“Sometimes you’ve got to grab yourself by the seat of the pants, drag yourself to the prayer room and say to yourself, ‘You’re going to pray!'” – Rev. Verbal Bean
Work. School…either your kids, or yours. Social Media. Entertainment. The list of prayer distractions goes on and on. We are so busy. Our lives are so complicated. The desire to pray is often buried in a heap of incomplete, disorganized tasks. When we do pray, it is at varying times, depending on our schedule: sometimes in the morning, sometimes lunch, in the evening, or whenever we have a few minutes to spare.
We tend to think of great men and women of God who are strong in their spiritual lives as enigmas, unusual, or different than the rest of us. God has called all of us, but perhaps these have a special calling that none of us have. While we pull our hair out trying to make spiritual sense of our lives, they seem to have mastered walking with God. These anointed vessels inspire us. But we also believe we would never be able to attain that level of consistency and power with Jesus Christ-certainly not spending ten minutes a day in prayer!
Rev. Verbal Bean was one of those “enigmas”. His desire for God started out before he was a teenager. After school, he could be found under his bed in prayer. By the time he was an older teenager, he was well-known in the East Texas area of Orange, TX, as someone who knew how to touch God in prayer. So, did he have an unusual anointing that no one else could possibly possess? Was it a “special calling” that is given out to just a few people, every so often, when God feels like it?
Bro. Verbal Bean would walk into a service, and people would later testify that you could feel the presence of God surrounding him. Preachers, most of the time, give off some kind of feeling. Some call it a vibe, atmosphere, or impression. Bro. Bean didn’t just give off an impression. He walked with God, and you could feel the depth of his prayer life, just by him walking to the pulpit. There were times when he would step up to the podium, and before he could say anything, the Holy Ghost would fall, causing people to weep as the presence of God and the Spirit of prayer moved into the service.
This was more than a vibe, this was a holy anointing!
So, Verbal Bean was, no doubt, different. But, was he different because of something God put in him, or was he different because he responded to God differently than most? I tend to believe the latter. We are all called! God wants to do so much more through us to impact our world for Jesus Christ. I am convinced that there are more men and women that God can and will take to places in the Spirit no one has be ever been before. Was this level of anointing given to just one or two special people, enigmas? I think not!
He is an inspiration, for sure. That inspiration should motivate us to respond, as Verbal Bean and many others have done, with a higher level of discipline and desire. The call is given! The hour demands that more of us walk with God, as our fathers before us. God has more than enough anointing! He could raise up a thousand Verbal Bean’s and never run out of Holy Ghost power!