Jack Deere Quotes

If you ever make it in the Christian life, it won’t be because you are a good follower. It will be because my Son is a good leader. Put your confidence in his ability to lead you, not in your ability to follow.

Sometimes, when you have spent a long time rejecting the gifts of the Spirit and come to believe in them, you almost feel as if you are being born again. You feel as if you have a whole new Bible. By that latter statement I mean that the Gospels and Acts come alive for you in a way that they never have before. Things that you had relegated to the first century now become a possibility for today's church.

Ya smell like sun," he murmured. D's voice was raw, like a man under hypnosis. "Ya know that smell? That toasty-skin smell, like ya get after goin' ta the beach?" He nodded a little. "I love that smell." He straightened, eyes lowered to the ground. "Reminds me a workin' on the ranch, when I was a kid. Ridin' with my brother, up in the hills, sun beatin' down turnin' our necks brown, our hands." Jack didn't dare speak, or breathe, or make the tiniest move to disturb the so-rare Reverie. This glimpse into D's secret mind was like having a skittish deer approach him on a wooded trail; one false move and it would dart away into the brush, leaving him with only a flash of white tail before vanishing.

And no one can keep us from fulfilling our destinies. No gossip, slander, betrayal, tragedy, not even the devil himself, can steal it. I’m the only one who can throw away my crown.

It was a joy, though, to get down into the valley and lose sight of all that open sky space underneath everything and finally, as it got graying five o'clocking, about a hundred yards from the other boys and walking alone, to just pick my way singing and thinking along the little black cruds of a deer trail through the rocks, no call to think or look ahead or worry, just follow the little balls of deer crud with your eyes cast down and enjoy life.

I say, Bill, I’ve sprained my ankle.” Bill staggered on through the milky water.  He did not look around.  The man watched him go, and though his face was expressionless as ever, his eyes were like the eyes of a wounded deer. The

This cook, Preacher? He's unbelievable. I had some of his venison chili when I first got to town and it almost made me pass out, it was so good." Hi slips curved in a smile. "You at venison, Marcie?" "I didn't have a relationship with the deer," she explained. "You don't have a relationship with my deer either," he pointed out. "Yeah, but I have a relationship with you--you've seen me in my underwear. And you have a relationship with the deer. If you fed him to me, it would be like you shot and fed me your friend. Or something." Ian just drained his beer and smiled at her enough to show his teeth. "I wouldn't shoot that particular buck," he admitted. "But if I had a freezer, I'd shoot his brother." "There's something off about that," she said, just as Jack placed her wine in front of her. "Wouldn't it be more logical if hunters didn't get involved with their prey? Or their families? Oh, never mind--I can't think about this before eating my meat loaf. Who knows who's in it?" -Ian and Marcie

I say, Bill, I’ve sprained my ankle.” Bill staggered on through the milky water.  He did not look around.  The man watched him go, and though his face was expressionless as ever, his eyes were like the eyes of a wounded deer. The other man limped up the farther bank and continued straight on without looking back. 

Well, don’t fart or you’ll scare the deer,” he continued seriously. “They have very sensitive noses and ears.

A person who has wrong doctrine and humility can be corrected. A person with mostly right doctrines and no humility will be resisted by the Lord he professes to serve.

Ma said that Jack Frost came in the night and made the pictures, while everyone was asleep. Laura thought that Jack Frost was a little man all snowy white, wearing a glittering white pointed cap and soft white knee-boots made of deer-skin. His coat was white and his mittens were white, and he did not carry a gun on his back, but in his hands he had shining sharp tools with which he carved the pictures. Laura and Mary were allowed to take Ma’s thimble and make pretty patterns of circles in the frost on the glass. But they never spoiled the pictures that Jack Frost had made in the night.

one kept me informed on Dad’s progress. Or lack of progress. Or how serious it all was—is. You certainly didn’t, darling.” Yet, was this true? Vaguely I seemed to know that my father was not doing well for some time. Driving on our country roads you see the carcasses of animals—raccoons, deer—lying at the roadside, killed

Three hundred yards away, a mule deer that had already browsed its fill and been to water, rested in the shelter of a dry wash. Long-eared jack rabbits went about their various affairs. Gophers ventured a few yards from their dens, then squeaked and scurried back. A heavy-bodied rattlesnake, just emerged from its winter’s den, coiled near a clump of cholla cactus and waited for a pack rat to venture from its spiny nest.

