Nurturing prophetic children

God is Spirit. Through His Spirit, God does wondrous things, one of which is to lead our sons and daughters to prophesy, dream dreams, and see visions. What should we keep in mind if we believe that our children are potentially prophetic and that the things that they tell us or see in the unseen realm are from the Holy Spirit, and not just from their overactive imaginations?

 

Also, see Understanding the gift of prophecy

John 4:24 NKJV  God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

Psalms 72:18-19 NKJV  Blessed be the LORD God, the God of Israel, Who only does wondrous things! And blessed be His glorious name forever! And let the whole earth be filled with His glory.

Joel 2:28 NKJV  “And it shall come to pass afterward That I will pour out My Spirit on all flesh; Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, Your old men shall dream dreams, Your young men shall see visions.

Examples of children with prophetic gifts

Prophetic gifts can be evident in children from an early age. We see that John the Baptist, for example, leaped inside his mother’s womb when he recognised the voice of Jesus’ mother. God called some of His prophets when they were still in their teens. The youngest we know of is Samuel who was around 12 years old when he received a prophetic word from the Lord about Eli, the High Priest.

• 6 months in the womb | John the Baptist leaps in his mother’s womb when he heard Mary, who was pregnant with Jesus, greet his mother (Luke 1:41)
• 12 years old (est.) | Samuel hears God calling him (1 Samuel 3:1-18)
• 14 years old (est.) | Mary, Jesus’ mother, sang a song prophesying about Him (Luke 1:46-56)
• 17 years old (est.) | Jeremiah receives a word from the Lord about his destiny (Jeremiah 1:4-10)
• 18 years old (est.) | Daniel interprets king Nebuchannezar’s dream (Daniel 2)

1 Samuel 3:11-14 NKJV  Then the Lord said to Samuel: “Behold, I will do something in Israel at which both ears of everyone who hears it will tingle. In that day I will perform against Eli all that I have spoken concerning his house, from beginning to end. For I have told him that I will judge his house forever for the iniquity which he knows, because his sons made themselves vile, and he did not restrain them. And therefore I have sworn to the house of Eli that the iniquity of Eli’s house shall not be atoned for by sacrifice or offering forever.”

A child is potentially prophetic if there are these following conditions.

• Bloodline | One of or both their parents are prophetic.
• Purpose | They have an instinctive sense of destiny and purpose although they may not know what exactly it is yet.
• Sense of self | They have a strong sense of self, and what they want (their spirits are more sensitive and attuned to what feels right or wrong).
• Distinctive | They don’t always fit in with the crowd or their peers.
• Imaginative | They can be very imaginative.
• Creative | They are creative and have artistic talents because the Holy Spirit is Creator
• Observant | They observe and pick up ‘signals’ in both the physical and spiritual realms.
• Foresight | They have an intuition about what is about to happen before it does or have the ability to finish other people’s sentences before they do.
• Déjà vu | They recognise places they have never been to.
• Strange questions | They can ask unusual questions, for example, “Why is that bird following us?” when there is no bird in sight. 
• Dreams | They have vivid dreams with clear prophetic messages that they can recall upon waking up. Some dreams can be upsetting eg. grandma is dying when no one told them. 
• Sensitive to unclean spirits | They want to actively avoid certain people or places because they can sense or see unclean spirits inside them.
• Unseen beings | They seem to see and can describe invisible animals, creatures, monsters, and friends in detail. 
• Spiritual senses | They hear voices and smell smells that no one else can discern.
• Fascination with number or letter patterns | They seem to notice patterns in numbers or letters being repeated in different places.
• Nature | They seem to have an uncanny ability to connect with animals, almost as if they can communicate with them. They are more open to spirits and hence to the spirits of animals as well. (Ecclesiastes 3:21)
• Heavenly encounters | They say they see angels and have experienced visitations from Jesus.
• Active emotional radar | They pick up on other people’s emotions very easily and can sometimes be overwhelmed. They may act out emotions that are not theirs.

2 Corinthians 4:18 NKJV  while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. For the things which are seen are temporary, but the things which are not seen are eternal.

Some challenges with raising prophetic children

Prophetic people, including children, can pick up on the spiritual conditions or emotions of people around them and not realise that what they’re feeling is actually not their own. 

