Our last three articles have focused on revelation. We’ve discussed what it is, who it’s for, that you have all the revelation you could ever need tucked inside of your born-again spirit, and finally, four practical principles you can apply to your life today to start creating an environment to receive it. Each one of those teachings came from my personal experience of hearing the Word, applying it to my life, and seeing the results. Some revelations took days, some weeks, and some months, but they came and it has changed my life.
Once you start applying those four principles I taught in “Receiving Revelation,” I have confidence that revelation will begin to come to you. When it does, it will be beneficial for you to have a little guidance on how to recognize it, how to identify it, and how to know it’s God.
First, let me tell you what it’s not: How many times have you heard an amazing teaching at church or listened to a message and a certain scripture jumps out at you and you say, “Wow. That was really good. I need to remember that!” That scripture penetrates your heart at the moment, and really resonates with you, but then if you don’t take note of it and meditate on it, after a week or two – maybe even before you leave the church parking lot – you’re trying to remember what it even was. That is not revelation. It has the potential to be revelation, but at that point it is merely a thought.
So, if that’s not it, then what is it? I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m going to start with two “feelings” that I’ve experienced when receiving revelation. I know. I know. We don’t operate by feelings! But hear me out. The first one I can only describe as the “roller coaster effect.”
If you’ve ever been on a roller coaster that has a terrifyingly slow climb and then an equally terrifying plummeting drop, you have experienced this feeling I’m talking about. Imagine you’re in the last car of the roller coaster and you get to the top of the peak, and right before the weight of the other cars whips you down into the abyss, you have a moment of weightlessness. Then whoosh! It’s that split second where you feel lighter than air, when your insides aren’t sure if they should be up or down. That’s how I feel right before a revelation comes. It’s just right there. Any moment now, it’s coming. It feels like my spirit man is quivering on the inside, excited that my mind is finally about to get it!
The second “feeling” I experienced can best be described with an image. Cesium, for all practical purposes, is the most reactive metal in the world. It is an alkali metal and reacts violently with water. I have given you a link below so you can see exactly what happens when the two come into contact with each other. I’d try to describe the chemistry behind the reaction for you, but even after reading about it, I still can’t explain it!
In the video, you’ll see there are two elements present: cesium and water. Likewise, in revelation, you also have the presence of two elements: your mind and the Holy Spirit. In both instances, the water is the catalyst that causes the substance to become alive and active. Just like the cesium is explosively reactive to the water, in revelation, your mind becomes explosively reactive to the living water of the Holy Spirit (John 7:38). Keep that analogy in mind as you watch the video!
Click on this link to view the video, and scroll down to #3 on the list:
Cesium and Water
That’s exactly what revelation felt like to me on March 13, 2014, when I received my complete healing from lupus, Sjögren’s syndrome, hypothyroidism, carpal tunnel, degenerative disc disease and bulged discs in my back. On that day, all of the revelations I had received up to that point fell like dominoes, and what was true in my spirit became a reality in my mind and in my body.
Setting feelings aside, being able to recognize revelation based on God’s Word is the most accurate and reliable means of identification, so let’s look at what the Word says about revelation. As we saw in the previous articles, according to the Word, revelation is not something that is taught by man, but it is revealed to you by God through the working of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 2:10). You can receive head knowledge from man, but spiritual wisdom needs to be added to that knowledge in order for it to become revelation, which will then cause that Word to become alive and working in your life.
But this is the most important point for you to get from this article:
Revelation knowledge will always line up with the Word of God.
What the Holy Spirit teaches you will be true and not a lie, and that will always be confirmed with the Word (1 John 2:27). We can trust that this is true because the Holy Spirit doesn’t speak for Himself. Just like Jesus, He only speaks what He hears the Father say (John 12:49 and John 16:13-15).
If you believe that you have a revelation of something, the first thing you need to do is find it and confirm it in the Word. If you find that what you have is contrary to what the Word says, then you need to bury that thought immediately and never dig it back up.
Here’s an example: Let’s say you need healing in your body, and you’ve been meditating on healing scriptures and asking the Holy Spirit to show you where you’re missing it. One day, this statement presents itself clearly in your mind: “You’re not healed because I’m trying to teach you something. There is a reason for this sickness, and I’ll turn it around for your good.” What’s the first thing you should do with that thought? Hold it up to the light of God’s Word. In your studies, you find numerous scriptures that say you’re already healed, and none that show God ever withheld healing in order to teach someone a lesson. The conclusion? This thought, as clear as it may have been, is not a revelation from God.
