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Wisdom is invaluable for any believer and all the more when exercising your prophetic gift. We need all the wisdom we can get, particularly when we are handling words of revelation in these perilous and controversial days.
The following prophetic wisdom lessons from my years in prophetic ministry will help you discern what to do & what NOT to do as you grow in your prophetic gift.
Prophetic Wisdom Lessons—What Not to Do
Through my many years of active ministry, I have learned a few things. As a prophetic person who is wired to be extra-sensitive, there are certain hard-learned lessons I continue to keep in mind. Here are four wisdom lessons that have kept me from floundering in the prophetic; essentially, these are things to avoid.
1. Do not let your “calling become more important than love.”
 Prophetic revelation can be a pretty heady thing. It can be too easy to misplace your identity by putting it in your gift and calling. We must always take to heart these words of Paul: “Let love be your highest goal! But you should also desire the special abilities the Spirit gives—especially the ability to prophesy” (1 Corinthians 14:1, NLT).
There was a time in my life when I was so enamored with anything prophetic that I only paid attention to the last part of that verse. Somehow the “love” exhortation was blocked from my field of vision. This was not the case for one of my best mentors, Mahesh Chavda, whose first book was titled, Only Love Can Make a Miracle. Nor was it the case for the seer prophet Bob Jones. In a near death encounter, Bob was commissioned to challenge the prophetic community with a piercing word, “Did you learn to love?”
2. Do not “disclose Noah’s nakedness.”
Do not be too startled by that statement. What I mean is this. In the story from Genesis 9, Noah was lying drunk and naked inside his tent. One of his sons saw him naked and informed the other two sons. Those two sons were wiser than the first one; they walked backward with a garment between them to cover the shame of their father’s nakedness, without looking at him as they did so.
Here is how that applies to us. God sometimes reveals to prophets shameful things about other people. These revelations would bring those people into disrepute if they were released at large in a wrong manner. In situations like these, a prophet needs to learn the wisdom of holding his or her tongue. It is far better to preserve a sinner’s honor than it is to bring them into shame and disgrace. God can still convict the sinner and He can still do His work of restoration, even if nothing has been said in public. “Walk backward” by privately disclosing the word to the person it applies to.
3. Do not catapult yourself beyond the limits of your sphere.
 The apostle Paul sagely offered this advice to the Corinthian Christians. He told them (and us) not to boast of authority that we do not possess (see 2 Corinthians 10:13-16). This is often referred to as your “sphere of rule” or your metron. I found out about this reality from personal experience. I definitely do not function in the same level of revelation or with the same level of authority everywhere I go. Over time I have learned to discern which places I am called to build or bless and which places I am not. I cannot improve my effectiveness in the places I am not called to affect.
Once years ago when I became deeply involved in a major international prophetic controversy...
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