I want to share something that happened this morning. I was at the grocery store doing the normal mundane things that you do in the grocery store— going up and down the aisles, getting food off shelves and putting them in my cart. I don’t remember what I was doing the moment it happened, because I don’t think I was doing anything particularly exciting. I was probably trying to think of where in the store the next item on my list was. As I pushed my cart down the main aisle of the store, I saw this woman to my front right. She was older, probably in her late 60s or 70s, greyed hair with some streaks of color in it. Right when I looked over and saw her, I had this thought run through my head—that she has a grandson, that she has been concerned about him, and that she needed to know her prayers mattered. Now, after having this thought out of the blue, I did what almost everyone does—which is first wonder if that was my thought or the Holy Spirit, and then ponder it more as I continued with my shopping. Did I stop and talk to her at that moment? Yeah . . . no.
However, I wasn’t wanting to entirely ignore the situation. Part of engaging the prophetic is to not just receive revelation, but to interpret it and decide what action needs to be taken. Some things just require prayer, others require speaking to others, and while this seemed like it more obviously fell into the latter category, I don’t honestly like randomly approaching strangers in situations like that because it’s uncomfortable. So, as I continued my shopping, I did ask the Lord to have me run into her again during the course of my shopping if He wanted me to go talk to her. Which I did just a few minutes later, when we were the only two people in an aisle, making it rather obvious to me that I was, indeed, supposed to go speak to her. She was standing toward the far end of the aisle, so I walked past her to the end of the aisle, parked my cart, then turned back to speak with her.
Leading with my usual “Hey, I have a random question for you”, I then asked her if she had a grandson. She confirmed that she does, at which point I proceeded to let her know the rest of what the Holy Spirit had shared with me— namely, that God knew she was worried about some kind of difficulty that was happening with her grandson and that He wanted her to know He was going to take care of the grandson and the situation. The Lord didn’t tell me what the situation was, I didn’t ask, and I didn’t really feel like I needed to know— but she thanked me and let me know that she was indeed worried about him and that she needed to hear that.
I finished up with my shopping, I got in line to check out, then realized I forgot something I had meant to look for. As I walked back through the store to find what I was looking for, I ran into this woman again. We made eye contact, I smiled at her, and she proceeded to tell me that she really needed to hear that message from God today and asked if she could give me a hug. I’m a hugger, so I gladly accepted. She told me her name was Sylvia, and asked me to keep her in prayer, and I continued to encourage her that her prayers matter, that the Lord knows what is going on, and that He is going to take care of things.
What I experienced in the grocery store is something called a Word of Knowledge. It is one of the nine spiritual gifts listed in 1 Corinthians 12, and it functions very much like how it did with Sylvia and I, where you suddenly know something that you could not otherwise have known. The Word of Knowledge deals in the realm of facts and information, as juxtaposed with the Word of Wisdom which deals more with function and process—how to resolve a problem or execute a plan or anything along those lines. While it can sometimes be helpful to know whether you receive a Word of Knowledge or a Word of Wisdom, both have a similar function in that they tell you something you didn’t know before that has some sort of application to the situation.
In this case, the Word of Knowledge gave me information about a situation— primarily that Sylvia had a grandson, that he had a problem, and that God already had plans to address the issue. In reality, this is one of the best kind of prophetic words you can give somebody because it doesn’t require action on anyone’s part. All you have to do is deliver the message. There is no intercession needed, they don’t have to go and do something in response to the prophetic word, and it is largely to encourage that person and help him or her to continue to trust God as they walk out the outcome He has already planned.
Now, as I mentioned before, I didn’t need to know more about the situation, but let’s pretend I did. Let’s pretend that either I needed or wanted to know more. Sometimes more information can be helpful because you get a word that’s extremely vague. Sometimes it is just enough information that without more detail it is useless to actually solve any kind of problem. Sometimes you are simply curious about what the Lord is talking to you about. But whether any of these or for some other reason, you can always just ask the Lord to tell you more. There is no limitation on either the gift of the Word of Knowledge or Wisdom or on our relationship with the Holy Spirit that forbid us from asking Him questions. If we don’t know enough, we can just ask for more. I think sometimes we build it up to be more complex than that in our minds, but it really isn’t.
