply it.
See, we're not looking for prophets who have knowledge.
We're looking for reformer prophets.
We need knowledge and the ability to apply that knowledge,
that information.
And so there is an impartation that's happening
because we've practiced something over time
and it cracks something open to you,
just like in 2 Kings 6, verse 17.
Elisha prays,
open the eyes of my servant so that he may see.
Then the Lord opens the servant's eyes.
He looked and he saw that the horses and chariots
around there, it was filled.
And there was more for them than against them.
It may look like you're surrounded,
but I'm surrounded by him.
That's what that song's talking about.
And there is something that happens
when prophets come together and release sight.
We release an anointing.
for you to see realms, step into realms, open up realms
that you've never been maybe familiar with.
That's why I love the languages of God,
all the myriad of the ways that He speaks.
And now, if I'm a good interpreter,
I'm able to translate those languages.
What's God really saying?
What's He saying in creation?
He's saying, check me out.
All of me is in this.
All of me is in the person in front of you.
Do you see me?
You don't see me?
Keep looking.
Go further.
I'm a little excited, sorry.
Let me speak on a few practicals of interpretation
that we apply to dream interpretation
that are vital to all of us.
And if you get really good at that, you get skilled there,
then interpretation trickles into all the other areas.
This is what Lindsay does
with the prophetic reports all the time.
They compile all this stuff
and they use the gift of interpretation
to actually see strategies, see patterns and trends,
see the overarching language of God, not just a word,
but a whole paragraph, a whole phrase of what God's saying.
We're not just looking for a word,
we're looking for what God is doing.
And we start doing connect the dots prophetic
and we start doing it, it's amazing.
There's four main sources of dreams.
Four main sources of dreams.
Those four main, now, remember we're triune beings, right?
We're body, soul and spirit.
Anyone, Chris agrees?
Good, he reads the Bible.
Yeah, we're made in the image of God.
We are triune beings.
We are body, soul and spirit.
And so as triune beings,
we receive information in those three realms.
But Ben, you said there's four.
Yeah, there's body dreams, soul-based dreams
and then there's spiritual dreams.
And spiritual dreams have two components.
There's the kingdom realm and the demonic realm.
So there's God dreams and demonic dreams.
Now, here's what a lot of people try and do.
Okay, I wanna, oh, that was a God dream.
Oh, that was a demonic dream.
Oh, that was a body dream.
Oh, that's just soul-based dream.
No, many times we're receiving information
on all of those levels in one dream, in one dream.
My daughters come running in the room in the morning
because we've actually created
a regular thing around interpretation
and the wisdom on my children is very high
because they've been interpreters from childhood.
We prayed over their dreams and then we woke up
and I never interpreted their dreams.
I asked questions so that they could learn
the language of interpretation.
This is vital.
And so my daughters will run in the room like,
Dad, I had a dream last night.
I had a God dream.
Well, that part was soul-based.
That over here, that was just from my body
because remember, I stubbed my toe the other day.
They are aware.
Can I say this?
I'm gonna say it.
Nevermind, I'm not asking your permission.
I'm gonna say something.
That's a generality, I know that.
Sometimes prophets
are the most unaware group of people in the room.
And they think they're the most aware.
Being aware of only one realm
is incongruent with the way God created us.
I wanna be healthy body, soul, and spirit all the way.
And when we are, we become the most stabilizing force
for the church and for the kingdom of God.
But for a long time, we've been known as unstable.
Prophets don't show up on time.
Well, I was in the third heaven fighting
and it was awesome.
I got a message from God and I went and fought this angel
in the second heaven.
And then it was 21 minutes and I fought
and so sorry, I'm late.
I'm like.
So why didn't you leave 21 minutes earlier?
Because if you know the future.
We tell our teams, hey, awesome, you can get a word
from God, can you show up on time?
You can get a word from God, how do you treat your roommate?
They will know I am his disciple by my powerful words.
Now they know we're his disciple by our love for one another.
If you want people to listen to your words,
increase in your love.
If you wanna increase in interpretation,
increase in your love.
That's the filter everything should go through.
So four main sources, body, soul, and spirit.
And then there's four lenses of interpretation
when it comes to at least dream interpretation
and I see the crossover.
Number one, Holy Spirit, right?
Does not all interpretation belong to God?
There is a God in heaven, the revealer of all mysteries.
Like the interpretation and wisdom belongs to God.
So number one filter, Holy Spirit.
I've got to have Holy Spirit as part
of that interpreting filter
and it is the number one primary one.
Number two, what is the emotion of the dream,
the encounter, even the prophetic word?
I see too many prophets matching their own particular style
of emotion and they give the same word all the time.
Some of you are, oh, I'm just a weeping prophet.
Oh, okay, it's okay, it's not wrong.
God loves your flavor, he loves your style,
but sometimes that can be a hindrance
to what God's actually saying
because I'm so distracted by your manifestation,
I can't actually hear your words.
If there is emotion in the word,
then part of delivering the word
is to match the emotion of God.
I wanna match his tone, I wanna match what God's doing,
I wanna match his heart.
That's why knowing him and being aware,
I don't just give words all the time.
This is so important.
So emotion is a big lens that we use for interpretation.
Let's just do a practice.
Color green.
If there's a negative emotion,
what could the color green mean?
Hospital?
Why do you say hospital, Haley Braun?
Okay, so this is cool
because this is another lens of interpretation.
So the next two lenses of interpretation
are the dreamer or the receivers' own life experience
and cultural experience.
And if we don't take those into account,
if we're just like, oh, green means this every time,
Lord of the dance.
No, it doesn't.
That's not how it works.
That's not how interpretation works.
So the receivers, their own life experience,
because God speaks the receiver's language.
He knows your experience and he's gonna speak in ways
that you would more readily understand.
So my first check is, hey, what does that mean to you?
People come to me all the time.
Hey, interpret my dream,
but I'm not gonna tell you anything I've gotten.
I'm like, yeah, I don't do that.
I'm sorry, I don't do that.
Well, why not?
I wanna see if yours is accurate.
No, you wanna see if yours is accurate.
You're afraid that what you got might potentially be wrong
and you're hoping that what I say lines up with your hopes,
which may mean it's soul-based, may not,
but don't do that.
Why?
Because I'm gonna go, God gave you it first.
And I trust the wisdom on your life.
I trust those intuition.
I'm looking for the Holy Spirit aha moments in that
to get that accurately.
If it doesn't mean anything to you,
then I get to bring the interpreter's life experience,
the interpreter's own cultural experience.
So Haley said something that she grew up with
and is recognized, okay, that's her interpretation.
What else?
On a negative with the color green.
Okay, envy, because we say this thing green with envy,
at least in the United States of America.
What about, could it?
be anger?
I don't know.
The Hulk, that's right.
Okay, that's cultural.
Not everyone has seen the movie Hulk,
but I've seen the movie Hulk,
and so some, or maybe it be the Grinch.
Or maybe it's gangrene.
Maybe it's jealousy, of course.
But what if it's positive?
Life, prosperity.
Why do you say prosperity?
Green money.
Okay, that's cultural.
Because not everyone's money is green.
Right?
So this is why I want to challenge you.
Great, I'm great with you having your good friend Google
to look up the meaning of something.
I'm great with you having biblical encyclopedias
of signs and symbols.
