There is a lot of words and guidance out there claiming to be “confirmation” that you are on the right path and doing what you are supposed to do. There are many biblical examples of God calling a person or group to do a thing, and God confirming their assignment with some sort of sign. And the bible is sort of split into two groups of people who asked for a sign and those who did not. And most of the time, both groups received a confirmation whether or not they requested it from God.

I am not going to place God in a box and tell you that he will only do a particular set of things. He has appeared to many different generations in many different ways. God is not a respecter of doctrine or ordinances or rules, but He is a respecter of His own principles that He has given us in His word. One of these principles that theologians and scholars agree on is called “The Law of First Mention”. This principle essentially means that whenever the context of something is first described in scripture, it will be the basis and standard for all other similar circumstances that follow. For instance, redemption of a group of people coming about by the use of a tree was not first mentioned in the Gospels at the cross. It was actually first mentioned in Exodus 15:22-27, when the people of Israel came out of slavery and found a place with water, but the water was stagnant and undrinkable. So God told Moses to take a tree that was nearby and throw in into the water. When he did, it became sweet and the people were saved. This was a shadow of what Jesus would do, and these types and shadows are throughout the old testament.

In the instance of “confirmation”, it seems to me that the first mention of God calling someone to a task and then confirming that task through signs and wonders is in the story of Noah, which begins in Genisis 6.

God spoke to Noah and gave him an important task or “calling”. And God began to bring physical confirmation to let Noah know he was on the right path and was not crazy.

Once Noah began to obey and had completed the ark, the bible lists three distinct events that were contrary against the natural order of things, which is the definition of a miracle.

1)   In Genesis 7:8-9, the bible specifically says that all these species of animals came to him, in mating pairs. Noah did not run throughout the earth and gather up these animals, God brought them. That is a miracle.

2)   Genesis 7:16, it says that God himself shut them into the ark. It is very specific to say that God did this, and not Noah and his sons hoisting the door shut with some giant rope.

3)   We know from inference that all these animals somehow remained calm and docile and went onto the ark peacefully and remained peaceful throughout the flood. There were predator animals as well as prey animals, and they all existed together without any killing or eating one another.

Notice that this confirmation came after Noah began to obey. As a matter of fact, the tough part of building the ark was over by the time all these confirmations reached Noah.

I am going give you the account of the circumstances that surrounded my initial call to this assignment, which began in January 2016. I do not intend for this to be the model or standard for measurement for everyone to use as they determine if it was really God who called them, or their own flesh. Later, I will outline basic biblical wisdom to consider as you move forward, but for now, this is simply my own story, not theology.

In January 2016, I had a dream that I still remember as plainly as when it took place. In the dream, I was sitting in a pew in an empty church, and I was holding an 8”x10” photo in a frame, of a woman who I knew in my spirit was my spouse, who I had not met yet. I heard her name in my spirit, and I saw myself praying for her.

Without realizing it until much later, I met the woman from my dream in March 2016, and we began a relationship. We dated until December of 2016, when we broke up in a very painful set of circumstances.

At this point, I wanted nothing to do with her. But I experienced another dream in January of 2017. In this dream, I saw this woman wearing all black, and I was praying for her using the name of Jesus. As I prayed, I saw layers peeling off her one after the other. After many layers, she stood there wearing a bright white wedding dress, and we held hands as we got married.

When I had this second dream, the last thing I wanted was to pray for her, much less marry her. So I continued my attempts to move forward. Within a few weeks, I received a call from a person who was also negatively affected by the break-up, and who had also encouraged me to move on and forget about her. This call came on a Sunday afternoon, and this person sternly instructed me that I needed to be praying for the woman I had dated, and that if I didn’t pray for her, nobody else would. I took in her counsel, and I chose to continue moving forward and did my best to forget about the whole situation.

In the first week of March, I was in the process of moving along with another friend. As I helped my other friend pack his things, he found a book and handed it to me. It was called “The Power of a Praying Husband”, by Stormie Omartian. (I still have that book to this day). I knew immediately that this was important and I even sensed that God was involved in this, but I was still in pain and refused to acknowledge the direction that God was clearly pulling me in.

A few weeks later as I began to unpack from my own move, I found that book and I decided to check it out. It had twenty chapters that were relatively short and organized so that you could review a chapter quickly, say in the morning with your coffee. I started a chapter each day, and when I got to chapter eighteen, God got my attention.

It was a chapter on deliverance, and in it the author describes the process of deliverance being like layers that are removed from the soul of a person, because that’s how bondage is placed on a person, in layers of trauma.

When I read this, I knew the call to pray for this person was undeniable, and absolutely not what I wanted to do at all. Praying for this person was not only the last thing I desired, but I also detested the potential that she would be my future spouse.

There were many other instances of what I believe to have been confirmations to the calling that I had received, including a time when I began to pray about the name I had heard in the dream in 2016; it was different than this woman’s name. I ended up looking up both their Greek/Hebrew prophetic names, and they were connected in scripture.

In conclusion, I would also like to point out that Noah did NOT go looking for confirmation. He never asked for it at all. Yes, there are instances where God honored the requests of those in scripture who requested confirmation to build their faith.

I will also say that it is extremely unwise to go looking for “prophetic words” online or on YouTube to help guide you. It is very easy to find the words that you want to hear and take them as God’s word. This will lead to many battles with doubt and confusion. If you have believed you have been called specifically to pray or intercede, or to anything for that matter, begin in obedience and let God confirm it to you. He who called you is faithful.