A Prophet’S Journey: My Search for Destiny

By Shirley Spencer

There was a battle for my soul that warm October day in 1939. It was a spiritual battle for my destiny, good versus evil. The weather that twenty-first day was unusually warm, and by the time of my birth at 5 p.m., the thunderstorms were strong, with lightning shooting across the heavens.

Another unusual detail of my birth was I was born with a veil over my head. I would later find my superstitious family believed this to be significant. If I had been born in a hospital, no one would probably have known of the veil. But my fathers family took great joy in this fact, and though they went to church, they kept their superstitions as well. To them it meant I would be a fortuneteller or a psychic.

However there were conditions to fulfill before that superstition could manifest. For me to receive this gift, the veil must be buried in the ground. If it were burned instead, the gift would never come to pass.

This veil is sometimes referred to as a caul or hood that is the thin remnant of the amniotic sac. In medieval times, it was considered to be good luck, and in the psychic community began to be called a veil. It was believed by the psychics that a person born with this veil would have good luck and an unusual destiny. I say, only Gods people have a strange and peculiar destiny. I became His prophet.

• Language: English
• Publisher: WestBow Press
• Release date: Jul 5, 2013
• ISBN: 9781449797683

Shirley Spencer

Shirley Spencer called of God and sent to the nations to fulfill the great commission, walks with a strong prophetic anointing and apostolic authority. Having written schools of homiletics and evangelism, she works in the field of teaching and ministers with a prophetic impartation.

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Copyright © 2013 Shirley Spencer.

Interior photographs supplied by Phil Spencer

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Scripture taken from the King James Version of the Bible.

ISBN: 978-1-4497-9769-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-9770-6 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-9768-3 (e)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013910262

WestBow Press rev. date: 7/3/2013

Contents

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Foreword

Preface

My Beginning

Finding God

Angels

Phil

Yearning for a Father

God Calls on the Phone

The Word

Manifestation of the Spirit

I’m Sorry to Inform You

Evangelism Years

You Visited Me in Prison

Prophetic Intercessor

Finding Our Way

Call to the Nations

Author’s Note

Foreword

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S hirley has been my wife for thirty-six years and has been by my side all the way. During the many months she labored over this book, it was evident that a mandate from God was driving her.

While she labored, there were times when she would go to pray and seek God, and God would meet her and take her to spiritual high places. He already is preparing her heart and understanding for her next work regarding the corporate church. As a prophet, she has touched many lives in the form of a prophetic voice to the saints of God.

I am looking forward to the months ahead to see how God leads her into the revelation required to achieve the next level. It is an exciting time watching her mature and reach new heights. I believe that she will achieve her heavenly Father’s desire for her.

Her loving husband,

Phil

Preface

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W e did not know at the time that God had a divine purpose for our lives. We have walked together in the kingdom of God for twenty-eight years. Sometimes we walked side by side, sometimes watching each other’s backs, but always committed to each other and to God.

Phil and I met in October 1976. We were both involved in failing marriages and were suffering from various problems that had occurred. It was autumn and the leaves were changing color and beginning to fall, and we were trying to find our way through the maze of life.

Phil’s sister arranged for us to get together at her house for a get-acquainted evening. I had met his sister while working in real estate and sold her and her husband a house that was listed where I worked.

Though we never talked about church, God, or the like during the next two to three months, we did talk about many different things.

I learned about his job as an electrician at General Motors and that he was a professional archer, had an archery business, and had invented the fiber optic lighted hunting sight for hunting bows. He had contracts with some national archery companies and was getting ready to sell to companies in Canada.

I was establishing my own auctioning company. I had sold motorcycles, farm equipment, household estates, and antiques in ballrooms with a bank of telephone customers. I was also still selling real estate through a local broker.

By the middle of December, he had asked me to marry him. We were married on February 14, Valentine’s Day 1977. With our two families combined, we had three daughters, Rene, Kim, and Nanette; a son, Tim; and the two of us.

We bought a house that year that was situated on fourteen acres alongside the Little Wildcat Creek, where it’s not uncommon to see groups of deer from ten to twenty strong walking among the trees.

Shortly after we were established on our property, a strong storm came through, tearing down many trees in the woods. What a mess. But we didn’t see the negative; we saw the positive. With the help of a few friends, we cut those trees into pieces and used them to make walls. Two and a half years later, we were standing in a three-thousand-square-foot building housing a full-service archery pro shop and a full-size indoor archery range.

It was during that time that the Holy Spirit began to work in our lives, and in the foundation of that building, we buried a rock with Scripture dedicating that building to the Lord.

The peace of God began to manifest and caused Phil to have a hunger in his heart. He had been disappointed with Christians in the past and didn’t feel he could trust them— they had too much opinion and not enough fact.

He wanted to believe, but he had never experienced anything that he could say was real. He was somewhat agnostic, a person uncommitted as to whether God is real or not but open to believing.

Shortly before school was dismissed for summer vacation, I decided I would not work during the summer in order to be at home for my daughter, Kim, and Phil’s daughter Rene. My son, Tim, would soon graduate and enlist in the U.S. Navy. Phil’s daughter Nanette lived with her mother.

We wanted to be a family that was successful and would not call anyone step. We had family meetings and developed a family bill of rights that we collectively put together and agreed upon. It worked much better than expected. As I had been a Christian a few years earlier, I knew that the father should be the head of the house, so part of our family bill of rights was that Phil was the final authority. He never used a heavy hand and was a good listener and mediator.

I had walked away from the church but had never lost my love for God. To my surprise, it became evident that Phil hoped there was a God. He would say later that he was looking for the God of Moses and found Him.