I'm great with you having all of the dream books
that are out there,
but mine that's coming out soon
is actually doesn't have this is what it means.
We have a friend who just got so excited
about dream interpretation because I do it all the time.
She went out and bought a book because mine's not out yet,
and she's like, oh, I know what this means.
Let's interpret your dreams.
Well, let me look it up, okay?
Socks mean this.
Feet mean this.
This is what that means.
There's no relationship with God there.
Amen.
There's no honoring the emotion of the dream.
It's just means this every time.
That is not interpretation.
It's trying to superimpose information on a situation.
And we can lead so many people astray.
And I want to be able to accurately do this.
And a lot of times, well,
I get this too in dream interpretation.
Many times, well, that doesn't resonate with my spirit.
What they're saying is, oh, that ruffles my feathers.
What that says is I don't like your interpretation.
That is confronting me.
And God would never do that
because I don't feel peace with that.
No.
No, you feel confrontation.
There's no condemnation in it.
Because even if your dream or the encounter exposes an issue,
okay, this exposes an issue.
Okay, but God, what did you release?
God, what am I supposed to be partnering with?
This is important.
Because I, and what's crazy is God,
if you'll steward this well in your life,
God will start giving you dreams of people
before you meet them.
Because He can trust you with them.
I've had it happen multiple times
where I meet a person in a dream
and then I meet the person in real life.
And I know all kinds of prophetic details about their life.
I know words of knowledge are released in the dream
and I get information about that.
And then I get information about their future as well.
It's beautiful.
But there is a level of stewardship on our dreams
that is on interpretation that is so vital and so important.
Let me give you an example of it.
Can I give you an example?
I was in Austria.
This is probably 12 or 13 years ago doing a conference.
And I was asleep and I went into a dream.
And in the dream, I'm in this great like Austrian meadow.
It's beautiful.
And it's set up for this giant banquet.
And over here, someone's setting up a piano for worship.
And then up at the top of the field
was a group of Japanese pastors.
And how many are from Japan here?
I met a couple of Japanese pastors the other day
that were in at least for a day, maybe some online.
But we're over here, someone's pointing.
Okay, right here, come on.
God bless Japan.
And there's a group of Japanese pastors
at the top of the hill.
And someone comes down and says,
Ben, they wanna meet you.
And so I walk up the hill to meet these pastors.
And this head pastor comes up to me, Japanese pastor.
And he says, hi, my name's C. Peter Wagner.
Now, I haven't studied C. Peter Wagner
at the time very much, but I knew he wasn't Japanese.
So this is like, dreams are weird like that, right?
And so C. Peter Wagner, and he looks at me,
introduces himself, and he hugs me.
And when he gives me a hug, it felt like my father.
Same scruff of my father's beard on his face,
like on my face.
And I felt so like, you know that embrace of a good father?
Some of you don't,
but it's like you have a good father, God.
And that embrace is so beautiful.
It's so protective.
It's so identity releasing.
It's the,
dad, I felt that.
And then he pulls away and looks at me
and starts singing a nursery rhyme.
And it gets to that point, ashes, ashes, we all fall down.
And he falls on the ground laughing hysterically.
And I look at him and I fall on the ground with him
and start laughing with him.
And I wake up.
I'm like, what in the wide, wide world of sports
is going on, right?
What is going on here?
This is crazy.
And so I'm going through this and I said,
God, what does C. Peter Wagner have to do with Japan?
I don't know.
So I get on my good friend Google and I search it up.
And in the late eighties,
C. Peter Wagner released a prophetic word
that 10 million souls would be saved in the nineties
in Japan.
It never happened.
It was one of C. Peter Wagner's huge frustrations
in his life, because I've talked to friends of his.
Well, I said, God, why are you showing me this?
He said, it was a right word.
I wanted that to happen.
But people saw him as a teacher, not as a prophet.
So they sat back and said, we'll see.
Rather than partnering with the word through intercession,
they never stewarded that, but it's still in my heart.
Ben, will you steward that?
So I went to intercession because I, listen,
I had no invites to Japan.
Few years of prayer and intercession over Japan
and 10 million soul harvest.
I get invited to Korea and I'm in Korea and guess what?
At the C. Peter Wagner Learning Institute,
doing a training in the prophetic.
And I share it with a bunch of crazy Koreans.
And I say, hey, let's pray into this, this revival.
And if you know the history of Korea and Japan,
there's not a great history there,
but you reap whatever you sow.
And I said to the Koreans,
how many of you want revival in your nation?
And all of them are screaming, yelling, I want that.
And I said, okay, well, we're going to pray for it
for another nation because you reap what you sow.
Good measure, press down, shaken together, running over.
Okay, so we begin to pray.
And I thought I knew what intercession was.
I don't, I don't.
Koreans are absolutely crazy.
Like they went to a whole nother level.
I thought we were going to pray
for two or three minutes over Japan.
It turned into like an hour and a half crazy prayer service.
Kim Koch was there.
Naomi, I think was there.
It was like amazing.
And so we pray into it.
So I'm still not in Japan.
Fast forward three years after that,
going and going multiple times and praying into Japan.
And now I'm inviting larger groups to pray into this.
This is stewardship.
This is reformation.
It takes a journey to get to this.
And so we're going after it.
And as we're going after it,
I'm like, okay, God.
And finally, three years later, I have another dream.
And in the dream, I meet a man in like this boardroom.
And he says, hi, I'm the prime minister of Japan.
Will you intercede for me?
I said, yeah.
And he took me into this boardroom
and all across the table in the boardroom
was all of these prophetic words from children.
Now I begin to realize that first dream
was all about the restoration of the hearts
of the fathers to the children
and the children to the fathers.
Remember the hug of the pastor.
Something was lost in the war
that a whole generation lost their fathers in Japan.
It was a fatherless generation due to war.
And God was restoring the hearts of the fathers
to the sons and sons of the father.
And that is a key to the revival in Japan.
So that's what we've been praying into,
the restoration of this.
And that's what happens when the prophets show up,
the restoration of a relationship.
So I'm in this boardroom.
And I wake up and I'm like,
I wonder what the prime minister of Japan looks like.
I've been praying for Japan.
I probably should know this.
So I look it up and the guy who showed up in my dream
was the prime minister at the time, Shinzo Abe,
who just was assassinated.
And I've been praying for this man specifically for years.
Who knows if God's not raising up prophets,
you in that secret place.
Maybe you're not on stage.
Maybe you're in your prayer closet
and someone's life depends on your prayers.
And we're at that place.
And some years after that dream with Shinzo Abe,
I now get an invitation to Japan.
And when we land in Japan, Kim, you were there.
When I landed in Japan, they said,
hey, could you go to a lunch?
We've got a bunch of people
who would be the equivalent of Congress
in the United States of America.
We've got a dozen of them.
We want you to pray and prophesy over them.
So I go and pray and prophesy over them.
It was a hundred year anniversary
of a revival that broke out in Japan.
We landed on the day of the hundred year anniversary.
Not just that, that same week was the inauguration
or coronation of the new emperor of Japan.
We are landing in that time.
It was such a powerful, amazing trip.
Now I'm getting the ability to influence that place.
Why?
Because I've got so many years of investment praying into
and my heart for a nation has come through me saying,
God, what's important to you,
I'll make important to you through prayer and intercession.
See, interpretation is really important for nations.
