Understanding the timing of Prophetic Words and Dreams – Prophetic Series Part 5

One of the biggest challenges prophetic people have, and those receiving the prophetic word, is understanding the timing of the word.  When will the word actually happen?

This is critical to keeping our faith and hope level up.  Yes!  If we understand the timing of the word then we are able to stand in faith for it.

In this post I am going to show you some patterns which you can use to discern the timing.  Will I give you the exact timing of your word? No.  I honestly don’t think anyone can do that.  Why?  Most prophetic words have warnings, instructions, conditions attached to them.  If you don’t follow and obey what God is showing you will not receive the promise.  It really is that simple.

(Isaiah 1: 19-20) If you are willing and obedient, you will eat the good things of the land;  but if you resist and rebel,  you will be devoured by the sword.” For the mouth of the Lord has spoken.

Absolutely nothing in life replaces obedience.  Nothing.  Therefore, you can delay the word.

There are 2 things that you need to understand for the word come to past. (1)  Your understanding of the time and season that you personally are in. (2) When God’s Kairos time has arrived.

Everyone of us is on a different timeline.  God has seasons in which He works (Hebraic Calendar) but the timing of your own word comes after you have completed your process, obeyed and then it collides with the Kairos timing of God.

1 Peter 5:6  (NKJV) “Therefore humble yourselves under the mighty hand of God, that He may exalt you in due time”

The word time here means Kairos.  There is a specific time when thing happen.  That means when God gives you a prophecy, a dream, a vision there is a Kairos time associated with that and it will surely come to pass.

When I first started in the gift of prophecy, I didn’t understand this.  When the prophetic unction of the Holy Ghost would come upon me it felt so urgent in my spirit that I was convinced things would happen that day or that week.  When it didn’t I just thought I imagined things and they were not real.  This was not true, I just didn’t understand the gift of prophecy, kairos timing of God and my need for an Issachar anointing.

I don’t believe in praying for gifts because I believe God gives you the gifts that He knows is best for your personality type and your calling.  However, there are some gifts that work in tandem with others that will cause you to have a greater degree of accuracy and use your giftings better.

If you have the gift of prophecy, you need to pray for an Issachar anointing and the gifts of discerning of spirits.

If God speaks to you primarily through dreams, you need to pray for the gift to interpret dreams

If God takes you into the gift of tongues, pray for the interpretation of tongues.  Yes, even your own tongues.

The Issachar anointing is from the tribe of Issachar

(1 Chronicles 12:32) “And of Issachar, men who had understanding of the times to know what Israel ought to do…”

It is moving in understanding of God’s timing and season with wisdom.

Spend some time studying the tribes, the layout of the tribes and which ones were grouped together.  In this a lot of revelation will flow to you on God’s order of things.

Numbers 2:1-9, specifically shows the tribes grouped together.  The first one is Judah (Praise), followed by Issachar (Timing and Wisdom), followed by Zebulon (War, Trade, Ships – Business).

So your practical steps when receiving a word is to:

1. You need to Praise first
2. You need to understand the timing and ask for wisdom
3.  You need to war for the promise and pray in your provisions for it.

This is the layout that God has given in the model of the tribes.

If we look at the life of David (1 Samuel 16) we see that he was given the prophetic word by Samuel that he would be King at the age of 15.  However, he still had to go back to tending the sheep and living his life until the Kairos moment arrived.

The next thing that happens is God puts a distressing spirit on Saul and now he needs someone who plays the harp to soothe him.  David’s gift now makes room for him and he ends up in the palace playing the harp for the King.  So here he is looking at his promised position but still unable to touch it.  Now, if you are tracking the prophetic word you will see that it came closer, he moved from the stable to the palace.  There was movement.

What happens next is he becomes best friend with the King’s son, Jonathan, and marries the King’s daughter, Michal.  Now he’s family!!  There is further movement.

1 Samuel 18:30 says that in all that David did he operated in great wisdom so he gathered a huge following/supporters because of how he interacted with others and acted.

What happens after that is immense warfare.  The enemy gets really nervous when he realizes that you are nearing the promise.  The attacks start coming from everywhere.  How you respond will determine how long you stay in this season.  God will then start testing you to see your level of commitment to the promise.

David was given more than one opportunity to kill Saul, did he do it?  No.  He recognized that God gave Saul his position and therefore, he respected and submitted to the authority that God put over him.  If God promised David he would be King then God is well able to do it without David’s help.  All David needed to do was walk in obedience and do what the Lord told him to do.

A lot of you will go through the persecution and will need to step away from killing people (with your mouth) in order to see the promises of God fulfilled in your life.  If you engage in this type of warfare (using your tongue to crucify people) expect your promise to be delayed.  Even if they deserve it, stay out of that.  Touch not God’s anointed (even if they are not acting right) they are in their position of authority for a reason (Romans 13:1-2).  Leave them to God and keep your mouth off of them.

