[00:00:00] Speaker A: That I needed something so much more personal than I had had.
I wanted it. All my life I was very familiar with the altar.
I had always said yes to God.
But this day I came back to my room and I took my Bible, which I always had on the top of my books because I always needed it. But I held it up before the Lord and I said, if there is life in this book, then I want it to come alive to me.
[00:00:46] Speaker B: Welcome to the well, an Elam Fellowship Leadership podcast. My name is Leah and I'm the social media and marketing coordinator here at Elam Fellowship. Each episode will draw from the heart of our leadership community and dive into messages that refresh, challenge and equip you in your walk with Christ. In this special series, we're bringing you teachings from our prophetic ministry conference held this past August. These sessions are full of wisdom, encouragement and practical insight to help strengthen you as a leader and as a prophetic voice in your environment.
Today's message is part one of a two part session featuring our speaker, Sylvia Evans. So let's jump in together and hear what God is speaking to us.
[00:01:23] Speaker C: I've nothing but positive, like all of you to say about the gift of the prophetic ministry in her life and her love for the Lord and her consecration to the Lord is unquestionable, isn't it? And her character and her integrity, her gift, her tremendous teaching ability.
I feel like I've done prophetic press tree with Sylvia quite a few times and when she prophesies, I feel like at the end of it, I don't even know the Bible. And you know, I mean, she quotes Genesis to Exodus and I'm hoping to get through John 1:1, you know what I'm saying?
But the gift, the teaching gift flows into the prophetic gift and the mantle that's upon her life. She needs no introduction. To many of you, especially who've been around dealing for years, we need to stand and give a warm welcome to Sister Sylvia Evans. Amen. Bless the Lord.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: For those who don't know, I used to be a runner.
All my life I was a runner. I raced myself home from school every day, would bound up the stairs, step into the living room and cry, mommy, what time is it?
To see if I had outrun myself from the day before running home from school.
And so I would never have imagined that the Lord would let cancer try to take my leg.
And he was gracious enough to leave me the leg and take the cancer out. Isn't that good with a lot of muscle and tendon But I've just recently realized I have a little advantage now because I used to have to run through the airports with my garment bag on my shoulder and hauling my things.
And now the invention of wheels has worked, and they actually have a thing called a wheelchair.
So they meet me at the curb, they take care of the luggage, and they get me to the door of the plane, and somebody carries the luggage and puts it up, and I still can go.
And that's all that matters.
The gold that is in me is to go to the world.
I'm coming up end of this month, August 31, on 85.
And people act as though I don't have a right to keep going to the world.
What are you doing?
When are you going to retire? What is it? Listen, I tire today, and then I retire tomorrow.
That's what I do.
So I do that every day, don't I, Vicki?
Yeah.
And so if you have any personal questions for me, don't counsel me in the middle of your question. Ask me, but don't tell me what I need to do by telling me not to do what I do, because what I do is I go.
And that's. Because that's what he said.
So it's 50 years ago now, come October, that I was traveling between two cities in Georgia.
I had.
I had moved to Georgia in 1965, and.
And there's a whole story in it, but I was in a city named Waycross, which is way across Georgia, down in the southeast corner, and.
And I was traveling over to the city of Moultrie for one night because someone had called and asked me to come to minister to one person.
And at that time, God had taken me out of everything that was comfortable for me. I was a schoolteacher.
I intended to be a schoolteacher in Africa from the days of my childhood.
And every time I tried to go, the door was closed.
Something called independence movement in Kenya made a difference, and eventually they got their independence. And then they took the schools away from missions.
So the school where I was going to go was closed. And three times I was.
I was about to be commissioned to go. And it would be, don't send Sylvia. Cable would come, don't send Sylvia. Government withholding subsidy for one more year.
Schools closed, etc.
And I ended up in. In Georgia. Little roundabout with. But you don't need that part of the story.
And so in Waycross, Georgia, I was a schoolteacher. I was a music director, drama producer, programmer, sang for every club in town or spoke for every whatever. And it was Expanding more and more of not being a schoolteacher.
And I ended up with a friend in ministry in what started as a coffee house.
And it was supposed to be just Friday, Saturday night.
And then it got bigger and bigger and that little card that was out that said 2 8, 3 help was bringing people in from the community, was bringing people in from drug addiction and from small town gangs and.
And it ended up that I was going out to California to meet with my favorite missionaries, Twinnies May and Faye May, Dods White, Fay Sickler and their husbands, Arthur Dods White and Bud Sickler.
At Melodyland big conference.
They were speaking and I was sitting between those twins, literally broken before the Lord because I was asking one more time if I could go to Africa then.
And I found out that's what they were asking to.
And the Lord bowed me down where my face was, in my hands, on my knees.
And he was, he was sending me back to Waycross.
And afterward Fay rubbed my back and said, sylvia, what was the Lord saying to you?
Was he telling you you could come to Africa now?
And said, oh, he's sending me back to Waycross for this. And so I had moved into ministry and into full time work in Presbyterian Church.