You may never actually get invited there,
but you may be shifting the nation through your prayer.
And I'll tell you this,
you can be an intercessor and not be a prophet,
but it is super, I have a concern that if you're a prophet
and you don't intercede,
you're not actually fully walking in your office.
We have to be intercessors because your words are powerful,
whether we're declaring them in public
or we're declaring them in heavenly realms
to principalities and powers.
We're establishing and it's vital and important.
Let me pray over you guys.
There's a bunch of things I wanted to get to,
but we got to a few of them.
Scratch and sniff.
There's more meals to come.
This is rich food.
Stand to your feet
because I'd rather you stretch a little bit too.
God, we wanna be so intimate with you
that we think like you.
God, that it's not this try thing, it's this be thing.
That we're such close friends of you,
we know what the master's doing.
And you share with us that information
and we know when to act and when not to act.
We know when to pray and when to declare.
God, we know when to partner with it
or how to partner with it.
You give us strategies.
God, I release an increase of God dreams,
an increase of the gift of interpretation.
Not just that, we need wisdom and discernment
coupled with interpretation.
We release that in the room as well.
And in this, as we are intimate with you,
we operate in all of these gifts
in a way that represents you well.
It doesn't just celebrate me.
Everyone sees the gifts on our life
and get jealous for the God.
Of our life and wants that same relationship.
But we're generous and we get to give this away.
We get to gift it to people all over the world.
And I pray that the wisdom that's being released
to kings and leaders, to rulers right now,
that God, you would place prophets, interpreters around them
that God, as we steward these gifts,
God, you found Joseph in a prison.
You found him and he went straight from the lowest place
to the highest place in a moment.
God, you can find us.
Let us be found being good stewards
of what you've imparted into our life
so that when the call comes, we are fully prepared,
we are fully equipped that we actually belong in that room.
We won't go to performance in that moment
because it's just part of our lifestyle.
We won't go to try and earn our place in that room.
We will go as a mouthpiece of the Lord God Almighty,
just like Jeremiah.
I have put my words in your mouth.
That your words would be in our mouth.
And we receive that in Jesus' name, amen, amen, amen.
All right, we're gonna have a whole team come up.
Can we get some more stools, three more stools?
Yeah, that would be awesome.
Haley Braun's coming up, Lindsay Ryman,
Bethany Hicks, and we're gonna do a Q&A.
You can grab this too when you leave.
Here, I'll get those.
You can grab this too when you leave.
Here, I'll get those.
Sorry.
Wow, wow, wow.
You wanna get this?
Thanks, Ben Armstrong.
I wanted to say there was something released in the room
on generational curses.
Some of you've partnered with that too long.
And if that's you, just stand to your feet real quick
because we're just gonna break agreements with those.
You thought they had a right to be there, they don't.
Bye-bye.
Yeah, if that's you online, stand to your feet
and you're gonna receive breakthrough right now.
We break all partnerships we've made,
known or unknown, with the lie
that this thing had a right to be there.
Whatever it is, put the name of that thing,
that generational curse on your lips,
that we break all partnerships we've made with that,
known or unknown partnerships.
And we nail them to the cross of Jesus Christ.
And now Jesus, what do you have in exchange for that lie?
What truth do you have in exchange?
Fill us with that truth, transform us with that truth.
Let us become that truth, in Jesus' name, amen.
Amen.
And all of you that actually stood for that,
that's now a familiar spirit,
it's no longer a generational spirit.
Okay, it's familiar, and it might come back and say,
hey, remember we were partying yesterday?
Remember me?
Let me in.
And you say, hey, go talk to the dog next door, right?
Because you don't receive that.
And then remind yourself of the truth
until your emotions catch up,
because your emotions won't catch up to the truth
as fast as we'd like it to,
because we've trained our brain for a long time.
So you need to retrain your brain with the new truth.
Okay, bless you.
So good.
Well, we have first question out of the gate.
How do you create a healthy culture
of dreaming in your family?
No, I've been talking.
Yeah.
Well, first of all, I mean,
you can't steward what you're not valuing.
Yeah.
Right, and so I think the first thing
that I would do as a parent with your child
is start to value what your children are dreaming,
the fact that they are dreaming.
And so what I would do when my kids were younger,
I would just ask them every day like,
hey, did you have any dreams last night?
And then they would say, oh yeah,
I would start to have a dream, or maybe they didn't,
but they would get used to the expectation
that I would be asking them.
So then when they did dream,
it's kind of like they would subconsciously file like,
oh, mommy's gonna ask me about my dream.
And so then we would process those dreams together.
And then I would do kind of like what Ben was teaching us,
like, oh, what do you think that means?
How did you feel in the dream?
And then this is the key,
and this is what Ben mentioned today,
is because Daniel did this with Nebuchadnezzar.
It's like, look, you are hearing from God.
You start to connect that they are actually hearing from God,
that God is speaking to them in their dreams.
And so again, as you start to value it
and you start to steward it,
you have them maybe even write it down,
help them learn how to interpret it,
then it begins to actually accelerate, I believe,
even that value in their own life.
I have a daughter that dreams like 4D.
It's crazy, like she'll share a dream, right?
Daniel, she shared dreams with you,
and it's like, and it was this color,
and it went around this, and it was this.
I mean, it's like she's living in it,
and I wanna know how to steward that even better
as a parent.
And so again, recognizing that this is one of the ways
that God speaks to all of us,
and I believe that there's an acceleration
that begins with valuing it.
Here's a little fun add-on to what Bethany's saying.
We would pray over our children every night
for their dreams, and then we'd ask them,
who do you wanna give dreams to, too?
So we would pray for others,
and sometimes it was our neighbor,
sometimes it was auntie,
sometimes, because you reap what you sow.
And so when you not only create that attention to it
through prayer for yourself,
and you gift it away to others,
it's also training this, greater is he that is in you,
Kira, Madison, Connor, than he that is in the world.
And we expand the kingdom.
everywhere we go.
See, I don't go into a place expecting bad dreams
might happen to me.
No, I go into a place expecting to release good dreams
everywhere I go.
So I am the greater influence in an environment
and we teach it through just little things like that.
I think just to add real quick, I think as well,
anytime you're trying to introduce a new subject
into your children's lives or even into a community
of young believers or people new in something spiritual,
if you set the bar too high,
if the stakes are too high,
nobody wants to engage with that.
Nobody wants to fail continuously while they learn.
You play better when you win.
If you've ever tried to play,
start playing competitive games with a young child,
you gotta let them win a couple of times
for them to get interested in a game
because if they're losing constantly,
they lose interest real fast.
And so I think discovering also the prophetic language
of each individual in the home is really important.
So each of us have kind of a main way that we hear God.
We heard about it, that sight, hearing, which vision,
it's not just open-eyed vision, it's dreams,
it's seeing in the mind's eye, it's hearing,
it's perceiving, which is kind of like a knowing
or a feeling.
My oldest child, he doesn't see or hear.
So when people say, what do you see?
Well, he didn't used to, he sees now,
but when he was first born, seeing or hearing,
he'd be like, mom, God doesn't talk to me.
But he was a feeler and a perceiver.
So even in the language of dreams, what did you feel?
What did you know intuitively that you weren't seeing?
Things like that.
I think it's important that we play to the strengths
of the individuals in our family.
