A New Power for a New Hour
I have been ministering here in Saginaw, Michigan for 6 days now. It has been a very busy schedule but so refreshing. Not only has it been refreshing to leave the 90 degree temps of North Florida and South Georgia to get back into early Spring temps here, but the spiritual atmosphere has been invigorating.

Pastor Ken Cline has been the Senior Pastor of the church for about 2 years now and he has done a great job taking an older church and slowly moving it toward a new era of equipping for mission. Much training has been going on and my coming here was to speak/teach/preach at their weekend seminar called, "Equip 2010". I am embarrassed to say that after teaching for 3 hours on Saturday to leaders, I was caught off guard Sunday morning when a spiritual eruption occured. There has been a lot of change going on here the last year and not all has been fun for the church. Any time there is a transition there is reaction! They certainly haven't been exempt. However, they have taken the high road and remained on point in pursing the calling of the Lord upon them. Rather than becoming enbroiled in trying to defend themselves they have chosen rather to continue to train and focus on the future. The result has been a new influx of young adults who are hungry to know Jesus in a greater way and they want to be used by Him. That is precisely why we saw this outpouring of the Holy Spirit this past Sunday morning, Sunday evening and again in this midweek service on Wednesday. I can't stress this enough, this Pastor prepared the way and then opened the door for the Holy Spirit to come and do whatever He wanted to do. That takes a lot of courage. I applaud Pastor Ken.

I came to this conference with plans and outlines to teach, teach, teach. I did that for a number of hours. Then, when I was so positively affected beginning on Sunday morning by the spontaneous worship of the people, I heard the Lord say, "put up your outline and follow me"! "Yikes, where are we going"? Many were Baptized in the Holy Spirit just like in the book of Acts. Again on Wednesday night, many more experienced the same empowering. That opened the door for a number of older Christians to be drawn in to experience the same wonderful time in the presence of the Lord with many more being renewed and refreshed by His Presence! Then, without any coersion, little children were right in the middle of it all experiencing the Holy Spirit.

When I returned to my room I was basking in the overflow of these meetings and I realized that this was the icing on the cake of equipping. Yes, they needed to be trained but training is not the end of equipping. The Holy Spirit empowering was the most important of all. While I was there seeking to be used to help equip the saints for the work of the ministry, did the Holy Spirit do or say anything to me? Oh yes! He told me to bring a new Pentecost to a new generation. If we don't equip this new generation by exposing them to the truth of Pentecost we will be back where many of us started in the late 1960's and 70's with nice sweet churches without the Power of God to set the captives free. Then the Holy Spirit will raise up a new group who is not ashamed of the Full Gospel. It is time for A NEW POWER FOR A NEW HOUR!