For all we're talking about of the prophetic and all, my concern is we don't forget the traditional churches, as we say, the denominational churches are fertile ground for God to send people who live prophetically and know that God is speaking and has set them there.
And there are different ways to, to live prophetically.
And now God was moving me over in ministry Tumultuary, but it was coming one call at a time.
And I felt by that time that I was unsuccessful because I wasn't doing anything that I was trained to do and that I planned to do.
I was now leading the counseling ministry in what was supposed to be a Friday Saturday night office. But while I was out in California, God had spoken to the board of that ministry and they called me to come. And while I was out there and God kept speaking to me about One Way House and another thing called Brunway, a building that was available for ministry, that was built as a tithe to the Lord and was given to me not to own but to use. And God was saying Brunway and One Way.
And I got there to the meeting. And while I was in California, they had somehow heard from God that I was the only person they knew that could take leadership of this ministry now to be a seven day a week, 24 hour ministry.
This was not exactly What I was asking God.
And it wasn't what Fay and May wanted it. It wasn't what had been my heart forever.
Since I was 4 years old.
I knew that I was called to Africa.
And so in the. In the prophetic knowing, I found out that there are different steps in the fulfillment, coming to fulfillment of what you know, and not only you know, but others know.
And that sometimes it takes you into a time when you don't feel qualified.
Because I had had too much success, it had been so much a work of grace in God's life for me that it wasn't hard.
And now he put me into this situation as not just director of counseling, but the main counselor dealing with impossible people and impossible cases and saying to somebody, can you at least say, I will arise, I wish I could.
Or, well, anyway, all of them.
And I. I was not trained to be a counselor.
I never wanted to be a counselor. I was required to take the first course in psychology, I guess a passive, fine, everything. But what difference did that make in my life?
Nothing.
And here I am over a counseling ministry.
I know you're asking, well, where are you going now?
Well, I'm going back to an altar.
I'm going back to an altar where I said yes to God.
And then two altars.
Six times during the time that I was in Florida, before I went to Georgia, in the 10 months that I was there, six different prophets.
I was in Cheryl's grandfather's church.
And he loved being in Florida.
He loved the fact that all the preachers came to Florida in the wintertime.
And he invited every one of them, or they found him because they knew there'd be a pulpit that was open, Brother Zeke, Dad's way.
And all these different preachers came. And in the course of the 10 months that I was there, six different preachers and prophets, only one of them knew me a little bit, called me out while they were preaching, or when I was at the altar, came and prophesied over me and went to the same portion of Scripture, which is Isaiah, chapter 11.
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, Jesus, with a spirit of wisdom and understanding.
It's first of all the spirit of Jehovah.
It's the covenant spirit of the faithful God, the spirit of Jehovah, the spirit of wisdom and understanding.
The psalmist said, get wisdom, get knowledge, but with all you're getting, get understanding.
That's another dimension of perception of the unseen wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel.
And might thank God for that coupling, because you try doing counseling without any power or authority, and you find out you can't.
And the third is the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. And you run that back in a circle, and it becomes the fulfillment of what the Old Testament prophet Solomon said, that the fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, it's the beginning of knowledge, it's the beginning of understanding.
And I come to understand that that's because you've declared your dependence upon him.
And Sylvia says, it's not what I can do for God, it's what I will let God do for me, in me, with me and through me.
But one of the things that he does is bring us to a place where we know we can't.
And certainly, if you're dealing with the prophetic, it's very, very important for you to know you can't without him.
You're not doing it for God. God is doing it for you, in you, with you, through you.
But that prophetic confirmation after confirmation after confirmation was not something that I had considered to be a career or even a characteristic of who I was.
But it started happening.
Why did I learn to prophesy? I learned to prophesy because I had to.
But the way I learned to prophesy is out of desperation.
And it started happening in college, where all I was doing was pressing in to know the Lord himself.
You know, I came back to my room one day, I was at Houghton College. Where am I now? I'm in New York, aren't I?
So you know Houghton College?
Well, I've been going back and forth to Georgia, and I. I literally forget which one I'm in.
So.
So I was at Houghton College, Christian College, wonderful college, but it wasn't Elam, and I'd been raised Elam, and we'd lived on campus at Elam. And in those days, at Elam, there was never any worldly music played in the dormitories. And everything was holy. That's why they called it the Holy Hill and meant to be intended to be.
But everybody was at Elam with an intention to study the Bible, with an intention to go into ministry of some kind, serve the Lord some way. And Houghton is a. Is a liberal arts college. And people were preparing to be doctors. Some of them would be missionary doctors, but some were preparing to be school teachers. They.
They were all different fields.
But also some of them were there not because they had a personal call to ministry, but because their grandfather graduated from Houghton and now was paying his way to be there. So, I mean, it was an entirely different setting.
And I came to understand I couldn't depend on the community around me, that I needed something so much more personal than I had had.
I wanted it all my life.
I was very familiar with the altar.
I had always said yes to God.
But this day, I came back to my room and I took my Bible, which I always had on the top of my books, because I always needed it. But I held it up before the Lord, and I said, if there is life in this book, then I want it to come alive to me.