And as we play to those strengths,
faith opens up to the spiritual realm,
and then the other senses become trained
as they recognize their primary way of hearing and perceiving.
Does that make sense?
I wanna just mention something
because I feel like I'm hearing this question in the room,
in the spirit, like there's people in here
that feel like they don't dream.
Does anyone here feel like I'm not?
Yeah, and you're like, this is awesome
that God speaks in dreams, but I'm not a dreamer.
I was exactly the same way.
And actually something I learned from Doug Addison,
who is pretty well known as a prophet of dreams
and interpretation of dreams.
But again, it starts with,
you can't steward what you don't value.
And so it starts, if you wanna dream more,
obviously go to sleep, that helps.
Get a good night's sleep, get some good REM.
And, but ask the Lord as you're going to sleep,
say, Lord, I wanna hear you through dreams.
Father, would you start to give me dreams?
Help me remember my dreams.
So you're starting to value
one of the ways that he's speaking to you.
And when I started to do that,
all of a sudden I would start remembering my dreams.
And the way that you do that,
it's kind of like you put your expectation
before the revelation.
So I would put a notebook next to my bed with a pen
because I was expecting
that God was gonna speak to me in dreams
because he's a good father
and he delights to give good gifts to his children.
And so as you're going to sleep,
if you wanna dream, just say,
Lord, would you speak to me in my dreams?
Would you start giving me dreams?
Okay, don't get caught up
in what the meaning, the interpretation is yet,
just start dreaming, right?
And start recording those dreams, write it down,
even if it's just a couple bullet points,
because then you go back to sleep
and in the morning, just those bullet points
will bring that dream back to fresh memory.
And then you can walk through,
okay, Lord, what does this mean?
What was it you're speaking?
How did I feel?
But I found when I started to do that,
I went from like hardly remembering my dreams
to having hundreds and hundreds of dreams
within several months.
And you keep a dream journal
and it's a beautiful way to just explore your own,
just connection with the Lord.
It's good.
Great.
Question here, what do you do
if your dreams are consistently scary or demonic?
Who wants to answer that?
Do you want to start?
No, it's okay, you don't have to.
I'll say this.
So again, we've talked about it,
around it at multiple times,
but all spiritual realms thrive on attention, right?
And the demonic realm is that pride filled kingdom
that needs your attention.
And so that's gonna show up first,
but scripture also says,
God will never leave me nor forsake me.
So he's actually in the dream with you.
You're just not aware of it.
And you can train yourself either when you wake up
and you had a negative dream,
you had a nightmare, a night terror,
okay, God, where were you in the dream?
How do you want to show me yourself in this dream?
What do you want to do?
But if you'll do that enough,
many times you'll remember,
if you have regular nightmares and night terrors,
when you go to sleep, I want you to pray this,
God, give me a weapon,
help me see you in the dream on how to defeat this.
just had a testimony of a young lady
who had regular nightmares and night terrors,
and this exact same thing happened,
and they stopped the night she did it.
But I really believe you can actually say,
God, where are you?
And he'll show himself to you in the dream,
it'll shift everything.
And the other thing is when you wake up,
if you'll connect yourself to God,
in that, the devil start getting frustrated
that every time he gives you a nightmare,
you connect with God,
and he'll stop giving you nightmares.
That's so good.
I love that.
I can think of kind of three practical things as well.
First of all, watch what you're feeding on, to be honest.
Like, you know, my daughter watched
the entire Stranger Things four season in like a day,
and she's like, I'm having these dreams about,
I'm like, what have you been eating?
You know what I mean?
Like, yeah, I don't love Stranger Things,
I've never seen it, but I'm just saying,
like, just watch what you're feeding on, guys.
Because some things,
remember the eyes can be the gateway into your soul.
And so again, if you're processing
what you've been feeding on during the days,
it can manifest in your dream life.
And so that would be kind of the first place
that I would check.
Second place, one of the things I learned too,
is you flip those nightmares too,
you can flip those dreams.
So again, something I learned from Doug Addison was like,
if people are having dreams where somebody's chasing you,
and they're chasing you,
well, and it feels like a bad guy that's chasing you,
then what I learned from him is you flip that
in the sense that if the enemy is chasing you,
then that means there's a destiny on your life
that he doesn't want you to catch.
So it's actually a good thing
because he's trying to get you to be afraid.
So you kind of flip that, bring it back to the Lord,
like, wow, there's a destiny on my life,
and I actually can flip that, right?
And so there's that piece.
And then, also, I just prayed this as a kid.
I remember doing this all the time
when I would have nightmares.
I just prayed, Jesus,
help me just to have good dreams tonight.
I know that's super practical and simple,
and that's just how I would train my children.
Like, Jesus, just give me only good dreams.
I just pray good dreams.
I think it's okay to preempt it as well
so that we can actually hear them.
And with children, especially,
I love that you brought up
that the enemy likes to puff up.
He likes to make himself appear bigger
than he actually is.
And one of the ways, especially with children,
is that he will try to introduce himself
with night terrors and nightmares
because he's trying to get the children
to either put fear into them
or to get them to shut off that scene gate,
their ability to see God in that area.
And so I know that Dana does a great teaching
on this as well,
and I've seen so many people at a young age,
in fact, I think that's even happening here as adults,
that as a child, you were prone to night terrors
or you're prone to nightmares,
and you actually shut off that gate.
You closed that because you didn't understand
how to steward or manage that,
and that's something that you're wanting to open up.
Is that anybody here that feels like they're ready to?
Okay, so if that's you, go ahead and just stand up.
We're just gonna go after this right now.
We're gonna open up that scene gate,
that internal scene realm,
the realm of dreams and visions and imagination.
So Father, I thank You, Lord, right now
that that scene is a gift,
that the language of dreams is a gift, Father.
And Lord, I just pray for everyone right here right now,
Lord, that shut that gate as a child
because of ignorance, because of lack of understanding,
because of fear, Lord God,
they did it to protect themselves, Father.
And Lord, we just pray right now, God,
that You would open up the eye gates right now,
the inner scene realm.
Father, we just flip on that light switch right now.
And I just see like you guys,
put your hand over your eyes first.
Okay, just say, okay,
Jesus' name, open up my eyes to see.
Open up my eyes to see.
Okay, and we're talking about our physical eyes
and our internal eyes.
And even put your hands on your heart.
Say, Lord, open up my eyes to see.
Open up my eyes to see.
Lord, I wanna see You in my dreams.
I wanna see You in my dreams.
I wanna hear You in my dreams.
I wanna feel You in my dreams, Father.
We do, we just, it's just,
and this is kind of, I always see it like this.
Just do like a prophetic act
of flipping the light switch on.
Okay, so Lord, we thank You, Father, right now.
It's as simple as that, guys.
And I just believe that that's gonna be opening up
even that internal scene realm of visions and dreams
and imaginations to You at a whole other level.
In Jesus' name, amen.
Great.
One more on the subject of dreams,
then we might shift to a different subject.
But one of the questions here is,
how do you tell the difference between a Holy Spirit dream
and then a soul or body dream?
Like one that's coming from me versus the Holy Spirit.
Pizza dream, but I'm just.
Okay, remember in my first session,
I actually.
talked about identifying Holy Spirit.
So number one, is there scriptural resonance with that?
Can I anchor it back in scripture in some way?
The character and nature of God through scripture.