So David, after Saul dies asks the Lord if it was time for him to return to Judah.  He was 30 and that’s when he became king.  And, still had to wait an additional 7 years to become king in Jerusalem. So he waited 15 years.  Samuel died before this prophetic word came to pass but that didn’t stop David from continuing to walk in a manner that was worthy of his calling/the prophetic word.

A prophetic word that explains timelines

I want to share a teaching with you that God shared with me as it relates to Kairos timing and stepping out on his word.  After I started praying earnestly to get the Issachar anointing one night he gave me a dream where I met this old man (around 70) who was covered in diamonds.  We were talking but I don’t remember what was said.  The only thing I remembered was his skin was made out of diamonds. A few days later I scratched my cornea.  Has that ever happened to you?  It is very painful.   Well, through this painful experience the Lord brought me to this revelation.

I went to see the Ophthalmologist.  He was a new doctor.  The doctor started to talk to me about presbyopia and using trifocals (totally aging myself here).  I had never heard of trifocals before, only bifocals so I was very intent on hearing what he had to say to me.

I will describe it as this, from the moment he opened his mouth and started talking I knew that it was God talking to me through him.  It was Dr. Diamond (not his real name) and yes he was around 70 years old.  He was talking to me about glasses and contact lenses and God was talking to me about prophetic words, timelines and the Issachar anointing.  I understood that this was the man covered in diamonds in my dream and that God was saying “Pay attention I am about to give you some valuable wisdom about the prophetic through this man.”

So here is the explanation…

When we are young we have perfect vision, then as we age we may need bifocals (distance and near).  Then some of us develop presbyopia and we need trifocals which gives us 3 distances. With Trifocal glasses you have the ability to see things at a far distance, intermediate and those things that are near.  The lenses of the glasses are set up to accommodate all distances.

The top of the lens is for far distance, the center is for intermediate (arms length away) and the bottom is for the things nearest to you which is usually reading.

Some trifocals generally have lines which help you to determine when you’ve crossed over from one to the other.  There are also lenses called progressive lenses which have no lines.  I asked him, “wouldn’t I get confused when I’m wearing a progressive lens to know which area of the glasses I should use to determine the distance?”  He said, “with constant use you will learn which part of the glasses you need to use to see an object”  Then he said “that’s why most people start out with the trifocals with lines, it’s like having training wheels on, when you become really good at discerning which part of the lens you need to look through you can move into progressive lenses”.

He then went on to warn me, “if start off using progressives (without the training wheels) you only need to make one tumble by stepping off the sidewalk too soon to realize that you perceived the distance incorrectly. Then you’ll never do that again.  Some people don’t want the lines on their glasses so then I tell them OK, you’ll learn from your mistakes after you fall a few times”

He also informed me that some people who need to wear these types of glasses refuse to wear progressives or trifocals because they find it gives them headaches.  I asked him “why are they getting headaches?”  He said “that’s because they are trying to change the glasses to suit themselves. You can’t change the far distance portion to be near or the near to be intermediate.  It is what it is.  You have to adjust to the glasses, the glasses does not adjust to you. What they are doing is constantly using the wrong part of the lens to view things and as a result they end up with a headache. And, instead of learning how to adjust, they give up.  Also, most of them are part time wearers, they haven’t really committed themselves to wearing the glasses so they wear it sometimes and then other times they don’t.  This causes the brain to be confused.  So the next time they put on the glasses the brain is confused on where to look and they get frustrated and quit.  They are just not committed to the glasses.”

Then he went on to explain that “like contact lenses the glasses are custom made to fit your eyes.  So I measure your eyes and determines where the distance line meets the intermediate line and where the intermediate line needs to meet the near line.  No two are the same each person is different.  Also, the custom fitting is designed with your hobbies and job in mind so, if you are in a profession where you need peripheral vision the lines for each distance will go all the way across the lens.  If you are someone who works more on the computer then they focus on the center of the lens.  The design has to do with your profession.  It is also advisable that you keep a single vision lens for when you go out walking.  Since you need distance vision when you are walking if you look down stairs in these trifocals you will fall because you will be using the near portion of the lens to look down and the perceived distance will be incorrect and you could fall and hurt yourself.”

Whew!  I seriously wanted to yell – Prophesy Dr. Diamond!!!  ha ha ha  but I couldn’t because he was talking about glasses and I was on another plain in the spirit.  What I really wanted to do was pull out my phone, ask him to go back to the beginning and repeat everything he said so I could record it.  But that would have seemed to weird, so I just asked the Lord to help me remember as much as possible and then I wrote it down when I got home.

So this is the breakdown of what you just read.

