“He won’t brush aside the bruised and the hurt and he won’t disregard the small and insignificant, but he’ll steadily and firmly set things right.” (Isaiah 42:2-3).

I began working in the vending business and started attending a church near my home a few months after my denomination closed down our church with apologies. A situation that was actually an ecclesiastical shell game. What I mean by that was they said they closed down the church but actually sold the building to another church in that denomination. But at least now, I had a good pastor and church to attend. Strange enough years before I met him after helping an older couple in a parking lot outside a hardware store who were having car problems. I told them I was a minister and gave them my card and they said they would tell their Pastor about me. He called me and we became friends.

While I was still at the Warehouse of Praise Church he invited me to come and preach one Sunday Night. I preached on The Divine Burning- a message on the fire of the Holy Spirit and God moved. Many of the elders said that they had not heard a message like that in years, it reminded them of old time preaching. By the way, what they call “old time preaching” is what they used to call biblical preaching.

Pastor was a good man, he built a beautiful church building and loved Jesus, but I noticed immediately when he preached he never made eye contact with the congregation. I encouraged him to look at people but he never could. I asked him why he was like this and he explained he had a horrible experience when he first arrived at this church and it beat him up so badly he never looked people in the eye when he preached.  Something had broken within him. I loved this man and believed in his ministry.

I remember one time that I began to prophesy (spontaneous scriptural exhortation) and called his congregation to repentance in the middle of the service. He was skeptical of my actions at first (for good reason) but people began to flood the altars to pray and God began to move and people began to cry out to God. He told me later that he did not know what to think at first but when he saw the Holy Spirit move like that he knew it was right. He was a good Pastor and he let me teach Sunday School and even preach a revival in his church. I will always be grateful to him.

Pastoring has got to be the hardest job in the world. That’s why a man has to do it through the power of the Holy Spirit and not in his own strength. That is why I will always be a Pentecostal. Pentecost to me means that I don’t have to do things in my own strength but the power of Christ that dwells in me. No matter how weak I may be, no matter what is going on there is a river of life flowing out of me.

© 2015 Rev. Stephen S. Gibney