Two Common Misconceptions About Prophetic Worship

There are two very common misconceptions that REALLY hinder prophetic worship:

1. Prophetic worship is SPONTANEOUS

2. God is the AUDIENCE

While both of these statements are not terribly wrong, they still keep people in their seats - intimidated by the spontaneous aspect of the prophetic and daunted by the prospect that they have to “perform” for this imposing “audience.”

Prophetic utterances may very well be spontaneous…but that is not what determines the prophetic. A prophetic statement, song, dance, piece of any kind is prophetic because it has God’s voice and character inserted into it. That’s simple – He LOVES to interact with us, so we can be expectant of His voice and participation in our worship every time we minister to Him. If we think about the prophetic like this - it makes it more about Him than us.

Secondly, although we are ministering to Him, He is NOT THE AUDIENCE. In prophetic worship there is no audience – only communing hearts. We used to get frustrated by congregations coming into worship behaving like an audience and simply sitting or standing in place. I think we tried to adjust that thinking by saying that God is the audience…so everyone needs to participate. While corporate participation by every member is desirable, we cannot limit God to the position of audience – He has something to say in every service.

Followed to their logical conclusion, both of these statements shut down congregational participation in worship and limit the scope of the prophetic because people may not feel proficient at spontaneously doing anything and they may be threatened by the concept of “performing” for the Audience of ONE.

We just need to relax about these two issues and allow Him to speak…and He LOVES to speak through every willing vessel. The onus is on Him – not us. We don’t have to perform or produce anything – we simply need to abide in Him and allow Him to flow in, and through us.