She swam nearer and her breath caught. Lying atop the rock was a bow and quiver full of arrows beside a pair of beaded moccasins. She spun around in the water, joy bubbling up inside her. But before she could take a breath, firm hands caught her ankles and tugged her under. She came up sputtering and laughing, but he’d still not surfaced. So he swims like a fish. She remembered he could also run like a deer, overtaking her in the woods all those years before. “Yellow Bird.” The voice behind her seemed almost to drown her with its depth. She turned to Captain Jack, hard pressed to keep her pleasure down. How many days since they had walked in the meadow? Too many, from the feeling inside her. In one glance she took in the doused eagle feathers of his headdress and the fine silver bands encircling his solid upper arms. Shimmering with water, Captain Jack’s hair was blue black. The beads about his neck were the same startling jade as his eyes and made him even more appealing. Suddenly shy, she ducked beneath the water, then swam away. Would he follow? They did a dance of sorts in the warm current, circling, gliding, swaying. Each time he caught her she pulled free and swam farther downriver than she’d ever been before. But he continued to woo her, pursuing her until she was so breathless she could only lie upon her back and float, the river like a watery bed.

She finds herself, by some miraculous feat, no longer standing in the old nursery but returned to the clearing in the woods. It is the 'green cathedral', the place she first kissed Jack all those weeks ago. The place where they laid out the stunned sparrowhawk, then watched it spring miraculously back to life. All around, the smooth, grey trunks of ancient beech trees rise up from the walls of the room to tower over her, spreading their branches across the ceiling in a fan of tangled branches and leaves, paint and gold leaf cleverly combined to create the shimmering effect of a leafy canopy at its most dense and opulent. And yet it is not the clearing, not in any real or grounded sense, because instead of leaves, the trees taper up to a canopy of extraordinary feathers shimmering and spreading out like a peacock's tail across the ceiling, a hundred green, gold and sapphire eyes gazing down upon her. Jack's startling embellishments twist an otherwise literal interpretation of their woodland glade into a fantastical, dreamlike version of itself. Their green cathedral, more spectacular and beautiful than she could have ever imagined. She moves closer to one of the trees and stretches out a hand, feeling instead of rough bark the smooth, cool surface of a wall. She can't help but smile. The trompe-l'oeil effect is dazzling and disorienting in equal measure. Even the window shutters and cornicing have been painted to maintain the illusion of the trees, while high above her head the glass dome set into the roof spills light as if it were the sun itself, pouring through the canopy of eyes. The only other light falls from the glass windowpanes above the window seat, still flanked by the old green velvet curtains, which somehow appear to blend seamlessly with the painted scene. The whole effect is eerie and unsettling. Lillian feels unbalanced, no longer sure what is real and what is not. It is like that book she read to Albie once- the one where the boy walks through the wardrobe into another world. That's what it feels like, she realizes: as if she has stepped into another realm, a place both fantastical and otherworldly. It's not just the peacock-feather eyes that are staring at her. Her gaze finds other details: a shy muntjac deer peering out from the undergrowth, a squirrel, sitting high up in a tree holding a green nut between its paws, small birds flitting here and there. The tiniest details have been captured by Jack's brush: a silver spider's web, a creeping ladybird, a puffy white toadstool. The only thing missing is the sound of the leaf canopy rustling and the soft scuttle of insects moving across the forest floor.

About fifty yards ahead a white-tailed deer was slowly picking his way across the snow-covered rocks and roots. As soon as I saw him I knew instantly that I didn’t want him to die. He was so beautiful and at ease in the woods. This was his home, not mine, and I suddenly felt like a killer who had broken into his house and was about to shoot him. I watched and held my breath.

The sternest rebukes Jesus ever delivered were not given to the sexually impure but to the spiritually proud.

His presence was a pressure instead of a pleasure. Jesus was in her home, but Martha was bothered not blessed. That’s what distraction does.

What is humility? My favorite definition is found in Samuel’s rebuke of Saul. Samuel said, “You were once small in your own eyes…” (1 Sam. 15:17).

