Very basically, I understand prophetic ministry to be when God speaks to one of His children and gives them a message from His heart to be passed to another. This might be a word of encouragement, a thought, a feeling, or guidance and wisdom from heaven. A person does prophetic ministry when they release the Father’s heart to the person or persons it was intended for. Anything that is released from the Father will always be with the purpose to strengthen, encourage, or comfort as Paul explains to us in 1 Corinthians 14:3.
God, being a creative God, uses many means and avenues to speak to us; very often in ways that we are not expecting, and sometimes in ways we are not willing to receive. Dance has been one of those unique and “different” ways that God uses to share His heart. Many in the body have not accepted, or still do not accept, dance as a viable voice from the Lord, which causes me to believe it is one of the most powerful ways He speaks. The enemy always tries to stifle our most powerful weapons and he has tried to confiscate dance for his kingdom for a long time.
The Lord told my husband recently that dance is always prophetic. My husband passed this message to me to encourage me that when I dance in worship before the Lord, it ALWAYS does something powerful in the spirit realm. I may not know or see what it does, but I can rest in faith that God is using my obedience and my worship for His glory and to accomplish His works. On the other hand, dance can be prophetic in a negative way as well, as what happens when the devil tries to inspire worship to him through dancing.
With this in mind, prophetic dance, looks like the other prophetic ministries in that a dancer can receive a word of knowledge, a word of wisdom, or any other prophetic insight from the Father. The dancer’s means of delivering that piece of strength, encouragement, or comfort is through their movement language. Dance is a language of movement and God speaks all languages. He also puts nothing to waste, so it makes perfect sense that He would give His heart to be translated through dance as one of His many creative ways of speaking to us.
I really love this quote from Claire Shieh of Called To Flag (http://www.calledtoflag.com/) regarding worship and prophetic dance. She says, “Some people can pray very loud and have lots to say but I have something so deep inside of me that words cannot express. So, I have to use my physical strength to let it out. And this is my offering to God and my way of prayer.” I relate to this quote in my experience with prophetic dance. I have had times where I am praying for someone or feel a burden to pray for a situation; to do intercession, but I don’t know what to say. At times I feel something needs to be released but my mind doesn’t know or understand what that might be. At these times I can grab a flag or put on some music as guided by Holy Spirit and just dance. Any worry over doing it “right,” goes away because I know that God knows what needs to be healed, delivered, or strengthened and just by getting up and allowing Him to use my body to release His will, I can trust that He prays perfectly through me. It is such a wonderful thing that God allows us to use something as creative, beautiful, and fun as dance, to partner with Him and do His work in the world or in another’s life. His ways are marvelous! Abigail Hawkins (class of 2015)
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