And I know you're real, but I don't want it to be because my mother knew you and my father knew you.
I want it to be that I know you. And he began to work in my life. And one of the. One of the things that started happening I can look back on were prophetic things.
And it. And it happened, for example, one day that I.
I thought I was leaving campus and going somewhere, and.
And God brought to my mind a senior girl. She was one of the most outstanding students in the college. And I had a little bit of a connection with her, especially through someone in her family.
And I couldn't get her off my mind.
And I kept feeling things might be troubling her, but I was. I was supposed to be going away, and I didn't know that I would see her. And I felt that I needed to do something to express this prayer that I had in me for her. She's a senior. I'm a freshman.
And so I took paper and wrote, and it kept growing.
It just grew, until I was turning in the Bible and finding expressions of scripture about patience and whatever.
And I'm saying to myself, what am I doing?
I don't know her this well, but I was speaking to issues in her life, and I folded the paper down and put it in an envelope and thought, well, since I'm supposed to be leaving, which didn't happen because God sent a blizzard, I'll go ahead and tell you.
Eight miles away from Houghton, and my mother and two of my brothers and another boy with her, with them almost got. They got buried in a snowbank and didn't know how to get out. This blizzard eight miles from Houghton.
And what was that all about? Well, that's a big story.
But, you know, a mail truck was the only. You heard the mail goes anyway, you know, and the mail truck almost ran into them, stopped just before.
And eventually he was able to pull them out and send them and tell them they better go back the other way, because if it was this bad in Pike. It's going to be much worse in Houghton. And we didn't have any snow.
I know it's complicated story.
So they went back to Elim and called me. They didn't show up.
But because I thought they were coming, I put the letter in the mailbox, which Carol wouldn't get until Monday, but I would have mailed it anyway.
Okay, I know I'm complicated now in this story, because you're saying, what's this got to do with prophetic.
Because it was God talking to me about something I knew nothing about and leading me to scriptures about patience.
And so I. I walked. I. I was going to put it in the mailbox, and instead this little voice said, don't take it to the mailbox.
Wait until you are leaving.
I never left.
So what do you.
What he had given me to do was put it in the envelope, address it. Now just stick it under the corner of the blotter on my desk.
So when my mother called me and said, how's the weather down there? Do you have snow? And I'm looking out. It was. I had to be called to the office to take phone call. It was not cell phones. This is years ago, okay?
And. And I looked out the window and fall leaves were blowing.
And she said, well, we. We were trying to come. She told me the story.
She told me how three young boys cried out to God in a way that she had never heard them cry.
How my brother Joel walked back a mile to a house.
They had passed a farmhouse and asked the man if he had a shovel that he could borrow.
And the man said, I'm not going to give you a shovel. Something like that.
I guess he thought he'd never get a shovel back.
Joel Escafee even had a hat or mittens. And the guy basically drove him away, and his fingers froze and his ears froze.
But when the gas was out, no more heat coming.
They cried out to God. And the mail truck came.
You know, sometimes mail is late, and sometimes it's right on time.
How serious.
How serious was God about them was one thing. But this.
This thing that happened to me that day, that I'm saying, Why would God let that happen?
But I had given my jobs all the way. I worked three jobs. I had given them all away.
I had my papers all finished. I had nothing to do.
And I went to dinner and sat in the dining hall. And guess who came to my table.
Carol.
With two pitchers, whatever they were, water and tea. I don't know what they were. And she set them Down. She said, well, it's good to see you're not stuck in a snow bank someplace.
How did she know that? Because the person related to her was my friend and apparently had told Carol.
Why?
Because Carol had said to God, I want to talk to that Sylvia Evans as the only person that she thought might understand where she was.
I learned later.
So she asked me, what are you doing after dinner? I said, I don't have anything. How about going for a walk? So we went for a walk and she started talking about all her anxiety because she was supposed to be getting, she was going to get married and, and her husband's going to seminary at Princeton and she was, she was top level student and she had put out all these resumes and she had no job down around Princeton and, and just anxiety, anxiety and anxiety. And all I had written to her was about patience and everything she said to me, I said, I just answered that in that letter.
And after a while, because it did start snowing while we were walking.
And she thought when I said, you know, Carol, could we just turn around and go back to my dorm?
And she said, oh, does the snow bother you? I said, no, it's not the snow.
Let's just go back to my dorm for a minute.
And I ran up the stairs, pulled a letter from under the bladder and I said to her, find a quiet time tonight anywhere and open this and I want you to read this as a letter from the Lord.
It had every point.
Everything she said to me wrote that had a word for that, had a word for that.
That's the beginning of the prophetic for me.
[00:29:29] Speaker B: Thanks for joining us for the well and Elam Fellowship Leadership Podcast.
We hope today's message encouraged and inspired you. This was part one of a two part session from our Prophetic Ministry conference. To stay connected, be sure to follow Elam Fellowship on social media and visit our
[email protected] and if you were impacted by what you heard, we'd love it if you shared this podcast with a friend or leader in your life. Don't forget to like and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. Until next time, keep drawing from the well and may you continue to be refreshed and empowered in your leadership journey.