In this instance, I received the Word of Knowledge through a prophetic gift, but it is possible to receive that same information just through our relationship with the Lord without a spiritual gift. In fact, I probably give people prophetic words and prophetic insight more often from a position of my relationship with the Lord than I do from a gift of prophecy or other prophetic gift. I know how to operate in most of the 1 Corinthians 12 gifts at will, and sometimes they work on their own without me initiating, but there are times when people ask for help and the gift remains silent when I turn to it to see what I can find out. But when we have a relationship with the Lord, a gift is a tool, not a limitation. If that tool isn’t doing the job, I will just have a direct conversation with the One who causes the tool to function to begin with, the God of the Multiverse who has all knowledge and wisdom. I say all of this so that we don’t get too hung up on an operation of the gift. Gifts are useful, they are helpful, and I personally believe they are vital and necessary. I think translating them as “gifts” in scripture has done a bit of a disservice in the way that much of the Western church views the Gifts of the Holy Spirit. These are divine empowerments that are designed to help us destroy works of darkness and establish the kingdom of God on the Earth as it already is in Heaven. I have talked to many people over the years who see them as optional, a “take it or leave it” sort of thing. And not only do I think they are badly mistaken with that mindset, but experience over time has demonstrated to me that as a result of a difference in our beliefs, mine is far more functional. If a friend needs healing or to hear from the Lord, they’re going to come talk to those of us who can get the job done over any of the people who consider the gifts to be “optional.” The Holy Spirit would not give us those gifts if we didn’t need them.
I can safely assume that Sylvia didn’t know she needed a Word of Knowledge for encouragement, but the Lord did. I didn’t know the gift was going to operate when it did, but I have been intentional over the last two decades to cultivate that type of engagement in my life for precisely this type of situation, even if it makes me uncomfortable every single time. I am used to it far more than I was in the past, but I still dislike going up to random people in situations like this, whether for prophecy or healing. To me it’s the equivalent of cold-calling for sales, but with a Kingdom bent to it. I know I have something they can benefit from, but I have to interrupt this person who is minding their own business to try to convince/show/demonstrate to them that they want what I’m handing out. And I’m not certain that feeling of discomfort ever truly goes away, but with experience does come a level of confidence or at least familiarity with this type of situation. So while I don’t prefer that kind of interaction, I’ll still generally do it. And, to be fair, from the other side of things, I think I would be thrilled if I was walking through the grocery store and some stranger began to prophecy over me something that the Lord knew was weighing heavily on my heart. I would feel seen, and I would feel loved. And when we go through difficult situations, sometimes that’s all we need to be able to keep going and to see the conclusion of the situation. And if I would ever wish to be on the receiving end of that, it only makes sense that someone else has to step out of their comfort zone for that to happen, so by the same token it might as well be me and it might as well be right now.
When God heard Sylvia’s prayers, he sent a son who operates in divine revelatory empowerments to encourage her and to help her have the strength she needs to get through this problem and to help see her grandson through it as well. Sometimes we need to be reminded that God cares about things in our lives more even than we do. There is no situation that is too small for Him to deal with, and it is never a waste of His time.
Normally, I like to close an article like this with resources to help you grow in the subject area I was talking about, but I don’t have any great resources to recommend you on how to grow in the Word of Knowledge. For me, it is an ongoing process of trial and error, hearing the Lord, learning to trust that I accurately heard what He spoke to me, and then taking a risk and seeing what happens, but I will share one last tip you may find helpful. The reason I began by asking Sylvia if she had a grandson is because that is a quick test to find out if I heard correctly or not. If she doesn’t have a grandson, then the rest of the word would not make any sense and therefore I probably heard incorrectly. At that point I would apologize for interrupting the individual and move on with my day. But because she confirmed that she did have a grandson, it also helped give me confidence to deliver the rest of the Word of Knowledge the Holy Spirit spoke to my heart.
The spiritual life we live isn’t always spooky. In fact, I think its rarely is. I remember Prophet Larry Randolph saying once at a conference that “in the midst of the mundane, the supernatural happens.” Sometimes we don’t have to go looking for spiritual experiences, we just need to have a heart that is open to the Lord and we need to cultivate a habit of obedience so that when He tells us things we actually do something with it. If you want to experience the gift of the Word of Knowledge, or want to grow in it, I encourage you to ask the Holy Spirit to bestow that gift upon you and to teach you how to use it. And who knows? Maybe someday soon you’ll be walking through a grocery store and the Holy Spirit will speak something to you that changes somebody’s day, or maybe even changes their whole life!
