Your Sons & Daughters Shall Prophesy - Prophetic Gifts Today In The New Testament Church

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SUGGESTIONS

FOR PUBLIC SERVICES

Everything must always be done in a proper and orderly way. 1 Corinthians 14:40 (Williams)

THE FIRST TIME I PROPHESIED was exciting, but confusing and unproductive. It happened in 1949 at the First Assembly of God in San Jose, California. I was a junior at San Jose State University and Joy and I were newly married. We were the young people's leaders at the church, already ordained and anxious to go into full-time ministry. The First Assembly was then located across the street from SJSU, so I found it convenient to go into the sanctuary during the lunch period each day to pray. I had heard that God was moving in various places with new manifestations of spiritual gifts and prophecy taking place (see chapter 18). It sounded pretty exciting to me, so I began intensifying my prayers for God's guidance and asking for manifestations to occur. One Sunday morning during the worship service it happened. I think the manifestation startled everyone else as much as it did me. No one in the church, including the pastor, was trained to prophesy or had been exposed to prophecy. The only expected (and infrequent) spiritual hap pening in the church was tongues and interpretation, with the pastor usu ally giving the interpretation to some unrecognizable tongue spoken out by one of just a few church members. These expressions lacked power

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