Join us as our special guest, Prophet Vanessa Birkbeck, testifies of how we can all be empowered by the Holy Spirit. For more information, visit Heart of Titus, or our website, www.heartoftitus.org.
Kingdom Community TV Podcast
Empowered by the Spirit
Today on Let's Go, you'll see and hear real stories of real people going to real places far away whose lives are changed as God uses them to impact the lives of others for His glory. Get ready to see people experience God's love and power. Let's go! Welcome to Let's Go. I'm Pastor Pat McGuffin, your co-host today with Pastor Tony Nardella. On this episode, we'll have an important time of discussion and teaching with Pastor Tony on the empowering work of the Holy Spirit. We're also going to have some incredible testimonies of God's miraculous work from our special guest Vanessa Birkbeck from Empower the Nations Ministries. Vanessa and her husband spent 20 years in Reinhardt Bonke's evangelistic revival ministry throughout Africa where she literally saw millions of people impacted by the gospel of Jesus Christ. We'll also have a wonderful time of praying together for the many needs around the world. So thank you for joining us and let's go! It's so good to have you with us today. I want to introduce you to my good friend Vanessa Birkbeck. Vanessa, it's a pleasure to have you with us today. Thanks Tony. I'm excited to be here too. My wife, Emily, and I have been good friends with you and your husband Rob for 10 years or so and we've traveled a lot of different places. But you started in Africa. Tell us a little bit about what life was like there. Well, I was born in Africa and grew up there. My dad actually raised me as a single parent. My mother left when I was four years old so my dad raised me and I actually met my husband there, got saved there, got filled with the spirit there and had wonderful encounters with God. And it was just such a wonderful, I love Africa because of that and from there we were called into full-time ministry. Well, that's very cool. Now, if I understand you left Africa to go to, I guess, Germany and the UK in order to serve. Tell us about that. Well, my husband and I had been serving in church every single day of the week just about and we couldn't get enough. We wanted to do more and we got involved with Evangelist Rhinod Bonke, the Ministry of Christfall Nations in Africa and we helped them with different crusades and conferences and then they asked us to help with one in Germany. So we traveled to Germany for that, then came back to Africa and while we were in Germany that time they asked us, would we join them? Consider. So we were like, this is not a consideration. This is an answer to prayer. So we packed up our whole lives in Africa and I had two children then. We left with four suitcases and $400 to start a new life and just on the premise that God called us. But you went to work for Evangelist Bonke. Tell us a little bit about his ministry for those viewers who don't or aren't familiar with his ministry. Well, I would call him the Billy Graham of Africa. That's what he's kind of known as. He has these massive gospel crusades. He has had them and he had a vision to win Africa for Jesus and he certainly did an awesome job at that. Just millions and millions of people got saved throughout Africa with he had fire conferences in the day for the pastors as they trained them and then a crusade that ran like a week long at night. Tell us a little bit about what kind of things would happen in those crusades that you saw personally. Wow, so many things. We saw people getting set free, filled with the spirit, demons, cast out the sicknesses. People healed so many different sicknesses. It was just wonderful, just wonderful time and the churches just grew and grew because so many people got saved. So it was a wonderful experience and just absolutely, I even tear up, it was such an honor and a privilege to work with him. Vanessa, you said that you had powerful encounters with the Holy Spirit. Tell us about that and how he ministered to you. I feel like my whole life I've had encounters since I got saved and the Holy Spirit's been very special to me because of not having my mother around and one of the occasions that I can recall that really changed my life was going to Toronto. You remember the power of God moving there without pouring in the 90s, the end of the 90s? Well, I kept asking God, could I go, could I go and I was so excited, I wanted to go and eventually he sent me, he had to because I couldn't pay, he had to pay. So I was praying before we went with some friends of mine and while we were praying and getting ready for it, the Holy Spirit spoke to me and said to me, "Are you ready to deal with your mother issue?" And I was like, "Mother issue?" I hadn't heard that language before and I was like, "Mother issue?" What's my mother issue? I didn't know I had one. So anyway, we prayed into it and I went to Toronto with a couple and we were there. It was just awesome. I was there, you know me very well. I'm there. If it's Holy Spirit, I'm there. I was there for every prayer meeting whether it was getting saved. I will be saved again. I would do anything to get the power of God and get prayed for and I was standing in the line one day and these people just came, they prayed for me and I went down and then I had a vision of Jesus like an encounter with him and he just came to me in the vision as I was lying there and he just spoke the word to me, abandonment. And I was like, abandonment? And I knew exactly what that meant. My mother had left so I knew it related to that in my life and so I just felt the Holy Spirit just minister to me and this ugly thing just leave. I wept and wept and this thing just left me and then after that Jesus came to me and he told me to put my hands out. Sorry. I get emotional when I speak about it now because it was so real to me and I put my hands out and he came and he put a jaw in this hand that had balm in it and he put another jaw