Testimony

Remembering When the Power of God Was in Our Churches
Submitted by Jarvis Huntley King.
Posted by Joey Kelly

Allow me to preface this testimony with the fact that I am 52 years old and was raised in the Church of God (Cleveland, TN). I strayed from the faith for almost thirty years and lived a despicable life of rancid immorality. However, I well remember when as a youngster the power of God would fall on people and the heaviness of conviction would be so strong during the preachers' messages about the dangers of sin that sinners would beg God to forgive them.
I went through and graduated from Teen Challenge eight years ago. Since then I graduated from the Mississippi DSOM program and received credentials in the AG. Throughout the year I was in Teen Challenge we attended many different AG churches, as well as other types of churches. In all those services, in all those AG churches, I can remember wondering what had happened to the Pentecostal church of my youth.

It dawned on me during prayer a while back that it has been years since I witnessed someone in a service run to the altar and plead through tears of shame, guilt and remorse for God to forgive them and save them from the horrible life they were living. At the time of this writing I can only remember it happening over the last eight years in chapel services in TC.

I have been growing increasingly concerned over the past couple of years at the lack of holiness I have witnessed in the AG, as well as the almost complete lack of remorse for the sin I know some so-called Christians are bound by. I know that a lot of what I witnessed in services as a youngster was fleshly emotionalism, but you can't tell me that when the true, overwhelming power of the Holy Spirit is moving that poor, bound and fettered sinners don't feel it and wonder at the tugging of their hearts.

Oh, that our preachers would preach with power the truth about the evil, demon-inspired sins that our people seem so confused about and let the Holy Ghost do what He does best! The latest programs and fads don't set deceived sinners free – the unadulterated power of God does!

One more thing… what happened to preachers, who aren't pulpit comedians and who don't have gimmicks, but instead are invited into our churches to preach for holiness and against sin? Preachers with the convicting anointing of the Holy Ghost who want to see people set free? Some of you know what I mean. Let your fire fall on me again and again, oh, Holy God!