One Multicolored strands of lights twinkled from every surface around the dining room of the Big Texan Steak Ranch, even from the antlers of mounted deer heads and the ears of one embarrassed-looking coyote. Only the buffalo head maintained its dignity. Well, he and the giant fiberglass Santa guarding the exit door. I’d wanted to come here ever since my rodeo-cowboy father ran off before my promised seventeenth-birthday dinner, but, in light of the news I’d just received, all of the decorations were suddenly a little too much. I cradled my iPhone between my ear and shoulder, one hand clutching the neck of my poncho and the other slinging my purse straps over my other shoulder. “Come on,” I whispered to Jack, my boss—a man

He's rich," Jack muttered to Eliza, "or connected with rich persons." "Yes—the clothes, the coins ..." "All fakeable." "How do you know him to be rich, then?" "In the wilderness, only the most terrible beasts of prey cavort and gambol. Deer and rabbits play no games." (Jack Shaftoe and Eliza)

The only legacy that lasts is written on the hearts you helped bring closer to heaven.

The Greeks and Romans thought the message about the cross was utter nonsense. Crucifixion was reserved for the lowest criminal; it was illegal to crucify a Roman citizen, no matter what his crime. There was no example either in Greek or in Roman mythology of a crucified god. A crucified god was a contradiction in terms. What god would ever submit to such humiliation? The Jews could not accept the message of the cross, because one who hung on a cross was cursed according to Deuteronomy 21:22-23. They thought it was impossible for God to bring Himself under a curse. The cross of Jesus contradicted human wisdom and experience

[...] if we want to be prophets, we must pay close attention to the thoughts that come to us out of nowhere with a message that contradicts our normal ways of thinking or acting.

(Isa. 66:2). There are actually people that God Himself esteems. This is an amazing fact in itself, but who He esteems is even more amazing. He does not esteem the rich, the beautiful or the intelligent; He esteems the humble.

Humility is almost always acquired in the desert. Moses, David, John the Baptist and Jesus all had significant training time in the desert. Likewise, everyone who is greatly used by the Lord is led into the “desert” to get humility.

I think that the best measurement of our love for God is the level of our capacity to enjoy Him.

[...] it is normal for God to come to us in a form that makes it difficult to recognize Him and in a way that makes it easy to reject Him.

Discipleship is loving someone, enjoying a person with whom we have a special chemistry, and teaching them to love the things that Jesus loves. Discipling someone is not an obligation; it is a pleasure.

A pair of waiters brought a feast to the hotel room and arranged it in the sitting area. They unfolded the hot cart into a table, draped it in white linen, and brought out silver-domed plates. By the time the wine was poured and all the dishes were uncovered, I was trembling with hunger. Luke, however, became fractious after I changed his diaper, and he howled every time I tried to set him down. Holding him against one shoulder, I contemplated the steaming grilled steak in front of me and wondered how I was going to manage with only one hand. “Let me,” Jack murmured, and came to my side of the table. He cut the steak into small, neat bites with such adroitness that I gave him a look of mock-alarm. “You certainly know how to handle a knife.” “I hunt whenever I get the chance.” Finishing the task, Jack set down the utensils and tucked a napkin into the neckline of my shirt. His knuckles brushed my skin, eliciting a shiver. “I can field-dress a deer in fifteen minutes,” he told me. “That’s impressive. Disgusting, but impressive.” He gave me an unrepentant grin as he returned to his side of the table. “If it makes you feel better, I eat anything I catch or kill.” “Thanks, but that doesn’t make me feel better in the least. Oh, I’m aware that meat doesn’t magically appear all nicely packaged in foam and cellophane at the grocery store. But I have to stay several steps removed from the process. I don’t think I could eat meat if I had to hunt the animal and . . .” “Skin and gut it?” “Yes. Let’s not talk about that right now.” I took a bite of the steak. Either it was the long period of deprivation, or the quality of the beef, or the skill of the chef . . . but that succulent, lightly smoked, melting-hot steak was the best thing I had ever tasted. I closed my eyes for a moment, my tonsils quivering. He laughed quietly at my expression. “Admit it, Ella. It’s not so bad being a carnivore.” I reached for a chunk of bread and dabbed it in soft yellow butter. “I’m not a carnivore, I’m an opportunistic omnivore.” -Jack & Ella

Why the long face? Aren’t you having fun?” “I hate hunting. I can handle ducks, but not deer. I mean, I don’t want to pass judgment—I just wish my husband didn’t shoot deer.” “Oh, Mel, don’t worry. I’ve been hunting with your husband—the deer are completely safe.” “Melinda, we’ll have venison all winter. You’ll love it,” Jack said. “Don’t worry, Mel,” Paul whispered. “He’ll never get a thing. They can smell him coming.” Some