of oil in this hand and he told me this was the oil for the healing of the nations and this was the balm for the brokenhearted and he gave that to me to go and minister with and the thing that made me cry even more was that he had taken something so ugly out of me and dealt with something so ugly but given me something so much more, so much more beautiful than I could have ever imagined. And so every time I think about the Holy Spirit and what he's done, it's like I know that he can do all this for everybody and so that kind of passion drives me on to just try and help others to see their potential in God. So yeah, that was one of my very special encounters. Vanessa, that's an incredible testimony of an encounter with our Lord there in Toronto but I know you've also had many encounters through Evangelist Bonkeys Ministry in Africa, but you care to share one of those with us. My favourite is Lagos, Nigeria, the year 2000 and Rana Bonkey had a mass gospel crusade there in that city with running for six nights, leaders meetings in the morning but a crusade at night. You preach one of the nights on the blood of Jesus and another night he would preach on the baptism of the Holy Spirit and in a single service on one night there was 1.6 million people attending. 1.6 million people in one place. In one service. Yes, they were in the same place. That would be a pretty pretty sizable place. That was, it was and then on Holy Spirit night there was 1.2 million people that got filled with the Holy Spirit and baptism in one time. They prayed in tongues for 30 minutes. That outpouring that was poured out on them is phenomenal. So Vanessa, 1.2 million people all in the same place, all baptized in the Holy Spirit at the same time, all speaking in tongues for half an hour together. What was that like? That was like the sound of many waters. I have seen no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has planned for those he loves. It was phenomenal and even when I talk about it, I tear up because it was so incredible and we have no idea how much God has in store for us if we just trust him. For 25 years, we've been going to Latin America and all over the world telling people about the love and power of Jesus Christ. We have sent hundreds of teams of ordinary people, men and women, pastors and laypeople, who God has used to do extraordinary things for his glory. Things like healings, marriage reconciliations, prophetic words of comfort and encouragement and of course winning souls. We have seen hearts set ablaze and churches revived and we've been doing this for so long that we have formed great relationships with many pastors and church leaders overseas. We encourage them, we counsel them and we help build unity among them. The Lord also uses these trips to train up our team members in their giftings and callings. Many of these are now bearing fruit for the kingdom both overseas and back at their home churches. We are here at Let's Go to not only share testimonies of what God has done overseas but to bring that same encouragement and anointing to you so that you might see the same grace and power of God moving in your life that we have seen overseas. Please make sure to visit our website to share your prayer requests and to take advantage of all the resources that we have made available to strengthen your faith. Thank you for taking the time to be with us and God bless you. Well I'm sure that these two testimonies you've given us are just the tip of the iceberg but tell us how have these kind of encounters with the Holy Spirit prepared you for the ministry that God has given you to do? Well I go back to after we met and I was praying and asking God I'm in full-time ministry but I needed to do more. I still felt like I want to do more what can I do God and one day when I was in my room praying I just kind of put my head back and God just gave me a download and he told me I want you to have a conference a woman's conference in South America and I want you to speak to Pastor Tony who you were my pastor then so I made a beeline for you on Sunday and I had to speak to you about what God had told me to do. It was a heavenly mandate and I was responsible to obey and I had to do it and you graciously with heart of Titus said how can we help and you set me on the track to go and do that ministry I chose Ecuador because I loved Ecuador and I felt the need there and I worked with Pastor Maribel there and she couldn't speak English and I couldn't speak Spanish so now I've got a range of conference so I really knew it was the Holy Spirit who had orchestrated this because I needed him to intervene where I couldn't and then everything I prayed in my room at home every single thing that God gave me in my heart that I prayed is what she did at the conference it was incredible so I saw this power that the Holy Spirit gave me of ideas he told me and then I would pray them and then she would do them on the other side of the world it was phenomenal without you communicating because you didn't know the same language. Yes I mean we had a few WhatsApp's and tried to you know translate but and then you translated a few but it was too much to deal with woman's things you know and you know coffee times and tea times and dances and ushers and it was a lot so she graciously handled that and I she's like my sister and we can't speak. That's incredible. Now with these kind of experiences you've recently formed your own ministry called Empower the Nations. Now how is it that you anticipate empowering the nations with your ministry? Well we started doing the woman's conferences which led me to do leaders conferences as well and I go wherever I feel the Holy Spirit's leading me to different countries and people that need more help. The leaders conference you know they needed to have a retreat to people in Serbia they were tired, weary because so many people were leaving for Europe. Their whole congregation was going their ministers were going so they I felt like they really needed