When we began our new walk in the Lord, we had not yet been to a church together. We began watching Christian television and within a few weeks chose a church in a neighboring county about half an hour away.

We loved the church, the people, and the pastors. It was one of the most giving and loving groups of people we had met.

There was talk around the various churches that Jesus would be returning soon. Some said by the year 1988, and some said in 2000—both groups had what seemed to be good reasons. In any case, that would leave us only about fifteen years before the return of the Lord, and though we knew that we would surely go to heaven, everyone else we knew had a big head start on us. We read in the Scriptures that we should be doing the Great Commission:

And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be damned. And these signs shall follow them that believe; In my name shall they cast out devils; they shall speak with new tongues;

They shall take up serpents; and if they drink any deadly thing, it shall not hurt them; they shall lay hands on the sick, and they shall recover. (Mark 16:15–18)

We looked for someone to show us how to pray for the sick, cast out demons, and raise the dead.

We heard about a Healing Explosion conference conducted by Charles and Frances Hunter. We trained with them using our vacation time and money. We began to see increased numbers in healings. We were allowed to pray for the sick after each service at our home church, where we saw cancers healed, swollen wounds gone, yellow-colored skin caused by liver cancer disappear, and wounds from World War II that left a man with limited mobility instantly healed. The most outstanding was when a baby in the womb who had been declared dead by the doctor came back to life when hands were laid on the mother and prayers offered.

During this time, reports came back that later in the week, doctors had spoken certain declarations that I had prayed, giving evidence of the gift of words of knowledge from the Holy Spirit. In the beginning, I couldn’t have said what was reported, as I knew nothing about medical terms. When this manifestation continued to happen and there were more witnesses, I sought the Lord as to what this was. Through the manifestation of wisdom, He showed me more of the Holy Spirit’s gifts.

At the same time, Phil began to experience a room suddenly opening up and showing visions like giant pictures where the walls should have been. In addition, he knew of things that had not yet happened but soon would. We soon found out that these were prophetic manifestations of the Holy Spirit.

We were also working outside the church; after all, we are sent to the world, not the church. During this time, many more manifestations of the Holy Spirit’s gifts were beginning to happen. I began praying prophetically, though I did not understand what that was.

People began wondering if we were prophets. We weren’t sure. And we certainly didn’t know what to do if it was true. Then a breakthrough came during a chance encounter with a woman we knew; she told us of a speaker from Florida by the name of Bishop Bill Hamon from Christian International. In that meeting, he mentioned that there would be a weeklong prophetic school the next week at a local church in Indiana.

On Monday, we found ourselves in a sanctuary with workbooks given to us upon registration. We did not know what to expect, but it would change our lives.

The first teacher of the day was Sharon Stone, now Dr. Stone. She introduced herself and then walked over to a man sitting in the front row. She began talking to him. He quickly began weeping loudly, and I wondered why. Was he offended? I didn’t know she was prophesying.

The first night as Phil and I slept, we both had dreams of prophesying. The prophetic gift began to come to life in those first classes.

Dr. Stone mentored us at different times during that summer. When she came to Indiana, she would ride home with us to teach us. I learned to hear from God, and I understood the importance and integrity of ministering. Everything had to be put on cassette tape, and a seasoned prophet had to be present to hear and judge the words.

Though evangelism is still important to us, we knew that our destiny would somehow be to help the saints find their way.

We stayed at our home church for another year, and the last six months we were there, I felt such a pulling to go, though there was nothing to go to, no one to go with us or support us financially. We asked our pastor if we could talk with him and told him what was in our hearts. He told us that we needed to be obedient to God and agreed that God was indeed leading us.

Our last day at church, the pastor had a special service, laying his hands on us and speaking a blessing. We were just two people loving God, stepping out to obey Him and to do the kingdom work. We still have a good relationship with that pastor today.

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In late 1992, we left what was our first and only church and set out to birth Spirit Wind Church in our home in Kokomo, Indiana. We relocated to a small office building in town, later adding a larger building across the street, and in 1998 we purchased a large Bedford stone church building, fellowship hall with a parking lot, and adjoining small house.

When we minister, we preach and afterward give prophetic words to people who desire to hear from God. Some believe that only fortune-tellers or mediums can hear from the spiritual realm and say that we cannot hear from God. Then I have to ask why it says that the sheep hear the shepherd’s voice.

People are so hungry to hear, and as I finish prophesying over a person and look to the next, I see the anxiety in people’s faces, begging me with their eyes not to stop until I come to them. Sometimes we prophesy for hours.

We began developing schools to teach and activate Christians. We developed schools in evangelism, healing, prophecy, and preparing sermons or teachings. We also developed a flagship class called The Making of the Minister, which teaches what God expects from ministers and what we can expect from God.

God began revealing many things, which we then taught. There would not be a class where at least one person wouldn’t cry and thank us, saying that he or she didn’t know the facts about what we had shared.

Some were surrounded by Christians, who did not believe in what we taught, and the seed that was planted was like the one in the parable of the soils. We began to see that the soil of our souls would have to be prepared before a seed that was planted could grow and produce.

We were growing in numbers, and we brought in committed people to help in training so that as invitations came from other states and nations, we could feel free to go and minister. We believed and still do believe that Jesus is the head and we are the body of Christ; we are all parts of the body, and each joint should be supplying what it is created to supply.

Our church has just celebrated twenty years in ministry. Flags of various states and nations hang along both sides of our sanctuary, and when the heating ducts are blowing, the flags will wave back and forth. In the early days, I remember the people, the healings, and long lines waiting to hear a prophetic word from God.

We began traveling internationally in 1995, with a trip to Mexico