Eight Prophetic Words that Changed My Life Forever
We need theology—the study of God based on the Scriptures. Without theology, we have the unfortunate tendency to be “swept away” and tossed to and fro by “every wind of doctrine” that circulates in the atmosphere (see Eph. 4:14). Sadly, as we move towards the Second Coming of Jesus, those winds of deception will gust strong, side by side with the pure winds of the Spirit. Theology protects us from deception, but theology without fire is equally deceptive. It boasts, “My information about God is an adequate substitute for an experiential relationship with God.” Worse yet, we mistakenly convince the on-looking world that salvation through Christ is the acquisition of Bible knowledge. Bible knowledge is certainly non-negotiable (and correct Bible knowledge at that), but knowledge without encounter creates ivory tower, untouchable Pharisees., convinced that what they know is meant to be arrogantly paraded.
Theology without fire is not Biblical. We need the fire of Pentecost today!
we need the fire
Tis fire we want, for fire we plead,
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
The fire will meet our every need.
Send the fire, send the fire, send the fire!
—William Booth, “Send the Fire” (1894)
And the thing we need—sorely need indeed—iIs the PPentecostal fire.”
—James Rowe, “The Pentecostal Firee
I’ll share those eight words right now: ““I am reintroducing My Church to Pentecostal fFire.”” This is the bold and life-changing statement the Holy Spirit responded with when I asked Him, “Wwhat exactly happened to me in Peoria, Arizona?” Sometimes, when God touches us, He does a work in our spirits that our minds need a chance to catch up with. That is precisely what happened to me in March of 2021. The Spirit of the Lord touched me in a dynamic, dramatic way when pPastors Paul and Kim Owens (senior pastors of Fresh Start Church) prayed over me in Arizona. It was intense, fiery, and prophetic, c… and I knew I received something from the Lord. I just was not sure of what really happened.
Word of advice: Continue to engage in constant conversation with the Holy Spirit when He speaks to you, or encounters you, in unusual ways. Too often, we write these experiences off as “unusual” and move on to the next thing. What if an unusual encounter is meant to serve as an invitation into conversation with the Lord? God has the right to do unusual things to get our attention and bring us into a divine conversation. This is what was happening with me!
Clearly Defining “Eternal Life”
Since the sSummer of 1999 when the Holy Spirit touched me as a spiritually hungry teenager, I’’ve been on a quest to encounter God. Disclaimer: I am not an experience -chaser. I don’’t advocate going from conference to conference, or event to event, simply to receive a spiritual zing or a thrill. This diminishes the holiness and sacredness of our encounters with God. On the other hand, I have made my life’’s quest the pursuit of an experiential God. He’’s a Person, not a concept, not a theology. And if God is a Person (which He is), then I can know Him experientially; furthermore, all Christ-followers can know Him experientially. This must be the standard for the Christian faith and walk in all generations—theology that ushers us into experience.
This is exactly what Jesus meant when He defined eternal life. He was not pointing to life after death in Heaven; He was describing a supernatural quality of life on eEarth charged with the Spirit of God: ““And this is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent”” (John 17:3 NASB).
What does it really mean to know ““the only true God?”” I repeat, it’’s far beyond concept, information, and theology. I believe in good theology —— which is the study of God. But the study of God should be the invitation to enter an intimate experiential relationship with God. Consider the humor of ““studying”” our husbands or wives like we claim to study God. I’’m amazed at how many Christians live content with information that would never sustain, let alone, build, a natural marriage, when it comes to how they engage God. Ponder that. Imagine if we lived satisfied with a book-knowledge level of ““relationship”” with our spouses, or even friends. That’’s simply no relationship, in that there is no actual relating of one person to another. To truly know someone is to venture beyond information, and enter experience. The information we know about them becomes three-dimensional as we experience what we know.
So no, I don’’t advocate chasing after experiential thrills with God, but at the same time, Jesus Himself defined eternal life as having an ““experiential knowledge”” of a Person called God. After all, that is what ““know You”” means in John 17:3. The Passion Translation beautifully captures the essence of the original language in this Scripture: ““Eternal life means to know and experience you as the only true God, and to know and experience Jesus Christ, as the Son whom you have sent.””
Pentecostal Fire provokes us to never settle for a conceptual relationship with theological information. Yes, pursue solid bBiblical theology. We need it at all costs, especially in an age where Bible tTruth is being exchanged for cultural relevance. But if we value theology above relationship with the Person that theology reveals, we are settling for a Christian life beneath what Jesus made available.
A Word that Changed Everything…and It’’s not “Revival!”
Back to my encounter with God at Fresh Start Church. After returning from Phoenix to my home in Texas, I tried to make sense of what the Lord did. “Lord, what did You impart to me?” ““Spiritual aggression, maybe?”” ““Spiritual intensity?”” You see, I was trying to process what the Holy Spirit deposited into me during that time of prayer and prophetic ministry. The community at Fresh Start are definitely recognized for being spiritually aggressive (in all the right ways) and the atmosphere that they cultivate is quite intense. My problem was I attempted to make natural sense of a clearly spiritual deposit.
Praise God for prophet friends! Author, minister, and one of my dear friends, Ana Werner, received some insight from the Lord concerning my encounter at Fresh Start Church (always fun when prophets know more about what you experienced than you do!). She reached out to me, encouraging me to keep seeking the Lord about it, as it was a very significant — even life-changing spiritual deposit that took place. No pressure, of course.
While on a walk one morning, continuing to process this encounter with the Lord, I sensed the Holy Spirit speak a phrase to my spirit that was sharp and clear. It was the answer to my question, “God, what in the world did You do to me during that prayer time at Fresh Start Church?” More than God doing something exclusively to me, I sensed He was charging me with an assignment. He was commissioning me as a messenger, not to promote the ministry of Larry Sparks, but to announce what time it was in the spirit. And He didn’’t use the word “revival,” interestingly enough. And I have a love/hate relationship with the word “revival.” I love it because as someone who spent half a decade earning my master of divinity in church history and renewal, I know from history what happens when a landscape-changing revival breaks into a church, region, and nation: measurable transformation. I love revival because I associate the word with the history of the American Great Awakenings, the Welsh Revival of 1904, the Azusa Street Revival of 1906, the Hebrides Revival of 1949, and so on. When I think of ““revival,”” I don’’t think of a church community thatwho experienced a few weeks or months of unusual healing miracles, or a church that boasted the headline ““We are in rRevival”” because they decided to host some extended special services. That is one of the reasons I am challenged by the word “revival,” because it has become somewhat of a buzzword in Charismatic circles, where people know if they tag it on to whatever marketing they are using, it should stir spiritual intrigue and encourage engagement. Revival is holy because of what we are reviving.
So, there I was on my morning walk, asking the Holy Spirit, “what did You deposit into me?” In this prophetic word of commissioning, I was not given the word “revival.” Instead, the Holy Spirit spoke a phrase that marked me. I believe He announced: “I am reintroducing My Church to Pentecostal Fire.”