You ate venison, Marcie?” “I didn’t have a relationship with the deer,” she explained. “You don’t have a relationship with my deer either,” he pointed out. “Yeah, but I have a relationship with you—you’ve seen me in my underwear. And you have a relationship with the deer. If you fed him to me, it would be like you shot and fed me your friend. Or something.” Ian just drained his beer and smiled at her enough to show his teeth. “I wouldn’t shoot that particular buck,” he admitted. “But if I had a freezer, I’d shoot his brother.” “There’s something off about that,” she said, just as Jack placed her wine in front of her. “Wouldn’t it be more logical if hunters didn’t get involved with their prey? Or their families? Oh, never mind—I can’t think about this before eating my meat loaf. Who knows who’s in it?” Ian

When they got back to town the hunters had returned and Mel was delighted to see no evidence of murdered wildlife in the truck beds or tied to roofs. But her elation was short-lived, because once inside the bar she learned that they had bagged two bucks, four-by-fours, both of which had already been taken to the meat processor to be butchered. “Oh,” she whined emotionally. “Who did it?” Jack looked at his feet. But he made an attempt. “I think Ricky did it.” Mel met Rick’s eyes and the boy put up two hands, palms toward her. It wasn’t him. Mel leaned against her husband and, unbelievably, started to cry. Jack shook his head, put an arm around her and led her away from the gathering, back toward the kitchen. As he did so, David was bouncing up and down on Mel’s hip, waving his arms wildly and reaching for his dad. “Melinda,” Jack said. “You knew we were going hunting. We didn’t torture the deer. We’re going to have venison.” “I hate it,” she sniveled. “I know you hate it, but it’s not a cruel thing. It’s probably more humane than the way cattle are slaughtered.” “Don’t try to make me feel better about this.” “Jesus, I wouldn’t dare,” he said. “What’s wrong with you?” “I don’t know,” she whimpered. “I’m weepy.” “No shit. Here, let me have him. He’s out of his mind.” “Sugar,” she said. “I should go nurse him.” “He’s going to be riding his bike up to the breast before long.” “He doesn’t want to give it up.” “Understandable. But you’re worn out. Maybe you should go home and go to bed.” “I don’t sleep till he sleeps. And he isn’t going to sleep until he detoxes.” “All right,” Jack said, taking his son. “Go cry or wash your face or nap or something. I’ll hang on to the wild one until he calms down a little.” He kissed her forehead. “This really isn’t like you. Not even over deer.” “By the way, you smell really bad,” she said. “Thank you, my love. You smell really good. I’ll wash this off before I smell the rest of you, how’s that?” She

You were right, you know—coming here was completely crazy. It was irrational. To think I’d choose to go to a town where there’s no mall, much less a day spa, and one restaurant that doesn’t have a menu? Please. No medical technology, ambulance service or local police—how is it I thought that would be easier, less stressful? I almost slid off the mountain on my way into town!” “Ah… Mel…” “We don’t even have cable, no cell phone signal most of the time. And there’s not a single person here who can admire my Cole Haan boots which, by the way, are starting to look like crap from traipsing around forests and farms. Did you know that any critical illness or injury has to be airlifted out of here? A person would be crazy to find this relaxing. Renewing.” She laughed. “The state I was in, when I was leaving L.A., I thought I absolutely had to escape all the challenges. It never occurred to me that challenge would be good for me. A completely new challenge.” “Mel…” “When I told Jack I was pregnant, after promising him I had the birth control taken care of, he should have said, ‘I’m outta here, babe.’ But you know what he said? He said, ‘I have to have you and the baby in my life, and if you can’t stay here, I’ll go anywhere.’” She sniffed a little and a tear rolled down her cheek. “When I wake up in the morning, the first thing I do is check to see if there are deer in the yard. Then I wonder what Preacher’s in the mood to fix for dinner. Jack’s usually already gone back to town—he likes splitting logs in the early morning—half the town wakes up to the sound of his ax striking wood. I see him five or ten times through the day and he always looks at me like we’ve been apart for a year. If I have a patient in labor, he stays up all night, just in case I need something. And when there are no patients at night, when he holds me before I fall asleep, bad TV reception is the last thing on my mind. “Am I staying here? I came here because I believed I’d lost everything that mattered, and ended up finding everything I’ve ever wanted in the world. Yeah, Joey. I’m staying. Jack’s here. Besides, I belong here now. I belong to them. They belong to me.” *

