People ask me about prophetic words more than almost anything else. Some ask because they think they received one and do not know what to do with it. Some ask because they were burned by one — a confident word from a confident person that simply never happened. And some ask because they want to know whether God still speaks this way at all.

I want to answer all three, plainly, from Scripture and from what I have learned since God first spoke to me in sentences.

What a Prophetic Word Actually Is

Put simply: God speaks a message for right now — to one person, to a congregation, or to a nation — and He speaks it through someone He has chosen. That is the whole of it. A prophetic word is not a prediction industry. It is not a spiritual gift reserved for a professional class. It is communication — the God who has always spoken to His people continuing to speak to His people.

The pattern runs through the entire Bible. God tells Amos that He does nothing without revealing it first. Jesus says His sheep hear His voice and follow Him. Paul spends three chapters of First Corinthians giving a local church practical instructions for handling prophecy in a meeting — instructions that would be pointless if prophecy had stopped or if it were rare.

What has changed since Amos is not whether God speaks. It is who He speaks to. Under the old covenant the Spirit came on specific people for specific assignments. After Pentecost, Peter stands up and quotes Joel: God pours out His Spirit on all flesh, and sons and daughters prophesy. The circle got wider, not narrower.

How I Started Hearing God’s Voice

I want to be honest about the timeline, because I think people assume this takes decades and give up before they start.

For most of my Christian life I sensed God in my inner man. He guided me through Scripture, through circumstances, through promptings I could feel but could not have written down. That is real, and if that is where you are, you are not doing anything wrong. But it is not the same thing as hearing sentences.

What changed for me was a book. Nathan French wrote It’s Not Meant to Be a Secret: God Wants to Speak to You, and I read it slowly during my morning quiet times. It pierced my heart. Reading how naturally God spoke to Nathan made me want the same thing — not as a special anointing, but as a normal part of a relationship. He later joined me to talk about it: Day 2 — Nathan French, It’s Not Meant to Be a Secret.

On a flight to Tel Aviv, partway through the book, I turned to the appendix. Nathan lays out practical steps there: get quiet, communicate with the Lord, expect to hear — with pen and paper ready as an act of faith — write down what He says, and share as led.

The next day in Tel Aviv, alone in a hotel room, I sat down with my laptop, closed my eyes, and typed four words. Speak to me Lord.

And He did. Clear, sentence by sentence, in a way I had never experienced. That was June 9, 2023. I started recording what He said in what became my Journal of Time Alone with God, and I have been doing it ever since.

So when I teach on this, understand that I am not speaking from a lifetime of it. I am a few years in. That is deliberate on my part — I would rather you hear it from someone who remembers being unable to do it than from someone who cannot remember what the beginning felt like.

Prophetic Word, Prophecy, and Rhema

These three get blurred constantly, and the blur is where a lot of confusion starts.

Prophecy is the broad category — the gift itself, listed among the spiritual gifts, exercised in a gathering under the oversight Paul describes.

A prophetic word is a single instance of it. One message, one moment, one recipient or group. When someone says “I received a word,” this is what they mean.

Rhema is a Greek term for a spoken word of God that lands on a particular person in a particular situation — distinct from logos, the settled written Word. A rhema does not add to Scripture. It applies Scripture, or applies God’s character, to a moment you are standing in right now. I have written a fuller teaching on that distinction: What Is a Rhema Word?

The practical difference matters. Scripture is the standard. A prophetic word is a message measured against that standard. If the two ever disagree, Scripture wins and the word is discarded — not softened, not reinterpreted. Discarded.

What a Prophetic Word Is For

Paul answers this in one sentence, and it is the most useful filter I know. In 1 Corinthians 14:3 ESV he says the person who prophesies speaks to people for their upbuilding, their encouragement, and their consolation.

Three purposes. Build up. Encourage. Comfort.

That does not mean every prophetic word is comfortable. Scripture is full of hard words, corrective words, warnings about judgment. But even the hard ones are aimed at building something up — a person, a church, a nation — rather than tearing a person down. A “word” whose actual effect is to humiliate, control, isolate, or frighten someone into compliance has failed the purpose test no matter how accurate it sounds.

I apply this bluntly. If a word leaves someone smaller, more dependent on the person who delivered it, and less able to hear God themselves, something is wrong with it regardless of how impressive the delivery was.

Prophetic Words for Today — Why the Volume Increased

A lot of people have noticed that prophetic words for today seem more frequent than they used to be, and they are not imagining it. Part of that is distribution. A word spoken in a living room twenty years ago reached the people in that room. The same word today reaches a hundred thousand people by nightfall through streaming, podcasts, and social platforms. Exposure changed even where frequency did not.

But part of it is real. When pressure increases, God’s people ask more questions, and asking is most of what opens the channel. What I have found in my own life is that the variable was never how much God was willing to say. It was whether I sat down expecting an answer instead of only making requests.