Children can impulsively react to the little ‘hurricanes’ of feelings inside their chests and forget their manners. For example, they enter a venue that has been secretly used for demonic activities. Sensing the darkness there, they recoil and want to run away, and throw a tantrum if forced to stay. Or they may ask why an aunty (who is secretly struggling with depression and suicidal thoughts) is so sad when that person seems perfectly fine and happy on the outside. When we try to correct them, they insist that that aunty is unhappy, creating awkward situations. At these times, we need to be sensitive and ask the Holy Spirit if He is bringing revelation through our children because He wants us to pray for others as a family.

Prophetic children can come across as being strong willed as they carry convictions in their spirits that cannot be easily overruled by logical arguments or any person. For example, they refuse to go to certain places or visit certain people. These convictions can be sent by the Lord to warn us and we should not brush them aside too quickly without testing all things.

1 Thessalonians 5:20-21 NKJV  Do not despise prophecies. Test all things; hold fast what is good.

One thing we will need to test is if their rebellious ways are being instigated by evil spirits who give them “instructions” and “coach” them to wrongly accuse others or overstep authority. A highly demonised child is easily recognisable because they will rebel simply for the sake of rebellion, use emotional manipulation to control adults and bully other children around them. They have a fascination with darkness and death. They can have extreme mood swings and be happy and respectful at one moment and extremely rebellious at another. Before we consider deliverance for our children, we need to first check what we have done to have given evil spirits access to our family. Children do not get demonically oppressed without reason and it is first and foremost, the parents’ responsibility to close all doors to the devil themselves. See Delivering children from demonic torment and fear.

Hebrews 5:14 NKJV  But solid food belongs to those who are of full age, that is, those who by reason of use have their senses exercised to discern both good and evil.

Testimony 1: Identifying demonic oppression with the help of the Holy Spirit 

“We adopted our son when he was a couple of weeks old and he is now 16. He overcame many things as a child and had been happy and well adjusted in the last few years. Recently, he became the victim of online bullying, was rejected by a manipulative young girl, and was avoided by some friends. Our son became very distressed and would run away for several days and not tell us where he had been. We were at our wit’s end.

I reached out to a friend who is prophetically gifted and asked her if she could pray for us. The first thing the Lord led her to ask me was how old my son was and how old his parents were when they gave him up for adoption. I told her that he is now 16 and that we heard his parents may have been quite young when they gave him up. She told us that the Lord revealed that there were two demons that were assigned to our son, rejection and self-destruction, which had come down from his parents. Somehow, they were assigned to act against those in the same bloodline once they reached puberty in their mid-teens. We should pray for our home and cast out those demons. She also reminded me to praise God for our son and to focus on the Lord.

After this, we prayed with four other prayer partners for a long time for our son. We went into his room and through the whole house, anointed it with oil, asked for God’s protection, and cast out any evil spirits that were still residing in any corner. And we prayed against the spirits of self destruction and rejection as well.

Not long after, our son came back after disappearing for two days. He apologised to us and said he wanted to change and be better. Things gradually got better. A couple of weeks later, he also told us he had stopped doing some “bad” stuff that he had been doing for the past weeks. We are very thankful for that. Our son has been staying home more now and has become calmer. Praise God!”

The prophetic gift is often a threat to the kingdom of darkness as it reveals the Lord’s plans and exposes the work of demons. Evil spirits will therefore try to remove a threat before they can mature and arise. Because prophetic children can be a powerful voice for the Lord as they get older, the enemy will try to lead them to a premature death, to cause them to self-destruct, and to stifle or mute their voices. They will attempt to do this in a number of ways:

• Give them reasons to fear or reject their gift
• Confuse them about what they are sensing 
• Devise situations where people reject them over and over again
• Plant thoughts that they are weird and unwanted and no one welcomes or wants them
• Plant thoughts of suicide and use their imaginations to plan their own death
• Lure them into magic and witchcraft instead
• Attack and terrorise them at night

Amos 3:7 NKJV  Surely the Lord GOD does nothing, Unless He reveals His secret to His servants the prophets.

