by Ryan Strydom

Mike Hanchett, who is known for his prophetic gifting in the NCMI team, was with us this weekend at Bedfordview and the way in which he imparted his gifting to us was really fantastic. Basically, Mike taught on developing a prophetic culture in our church in the morning and then delved into the ‘language of God’ in the evening during our All Sites Celebration time.

You can download both these messages and his notes at these links:

Download “Developing and Becoming a Prophetic Culture” here.

Download The Language of God here.

Perhaps the two key things that stood out for me were:

(1) That the prophetic is not just verbal but also includes action.

Mike backed this up with key scriptures around Jesus’ ministry. While Mike didn’t quite say it, as an artist I believe that the prophetic also includes art, which is for a whole other post. What I enjoyed was that Mike began to open up the possibility of the prophetic being more than just what we’re used to. Most notably was how the prophetic can be used in evangelism, even evangelism in our church meetings.

(2) The diverse ways that God speaks.

Mike believes that God is always speaking to us, but we’ve got to listen. I really liked this. He went on to list 22 ways in which he has found God speaks (from experience and scripture) and he admits that this list is something of a work-in-progress.

Here’s his list, which I’ve gleaned from his notes which you can download at this site (link above).

1. Audible Voice – Father to Jesus Lk. 3:21-23, Saul Acts 9:3
2. God’s still small voice – 1 Kings 19:11-13
3. Eye – God will guide us with His eye. Ps.32:8
4. Angels – Philip Acts 8:26, Peter Acts 12:6,7, Balaam Num. 22:32
5. Trances – Acts 10:9-11
6. Vision – Peter Acts 12:9
7. Dreams – Abimelech Gen. 20:1-7,
8. Creation – Rom. 1:20
9. Scripture – 2 Tim. 3:16-17
10. Tongues & Interpretation – 1 Cor. 12:8-10
11. Prophecy – 1 Cor. 12:8-10
12. Impressions – sense of evil
13. Prophetic Acts – Acts 21:11
14. Signs and Wonders – Judges 6:17-21, 7:9-15
15. Mind Reading – Lk. 11:17 Jesus displayed this quality
16. Circumstances – Rev. 3:8
17. Dance – Jer. 31:13
18. Prophetic Songs – Col. 3:16
19. Prophetic Pain – feel the pain of others
20. Spiritual Happenings – Ex.7:8-13 Aaron’s Rod
21. People – 1 Sam.3:16-17
22. Animals – Balaam’s Donkey Num. 22:21-31

Some people might be looking at ‘trances’ or ‘mind reading’ with a raised eyebrow. But there it is, in Scripture. Mike spoke about how there is always the counterfeit but there is also the “genuine” or “legit” and we shouldn’t throw out the “genuine” just because there are counterfeits. We should just seek to do these sorts of things in God’s way.

It was great having Mike at our All Sites Celebration which was, as usual, quite fun. I had the privilege of joining the choir that night with a lot of the Uptown guys and it was great!