The increase in volume is exactly why the tests below matter more than they used to, not less.

The Five Tests Every Prophetic Word Has to Pass

Paul does not tell the Thessalonians to accept prophecy uncritically, and he does not tell them to reject it. He tells them to do both jobs at once:

Both errors are named in the same breath. Despising prophecy is an error. Gullibility is an error. Testing is the path between them.

• Does it agree with Scripture? The first and heaviest test. Any word that contradicts the written Word is rejected, however moving the delivery or however respected the messenger. This test alone eliminates most of what causes damage.
• Does it bear witness in your spirit? Not “does it excite you” — does something settle in you when you hear it. That recognition is real, and it develops with use. It is also the test most easily faked by emotion, which is why it never stands alone.
• Does it confirm rather than initiate? The test I lean on hardest and the one most often skipped. A genuine word usually confirms something God has already been saying to you quietly. If a word tells you to marry someone, move somewhere, or hand over money, and God has said nothing to you about it beforehand, the answer is not “obey.” The answer is “wait.”
• Does it come to pass? The oldest test in Scripture. Deuteronomy 18:21-22 ESV answers how you know when a word did not come from God: if what is spoken in the Lord’s name does not happen, the Lord did not say it. This requires time, which means keeping records. A word nobody wrote down is a word nobody can test.
• Does the community weigh it? 1 Corinthians 14:29 ESV instructs that two or three speak while the others weigh what is said. A word that cannot survive examination by mature believers — or a person who treats examination as persecution — has failed this test in the reacting.

If you want to go deeper on how believers actually learn to recognize His voice, I walked through it across twelve days with prophetic voices from across the body of Christ: Hearing From God — Biblical Teaching and Prophetic Voices.

What a Prophetic Word Is Not

It is not fortune telling. God speaks to prepare His people, not to satisfy curiosity about the future. A word that only gratifies curiosity is not doing prophecy’s job.

It is not a substitute for Scripture. The canon is closed. A prophetic word applies what God has already revealed; it never adds a new doctrine.

It is not a leash. Nobody holds a word over you as a claim on your obedience, your money, or your loyalty. The word was given to you. Testing it is your responsibility, not an insult to whoever delivered it.

It is not only for prophets. Paul is explicit that this is not a closed office:

And it is not automatically wrong when it does not land the way you expected. Which brings up the part almost everyone gets backwards.

Receiving a Word Is Not the Same as Interpreting It

There is an episode in Acts 21:10-14 ESV that ought to be taught far more than it is.

The prophet Agabus comes to Paul, takes Paul’s belt, binds his own hands and feet with it, and says the Jews in Jerusalem will bind the man who owns this belt and hand him over to the Gentiles. Everyone present immediately begs Paul not to go to Jerusalem.

Paul goes anyway.

Here is what matters: Agabus was right. The word was accurate and it happened exactly as spoken. But the application everyone drew from it — therefore do not go — was theirs, not God’s. The word described what would happen. It did not say to avoid it. Paul went, was arrested, and preached the gospel to governors and kings as a direct result.

How I Handle Words I Receive

I keep a specific practice, four to five times a week, and I will describe it because people ask.

Before I go to Him I pray, putting on the armor of God from Ephesians 6:10-18 ESV. I use my Bible memory app to make sure my focus is on His word. Often I go to my knees to submit. Then, with my eyes closed and my hands on the keyboard, I start typing what I am grateful for, and I ask Him to put me in a secret place where I can only hear from the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.

He frequently gives me confidential direction, and I ask Him specific questions. After He has spoken to me personally, I ask one of two things. Lord, what do You want me and Your people to hear today? Or simply, Lord, how are You today?

I write it as it comes and I do not clean it up. I date and time-stamp everything.

Then I publish the words I am given, unedited, where the community can read and weigh them. Not because I am certain of every one — because test five requires it. A word kept private cannot be weighed, and a word I edited is no longer the word I received.

What to Do If You Think You Received One

Write it down immediately, with the date. Memory rewrites words to match outcomes; paper does not. Nathan French’s instruction to have pen and paper ready before you start is an act of faith, and it is also simple record-keeping.

Do not act on it that day. Nothing genuine is lost by waiting a week. A great deal is lost by moving in an hour.

Run all five tests, in order, starting with Scripture.

Show it to two or three believers who know you well enough to disagree with you.

Then ask for confirmation. Scripture does not present asking as an offense. When Gideon asked for a sign and then asked again, God answered both times, and the text records no rebuke for it. Wisdom and testing are commended throughout Scripture; haste is not.

And if it turns out you were wrong — you heard your own hope, or your own fear, wearing God’s voice — that is not disqualifying. That is how anyone learns to distinguish a voice. You do not learn by never being wrong. You learn by testing, being wrong, noticing the difference, and testing again.