It is a fine balance between encouraging a prophetic child’s gift while providing structure and discipline in a way that helps them grow up with healthy boundaries, emotional and spiritual maturity and wisdom. We do not want to quench the Holy Spirit giftings in our children as a result of our own adult mindsets, desires for quick solutions, or unbelief.

Testimony 2: Prophetic gift quenched by parents 

“I only discovered my prophetic gift in my 30s, when I became a Christian and began attending a Pentecostal church. Even though they preached about the Holy Spirit, there wasn’t a lot of teaching about spiritual gifts and how to mature in the prophetic. So a lot of it was just learning by trial and error. 

It wasn’t until 20 years after that, when I was listening to John Paul Jackson’s online teaching about dreams, that I realised that my prophetic gifts had already begun as a child. I remember I used to dream about flying very often. John Paul Jackson explained that flying dreams are an expression of a prophetic seer gift which enables us to see further than what other people normally see. Then I recalled that I also used to experience déjà vu quite often. Whenever we went to new places, I would often tell my parents that I felt as if I had been to those places before and recall doing exactly the same things we were doing at the time. I would also know what someone was going to say before they said it. 

My parents always brushed all this off and insisted that we had never been to those places before and that it was just a coincidence that I knew what I knew. Because of such consistent discouragement, I fell into the same unbelief as them. My dreams and prophetic senses stopped by the time I was about six. It was most unfortunate that my parents did not know how to nurture my God-given spiritual gift, but quenched it instead. Thankfully, I now have a relationship with the Holy Spirit and He has been the best Teacher and Tutor!”

Nurturing their prophetic gift

The strongest spiritual warriors for God’s Kingdom receive training from an early age. There are steps we can take to further their prophetic gifts. Just like Jesus when He was little, we want our children to increase in “wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.”

Luke 2:52 NKJV  And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

1. Invite them to fall in love with the Lord

The best Friend our children can ever have is God the Father, Jesus and the Holy Spirit. Let us make it a point to introduce the character of God as simply as explaining His name and the power of His name when we pray, such as:

• Alpha and Omega
• Almighty
• Author and Finisher of our faith
• Bread of Life
• Emmanuel (God with us)
• Good Shepherd
• Head of the church
• High Priest
• Lamb of God
• Light of the World
• King of Kings
• Prince of Peace
• Saviour
• The Word

We can teach one of God’s characteristics or names each week and ask our children to look out for evidence of that in their daily lives and share it with the family.

The joy of the Lord is our strength and the more they get to know the Lord, the more joy and faith they will have in their spirits. Help them develop a relationship with the Holy Spirit. Don’t try to give them all their answers, encourage them to seek the Lord for answers such as, “Why don’t you ask the Holy Spirit what colour to choose?” Above all, we need to be a good role model for them and practise what we teach.

Nehemiah 8:10 NKJV  … Do not sorrow, for the joy of the LORD is your strength.”

2. Make time to pause, listen, discern, and teach

In a world where mankind has been so removed from the idea of finding true rest in God, it can be hard for parents to slow down, especially with the pressures all around them to do everything and do it perfectly. Yet it is crucial to slow down to really listen to children and “look under the hood” to discern what is coming out of their hearts. 

Children can have difficulty in communicating everything they feel in their spirits, and it requires patience to pause, listen and discern. Body language is a good indicator of unspoken cues. Give them space to talk about what they are sensing and feeling, don’t dismiss their warnings or prophetic words. Teach them to distinguish between good and evil, and take note if they start drawing things that are supernatural in nature, such as angels and monsters (demons). Ask them where they have seen these things. All this takes an observant eye.

Colossians 3:21 NKJV  Fathers, do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.

3. Treat them as normal children

We need to be careful not to elevate our children’s prophetic gift like a trophy or single them out as being special or different, because this will only accentuate their feelings of isolation from other children. Teach them that prophetic people are also normal people who lead normal lives, and do lots of fun things. Let us not push them to prophesy but build their faith in the Lord and trust Him to lead and protect them while we try to teach them what we know.

Romans 12:6 NKJV  Having then gifts differing according to the grace that is given to us, let us use them: if prophecy, let us prophesy in proportion to our faith;

Prophetic children can ask, “Why me, why am I given this gift?” especially when they have to go through spiritual warfare. Make sure we explain that the gift is for the kingdom and God will not allow us to be tested beyond what we can handle. He wants us to grow strong and He will always help us when we ask Him to.