1. When you receive the prophetic word you need to discern the distance… Far (10+ years away), Intermediate (3 – 10 years away) or near (right now through to the next 3 years).  This is step one.
2. Ask God to give you an Issachar anointing so you can determine the timeline
3.  If you use the wrong portion of the lens you will get the timing all wrong.  You’ll step out too soon or too late and miss it.  So many people step out in the wrong timing and when the word does not come to pass they think the prophetic word was wrong, but it wasn’t.  They just misread the timing of the word.
4. If you step out in the wrong timing you can get hurt. i.e stepping off the curb and twisting your ankle or getting into an accident because you failed to heed the warning on your rear view mirror that says “objects in mirror are closer than they appear”
5.  Don’t try to change the timeline.  You can’t force God’s Kairos timing.  Surrender to it or you will have many headaches…and end up quitting!
6. You can’t use someone else’s timeline to judge your own.  Each one is custom fitted by the Creator, He knows you! Don’t compare yourself to others and don’t try to use someone else’s vision/lenses as your own.
7. The customization of your timeline is precise and tailor made to you and it has to do with your gifts, calling and purpose in life.
8. Once you get the prophetic word, and you are sure it is from God, you need to commit to it.  When you don’t walk with a sense of commitment and purpose you will get confused.  Make a commitment to the vision.
9. You will get better with use.  I have to tell you this was the point that gave me the most hope.  It was like God was saying you may have gotten it wrong in the past but, it’s OK over time you are going to get better at this.  You’ll move from training wheels, the lines to guide you, to not needing those lines because your level of discerning the time has become keen.  You get better with use. (Hebrews 5:14 The Passion Translation) “But solid food is for the mature, whose spiritual senses perceive heavenly matters. And they have been adequately trained by what they’ve experienced to emerge with understanding of the difference between what is truly excellent and what is evil and harmful.”

So now, let’s talk about how you discern when something has moved from far to intermediate to near.

God speaks to each of us in a different way.  You can have a family of 4 children and if you ask each of these children to tell you about their childhood you’ll get 4 different versions.  Some will see the negative, others the positive, and some won’t remember some of the events as others do.

We have to speak to one child differently from another because they process the information differently.

We have different gifts, so how God will reveal the movement in the timeline for each of us will be differently.  So, you need to pay attention to how he speaks to you specifically.  I’m going to give you some examples of this but this is just to be used as a guideline and not specific to your own timeline.

I was speaking with a lady who said she had 2 occasions when God showed her something and it happened exactly as He showed her within 72 hours of her having seen it.  Her process was like this, she gets a dream (she rarely gets dreams) within 24 hours of the dream she gets scriptures that line up with the dream, within 24 hours after that she has an open vision (she rarely gets visions) that shows her exactly what she should do next, she does what she sees in the vision, it happens exactly as she is shown.

When she relayed it to me I told her God showed her the formula for your “Near Timeline”.  She didn’t realize that’s what was happening until I pointed it out to her. I told her she has a formula from God on how things happen for her within a 3 day window period.

I can tell you that you also have a formula but if you are not paying attention to how God speaks, writing it down, going back and checking it then you will never figure it out.  God’s will is not for you to be stumbling around in darkness and being confused.

Her formula is not my formula, and yours could be different too.

I have noticed that when God gives a prophecy that is in the distance the word doesn’t have much confirmation around it at the time of the word.  This is something that should be written down.  You need to wait until He shows you it moved from distance to intermediate.  How will you know it moved?  Well, there will be a trigger moving you close to it.

So let’s say the word came by way of a dream when you write it down you may have forgotten about it because it happened 4 years ago.  Then one day something happens, really simple like a song playing on the radio and suddenly this dream from 4 years ago comes back to your mind.  Why do you think that is?  God just activated it and it moved closer.  He uses these triggers to let you know He has not forgotten about the word He gave you.  So you now need to record the date that this trigger happened.  You’re doing this to establish your own timeline.  After that you may never remember that dream again.  Until….

Suddenly a few years after that everywhere you go you are reminded of this dream.  Scriptures, dreams,visions, people referring to something that trigger it. Again and again and again.  It’s with an urgency.  This is how you know God is ready to bring this thing to pass.

It’s like giving birth the contractions get closer together the nearer you get to birthing it.  So what do you do?  Position yourself.  If you have to put things in place you need to get moving on that immediately.  No one in labor nonchalantly goes about their business when the baby is on it’s way.  Prepare to deliver it.  You watch hour by hour waiting for that until you are holding that promise.  Because there is another who also waits for you to give birth…

(Revelation 12:3b-4) “I saw a large red dragon with seven heads and ten horns, with seven crowns on his heads. His tail swept away one-third of the stars in the sky, and he threw them to the earth. He stood in front of the woman as she was about to give birth, ready to devour her baby as soon as it was born.”

You need to determine how God speaks to you to determine the signs of your timeline.  Pay attention to triggers.  Pay attention to the frequency of the triggers.  Watch for the warfare that will come during your near timeline and the devils of past seasons who will try to reattach themselves to you.  Believe me, they are well aware that you are in labor.  Stay away from that and prepare yourself to deliver. Look for God to test you because He wants to see if you are ready to receive it.

Next Wednesday we will have the final part in the series which is how to step out and use your prophetic gift.

I pray this helped you in determining the timeline of your prophetic word.  If you have any comments leave them below.  Also, if you received additional revelation from my conversation with Dr. Diamond, please share!

Be blessed!