“GodSpeak” by Rick Evans and Jessica Fischer

Over the past year God has been doing His best to teach me to trust His hand in guiding my heart and emotions. First in October at the Vineyard Missions Leaders Meeting, then in February at the Society of Vineyard Scholars conference – and finally this month at the Vineyard National Conference (I may have to stop going to these meetings as God keeps tweaking me at them…).  😛

It was no surprise then that I snatched up Rick Evans and Jessica Fischer’s book GodSpeak: How to Hear God’s Voice Without Getting Weird as soon as I saw it.

And I’m glad I did!

Rick (the primary author) is the pastor of a Vineyard Church in Cleveland, Ohio, while Jessica is the church worship leader and a freelance editor for Moody Publishing. Together they crafted an easy to read, power packed book on hearing God’s voice within the community of believers.

As you can probably tell from the book title, there are a lot of followers of Jesus who are afraid to hear directly from God because they think they will make them weird. And by weird, I mean destructive weird – the kind of weird you DON”T want to be!

This is unfortunate as one of the main motifs of the Bible is the call for the people of God to hear His voice:

“But Moses replied, ‘Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the LORD’s people were prophets and that the LORD would put his Spirit on them!’” – Numbers 11:29

“My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me” – Jesus, John 10:27

“Follow the way of love and eagerly desire gifts of the Spirit, especially prophecy.” – Paul, 1 Corinthians 14:1

Drawing from his decades of walking in the prophetic, Rick outlines some great guidelines to those who are seeking Jesus with their whole heart and want to hear from Him. Note that Rick is great at emphasis the fact that the prophetic is not the prize, Jesus is the prize – the only goal. We hear from Jesus to encourage, strengthen and comfort the church (1 Corinthians 14:3).

Guidelines

  1. Speak only what the Spirit is saying
  2. Speak the work humbly and not dogmatically
  3. Be clear when giving a persona interpretations
  4. Encourage the recipient to receive counsel from spiritual leaders or to wait for confirmation from at least two other sources if directional elements are included in the prophecy.
  5. “Most likely” prophecies are to be avoided
  6. Do not speak your present emotions and call it prophecy
  7. If your prophecy does not come true, admit this to the recipient and ask forgiveness if harm has been caused.

You will notice that this picture displayed on this post includes the book Experiencing God by Henry Blackaby. This is because I feel that GodSpeak is the perfect addition to Henry’s book and Bible study.

They both deal with hearing God and joining with Him in His mission to redeem all of creation and humanity to Himself. The only difference is that Blackaby stops just short of the prophetic – which is where Rick’s GodSpeak book picks up. They are perfect companion books.