Let me make you some coffee,” he suggested. “And ruin this perfectly good buzz? Hell, I’ve earned it.” She took a step and wavered. “Besides, I don’t think it’ll make me sober. Probably just wide-awake drunk.” Jack tightened his hold around her and laughed in spite of himself. “All right, Mel. I can put you in my bed and take the couch…” “But sometimes I have deer in my yard in the morning,” she said, a little whiny. “I want to go home. They might come back.” Home. That sounded good to Jack, that she thought of that cabin as her home. “All right, Mel. I’ll take you home.” “That’s a relief,” she said. “Because I’m pretty sure I already can’t drive. Even on a straight and undangerous road.” “You’re a lightweight,” he said. They

You’re going to have a lot of venison come in the bar soon, Jack. I’m going to shoot the goddamn deer if they don’t get out of my yard.” “I can’t take illegal venison, Hope. You try this every spring. Why don’t you put up a good fence?” “I have up a good fence! They jump it! And the goddamn rabbits dig under. Bastards.” “Now, is that any way for the owner of a church to talk?” “I just own it, Jack,” she said, pushing up her glasses. “I’m not exactly the religious sort.” “Is that so?” “This

Travis removed his camo hat and said solemnly, “My boy Brylock is huntin’ deers with Jesus now.

Of all the gifts, none seem to rest on such flimsy experiences as prophecy. No ministry is as difficult to learn. It is so much more art than science. It may also be the most valuable of all the gifts.

the problem with allowing anyone to prophesy to the whole church on Sunday morning—it is just not that helpful to the whole church. Most of the people who speak are not really prophesying, nor do they have authority to address the whole church. I have watched churches try to do prophetic ministry in this way for years and have never seen it build a strong prophetic ministry in the church. This method teaches people to ignore—or worse—despise prophetic ministry.

We also need the Lord to show us how to apply the revelation [...] People are different, and therefore the same truth may need to be applied in different ways if it is going to benefit the hearer. An application that would needlessly provoke one person may be just right for another.

After Isaiah delivered one of his most difficult messages of judgment, he said, “I will wait for the LORD, who is hiding his face from the house of Jacob. I will put my trust in him” (Isa. 8:17). Follow Isaiah’s example, wait for the Lord and put your trust in Him so that you won’t succumb to the Rejected Prophet Syndrome.

Good friendships do not just happen. They are cultivated over a period of time, and they are often painful. They take time because trust grows slowly. They are painful because friends become vulnerable to one another, and no one can hurt us like a close friend. The pain of intimacy scares some of us into settling for just being servants, but humble people endure the pain and take the time that all great friendships require.

Sunday morning is the time for the expression of our most mature gifts. It is not the time where people learn how to teach or prophesy.

Never give a prophetic word to someone without asking and receiving the Lord’s permission first. I am often asked, “How do we know if we have the Lord’s permission to give the word?” The answer is, He will tell us if we ask Him.

we can have a true revelation and give it a wrong interpretation. Furthermore, we can have a true revelation, a correct interpretation and a wrong application. We have to be right at all three stages if the message from the Lord is going to benefit someone.

In the patch of forest across the road, there were two deer grazing, a stag and a doe. Jack watched them in awe, took in their grace and vulnerability as though they were good omens sent personally to him. They were two reasons to live, to reasons to believe he could defy the odds history had stacked against him.

Humility, not intelligence, has always been the heart quality that moves God to speak to us and enables us to hear Him clearly.

Prophets do not live in a tidy world. They move in realms where angels and demons cross paths, where the counterfeit and the real intermingle. Confusion and ambiguity are their frequent companions.

The only way to derive comfort here is to assume that God does not speak anymore except in the pages of the Bible, or that He has given up His strange ways. But you probably would not be reading this book if you believed that. It is much more likely that you believe God still speaks today and that He might even ask you to do something strange.

Instead of learning from the failures of his bizarre behavior, Robert developed a theology to justify it. God “told” him somewhere along his journey that his ministry would be rejected. Armed with the weird incidents of the Bible and a divine promise of rejection, he would always be able to justify his antisocial ways and blame someone else for his failures in ministry.

If we are foolish enough, we will always be able to find something in the Bible to justify wrong or weird behavior or corruption in our hearts.

