How do you talk to people about prophecy today? The word prophecy is quite intimidating. It’s a high bar to have a conversation with someone and ask them do you prophesy? Prophecy is a foundational gift and we’re told to desire it, yet many people are unaware that the Lord still uses that gift today.

A change of terminology can be useful, and it can be much easier to ask how do you hear from the Lord? Many people are unaware they can hear from the Lord directly, by themselves. And even if they understand they are capable of hearing, they often think it is inaccessible or rare.

A great opening line is:

How do you hear from the Lord?

This gets them thinking how rather than yes or no. It starts them down the path of trying to recognize when they have heard from the Lord in the past.

Many people will say I hear through His word, meaning the Bible. And that is great! I like to ask a follow up:

Do you dream?

Dreams are common, and many people have heard about Joseph’s dreams or Daniel’s dreams. There is a strong biblical foundation for the Lord speaking through dreams, and it’s not a hard leap to imagine that the Lord still uses that today. Often people will have an interesting dream that has impacted them, or one that they want to talk about.

Once you’re talking about dreams, then you can go into asking about visions. And once you’re talking about visions, you can go anywhere: feelings, emotions, an intuition or a knowing, songs and music, repetition, symbolism, smells and many other ways the Lord speaks to us. All of our imagination is available for the Lord to speak through.