To me, everyone has a prophetic gifting. To me, the Holy Spirit can move through anyone and everyone, and maybe it'd be even more accurate to say 'everything' than simply 'everyone'. However, in much the same way, we like to have guided and tangible lines that others have prepared to help with definitions. Why? Why is it that we so value and enjoy restricting a good thing, by defining it? We restrict friendships by defining what kind of friends we are, we restrict sports, board-games, grammar, and... God. When we restrict and try to define God, we get tied up theologically, we forget the bigness, and try to downplay how important it is that we allow God to define Himself. When we define who God is, we can very easily run into situations where God is absolutely not moving, pride has taken over, and people are trying to build a tower to the heavens.
What we should be looking for are guidelines, and nothing less. Something that explains how something is how it can be used, and how it affects our lives. What guidelines are is a foundation, while definitions are boundaries of which restrict, rather than allow growth. Because of this, it's important that we are careful to accept and run with any single teaching or doctrine, but instead become careful to read and apply what we're taught. For instance, I've recently been introduced to a ministry who has a lot of different insights in many different areas, especially in regard to how humans interact with the Kingdom of Heaven, and God the Father. They have a specific topic expositing the gifts detailed in Romans 12:6-8, and how everyone in the Body of Christ embodies a different personality type detailed by one of these gifts. This isn't necessarily a gift you are given once you are saved but is how God originally designed you from your mother's womb. For instance, if someone has the "redemptive gift" of Prophet, they are going to see things very black and white, have a deep sense of intuition, and be built with a very vibrant emotional design, and have very intense emotions. This is what the ministry calls "the structure of the person." While I've been gaining insights about the way God sees people, I have also been quick to ensure that I'm not taking this topic into my heart as doctrine, it is simply a guideline that we can use to get to know people better.
Another example of what I've been learning in my own life is how we interact with God. What we know about God, and can know about God is regarded in what we consider His Book, i.e the Holy Bible. Yet there are countless debates, theologians, books, exposition, exegesis, interpretation, and 'proper' ways of thinking and coming to the Bible, and we haven't stopped to consider that all of them could be right. We haven't stopped to consider that the bias we're coming at the Bible toward is a bias that has been handed to us by generations of right and wrong beliefs about who the Bible represents. Yet this is a key that is being handed down by certain circles within the Body of Christ who has influenced the world in a big way. The key is this: that each of us have no idea what God is doing, what He's going to do next, and how He's going to do it unless we ask Him, and know Him. Many of us feel betrayed when something happens in our church that isn't necessarily in our scope of reference. When something is preached upon that has not been clearly talked about Biblically speaking. What if that something happened to us though? How would we react?
How would we react if we came into a room where God's presence was so strong that it knocked you over, or if someone came to you and told you everything about your life? Would you lean toward being offended and hardened, or would you gasp and feel known by the Almighty One who leads the person in front of you to prophecy? Furthermore, if you were shown all of the fruits you have borne, whether it be by ministry or other means, would you be pleased with the seeds that you've sown? Would you stop and consider that even the ground must be rotten if nothing good ever happens to you? At what point do you reflect upon your rotten fruits and stop blaming your neighbor for having cursed your ground? At what point do you throw your hands up, look up to the Throne and beg for mercy for cultivating a product which can only breed distaste, hate, and disgust? Would you stop selling your awful fruits, or would you learn to market the rottenness and take it as an opportunity to sell it as compost to the innocent and blameless, who will take the cursed fruit and turn it into a blessing for those around them? Who will not only multiply the fruits by one-hundred fold, but be able to satisfy the needs of their entire family, by finding a way to grow wheat, meat, and rich wine simply because they consider your rotten compost a blessing to their fields.
This is a call to introspect yourself and put your heart under a microscope made for even the hardest of hearts. Ask the Holy Spirit to judge you and your intentions with everything, O Lord you have searched me and known me, all of my ways are before you! Before I was formed you had written in your book my days, every one of them. Psalm 139 is a good psalm to read in lieu of this topic. If you have not felt known by the Lord, ask Him what's in your book. If you haven't felt known by the Lord for a long time, ask Him to judge your heart and mind. It's a good thing, to ask to be made pure before the Almighty. He will honor your request, and in fact, desires deeply to clean you up. So be made clean before Him, beloved. Keep walking, and persevere.