Before we use the prophets of the Bible to justify some unorthodox action on our part, we should remember that they had the highest levels of discernment and character. When God commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac or Hosea to marry Gomer, the issue was not whether or not they were discerning accurately the voice of God. They heard His voice clearly. The issue was obedience. We should also expect God’s voice to be that clear before doing something strange, especially when we could hurt someone.

from the beginning to the end of the Bible, God did strange things. It would be foolish to imagine that once the Bible was completed, God changed His ways to accommodate our sense of good taste. He is still doing strange things.

How should we respond when we encounter one of God’s strange acts today? We should glorify Him for the experience. Unfortunately, some in the Church glorify the experience.

Paul talked a lot more about the Lord than he did about his strange experiences with the Lord.

when God commanded the prophets of the Bible to do something weird, He did it with such clarity that they did not wonder whether the command came from Him or from their emotions.

I failed to appreciate the power of the general word I had been given and thought I could improve it by making it more specific. I was actually adding to the revelation I had received. Sometimes we do this because we think that people value specific words more than general ones [...] Sometimes we are tempted to add a few specific details to make us appear more powerful. But don’t do it. If the general word is from the Lord, it will have power. Adding to it will only dilute or ruin it.

Those who want to look like great prophets always end up needlessly hurting others.

For much of my Christian life, I had no appreciation of the Lord’s spontaneity. [...] It seemed reasonable to me that God would accommodate Himself to my preferred mode of divine communication and to my schedule. After all, I was quite busy serving Him. [...] But I also missed a great deal of what God was saying to me during those days because I restricted my listening to only one form of the Lord’s communication and mainly to one time of the day.

Someone has said that the greatest hindrance to loving God is serving God. I believe it.

if we examine the lives of those in the Bible who are skilled interpreters of revelation, we find that they were always devoted to prayer.

All of the elements that unlock the meaning of revelation—humility expressed in prayer, friendship with God and willingness to obey God—can be found in this chapter of Daniel [10]. The prophet was given a vision he could not understand. Instead of giving up, he “set [his] mind to gain understanding.” Then he prayed and fasted until the interpretation came. When we pray and fast, we are confessing our weakness and expressing our dependence on God. This is why the angel said that Daniel had humbled himself before God. He had a friendship with God, for he was “highly esteemed” by God (10:19). And he was willing to do whatever was required to obey and to understand the vision.

We know so little of God and His ways. Some things He will leave shrouded in mystery, regardless of our best efforts to understand them.

Jesus used hard sayings to frustrate the impure motives of everyone who tried to be close to Him.

Symbolic language conceals truth from the proud, reveals the most profound truth to the humble and jars us awake when we are tempted to use God rather than love Him.

Conversing with the One who gave us the symbols is the best way to discover their meaning. [...] there is no manual of symbols that will give us ready-made interpretations of the nonliteral elements in our dreams and visions. This is because symbols can have different meanings in different contexts.

Our thoughts and feelings about the symbol are important too, for God chooses particular symbols because of their potential to communicate with us.

the most common mistake made in interpreting dreams and visions is to take something literally that was intended to be taken symbolically.

Most of the time, negative events in dreams and visions are warnings, not decreed events (see Job 33:13-18). The dream may warn us what will happen if we do not repent of a certain attitude or behavior. Or we may not be doing anything wrong at all. Perhaps the devil has planned a special attack against us, and the negative dream is an encouragement to pray so that the calamity won’t come to pass.

All prophetic people I know are subject to tormenting dreams, which only seem to be revelatory. They tell a very real and coherent story, but it’s a bad story, usually the thing the prophetic person fears most.

I should have asked the Lord what the word about blood pressure meant and how it applied to this lady. Suppose I had done that, but the Lord had not answered me. Then I could have asked the lady to help me with the interpretation. I could have said, “Just a moment ago, I was looking at you and the words ‘blood pressure’ came to my mind. Do those words mean anything to you?” Had I done this, she would have said, “Oh, my! They certainly do mean something. My husband has low blood pressure, and he even passes out from it!

We can have the most vivid dream and think we will never forget it, but if we do not write it down within 5 to 10 minutes after waking, most likely we will forget the dream within the hour.

We have to be careful not to say more than God has said. If we add anything, we should distinguish between the revelation and our own opinions regarding its meaning and application. Our opinion may be valuable, but if we carelessly lead our hearers to believe it is what God has said, it will probably be deceptive.

great prophets have always been great interceders. If we truly want our prophetic word to draw our hearers to God, then we should pray for them after we deliver the message.

in the story at the beginning of this chapter, you may have wondered why God did not just say “low blood pressure” in the first place. If He could suggest “blood pressure” to my mind, how difficult would it have been to add the word “low”? [...] I think God omitted the word “low” because He was teaching me humility. First, He was teaching me to ask for an interpretation so that I might learn the habit of humble dependence on Him for everything. Second, He let me suffer a little healthy embarrassment. [...] The embarrassment that the Lord engineered was not a sign of His irritation, but rather of His love and His commitment to instill humility in me.

