If you are walking in an apostolic anointing or prophetic anointing, that anointing may come upon your life as a child. For me it did. I received that anointing as a very young child. It came upon my life. As for my daughter, she was born into it. She was born into the prophetic anointing and we saw her bear fruit, even as early as three years of age. My granddaughter was having visitations to heaven and the Lord was visiting her; she was prophesying a clear word when she was two and a half years old. So there are those that are born into the anointing and there are those who are apprehended at a very young age by the anointing that is going to administer their lives. 

Now some might say, well I didn’t have a tremendously close walk with God like Samuel, from the time that I was a child, so I guess I am not apprehended. That is not necessarily true. Although that prophetic anointing rested upon my life at a very early age, I went off into rebellion that I wish that I would not have done, but the prophetic anointing made room for that. When the anointing of God comes upon you to separate you out for a purpose, He makes room for our mistakes, for our failures. He leads us and He guides us and He disciplines us through every stage of our life, developing the end product of the end goal.

So for me, although I had gone through years of rebellion, the prophetic mantle that rested upon my life was there to teach, to discipline, to train, to lead, to guide and to protect. I didn’t feel protected. I didn’t feel guided. I didn’t feel any of those things in my younger years when I was in rebellion. But it was there none the less, and it had been given to me as a child. Do you understand what I am saying? 

Now I am going to say something to you that may rock some of your theology. When that was given to me, I was not born again. I did not get born again until my adult years. But that mantle came upon me to work its worth, none the less. 

It is just like the life of Jacob. When you look at Jacob, you see him many years in rebellion, being a trickster—all kinds of things. You look at his life and think, why would a guy do that? He was not born again, yet the prophetic mantle was upon his life. In fact, scholars believe that his actual day of conversion was at the time that he wrestled with the angel. That was the day that he fully gave his life to the Lord and the anointing that rested upon him then came into him. Do you understand what I am saying? The anointing that rested upon him then entered into his heart. 

So God puts an anointing upon us. He has apprehended us for this purpose. He has designed to bring us into this thing He has put on our heart and His anointing will stay with us, to protect us, to guide us, to teach us and to discipline us. It is there when we fail. It is there when we do it right. It is there when we trip and it is there to pick us up, but it is there to teach us all things in God that we desire to learn.

The Lord showed me, many years ago, a man who has tremendous prophetic anointing and He let me see into the man’s heart. This man, for 20 years, was born again but he was like a “pew potato." He would come to church and he would go to sleep—that is where he would take his naps. He did that for 20 years. One day he said to the Lord, “Is there anything real in Christianity? I just want what is real.” He was alone in his home when he said that and the Holy Spirit came upon him and turned his life upside down. God put a prophetic anointing upon this man’s life that was incredible. 

Now, because he slept for 20 years before he received that anointing, he was like a piece of coal, a diamond in the rough. There were a lot of things about his personality that were very hard to deal with because he had not been refined. He slept in God for 20 years. Do you hear what I am saying? For 20 years, although he was born again, he never let God do anything with his life so he had a lot of pride. He had a lot of stuff, a lot of everything. He had more of the flesh than most of us want to admit we ever have. And when that anointing came upon him, all the flesh he had was revealed in crystal clarity. 

People wanted to be friends with him because of his anointing but because of the unrefined flesh, it was repulsive. So the Lord said to me, I am going to show you something. And he opened up this man’s heart and let me see his heart and I saw what looked like dross, you know, yards of sludge and rock and debris, just all kinds of things. But right down the middle of his heart there was like a thread, a very, very fine thread. It went right down the middle of his heart to the bottom and at the bottom of his heart there was a pool of purity. There was this fine, fine thread that went down through all of this sledge and settled in a pool of purity. And the Lord spoke to me saying, That is why I can afford to give him this anointing, because in spite of all the flesh you see, there is this purity in him that wants only Me. He will let me deal with all of the rest of this to bring forth this purity that I see. 

Then He showed me this man’s wife. Now the wife, during the same twenty years, was a Sunday school teacher. She was very active in the church, very active in all the social programs of the church. She went to church religiously every Sunday, raised her hands to worship the Lord and would sit and listen to the messages while her husband slept beside her. Everyone thought she was a fine, upstanding Christian and that she loved the Lord immeasurably. She spent quality time every day for twenty years praying for her husband, that he would finally wake up to the Lord. 

Then the Lord said to me, Now I am going to show you her heart. When I saw her heart, her entire being was transformed into a harlot—she had the heart of a harlot. I was shocked. I gasped. I said, “How can this be?” And He said, That is what her heart is and that is all it will ever be. Although she loves me, she loves the world and she will never let go of her love for the world. You see, as long as we have a love for the world, we have the heart of a harlot. And so the Lord does not see our hearts the way we see them. 

To be continued next week…

Nita