Prophetic People in Testing Times: Signs Of Trial

There is an old song that goes, ‘Nobody loves me… I’m going to the garden to eat worms…’

My friend has a compost barrel in her garden and inside under the lid is teaming with juicy, wriggling worms, hundreds of them—eeuuw!

Eating worms has become something of a metaphor for having a bad day. A message that says, ‘Need worms, quick!’ is code for, ‘I’m having a bad day—need sympathy and prayer!’ On a really bad day, it’s ‘Give me the barrel!’ But what if you are not only having a 1-barrel-of-worms day, but a whole 10-barrel month, or even a 100-barrel year?

I am working on a chapter in my new book on ‘The Testing Season’—or should I say, the chapter is working on me? (It couldn’t get worse than the week a few years back when I was working on a chapter on pride!) At any rate, this whole business of experiencing testing, or wilderness seasons in the growth of our prophetic gifts is pretty relevant, and actually there is GOOD news too, so I thought I’d share some of it with you.

Signs that you may be experiencing a wilderness season in relation to your spiritual gift:

• Feeling that you have been shut down in your God-given abilities. You wonder where your gift has gone and what God is doing

• You may have voluntarily or involuntarily released ministry responsibility to do with your gift and feel displaced as a result

• You long for the honeymoon period when you first discovered your spiritual gift and think of it as ‘the good old days’

• You may have made mistakes and wonder whether you will ever recover

• You experience doubts about your ability and wonder if God really called you

• You find yourself going through character-testing circumstances and coming up short on the character side

• You wonder whether the prophecies once made about you will ever be fulfilled

• You feel as though you are being criticised, blocked or resisted

• You feel battle-worn and weary

• You feel displaced, separated or hidden in relation to your gift and ministry

• The opposite of God’s call and the destiny you believed for seems to be happening to you.

If you can identify with any of these things, there is some very good news for you—there is a REASON for this SEASON and it all has to do with you, God, and fruitfulness! We’ll have a look into this some more in the next few days.

Do you identify with any of the above points now, or have you in the past? I’d love to hear from you, and so would others—leave a comment for me.

In the meantime, I’m going to fast worms and try thanksgiving and praise instead…

The teaching section in this post is excerpted from the e-book, ‘Grow Your Prophetic and Prayer Gifts.’ If this post has ministered to you and you would like further help in the development of your prophetic gifts, click here to review the book.

See also Prophetic People in Testing Times: The Reason For The Season

© Helen Calder   Enliven Publishing

Helen Calder

Helen Calder is a prophetic minister and writer, and founder of Enliven Ministries. Helen has a unique gift of equipping in prophetic ministry and prayer. She is known for Enliven Blog (est. 2009), an online resource that reaches thousands of people globally.