Holy Spirit resonance is number two that I'm looking for.
It's like, does my spirit connect
with the Holy Spirit in this?
And then community affirmation.
Community is two prong.
It's your friends and family and your leaders
with a shared value system.
Shared value system.
Because you can submit some things
to people who have no grid for anything,
and then you get total craziness there.
But especially with soul.
Friends and family know you really well.
They know what you're feeding on.
I know my kids when they lived in my house,
and I know what they watched on TV,
so I know what their soul is.
I know with our conversations when I'm connected with them,
I know, oh, that sounds like soul influence over here.
This sounds like God.
And then the next thing is fruit.
Like, what is the fruit of that encounter,
that dream producing?
That's gonna tell you a lot.
And then time.
I had a dream one time when we lost,
we lost $800,000 in our business in three months,
and I owned a construction business.
And I had a dream that someone gave me a check
for $500,000, right?
And I'm like, oh, God dream.
Of course.
But when you're in that place, Chris knows this.
He's had big losses in his business years ago,
but we invent ways God can provide every day.
And not every day, every minute of every day.
It is racking our brain
because we're actually good stewards,
and we wanna take care of that,
and it's so important in our life.
We do that.
Well, that never happened.
Time told me it was a soul-based dream, not a God dream.
Yeah, do you have something to add?
I was gonna just ask Lindsay,
just the way that you're wired, Lindsay,
I feel like Ben was not just talking
about dream interpretation,
but also about interpretation of the prophetic.
And I would think with what you're doing consistently
with Aquaregia, you're probably having to discern soul
from spirit, from the Holy Spirit quite a lot.
Is there anything that you feel like you guys do
with prophetic reports to kind of discern the difference
between soul and the Holy Spirit?
Well, yeah, I mean, we start to identify,
I work in team all the time, so you're hearing from me,
but there's so many people that are a part of what I do.
And so we'll one, one, we use a blind method,
so no one ever knows who anyone's prophesying over.
And so when there's a pattern that forms,
we pay attention to that.
But I also have identified who the discerners are
in my group, because we do some really fun activations
where we're practicing discernment.
And I've also just been able to measure
where they are accurate.
And so we'll go through and then we're just like,
what do you feel on these words?
And there's times where we're like, I feel truth on this.
Like, and we'll start to, we're kind of methodical
and mathematical about it.
Like, okay, you know, two or three witnesses
are feeling truth on this, and we pull out the pattern.
And then we always, in those interpretations though,
we always leave it back to the receiver and the Lord.
So we're saying, hey, this is what we have identified.
This is what we're feeling,
but the interpretation belongs to you and the Lord.
That's good.
Can I just follow up real quick?
When you talked about discern as someone was asking here,
how, what do you do when you're constantly overwhelmed
by negative discernment?
I think something that really struck me
about what you shared,
even when you said you went to a psychic,
which really your Metron has got so much authority
in that atmosphere.
And so that's not something that anyone
can just walk in and do,
but I feel like you have such authority in the atmosphere
of even the demonic realm.
I don't feel like I hear you speak about that much.
Even when you speak about discernment,
it's very kingdom realm.
How have you kind of trained your people
to discern the kingdom realm and maybe get out of that?
I'm just discerning the heaviness of the demonic.
Well, I'm so lucky that I got saved in Bethel culture.
So I was trained to not really give a lot of attention
because I learned that the kingdom of darkness creates pride
or it thrives on pride.
But I am always looking,
like if there's something that's presenting itself to me,
then I'm like, okay, God, where are you in this?
And then how can I like counteract it?
And so I just want to say,
when I went to go see the psychic,
that wasn't like a willy nilly decision.
I had like five people, a council of the wise
that prayed for me and were covering me
like as I was in there,
because God was sending me on a research project, okay?
Yeah, it was actually to question, not to receive from.
Yeah, yeah.
Actually, I sat down and asked her questions
and then prophesied over her and then she quit her job.
So that was amazing.
So, but,
so I was just kind of, honestly,
if the demonic is there, then there's something going on.
And then I'm like, okay, well, why is this here?
And I start to partner with the mercy of God
and the compassion of like why it has been here.
And so then I start coming through the back door
of like why you're here and I partner with what God is,
why they're there and like why he's, why God's there.
Sorry, I didn't say that very clearly.
That's really beautiful.
I think that's really powerful too, to recognize,
you know, I think where you have a metron of influence,
so a sphere of influence is where you really have authority.
We have authority of all things,
but God has given us specific spheres
where we can actually step in.
And I feel like there's just this real grace
on your life, Lindsay.
And I don't think we see it enough
in the prophetic within the church.
People are actually called into those realms and society.
And I think it's just amazing.
And I know it's vulnerable to share,
but it's actually really powerful.
And it opens up the eyes of the church to go,
we can actually influence beyond the walls of this building.
We can actually go into society.
So thank you for being so vulnerable and sharing.
And can we ask you to do this?
If you have big questions like this
that aren't getting answered or, you know,
or even that are being asked and you wanna study more,
I would say, grab your questions, write them all out.
And then when you go back and review our sessions,
you have 90 days to review all of the sessions.
Have those questions right in front of you,
because we've answered a lot of these questions
in multiple ways on multiple layers.
You just didn't have the question in your mind at the time.
So you didn't know it was actually answered.
And so I really would want the richness of your questions
being answered on multiple levels,
not just in a, you know, 45 minute session
where we can only get a snippet of it.
There is so much that has actually been released
that I think hits on a bunch of these different spots
in all of our sessions.
So good.
We have a question from someone,
I'm sure it's more than one person.
Someone just, they recognize they haven't stewarded
possibly because they didn't know they were supposed to.
Do you have any advice or encouragement
for someone that's just realized,
oh man, I haven't stewarded these words.
What do I do now?
Or even a personal story of maybe
where you didn't steward a word.
Yeah, that's so good.
That's a huge passion that I have too.
Because again, a lot of people think that
when you, prophecy is just receiving in a word
and like, oh, I got a prophecy.
No, there's so many layers to it.
In order to see it come to fulfillment
and to promise.
And I mentioned it a little bit yesterday about partnership.
But a really, really practical example.
First of all, you wanna process the word.
And again, there's different tools.
And these guys use the prophetic lab for processing.
We have a prophetic processing tool.
Daniel's book, The Good Fight,
really helps you to break down
kind of the anatomy of the word
and to discover the identity.
There's times and seasons in your word.
There could be conditions and commands.
And if there's a responsibility that you have
that you're supposed to do, right?
And so it's really helpful to first of all,
start with that processing.
But then let's say you find out like,
hey, I now know I have a responsibility
to partner with this word to see it come to pass.
And so here's just an example that I have.
I was given a word.
Okay, well, we'll use the one
that we've been talking about all weekend right now.
I got a word from Chris.
You're gonna write the book
that redefines mothering in the kingdom of God.
That's awesome.
Like, it wasn't like Holy Spirit came on me like a dove
and I got in this trance
and I was writing this book for nine months.
Like, no, it was hard work, you guys.
Like I had to set my clock every single day
for 20 minutes to an hour every day and just write.
And it was hard and I had to press through
and I had to get feedback and I had to have edits.
And it's like, you have to go through those things
to actually see the fulfillment of that word come to pass.
I've had words that are like,
you're gonna speak in stadiums, okay?