1 Corinthians 10:13 NKJV  No temptation has overtaken you except such as is common to man; but God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able,

Don’t ‘teach’ them to suppress their gift or fear whatever they are sensing. Tell them to speak to you first if they encounter anything frightening so you can both pray and ask the Lord together. This way, they learn to pray and practice discernment alongside their parents. 

4. Build their faith, read the Bible together

Our spiritual food is the Word of God, it nourishes us, comforts us, strengthens us, corrects us and gives us wisdom. The sooner we feed our children spiritually with the Word of God, the better. Read the Bible together, beginning with the gospels, and ask them to ponder on what Jesus has said and done. Ask, “What can we learn from Jesus?”

Ephesians 6:4 NKJV  And you, fathers, do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.

As our children learn about the things that reflect the heart of Jesus and that belong to the Kingdom of God, they will instinctively recognise when things are ‘off’ and not from God. 

5. Nurture their gifts, include them in ministry opportunities

The prophetic gift is meant to be used in ways that are encouraging, comforting, and edifying for others in the church.

1 Corinthians 14:3-4 NKJV  But he who prophesies speaks edification and exhortation and comfort to men. He who speaks in a tongue edifies himself, but he who prophesies edifies the church.

• Teach them that condemning thoughts are not from God (I Corinthians 14:3)
• Encourage them to express, draw or sculpt what they see in the spirit the same way they would what they see in the physical
• Tell them stories about prophets from the Bible who did things well and who made mistakes
• Teach them about the importance of humility and respect for others
• Encourage them to ask the Holy Spirit to tutor them and show them the purpose of their gift
• Attune their spiritual senses to discern, don’t discourage their gift of imagination
• Teach them to discreetly pray in tongues throughout the day whenever they remember, to build themselves up spiritually (I Corinthians 14:4)
• Teach them to talk to God as they would to you
• Give them a safe place to ask questions 
• If they are unsure if the voice they hear is from God, teach them to ask the Holy Spirit, “Holy Spirit, is this from You?”
• Teach them to remember their dreams and ask the Holy Spirit for the meaning, and as they get older, we can ask them to write them down or sketch them out
• Keep a record of the prophetic words they receive
• Bring them along for ministry opportunities alongside adults, so that they can observe how others walk in their prophetic giftings, they may learn more from others than from just our nuclear family
• Teach them the proper way to pray for other people, and explain the difference between listening to God and praying His words versus following their own instincts, or worse, using their gift to manipulate or harm other people
• Teach them how to pray to cut off any unclean yokes with things that make them feel uncomfortable that day in their spirit (2 Corinthians 6:14)

6. Curate what they are exposed to

Our spirits are very much affected by what we look at, because what we see with our eyes feeds our imagination and subconscious, two areas that impact us significantly in spiritual terms. Remember that Eve ate from the forbidden tree of the knowledge of good and evil, because she felt that what she saw was good and that it was pleasant to her eyes. 

Genesis 2:4-6 NKJV  Then the serpent said to the woman, “You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.”  So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. She also gave to her husband with her, and he ate. 

We are to keep our environment free of witchcraft and not feed our children anything dark, such as stories, toys, and pictures of witches, monsters, blood sucking creatures, dragons, and mythical creatures for example. Prophetic children will have an innate fascination with the supernatural, the occult, and witchcraft because of their prophetic gifting, and we must not add fuel to fire. The more our children are filled with the Word of God and the Holy Spirit, the more they will be able to discern darkness.

7.  Recognise they will be a target and teach them their authority

Demons try to attack and terrorise prophetic children in order to debilitate them early in life when their defence systems are most vulnerable. As long as we keep our lives and homes free of idol worship and witchcraft, demons have no foothold that they can use to come after our children. Moreover, every child has the Lord’s angels protecting them. These angels see the face of God in heaven every second of the day and receive instructions directly from the Lord for our children’s welfare.

Matthew 18:10 NKJV  “Take heed that you do not despise one of these little ones, for I say to you that in heaven their angels always see the face of My Father who is in heaven.