The Lord longs for friends with whom He can share His secrets. [...] This closeness is the goal of prophetic ministry, not the delivering of prophetic words. Powerful prophetic words are the by-product of being close friends with the most powerful Word of all.

How can we tell the difference between a true warning dream and a tormenting dream? First, we must see if there is a connection between the dream and what we were doing just before we fell asleep. Second, does the dream reflect something we habitually fear or worry about? Fear and worry are entry points for demonic deception. Third, does the dream take away our hope, making us feel that neither prayer nor repentance will help? Hopelessness and condemnation are signs of the accuser’s revelation.

in our church we have three expressions of prophetic ministry on Sunday morning. Two or three prophets will address the whole church from the stage. We have about six to eight people who can do this well, but only two or three do it during the service. At the next level, we have ministry teams that pray over people at the end of each service. Finally, a number of our people will give prophetic words one on one informally. This procedure eliminates some of the craziness unstructured prophetic ministry allows

Emphasize the main and the plain, not the rare and the bizarre. [...] Don’t do anything strange without a clear leading from God. [...] Don’t do anything prophetically that is potentially embarrassing or harmful to another person without his or her permission. [...] Repeat after me: “I am not an exception to the rules. I am a beginner in the school of the prophets.

Sometimes the Lord does not give the prophet an interpretation or application of a revelation, but He still has him speak the revelation. In this case, the Lord may be testing the hearts of the hearers to see if they value His word enough to seek Him for its meaning and application.

The discipline to be silent when God is silent or when He has withheld permission to speak is a sign of prophetic maturity. [...] No one gets to the highest level of prophetic ministry without mastering the skill of prophetic restraint. These are the prophets who can be trusted with revelation that is not yet ripe for sharing, that must be “sealed” for a later use (see Isa. 8:16; 29:11; Dan. 8:26; 12:4,9). These are the prophets to whom God can show great secrets, then trust them never to repeat what they heard or saw to anyone (see 2 Cor. 12:4; Rev. 10:4).

unless the Lord says otherwise, every revelation is also a call to prayer.

Why would God show a prophet something and not give him permission to share it? Perhaps He is calling the prophet to intercede instead of prophesy.

Among other things, the Devil employs supernatural power to blind the minds of unbelievers (2 Cor. 4:4-6), to hold people in bondage through the fear of death (Heb. 2:14-15), to cause physical illness (Luke 13:11; Matt. 9:32; 12:22), to cause mental illness (Luke 8:26-39), and ultimately to cause demons to enter and dwell in a person (Matt. 12:45; cf. Judas in John 13:27). These are some of the works of the Devil that Jesus came to destroy. The works of the Devil cannot be destroyed by mere human power.

In those years, I was also learning that when the worst day of your life comes, it is only the beginning of bad. Suddenly, it seemed like everybody had a better story than mine. Then my story got worse. God took away just about everything I used to fuel my self-esteem until there was nothing left except his love. And for the first time, I felt his love apart from anything I could offer him. And then I no longer needed a better story.

If you want to be used by the Lord in a significant way when you pray for the sick, cultivate a desire to see the Son of God glorified. Wanting only the Son's glory is the most effective way I know to keep ourselves from being deceived and led into error.

Anyone who is ores the Bible is inviting deception and disaster to be his intimate companions in the journey of life.

God is so humble he doesn’t mind the shame of the stable or the stigma of illegitimacy. Have you ever noticed God’s preference for the humble, the lowly, and the afflicted (Isa.57:15; 66:2)?

This is not an academic book. I have not written it for professional theologians. I have tried to write a practical book for ordinary Christians who want to hear God’s voice above the clamor of everyday life. The still, small voice that spoke to Elijah in the cave is far more powerful than many of us realize. It can keep us from being bound by tradition or driven by circumstance. The voice can give us more than our own abilities to understand the Bible. Many Christians have wandered into a spiritual wilderness devoid of passion and power. Those who hear and obey the voice of God will escape that wilderness or see it changed into a garden.