some kind of support so I prayed and I was what do I do God and he told me do a retreat for them so of course now I need what's stopping me is money so God bless my family all my kids supported us and doing you know the first conferences and then we also did woman's conferences and one we just did a couple of years in a row is in Bulgaria ex-communist nation 30 years ago they had you know communism ended and they hadn't had any woman's conference ever ever in their church as soon as I heard that I said we've got to come we've got to come and change that so my heart is that they would see God's empowerment and you know if there's a stumbling block of something let's help them let's do what we can to help them and we have training workshops and then we do an end meeting where we have an empowerment session where we pray for them each and every one of them to be filled with the spirit and be empowered to do what God's called them to do well you share with us a couple of very powerful encounters with the Lord that you've experienced do the women and the men in your conferences today experience these things as well absolutely we normally have everyone most people lying on the ground or something whatever happens and yes God is face or to his word and he comes you know we get set a task from God and we are inadequate but God makes us adequate through the toss that we do and I love that even though we can't do it he makes us adequate that is so true you know we're weak that's when we're strong now Vanessa I know that you're known around the world as a prophet and a prophet's here to edify comfort and encourage would you mind taking a few minutes now to speak directly to our viewers and edify comfort and encourage them with whatever God's put on your art yes so in the season I feel that the Lord is really calling his church to get ready and prepare themselves and we have to prepare ourselves like we've never done before I have been speaking on a few scriptures and one of them was about Elijah with the rainstorm and the other one was the woman with the oil and it was how much they prepared was how they were blessed and I'll look today at Elijah's story and in one king's 18 and it says there that you know he had to deal with the prophets of Baal and once he had done that he told he had told Ahab that the rain was going to come the drought would end and so many of us have been in a season of drought we feel that we're in drought and here comes the word of the Lord and Elijah goes straight ahead and obeys God and sets up what he has to do but then it says that after they had been down in the bottom of the valley he went up to the mountain and it says that he pulled up his garment he pulled this cloak and tucked it in and I saw that word there that he had to prepare himself to run in the spirit and I love that so I'm thinking what does prepare mean how did he have to prepare himself so I checked the scripture and I went back and he told the king he said go and eat because I hear the sound of abundant rain I hear the sound of abundant rain he was speaking what God had told him was coming even though he hadn't seen a single thing and I feel that that's so prophetic because there's abundant rain coming in the spirit realm and God is speaking to us as this church I hear the sound of abundant rain so church prepare yourself get into God's word read like you've never read before change your position do what you have to do to change maybe you need to move from your sofa into your prayer closet I don't know what you have to do but some we have to do something even more than we've done before to sustain us for what's coming Vanessa what a powerful encouragement for the church to get ready for the outpouring of rain of the Holy Spirit that's coming to the church I just want to thank you so much for being with us on the show and and now we're going to move on to the next segment of our show thanks for joining us for a time of prayer if you would just pause with us for a moment we're going to pray together and ask the Lord to move powerfully through your homes I'm here praying with Vanessa thank you for joining us for the segments which you might just take a moment starting us off and praying for the viewers today. Father God we just thank you right now for all those who are out there and we just know that Father your word says that you are given for ourselves our children and for all those who are far off and all those who the Lord Jesus calls we know that you pour out your spirit upon them all and your promise is always answered because you are God that doesn't lie so Father God we just ask right now that you just pour out your spirit upon all those who are wanting a refreshing and a renewing and just a sense of just knowing your purpose in their lives Father that they would run with what you've given them that they would not grow weary Father that they would sense your presence in a way that they've never felt before just as I've had encounters with you Holy Spirit I know that you can come upon every single one of them in all those areas and I pray for all those that are hurting out there today that you would just by your spirit just bring your compassion and your healing touch to their emotions and their hurts we ask it in Jesus wonderful name and for his glory yes Father we thank you so much for every single person joining right now we thank you Holy Spirit you are pouring yourself out in love and power we thank you for a spirit of boldness that is washing over the bride of Christ right now God we just declare that every person watching maybe receive the spirit of boldness to step out in faith and do all you have commanded them to do in Jesus mighty name we pray Amen Amen oh Vanessa thank you so much for joining us today thank you if you are watching and you have a prayer request and you'd love for us to pray and join with you to believe God for a miracle there's a number on the bottom of the screen would you text or call that number it would be our