Often, people lump things together when it comes to matters of the call. They sort of put the cart before the horse or distort the order of their calling.
And this is fundamentally due to lack of intimacy with the Holy Spirit and also ignorance of the divine protocol and procedure of the call.
While it is not wrong to get information about your calling from external channels, you’re however the first prophet over your life.
Now personally, I have benefited immensely from the ministry of prophets and other ministers who spoke to me about my calling and ministry in the past.
Many of them however confirmed what I already had in my spirit.
In instances where I received the messages firsthand, as I followed them up in the place of prayer, having first received a note of witness in my spirit at the point of getting them, I received further clarifications.
Till Jesus comes, I will always respect the ministry of prophets and other ministers whom God uses to send prophetic messages to me, and as a matter of fact, I always fall in love with their ministries.
However, I will be confused as par the peculiar nature, features, expressions and manifestations of my calling if I don’t have personal relationship with the Holy Spirit.
And the same is applicable to any other minister. When it comes to discerning the terms, times, seasons, consecrations, opportunities, operations, administrations and manifestations of your calling, then you will have to develop your spirit man.
The call of God is not in your head; the call of God is in your spirit. The greatest things that will affect your life on earth happen from within you.
If your spirit is well trained and developed to pick divine signals, then it will always be able to pick on the frequency of the Holy Spirit on the things that pertain to your calling.
You see, your spirit knows what your head does not know. Right from the inside of you, you can understand the critical details of your calling as you stay perpetually in fellowship with the Holy Spirit.
The Apostle Paul writes about the nature of the human spirit this way:
1 CORINTHIANS 2:11
For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God.
The “things of a man” mentioned in this scripture do not mean physical things or things you relate with through your five sense organs.
They talk about the deepest and innermost thoughts of man that affect his existence on the earth, and the Bible says your spirit knows and processes them.
The advantage that you as a believer have is that your reborn and recreated human spirit processes the thoughts of God through the Holy Spirit because now, the Holy Spirit takes the thoughts of God (the deep things of God) and transmits same to your reborn human spirit.
So, as a child of God, you have unfettered access to the thoughts of the Father about every aspect of your life, including the things that pertain to your calling.
The most important factor in this whole equation therefore is your spirit.
Why? God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit are eternally committed to revealing their thoughts to you, but your spirit must be well trained and developed to capture them.
The Christianity that emphasizes external manifestations or spectacular operations as the fundamental basis of divine guidance will produce a set of Christians who are spiritual misfits, rookies and Lilliputians when it comes to interfacing with the things of the Spirit.
While I believe in spectacular operations and I love and also experience them by God’s Grace, I will however not teach them as the fundamental basis of spiritual guidance.
The primary way by which the Holy Spirit leads you is called INNER WITNESS, and if that is the case, then your spirit must always be well developed to pick the light and the witness that’s coming from the Holy Spirit.
It is written:
ROMANS 8:14, 16
14 For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. 16 The Spirit itself beareth witness with our spirit, that we are the children of God:
Therefore with a healthy and robust spirit, I can pick the signals of the Holy Spirit as par things that pertain to my calling like the terms, times, seasons, consecrations, opportunities, operations, administrations and manifestations.
In this way, I will be able to correctly INTERPRET my calling and I will not be pursuing shadows in ministry while dispensing much energy.
When it was time to start out on The Feeding Mandate, it was as clear as crystal in my spirit while I kept hearing these words repeatedly in my spirit, “Be in time…”.
When it was time for me to get married, I just began to sense in my spirit that it was time and preparation was put in place. The rest, they say, is history.
When it was time to start teaching the Word on Radio, the signals were very clear in my spirit, and by God’s Grace, we’ve been on radio ever since to the glory of God.
When it was time to start teaching the Word online, I heard the Lord very clearly in my spirit and God has been faithful.
The same thing is applicable to every other aspect of ministry. Time and space will not permit me to go into more details.
Following the nudgings in the inner man has helped me a great deal, kept me in the safe zone of the call and also helped me to stay balanced in ministry.
Some years ago, a woman walked up to me and told me that God asked her to tell me to gather missionaries from different places, minister to them constantly, organize conferences for them and sponsor them.
Well, I didn’t receive any of that. My spirit was blank and God never told me that. It ended there.
At another time, I went to preach somewhere and as I was going to my car, a lady ran towards me and told me that God asked her to tell me to go and hold a crusade at Ijebu Igbo, Ogun State and that many captives of Satan were waiting for me to come and deliver them.
I didn’t argue with her. I just said, “It is well.” Now the lady missed it. God never told me anything like that and there was no agreement in my spirit.
There are apostolic evangelists who will do a more thorough job of that nature, so why strain the grace of God upon my life?
My spirit was blank and I knew instantly that it wasn’t God Who spoke through the lady.
Conversely, I have received several other messages from external channels and my spirit bore witness to them.
In sum, you will have to train your spirit man to discern and correctly interpret the details of your calling.
Ability to do this will set you on the path of graceful advancement in ministry while failure to do it will cause a major setback in the call.
May the Lord help us all to correctly interpret our calling in the light of His dealings with our spirits and may we experience upward mobility in the call to the praise of the glory of His Name. Amen!
