My Testimony –

When God First Anointed Me

 

When You Grow Up in the Fire,

You Cannot Stand the Smell of Smoke

 

I was raised in a Pentecostal home and born again

at the age of five. I later received the Holy Spirit into my

life at the age of eight. As I was growing up, I continually

saw supernatural manifestations in the church we

attended. I also saw it in my home.

 

I remember on one occasion, my mother fell and

broke her arm in three places. Her arm bone was jutted up

above her wrist. My parents were sitting in the living

room listening to a Kathryn Kuhlman tape back in the

days of the reel to reel tape recorder.

 

After they had taken communion, our pastor came

and laid hands upon my morn and the power of God went

through her arm like pins and needles. She felt a burning

fire running up and down her arm and she knew she was

healed. Our pastor was a powerful man of God. Back in

the fifties, he had gone into a deaf school and emptied it

by the power of God. Every deaf person was healed.

 

When my mother said she was going to cut the

plaster cast off because she was healed, I pleaded with

her not to. I was only about six years old at the time. To

me, if something was broken, it was broken. I thought if

she took off the cast her arm would fall off!

 

She went into the bathroom and filled the tub with

hot water and while she was cutting away the cast with a

razor blade, she was praying in the Holy Ghost. A little

while later, she came out of the bathroom totally healed

by the power of God. This was only four days after she

had broken her arm. It was a total miracle that astounded

the medical profession – a proven, documented miracle.

 

What I am saying is that you cannot grow up

seeing that happen without being affected as a child

towards the reality of the power of the Holy Ghost.

 

The Family That Prays Together, Stays Together

 

My parents would sometimes pray from seven in

the evening until two in the morning. People would come

to the house and not want to leave because the presence

of God was there, the anointing of God was there.

 

We would sit at the table and my father would

start to pray over the food. I could tell from the way he

prayed whether we were about to eat or whether we

would eat a little while later. The anointing of God would

come upon him and he would begin to prophesy. My

mother would put the food back into the oven. She knew

we were about to have church!

 

Hungry and Thirsty for God

 

I knew that there was more, much more. During

the years that would follow, I began to get hungry for

God. In July of 1979, I cried out to God in sheer

desperation. I wanted Him to manifest Himself to me and

in me. I was hungry.

 

He told me that I had to hunger and thirst. At first

said to Him, “Why don’t You just give it to me? I have

served You all my life. I have been a good boy. I haven’t

done this, I haven’t done that, as others have. God, I

deserve it.”

 

He said, “I’m not a respecter of persons. You

come the same way everyone else does. You come in

faith and you get hungry and you desire it. Then I’ll give

it to you.”

 

You have to desire it like a man who has been in

the desert three days desires water. All he can cry for is

water. If a man walks up to him and offers him half a

million dollars, he will push him aside and shout, ‘No,

water, water, water!’ He wants water more than life itself,

because the only thing that is going to save him is water.

 

When you become desperate for the Holy Ghost

in your life like that, so that you want nothing else, then

He will come. There is something about a hungry and

thirsty heart that will cause God’s power to move over a

million people and come to your house.

 

Baptism of Fire

 

As I prayed that day, I told the Lord, “Either You

come down here and touch me, or I am going to come up

there and touch You.” I was desperate. I must have called

out to God for about twenty minutes that day.

 

Suddenly the fire of God fell on me. It started on

my head and went right down to my feet. His power

burned in my body and stayed like that for three whole

days. I thought I was going to die. I thought He was

going to kill me.

 

I thought, He has heard my prayer,

“Either You come down here and touch me or I will come

up there and touch You,” and now He has come down

here and touched me and He is going to kill me and take

me home.

 

I was really praying, “Lord, I am too young to

die.” In the forth day, I am not praying, “O Lord, send

your glory,” I am praying, “Please lift it off me so that I

can bear it.” I was plugged into heaven’s electric light

supply and since then my desire has been to go and plug

other people in.

 

My whole body was on fire from the top of my

head to the soles of my feet. Out of my belly began to

flow a river of living water. I began to laugh

uncontrollably and then I began to weep and then speak

with other tongues.

 

Drunk on the New Wine

 

I was so intoxicated on the wine of the Holy

Ghost that I was literally beside myself. The fire of God

was coursing through my whole being and it didn’t quit. I

began to realize why we would need a glorified body

when we get to heaven. When the natural comes in

contact with the supernatural, something has to give way

and it’s not going to be the supernatural.

He did finally lift that intense anointing off me,

but it stayed lightly on me, that I was aware of, for two

weeks. Because of that encounter with the Lord, my life

was radically changed from that day on.