Unapologetically Apostolic

Coming from a denomination where the triune God was taught in every aspect. I had been baptized in the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit multiple times. I went along with what I was told because nothing else was taught. We would sing the song with the line "God in three persons, blessed Trinity." But where was this doctrinally in scripture? It was not until I got into Apostolic Pentecostal doctrine that I began to search scripture for myself. I asked my pastor lots of questions and what studies I could do to grow my knowledge. He challenged me to study the "Why". Which why? Any one that I questioned coming from a background of baptist and non-denominational, I asked it and started looking in the only place I could get the answer.  One of the questions I asked myself was why Oneness. Did it really matter if I believed in a triune being as opposed to One God? While there are numerous scriptures that support the oneness of God, we don't have to...

Two years ago, I stepped into an Apostolic Pentecostal Church for the first time. I wasn't scared because I had spent the past twenty years in a non-denominational church so, in my mind, I knew what to expect. But what I experienced in that first service was so much more than what I expected. In my life, I had walked an aisle time after time. I would pray the repeat after me prayer and be baptized in the titles. Not long afterwards, I would find myself in an altar rededicating my life because I couldn't keep up my end of the bargain. Time and time again and asking for more. In tenth or eleventh grade, I saw a man praying in tongues for the first time at a gospel singing and I wondered why I didn't do that. But I was part of a denomination that said that tongues did not exist anymore, that the works of the Spirit was dead. As I continued my life, I experienced the movement of the Holy Ghost (as referenced in Oh Taste and See) at a music school I attended. Because I didn'...

This week has been extremely hard for me. My husband met me Monday evening when I got off work to do some laundry at the local laundromat (I had the detergent with me, he had the clothes with him). Within the two hours we were there, things quickly took a change. He has a conglomerate of health issues, any one of which could pose a life threatening emergency at any time. Well, high blood sugar reared it's ugly head.  Once the laundry finished drying, I loaded the clean clothes up with me and he headed straight to our local ER to be checked out. When your blood glucose is high enough that it has to be checked through the lab, you have a big problem. And to top it off, his blood pressure was sky high as well. Immediately to the back he goes and emergency treatment begins. Insulin drips and bags of saline due to the dehydration (high blood sugar will do that to you), blood work and other labs checking for this or that. I go to bed not knowing the exact outcome, chance of ICU, admissio...

Everywhere you turn right now you are seeing reports of the revivals which are sweeping across university campuses. Beginning ten days ago at Asbury University in Kentucky, and now spreading to Lee University and Samford University as well as a few other campuses, these students have displayed a hunger which has been unseen in our modern culture.  For many of these students, they are experiencing something that they have never experienced before. They have sat in services week after week for the majority of their lives without ever feeling this way during a service. But what is it that they are feeling? Because of the nature of work which I do, I get exposed to a lot of secular music. Eleven words of a song have taken on a whole new meaning because of this revival movement, "I never knew that I was starving till I tasted you." These students have sat in services week after week with a pre-purposed agenda: sing this song followed by this one, pray here, preacher will share a...

Many years ago, I was part of a choir which sang a song which contained the words "Your load will be much lighter when Jesus lifts the load." So often, we find ourselves laboring under a heaviness that we don't understand. We continue to cry out to God saying, "God, You said you would not give me more than I can bear. Why does it feel like the world is on my shoulders? Don't You care?" (See 1 Cor. 10:13) Well, of course He cares. What 1 Corinthians is talking about is temptation, those things which are common unto all mankind. It is not talking about our burdens or the things of life which come at us on a daily basis. We all face these things. But there is a difference when we let Jesus lifts the load. In society, we have what are called beasts of burden. These are such as horses, mules, and oxen which are yoked together to carry a heavier load. The yoke goes over the heads of the beast while the beam rests squarely upon the shoulders of the animal. This mea...