Nonetheless, demons are vicious and can use un-repented ancestral issues or even other people to bring our family harm. They will attempt to stay hidden and keep whispering tormenting thoughts into our children’s minds. It is our responsibility to cleanse our homes spiritually and repent of our generational iniquity so that we don’t leave our children to needlessly suffer the consequences of our bloodline.

1 Peter 5:8 NKJV  Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.

Here are some suggestions on what we can do for our children.

• Teach our children how to keep their thoughts pure and tell bad thoughts to go away in Jesus’ name (the demons planting those thoughts will leave, at least for a while),
• Teach them how to command demons to leave them.
• Encourage them to sing worship and praise songs at any time.
• Encourage our children to use their gift of imagination to ‘see’ the spiritual armour of God on themselves, that He has tailor made just for them.
• Remind them that feelings of fear are not from God and to ask God to help them through every fearful situation and to hang on tight to Jesus at all times.

2 Timothy 1:7 NKJV  For God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind.

8. Teach them how to recognise witchcraft 

We need to explain to our children that the only true supernatural power comes from God in heaven and that there are many counterfeits on this earth. God’s power is clean and pure, and comes from heaven. These counterfeit powers come from hell. They may even look very cute, cool, colourful (ie. not all are dark) and powerful, but they are not from God and come from the devil and darkness. Anything that casts a spell, chants incantations, drinks magic potions, teleports, reads minds, calls on angels, hypnotises, enters different realms, chases down evil with magical powers for example, is teaching children that magic is good and even heroic. There are no good and bad witches, just as there are no good and bad murderers or rapists. Witchcraft, under any disguise, is evil.

Demonic powers will use any image, other than the image of God, to try to remodel our children after them. Examples include pokémon (which is short for pocket monster), labubu (a character based on Nordic mythology), harry potter (a wizard), just to name three out of thousands of examples. See Delivering children from demonic torment and fear.

9. Fill your house with praise for the Lord

Spirits are summoned by words. We attract whatever we talk about. The Bible calls it eating the fruit of our words. When we speak unkind words about other people, complain all the time, and condemn others, we attract unclean spirits. As the prophet Isaiah found out, we can not bear to stand in God’s presence with unclean lips. On the other hand, when we fill our mouths with praise for God, it attracts the glory of God into our lives, it attracts angels because angels are from heaven where praise goes on for eternity, and it repels demons. The Lord’s Word tells us that our families and prophetic children are to praise God in all circumstances.

Proverbs 18:21 NKJV  Death and life are in the power of the tongue, And those who love it will eat its fruit.

Isaiah 6:5 NKJV  So I said: “Woe is me, for I am undone! Because I am a man of unclean lips, And I dwell in the midst of a people of unclean lips; For my eyes have seen the King, The Lord of hosts.”

Testimony 3: Raising a spiritually sensitive child

“I have two young children, a son and a daughter, and have always known that my daughter is a special child. I’ve encountered her being prophetic and it could easily be missed. One time, we were watching a friend dancing in worship to present a bouquet of flowers in prayer and I knew that at the same time, my daughter was doodling next to us. Later, I went to see what she drew and saw that she had drawn flowers. It was just a scribble that looks like a flower but I truly believe she received that from God. So we cannot dismiss the little things, just like if God gives us dreams and we don’t bother to write them down and ask further, then He will give us fewer dreams. Parents have to treasure such moments.

So this is what I do now: I keep every record of any prophetic word spoken for my children and I ponder them with the Lord, like Mary did for Jesus. I have a dream journal ready for them to report if they have good dreams. I anoint their pillows and I play scripture or testimony in their sleep so their spirits can receive.

I also include both my children whenever I do prophetic ministry and do outreach to strangers on the street so they can see it for themselves. It can just be a conversation, nothing intimidating. It is all about loving the person and bringing them to encounter God.

I want to start doing treasure hunts with them i.e. to pray with them to ask what or who God may have in mind for us to find or discover that day, write it down, then go out and spot clues. Since kids learn by experience, I feel these hunts will be engraved in their memories as testimonies. That is when the teaching comes alive and helps our children to have a heart for others. One other thing I want to do next is meditate on scripture with them and ask them what God is saying and have them draw it out.”

May this sharing be a blessing to you as you seek to love the Lord with all your heart and raise your children in the counsel of the Holy Spirit.