Now, I had never spoken before, so what do I do?
I start to prepare as best as it depends on me,
as far as it depends on me,
to the best of my ability for the fulfillment of that word.
I can't expect that I'm gonna go and speak into a stadium
unless I went and walked into an empty stadium one day
and just preached to myself.
Like, yay, I fulfilled the word.
That's, I could, you know,
that's not what we're talking about.
We're talking, so what did I do?
I got books on how to speak publicly.
I started to watch some speakers that really spoke to me
and learned how they did that.
I would say yes to every opportunity to speak,
whether it was two people or 200.
I would do everything that I could to steward my ability.
to do that, you know?
And so if you get words about going to the nations
and you don't even have your passport,
that's a word for some of you in this room.
If you have words about going to the nations
and you don't even have your passport, start there.
Because that is a step of faith
in partnering with the prophetic promise.
That's good.
You have anything to add to that, Lindsay?
I mean, I think she covered it.
Mostly I would just say, I love processing words.
I view it like as a scavenger hunt.
And so it's so fun for me,
especially when I start detecting patterns
because I feel like I'm like, I found you, Holy Spirit.
Like, He's like, you found me.
And you know, it says Proverbs 25 too.
It's the glory of God to conceal a matter
and it's the glory of kings to search it out.
And so like approach it,
not as like some work you have to do,
but this like scavenger hunt you're going on,
you're like searching for the treasure
and look in between the lines.
I told that example of the friendhood,
the word about Spain and revival, right?
And like, it sounded like a lot of things
God was going to do, but it was like,
well, have you learned Spanish yet?
Like, so look for the things that are obvious
and then in between the lines to partner
and have fun with it.
Yeah.
I just want to mention just three points
on this really quick.
I preached on this last year,
but this is kind of the three ways
to partner with your word, real practically.
Number one, you first need to agree with the word.
Okay, your agreement is necessary.
Your amen to God's yes.
See that prophetic promise as this is God's yes
and you need to add your let it be so.
So that's the first key is you say, I agree.
And that can be as simple as like, Lord, I agree, right?
The second key is you want to align yourself with the word.
You want to either remove any,
what in me needs to align to become who you say I am, right?
And so there's an alignment
and that's partly connected to preparation.
What in me needs to prepare or align myself
for the fulfillment of this word?
And then finally, the third key is you want to appropriate
or take action.
What's one action step that you can take
towards the fulfillment of that word?
And it can be a baby step, guys.
You know, it's like, you know,
if I was called to speak in a stadium,
but my baby step is I'm speaking to my small group of two,
like I'm learning how to speak publicly.
Do you understand that?
It's like, you're taking a definite action step
to prepare yourself and that shows God
that that's partnership.
Daniel said it the first night,
because God's value is relationship.
His methodology is partnership.
He's not gonna come,
he's not gonna force you to do something
that you're not willing to partner with.
But the promise is there to show you something
you never saw before,
so you can become something you never were before.
And so again, those three keys are really powerful
to start stewarding that prophetic call in your life.
I just want to be honest
that I literally got a prophetic word from Chris
in my early years of pastoring and I did not steward it.
So I just want to like,
I'm like a human being like all of you.
We are all human beings.
If we're talking about running a race,
we're all running this race.
We're not sitting up here like we're the experts
and waves, you know what I mean?
Like we're like, a lot of what we learned
is through getting it wrong.
Yeah.
And you know, I remember the Lord once said to me,
if you want to get it right,
you're gonna have to get a little wrong.
He said, sometimes you get a little wrong
to get a little righter.
Yeah.
And I got a word from Chris.
He didn't know my name then, he knew I was on his staff.
I shared a, I did a transition,
I did an offering at Twinview.
I was early in being on staff and he said,
I came off the stage and he said,
you have the gift of storytelling on your life.
And he said, steward 30 minutes,
you won't even remember this,
steward 30 minutes a day in the Word of God
and in your journal, what are you saying to you?
And he said, and then he said, he looked at me,
he said, I mean it for the sake of this movement.
Steward, steward for 30 minutes a day.
Can I tell you, I received that Word with great joy.
I felt so amazing for the sake of the movement.
You know what I mean?
Like 25 year old Haley for the sake, you know,
I was so in awe,
it's like I received the seed of the Word with great joy,
but there was competitive seeds in my heart
that choked the growth of that seed that said,
for the sake of what movement, really Haley Braun?
Like what movement, Bethel movement,
you gotta be kidding.
You're never gonna, you know what I mean?
Like all of a sudden these words of insufficiency
and insecurity that were in my heart,
really actually choked out the Word.
So I didn't steward 30 minutes a day
because I didn't believe it.
I didn't believe that God could use me that way.
But can I tell you in God's grace and mercy,
I feel emotional because God is so merciful.
And of course we wanna value,
we wanna value all of this.
We wanna value the stewardship of the Word.
But if you're in a position like I was,
I asked the Lord two years ago,
as I began to see, I'm speaking more and more.
I have no time, I have three kids,
I've got a ministry I'm trying to lead.
How do I prepare messages?
And then I'm remembering this Word.
Oh my goodness, if I'd just done
what Chris had told me to do,
I wouldn't be panicking every time I speak
because I haven't had time to prepare sufficiently.
And you know what the Lord said to me?
He said, my grace abounds for you, Haley.
And so I said, God, what is the new strategy?
And He gave me a new strategy.
According to the Word,
He gave me a three morning a week strategy
to begin to steward this Word that Chris gave me.
So I just wanna speak over you.
All of these principles are true.
All of them are correct.
However, we miss it sometimes.
I miss it all the time.
But God in His grace and mercy
isn't looking for perfection,
He's looking for yielded hearts.
And so, so God, we just bring these words
that we didn't know what to do with God.
We even bring the thought process
that maybe stole away from the beauty
and the power of what you spoke.
And God, we ask for new strategy, we do.
We ask for strategy for this time in this season.
And Lord, we're not gonna wallow in shame.
We're not gonna be paralysed in shame of our failure.
But God, we thank You that through Your redemption,
we can enter in to the fresh promises of the Lord.
And so we enter in, God, I ask for new strategy.
And God, I ask for the grace to step in, God,
where You release the Word, You release the grace.
And Lord, we choose to partner with the grace
instead of the naysaying.
We partner with the grace of what You are saying.
In Jesus' Name.
And I declare that you did not miss it.
I felt, what?
Which one was my miss it story?
I don't, okay.
But I just feel like,
I actually felt this earlier today online,
but like, you did not miss it.
Like, yes, God is kind and gracious.
I feel like there were words spoken over your life
that now as you're becoming aware of your responsibility
and that you didn't know back then,
you feel like you missed out on that promise of God.
And I just feel like the Lord is saying
He is a good and loving Father.
He even knew that you weren't ready to receive that seed
and He's bringing it back to you right now in this season.
So I feel like there's a fresh awakening
of promises in this season.
I see Him like stirring up or churning up the waters,
churning up the waters and these promises
that were long buried, even like from decades ago,
I feel like the Lord is actually bringing those
back to the surface and breathing new life.
And I just wanna say this again,
you are the perfect age to do everything
that God has called you to do.
Something we learned from our senior leader at the mission.
And I just feel like sometimes we,
there are some of you in here that feel like
you're past age, like you're past the time date
or the timestamp and the God is so kind and He's so good.