joy to partner with you in prayer so please reach out to us and now we're just going to continue with the rest of our show I want to take just a few minutes now to explain why I think it is so important for us to be baptized in the Holy Spirit I grew up Catholic I went to Catholic schools and I was an altar boy I learned a lot about God and Jesus and heaven and hell and miracles but I never personally saw any miracles I never saw any evidence that what I was being taught was really true so like so many other young people I left the church and decided to figure out life on my own years later after I got married I gave my heart to Jesus in law school I started going to Protestant churches this time which also taught me a lot they too taught me about Jesus's life and teachings and his miracles how he walked on water healed the sick and even raised the dead but I never saw any miracles in those churches either I never saw any real evidence that what I was being taught was actually true I just couldn't understand the inconsistency everybody's Bible is full of miracle stories but rarely have ever did I see or even hear about modern day miracles in the church why this inconsistency between the Christianity that Jesus lived and taught us to live and how so many Christians are living today then one night not long after I got saved I was telling an old drinking buddy of mine about what Jesus had done for me we stayed up talking until one in the morning I went to bed happy full of joy the joy that comes when you are bragging on Jesus and how awesome he is well that night I remember dreaming and telling Jesus in my dream how much I loved him repeatedly as I was dreaming all of a sudden I felt this power surge through me starting with my feet and ending up in my mouth when it hit my mouth I woke up speaking in tongues and I had the interpretation too which was I love you Lord Jesus I knew right then that God had given me something special I knew that he was real not just because my pastor or priest told me he was but because I had personally experienced him how do you know that God is real when the Apostle Peter was explaining the purpose of the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost he said fellow Israelites listen to this Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles wonders and signs which God did among you through him as you yourselves know the Bible says here that God wanted us to believe Jesus so badly that he did miracles and signs of wonders through Jesus in other words God knew that people would think Jesus was just another nice teacher if miracle signs of wonders didn't follow him in fact Jesus said unless you people see signs of wonders you will never believe in the same way Jesus wants the world to believe the good news so badly that he wants us to do miracle signs and wonders who are his messengers as well in fact Jesus told his followers not to preach the gospel until they had received this power from heaven the Bible says on one occasion while Jesus was eating with them he gave them this command do not leave Jerusalem but wait for the gift my father promised which you have heard me speak about for John baptized with water but in a few days you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit I think many Christians today are trying to win the war against Satan with one hand tied behind their backs they want to be witnesses for him but they do it without the power God intended for them to have Jesus said but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the ends of the earth sadly many Christians are living weak in powerless lives always afraid and always wondering if God is really real for many it is because they have not been empowered by his Holy Spirit without that power they try hard to be good Christians but find it very difficult to live lives of victory as a result many settle for a lukewarm Christian life because that's all they've ever known or ever seen a church without miracle working power but the good news is that this power is available to all of us right now as the apostle Peter said on the day of Pentecost repent and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins and you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit I know many of you who are watching are hungry to live a life and powered by God that will change your family your neighborhood and even the world why don't you tell God how hungry you are and watch what he does you will receive the gift of the Holy Spirit so Lord in the name of Jesus I thank you for sending the gift of the Holy Spirit to us Lord we all want to be empowered by you we open up our hearts to receive you and all that you have for us in Jesus name if you prayed that prayer with me we would love to hear from you and to pray with you as well our telephone number is on the screen God bless you and now let's go to the next part of our program I trust that the testimonies and the teachings you have heard today and on our other programs have been a blessing to your life the things that we have seen on our trips overseas have been so life-changing not just for the people overseas but for us too we can't help but share them with you it's burning inside of us to share with you with what we have seen of God's love and power now we know we're just a small part of the army of preachers that God is raising up in these last days and that there are many ministries worthy of your support we simply ask that you prayerfully consider us as a ministry you would support after of course taking care of your home church by God's grace and with your help we will continue to bring you these life-changing testimonies and teachings our number is on the screen please feel free to call for prayer or if you would like to partner with us going forward or you can go straight to our website heart of Titus is the name of the ministry and heartoftitus.org is where you need to go on the web God bless you and we look forward to seeing you on our next episode of let's go you