Words of Knowledge Lead Heroin Addicts to Jesus
When I started pastoring, I determined to provide a healthy balance of both the Word and the Spirit. We gave opportunity for those who needed healing to be prayed for in every service. This type of ministry produced much fruit in our church and the lives of our people. I would pray and prepare messages the Lord gave to me. My worship leader, leadership team, and I would pray together before each service. We simply yielded ourselves to the Spirit and let Him know He could have His way. If He prompted any of us that He wanted to say or do something in the service, we would change our plans and follow Him.The results of this kind of yielding to the Spirit was remarkable. There was someone being saved, healed, delivered, or ministered to by the Spirit in every service. Sometimes it would occur during the worship. Other times during the ministry of the Word. He would also move powerfully at the end of a service during an altar call or prayer ministry. This kind of balanced ministry of the Word and the Spirit creates a great expectancy in the hearts of the people. And it makes your church and ministry attractive to people hungry for the ministry of the Word and the supernatural.
Balanced ministry of the Word and the Spirit creates a great expectancy in the hearts of the people.
One example I will share with you happened while I was ministering the Word one Sunday morning. I was about two-thirds through my message when I noticed an interracial couple walk into the service and sit down in the back row. I started to go to my last point and my notes became blurry. I could no longer read them. The letters were all jumbled together and a light mist was over them. Then I tried to read my Bible and the same thing happened. The letters were all jumbled together and a mist was over it. I took off my glasses to make sure it wasn’t something to do with my eyes. It was the same thing. I couldn’t read anything from either my notes or my Bible.
As we were praising the Lord, I heard the Spirit say to me, “Pray for the couple who just walked in and are sitting in the back.”
I could have said a few words from my head and closed the service, but a thought came to me to ask the people to lift their hands and praise God with me for a moment. I was doing that to take time to connect with the Holy Spirit and find out if this was from Him and what He wanted me to do. As we were praising the Lord, I heard the Spirit say to me, “Pray for the couple who just walked in and are sitting in the back.” I didn’t have anything to lose because I still could not read my notes or my Bible. So I asked that couple if they would mind if we prayed for them. I asked them to stand and also asked one or two church members to stand with them and help me pray for them.
As I began to pray for them, the Lord gave me a word for the man. He was a tall, handsome African American gentleman in his thirties. I told him he was a prince in the kingdom and he had parents who had been praying for him. I let him know his potential was awesome; but in order to fulfill it, he needed to change paths, and in some cases, change some relationships and God would bring him into great success. He started shaking uncontrollably about halfway into the word I gave him. He kept shaking and shaking even after I finished giving him that word.
The Lord knows you have lost something very precious to you, and if you will give your life to Jesus, He will restore everything you have lost and will give you a second chance.
Then the Lord gave me a word for his companion. I told her, “The Lord knows you have lost something very precious to you, and if you will give your life to Jesus, He will restore everything you have lost and will give you a second chance.” She fell in a heap on the floor and began to sob uncontrollably. Well, as you can imagine, my message was over, but the service had really just begun. Our people gathered around this couple and ministered to them for close to an hour. What we found out later was they were both hard-core heroin users. They woke up that morning after almost over-dosing and said to each other, “We need to give God one more chance in our lives.”
They had seen the billboard sign that advertised our church on the highway and it took them forty-five minutes to find us. His name was Alvin and her name was Sharon. Alvin had received the Lord in a Baptist church when he was a boy. His dad was a Baptist deacon who had been praying for him for many years. Alvin had been in a lifestyle of drugs and substance abuse for more than fifteen years. Sharon had not received the Lord until that day. She let our ladies know, who were ministering to her, that she had lost custody of her daughter, Cheri, because of her drug use. God read their mail through the gifts of the Spirit that day.Alvin and Sharon were married a few weeks later and both became disciples of the Lord. They became the greatest evangelists in our church. They brought more people to Jesus than anyone in all the twenty-four years I served as pastor. One year later, Cheri was placed back in their custody. Praise God. They both got good jobs and became wonderful parents and lived a life that glorified the Lord. What an awesome testimony.
The bottom line is we need both the ministry of the Word and the Spirit.
It wasn’t my great teaching of the Word that set them free but the gifts of the Spirit. I am not making light of the ministry of the Word. They still needed to be taught the Word in order to become freer, maintain their freedom, and grow in the Lord. The bottom line is we need both the ministry of the Word and the Spirit. As we model this in our services, it will encourage people to walk in the supernatural in their personal lives, workplace, and relationships.