And He knows you so much better than you know yourself.
And I just feel like the Lord is saying
you did not miss it.
And He's bringing it back to pass.
And there's covering for that
because there are some time sensitive words.
And that's where maybe you're super frustrated.
You're like, ah, what do I do with that?
I'm like, well, repent.
Like, honestly, we didn't believe the voice of God in that,
but know that He's so gracious.
He's so loving.
And He always gives more opportunities for other things.
I, there's so many in my life
where they were time sensitive words.
And I missed the timing on that.
I didn't honor that time.
And so even there where there's some of those,
like God's teaching you, I would revisit.
Because the original question was,
what do I do with all of these words
that I feel like I haven't stewarded?
Well, get rid of the ones that were time sensitive
and that was like, don't hold yourself to that anymore
or punish yourself for that.
And then take the ones you do have
and then do all what these guys have been telling you to do
with those words, revisit them, honor them,
and watch the acceleration start happening.
You're gonna start checking the boxes off
of all these words.
And also sometimes people can give the word,
but it's the wrong time to give the word.
And my example of that is after I came back from Thailand
and I was in LA, a friend of mine was like,
oh, well, she's like,
I think maybe you're gonna go to BSSM.
And I was like, I'm never gonna go to BSSM.
I wanna stay in LA.
And like, obviously I came here,
I did three years of BSSM, right?
But like, it was just, my heart wasn't ready.
The word was right, but the timing was wrong.
So just sometimes also don't beat yourself up
about maybe that you missed it.
It just might not have been the time yet.
Yeah.
That's so great.
Had a couple of questions,
actually kind of repeat questions.
Can you have more than one five-fold office?
Chris and Dana.
I know, Bethany said don't ask any questions
that are too difficult.
Why are you asking the questions then?
I think it's a great one.
I think, first of all, not everybody has an office,
to be honest.
I mean, I think not, I think, but the grace is available.
The faithful grace is available to every believer.
So we can all have apostolic grace,
prophetic grace, evangelistic grace.
The office is a call and an assignment.
It's something that Jesus gives as a gift
to people that he calls.
And so I think that it's possible.
I don't know that it's likely, but it is possible.
To be honest, you guys, like as an office prophet,
I've already got so much on my plate
and an assignment and a lane.
Like I don't, I barely,
I don't even know that I have time to do everything
I'm called to do just in the office of prophet.
So if I'm office of teacher as well,
and I've got all of this over here, I mean, that's just,
it's, I don't know that I would have enough time,
but there are people that function as an apostolic prophet
or an app, you know, a prophetic teacher.
And so I think, again, it can seem confusing.
I think the graces do mix in with the office.
But as a general rule,
and these guys would probably add something.
Chris, you said you would jump up
if you needed to correct us.
I think as a rule, he's on his way.
I can see it.
Come up.
Ben's gonna say something.
Let me say this as well.
It's a gift of Christ.
The office are gifts of Christ
and Christ gets to do whatever he wants with those gifts
and give them to whoever we want.
Is that normal?
I love Chris's deal on this.
Could it be potential?
Well, Jesus modeled something
where there is potential for that,
but that was Jesus Christ as well.
So, but he did also say, greater works will you do.
So I don't know, like there's a big potential there.
And Chris has a great example of operating in a grace
that someone else, when you're connected.
So go ahead, Chris.
Sort of took it.
No, but tell it.
I mean, I don't think it's a big deal,
but I think the goal is for us to receive grace
from the five-fold ministry
and grace is the operational power of God.
And we talked about it earlier.
And grace has colors, right?
Because Romans 12 says,
since we have gifts that differ
according to the grace given to us,
let us each exercise them according to their faith.
So in Ephesians four, it says,
to each one of us grace was given
according to the measure of Christ's gift.
He gave some as apostles, prophets, evangelists,
pastors and teachers.
So what do the five-fold ministry equip you with?
By the way, this is all in your manual.
What do they equip you with?
Grace.
What does grace do?
It gives you different kinds of gifts.
So if you come to a pastor,
if you're operating under a pastor,
you're gonna receive pastoral grace.
If you operate under a prophet,
you're gonna receive prophet grace, right?
And that grace is gonna give you prophetic gifts.
The pastor grace is gonna give you pastoral gifts.
The apostolic grace is gonna give you apostolic grace.
And the goal isn't for us to be
the apostle, prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher.
The goal is for us to be equipped
by all the five-fold ministry.
Because if you read the Ephesians four passage,
it's talking about that the body should be equipped
with all five graces so that we can operate
as if we are an apostle, prophet, evangelist,
pastor, and teacher.
Not because it's our call,
but because it's the grace of God flowing through us.
And so, just to reiterate, again,
this is also in your manual,
but we really want you to read the manuals.
Yeah.
Because two-thirds of what's in that manual,
you haven't got yet.
Yeah.
So, where was I going?
So, the grace of God that's in apostle,
prophet, evangelist, pastor, teacher
is completely available for you.
But it takes three things to have a ministry.
A calling, a gifting, and an anointing.
Your calling gives you your identity.
Your gifting gives you your ability,
and your anointing gives you your purpose.
So, the question is, can you have more than one calling?
Everybody has more than one calling
because many of you are mothers.
That's not just something you do,
it's something you are, right?
So, the question is, can you be an apostle and a prophet?
Can you be a apostle and a teacher?
My thought is, probably you're not.
Probably you have a single call,
if you're even called to the five-fold ministry.
Probably.
But it's not a point of argument.
The real value in the five-fold ministry
is not that you're walking around like,
I'm a teacher and a prophet.
I'm a prophet who teaches.
I also operate apostolically,
probably more than I operate prophetically,
but it's because I'm hooked up to an apostle
who pours into my life.
So, I can operate the same way.
that he operates, not because I'm an apostle,
because the Lord has never privately
ever called me an apostle.
But you know, I'll finish with this.
In Weaverville, sometimes you would buy land
and you'd go to build a house on it,
you can't get water on your land.
And so you would go to your neighbor
who maybe has a great well,
and you'd pay a small fee,
or sometimes he'd even do it for free,
and he would say, yeah, you can tap into my well
if he has a big enough well.
Well, if you come to my house
and I've tapped into my neighbor's well,
you don't know that.
All you know is you got water to drink
and a shower to take.
It doesn't matter, as long as I have a relationship
with my neighbor, that the water's not coming
from my property.
That's great.
And I think it's a great illustration
is what happens when we tap into the family of God
and all the graces of God are flowing through us,
even though they're not resident in me,
they're actually coming from a relationship
that I have in the body of Christ.
And I think, ultimately, that's even better
than do I have all the five full callings?
Yeah.
So that's my opinion.
That's good.
Thanks, Chris.
We just have a few more minutes.
I just want to ask a fun question that we were asked.
Ben, but I want to kind of broaden it a little bit.
Ben, earlier you said that you could perceive
an angel behind you.
The person asked, how did you know there was an angel?
I would love for us as a panel,
maybe just to talk about how we perceive
things in the spirit, how we perceive the angelic
and the movement of the spirit, just personally.
Yeah, personally for me,
that came through practice and repetition.
So our skin is our largest sense organ on our body.
And a lot of times we have sensations in our body
that cannot be quantified through the natural.
So if I walk in the room and the temperature's 105 outside
and it's 53 in the room, I might get the chills.