The bottom line: If it lines up with the Word, keep it. If not, get rid of it.
Another way to recognize revelation is by looking at the fruit it produces in your life. In James 3:17, you will find a list of adjectives. I believe these adjectives not only describe revelation itself, but that they also represent the characteristics that revelation produces in you. Their presence or absence is a great way to know if what you have is a revelation from God or not. These are the fruits of receiving revelation:
But the wisdom that is from above is first pure,
then peaceable, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits,
without partiality and without hypocrisy.
Let’s start with purity. The dictionary defines purity as “freedom from anything that debases, contaminates, pollutes … freedom from guilt or evil; innocence; physical chastity.” Revelation will bring wrong thinking, false teachings, and anything else that is contrary to God’s Word to the surface and wipe them away. As an example, as a result of being picked on my entire childhood and teenage years because I had cystic acne, I had an extreme fear of rejection. A revelation of God’s love and unconditional acceptance of me wiped that thinking away. It purified my thinking.
Revelation creates a sense of peace within you, a peace that passes all human understanding (Philippians 4:7). It produces the “calm in the storm” that allows you to remain steadfast and unmoved by the negative circumstances around you. Revelation is the anchor when the winds of opposition blow against you.
A revelation that God is your provider will produce a peace within you that causes others around you to say, “How in the world are you so calm when you just lost your job and the job market is terrible?” Or a revelation of God’s unconditional love may leave people asking, “Your husband rejected you and left you for another woman, how can you not be falling apart right now?” Revelation produces peace.
Gentle, the Greek word epieikes, is also a byproduct of revelation, and it means kind, tender, not harsh. This is the same root word we get our word “gentleman” from. A gentleman is kind, thoughtful, and he isn’t pushy.
“Willing to yield” simply means a person who isn’t stubborn and can be reasoned with. You become willing to yield to God’s wisdom, teaching and direction, as well as to the instruction of others.
Being full of mercy means that you don’t give people what they deserve, even when they are wrong.. Even an unbeliever can exhibit mercy, and a Christian can have mercy out of obligation, but revelation produces the God kind of mercy. Worldy mercy says, “I’m going to have mercy on that person because God says I should, but they are a complete idiot and they don’t deserve any mercy.” You’re having mercy because you feel like you have to, not because it is in your heart to do so. Revelation will change that in your life and lead you to mercy that is driven by a changed heart, a heart of love.
What are good fruits? Galatians 5:22-23 lists the fruit of the Spirit that revelation will produce. It will produce love, joy, peace, longsuffering, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control in your life. And Matthew 6:17 says that you will know a person by their fruits; in other words, how they live and how they treat people. Revelation results in good fruit, both inward and outward.
I love this next one. I think it is one of the best fruits of revelation. Revelation is without partiality. The Greek word here means without ambiguity or uncertainty. In other words, you just know that you know that you know it in your knower! Revelation eliminates questions and wavering. There is no doubt in your mind about it and there isn’t a single thing that could convince you otherwise. Because of revelation, there is zero uncertainty in my mind that my Father loves me and that I am healed. No matter what.
“Without hypocrisy” means that your actions will line up with your words. There’s nothing worse than a person that says one thing and then does another. Their actions don’t reflect their words because they really don’t believe what they’re saying. With revelation, what you do and what you say will line up perfectly. It’s what you know, so it’s what you do. Period.
Let’s review with this final statement: Revelation knowledge that you receive from the Holy Spirit will never be in opposition to God’s Word and will never produce characteristics that are contrary to those listed in James 3:17. If you believe you have received revelation and you are seeing fruit in your life from it that is in direct opposition to any of those things we discussed, then that revelation is not from God and should be discarded.
It is worth repeating, and a great way to close out our study on revelation, that the absolute best way to recognize revelation is to know and understand God’s Word inside and out. When you know without a doubt what God’s Word says, as soon as a thought comes, you can run it through the filter of His Word and know if it’s from God or not. When you know with certainty what the real deal is, a counterfeit is easy to recognize.