How can you stand in prophetic anticipation? In this teaching, Pastor Michelle gives you understanding and instruction. Here are five take-away points from this lesson:
- Prophetic anticipation means confidently expecting God’s promises to manifest, involving both emotional excitement and spiritual faith, even before seeing evidence with our natural senses.
- The prophetic gift is given to communicate God’s immediate, personalized messages of encouragement, instruction, and comfort to His people.
- Anticipating God’s word not only stirs our spirit but also has a physical effect, triggering a release of dopamine that brings motivation and joy during the waiting period.
- Walking in prophetic anticipation requires discernment, patience, and trust in the authenticity of God’s word, distinguishing it from false prophecy or worldly messages.
- Standing in anticipation is an active process—preparing, worshiping, and sharpening discernment while trusting God’s timing, rather than passively waiting or giving in to anxiety.
Teaching Notes
What is Prophetic Anticipation?
- ANTICIPATION: What does it mean to “stand in anticipation” ?
It’s waiting for an expected event to happen while experiencing a mixture of emotions like excitement, hope, expectation, thrill, optimism and even anxiety.
The word “anticipation” comes from two root words:
Ant: before or in front of.
Capere: to take or to grasp.
Anticipate literally means: “In your heart and mind you have taken possession of something beforehand.”
- The purpose of the spiritual gift we call: The Prophetic –
To communicate God’s heart and message to His people.
We hear God’s on-time, right now word of edification, exhortation, and comfort.
His will. His plans. His warnings.
His rhema, right now, specifically directed, immediately applicable Word from the Lord to us.
Anticipation according to psychologists:
ANTICIPATION Causes one’s body to trigger a dopamine hit. Dopamine is a neurotransmitter made in your brain that’s an internal “reward system.” Dopamine is known as the “feel-good” hormone that makes us feel happy and motivated and focused.
Every time we stand in anticipation of God’s rhema Word manifesting in our lives it not only stirs up our spirit-man but it triggers a dopamine release in our minds and in our physical bodies. And even though – most often – our natural senses cannot see, touch, smell, hear, nor taste the reality of that prophetic utterance, by FAITH we stand in anticipation of it.
Those of us who really and truly trust in God can literally take possession of the thing beforehand.
Hebrews 11 (NLT, read & paraphrase)
1 Faith shows the reality of what we hope for; it is the evidence of things we cannot see.
2 Through their faith, the people in days of old earned a good reputation.
3 By faith we understand that the entire universe was formed at God’s command, that what we now see did not come from anything that can be seen.
BY FAITH…
- Abel brought a more acceptable offering to God than Cain did.
- Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying.
- Noah built a large boat to save his family from the flood.
- Abraham obeyed when God called him to leave home and go to another land that God would give him as his inheritance….
9 And even when he reached the land God promised him, he lived there by faith—although he was like a foreigner, living in tents…
10 Abraham confidently looked forward to a city with eternal foundations, a city designed and built by God.
Sarah was able to have a child, though she was barren and was too old… And she birthed what became a whole nation.
The Root of Prophetic Anticipation
The root / core of our ability to WALK in prophetic anticipation is knowing that the prophetic Word you received came from our ONE true and living GOD; the only God worthy of our trust.
THREE PROBLEMS WE EXPERIENCE
- We get too impatient to let patience complete its perfect work .
- We are too fearful and/or pride-filled to step out on what looks like nothing.
- We don’t know the difference between a true prophetic word and false prophetic word; or the gift of prophecy vs psychic activity.
1 John 4:1-6 (NASB)
1 Beloved, do not believe every spirit, but test the spirits to see whether they are from God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world.
2 By this you know the Spirit of God: every spirit that confesses that Jesus Christ has come in the flesh is from God; 3 and every spirit that does not confess Jesus is not from God; this is the spirit of the antichrist, which you have heard is coming, and now it is already in the world. 4 You are from God, little children, and have overcome them; because greater is He who is in you than he who is in the world. 5 They are from the world, therefore they speak as from the world, and the world listens to them. 6 We are from God. The one who knows God listens to us; the one who is not from God does not listen to us. By this we know the spirit of truth and the spirit of error.
Six Keys for Standing in Prophetic Anticipation
- Is not simply passively waiting for something to happen, but it’s actively preparing for and trusting in God’s word.
- Understands that suffering and spiritual warfare are part of the process, and it does not mean that the enemy is winning.
- You must track with God’s timing – It’s His kairos time and He won’t let you miss it.
- While you’re standing in anticipation, it is a time for you to sharpen your discernment and to prepare yourself for the manifestation.
- This “mean time” is not a time for anxiety, worry, or insecurity, but rather it is a faith-walk of excitement, hope, and joyous expectation.
- It’s a time to WORSHIP WHILE YOU WAIT.