Okay, that's natural.
But if I walk in and it's the same exact temperature
and I now get the chills, okay, what is that?
And I love those questions.
Remember, God, what are you doing?
And how do I partner with it?
What am I perceiving, God?
What am I feeling?
And what I have is through practice,
I get localized sensations in my body.
Maybe it's on my ear, a little prick or a tingle.
Maybe it's in the back of my head.
Maybe it's a brush against my face.
All I can say is maybe it feels like feathers
going across your face.
Those things I've learned, oh, most of the time,
those are angels.
And then I ask, okay, what are you here for?
Is there something specific?
Because they're sent to serve those
who would inherit eternal life.
That's what scripture says.
And so I'm like, okay, how do I partner with that more?
If my whole face starts burning,
that for me, in my experience,
is Holy Spirit has shown up in power.
And then so, yes, he's in us.
And I love Daniel's word.
We need a greater awareness.
But there are times where he actually manifests himself
in a unique way.
And usually that comes with a whole face burn on me.
And that's Ben Armstrong.
You need to figure it out for you.
Whose whole face is burning now?
Right now?
Because mine is.
Anyone else's face burning?
Raise your hand up high.
And there may be some online too.
Good.
Oh, thank you.
Thanks, God.
Just say, thanks, God.
Ask for more.
Thanks, yeah.
Okay.
So sometimes I see and sometimes I feel.
I like to say I'm a part-time seer,
part-time feeler, full-time party.
Now, when you say see,
are you saying you see with your natural physical eyes
the spirit realm?
Are you seeing internally, externally?
So I do both, yeah.
So sometimes I, those are my favorite.
So sometimes I do see with my natural eyes.
But there was a period of time where I was just,
I was new and I was so excited about that
that I actually didn't have a value for internal seeing.
And guess who shut that down?
And then he started teaching me.
And then I discovered like seeing internally,
which looks like in your mind's eye,
actually takes more faith, right?
And the more faith we build,
like we can move mountains, right?
So then I actually grew like, and it was fun.
It was like testing, like, okay,
I think I see in the spirit that there's an angel over here.
I'm gonna go stand over here and see what happens, right?
And so, and I was just kind of like exploring
and keeping track of how that worked.
And then for feeling,
I tried to explain this to my mom once
and she's like, don't say this publicly.
But she was like, my mom's, but like,
the only way I can describe it is.
Sometimes I will feel on my body, it feels almost like,
I always say it feels like a laser,
but I have never experienced a laser on my body.
I don't know why I think that.
And so I will feel it and tangibly,
not like a, like it's a tangible touch.
And sometimes I can feel them touching me.
And for whatever reason, I often feel stuff on my head.
And so sometimes I'm like, are you praying for me?
And so I've had experiences in that,
but then if I'm feeling something on my head,
I'm like, should I go pray for someone's mind right now?
Should I go pray?
So I kind of just follow the trail and see where it leads.
When you're in community like this,
we have involuntary seers and you can test
what you're feeling with what they're seeing.
Is that accurate?
And if you do that over time,
it actually creates trust for what you're perceiving
in those moments.
Yeah, I wanna say something about that.
I used to have this thing,
and I wonder if other people do too,
where when I would first wake up,
so I'm asleep, I wake up, my eyes would be open
and I would like see the room I'm in,
but then I would see other things
in the room with me, right?
And I remember I went to my first school of the prophets
and I asked Dano this question.
I was like, is it spirituality or is it science?
Like, am I still dreaming
and my brain doesn't know my eyes are awake?
And so he said, oh, this is happening.
There's something inside of you
that's popping off in an involuntary state.
So then I started recognizing it and praying for it
to grow when I'm in a voluntary state, yeah.
So if you have that happen, I think it's a sign to you,
like there's something in you, right?
And so you can cultivate that and partner with God for more.
Yeah, and I just wanna touch on that
because you just mentioned that.
So for those of you guys who are like, wow,
I would love to experience this.
I mean, I'm not like a big mystical experiencer.
I have had some mystical encounters.
I think the strongest way I would feel,
I feel it, especially when I'm in worship.
It feels like someone's standing behind me, you know?
And it's almost like there's that vacuum of sound or air
and you kind of look, look,
you guys know what I'm saying?
Like when there feels like there,
and you look behind and there's no one there.
And so I usually am like, oh, there's an angel next to me.
And one of the things that I've learned
from Dan and Chris, it's like out of Proverbs 3, 5, and 6,
right, trust in the Lord with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding.
In all your ways, acknowledge him
and he will direct your path.
And so the key to growing or accelerating your ability,
because can I just tell you,
we are created and hardwired to experience God
in every broadband, okay?
Some people, it is their primary or their default,
but you can also grow in those ways
because you also have eyes and ears.
You know, the skin.
And so we're actually created to hear God
on the full broadband of his voice.
And so one of the keys to growing in this
is to acknowledge him when you feel something
or see something, or even if it's like you said,
you woke up and you're like,
you saw these little, you know, other things in the room.
Okay, we're learning now.
First, acknowledge the Lord.
Thank you, Lord.
I don't know what I'm seeing, but I'm seeing something.
Thank you, Lord.
I'm feeling something behind me.
I feel like this is you.
And then you just kind of wait there.
You acknowledge him, you thank him,
and that opens up the gateway of faith.
And then it's often like what you behold gets magnified.
Often that will get clearer.
That will accelerate your ability to discern his presence
when he's speaking in other ways in the future.
That's good, that's good.
Shameless plug for BSSM right now.
I literally came as a, I had no clue what I'm doing,
and BSSM was such a beautiful environment
for me to learn and grow in the safety of community.
I'm not gonna dive into how I see or perceive.
I'll get to teach a little bit later,
and maybe I'll share there,
but I wanna tell you the safest place
to learn how God speaks is in a healthy community
where they value the move of God,
but they also tell you the truth and keep you in,
keep the riverbanks by that river,
let that river flow powerfully in a direction.
I used to skip along the back of this room in school
if I felt depression, because I was just practising.
I feel heaviness.
How do I release joy?
I was just asking the Lord,
and it taught me so much on how to train my senses,
and I'm just so grateful for school.
And I'm like, if you are sitting in this room
and you're thinking, should I do school?
I wanna tell you, like, and I'm not a salesman.
I'm horrible at selling things,
but if something changes your life,
you have to share about it.
And this is where I learnt, BSSM was where I learnt it,
and it was such a powerful school.
Yeah, Ben, will you pray for us?
Stand to your feet.
Even as we were talking about the angelic,
I felt a sensation on my right eyelid,
and instantly in my mind's eye, I saw a picture,
and I saw an angel with that,
you know, like when you're at the eye doctor
and they go, lens,
Lens one, lens two.
And he's giving, the angel came with eyes to see.
So a lot of times when you see what the angel is doing
or wearing or it's setting,
that actually tells you what function they're there for.
And so God, would you release eyes to see?
We wanna see greater and more clearer
in the spiritual realm.
With our physical eyes, our waking eyes,
our spiritual eyes, God, help us perceive better
what you're doing and help us to partner with that.
In Jesus' name, amen, amen.
Lunch break, be back at 2 p.m.
We are gonna give away some really great prizes.
And for those of you that have lunch tickets,
your lunches are in the back.
Bless you guys, we'll see you soon.
Testing.