Many Stir the Water users come to the site with a basic understanding of what it means to be a seer or how the seer gifting functions. However, we also get some users and visitors who aren't sure if they're seers and don't know how the gifting generally works.

In order to begin to understand the seer gifting, we need to start with the basics. A seer is any person who has the ability to receive sensory input from the spiritual realm. This can happen at any level; we don't have to have experiences like Ezekiel in order to be a seer. In fact, many people are seers and don't realize it, usually because of one or more of three reasons:

1. No one's ever told them. Maybe they could relate some odd things that have happened to them, but no one has ever told them that what they're experiencing may not be "just their imagination." A lot of seers would say they have active imaginations and that's all. They don't realize it's more than that. For example, they may see brief flashes of light or something move in their peripheral vision and assume it's just their eyes playing tricks on them, when they're actually seeing real flashes of light and real movement. They don't understand that these may be authentic.
2. Along similar lines, seers often don't realize that what they've been experiencing their entire lives is unique; they think everybody can do it. Or perhaps they suspect they are gifted in certain areas, but they don't realize that all the little things they keep dismissing are actually God trying to communicate with them and through them. For example, they may have always had detailed, extensive dreams; perhaps they've "known" things about people they just met or have been able to produce astounding works of art or make sound business decisions that have greatly impacted others. I'm just good at what I do, they may think. Or, Can't everybody do this?
3. Finally, some seers don't realize they're seers because as far back as they can remember, they seemingly have never done or experienced anything of a spiritual nature. Something shut the gifting down in them a long time ago, and at this point, they couldn't name even just one incident in which they knew God was talking to them. "He talks to other people," they say, "but He doesn't talk to me." Simply because it hasn't happened yet doesn't mean it can't or won't.

What Is Spiritual Sensory Input?

Here is what I mean by the term "sensory input." In the natural realm, we have our five senses that help us relate to the world and atmosphere around us. Through them we learn what things are, how they work, what's real, what something feels like, what it looks or tastes like, etc. These five senses allow us to experience what is going on around us, and without them, we wouldn't be able to function. These form our physical sensory perceptions.

What are spiritual sensory perceptions? The Bible says that this world is a type of the world to come (1 Corinthians 15:44; Colossians 2:16-17; Romans 5:14). If what surrounds us now is just a reflection of the real, then imagine what the real must be like! Our five senses, therefore, reflect a higher order - an order that is, by its very nature, better and stronger than what we know on Earth because it is the real order: the one that will continue to exist when this one has ended.

When we take the time to think this through, we will be amazed at the implications. If we have any senses on Earth, we also have them in the spiritual realm, because that realm is the foundation of this one. As spiritual beings (Galatians 6:1; 1 Peter 2:5), we should be able to see, taste, smell, touch, and hear what is going on in the spiritual realm around us just as we can in the natural realm. As seers, at times we may be able to smell what's in the spiritual air around us. We may be able to see it, touch it, even taste it. We can describe it to others. We can experience it just as we can experience the natural realm.

These are our spiritual sensory perceptions, and we pick up on them in different ways. Sometimes, this information will come to us physically. For example, we may feel cold or hot when the natural temperature hasn't shifted a degree. This is happening because we're picking up on the changes happening in the spiritual "temperature" around us. At other times, we will receive spiritual information through our spiritual senses, which often feels like "just our imagination" and hence the reason many people don't realize God is trying to communicate with them this way. Everyone has the capacity to experience the spiritual realm through the seer gifting, just as everyone has the capacity to hear God's voice.

When Stir the Water talks about the seer gifting, we mean picking up on spiritual sensory data, whether that be seeing, hearing, touching, tasting or smelling.

Why Is This Important?

So how does this affect us, and why is it important to study this gifting? The writer of Hebrews says that the mature in Christ train their senses to discern what is God and what isn't (Hebrews 5:14). You'll see this verse all over the Stir the Water site. As we practice and study our giftings, we mature in Him. We grow in our knowledge of Him and His ways.

Again, this world is not our home; our home is Heaven - the spiritual realm - which automatically insinuates it is more important, more real and concrete, than this one. Because that's true, wouldn't we want to study it? Wouldn't we want to know more about it and see if there was any way we could learn to walk in it and be affected by it now?

Hand in hand with this is another reason that is even more important. As we study and grow in this gifting, we will be amazed at who God is, how intimate He desires to be with us and how often He wants to communicate with us. We will fall in love. We will be changed forever.

That is a very good reason.

God is with us, and studying our giftings and training ourselves in them will increase our faith for greater things. It will help us see His presence more and more.

by Jim Driscoll