Luke Varvell  
The prodigal comes home 

FLORENCE, KY -- He was the opening act for Tina Turner. He had completely turned his back on God, but in the midst of a struggle, he called home to his father for help one night. C.L. Varvell told Luke, his only son,"I’m not going to come this time, you’re going to have to work this out on your own." It was going downhill rapidly for Luke and that phone call to his father cut him deep. Restoration would not come by someone just putting a Band-Aid on a more serious problem. It was going to take a major turn around for this preacher’s kid lost in the filter of life. "The circumstances that led to me coming back to the Lord happened about nine years ago. If it weren’t for my sister, who lived in the panhandle of Florida, I would have been a homeless person. She let me live with her in a little house she rented. I was helping to wire new houses in Florida all week long, doing construction work. At the end of every week when I got my paycheck, I squandered it on alcohol and drugs. I didn’t own any musical instruments at the time - life was a party to me, just a good time. I was wasting all the talent the Lord had given me. I had played on church platforms for years until I just got so numb and so cold toward the Lord, I walked away from it all one day. I had wasted everything He had given to me. I was living in this house with my sister who was a schoolteacher in Florida. One night I was driving home and I got pulled over because the right, rear taillight of my sister’s car was broken out. Needless to say, as the officer examined the car I ended up getting arrested because of some things he found beyond the broken headlight. I remember standing handcuffed on the side of the road in the hot summer night of Florida. I thought that I have just reached rock bottom - but I didn’t know what rock bottom looked like until I called my dad and asked him to send me some money. "I’m in trouble and I want to come home." I really wanted to come home, but my father said, "I’m not sending you any money this time," and I began to cry because I just knew he would help. My dad and I were the best of friends. We had played music all of our lives together and were very close, and then it finally dawned on me what condition I was in. I stayed there for a few months and worked out the situation with the courts of Florida. During that time the Lord moved on my father. He was moving from South Florida to a little city in North Carolina and he called me and said, "We’re moving to North Carolina and I wanted to see if you wanted to go. I’ll pick you up in the U-Haul truck. Gather up your belongings and we’ll go to North Carolina." I tell you what, I will never forget that phone call! I immediately told my father, "I’ll be there." It was the beginning of a new life at the time, even though there would be more struggles ahead.

As we moved to the new church, I got a haircut and really changed my appearance, since dad was trying out for the church. I cleaned up real good and even though I wasn’t completely changed, I put on a new image for the sake of the new church in North Carolina. When we got there, I played piano for a harvest festival and a woman came up to me and said, "You need to meet my daughter. She’s about your age, sings, and really loves music. You two would really hit it off." I said that would be nice, so she went and told Heather, my future wife, all about me. But - she didn’t know all about me because I had cleaned myself up, took all my earrings out, and was very pleasant to look at. This lady didn’t know where I had been, but she went home and told her daughter how clean cut I was and how it would be good to meet me. I had to be cleaned up so my dad could get voted in. If he didn’t get voted in we would all be back to square one, so I was spit-shined and polished. I fell right back in place as the preacher’s kid.My wife told me later that the minute her mom came in and said, "There’s someone I want you to meet - he’s a pastor’s son and his name
is Luke." She said that she knew from the first time her mom mentioned my name - that the Holy Spirit spoke to her heart and said, "He is going to be your husband." She was disturbed and she prayed that night, "Lord, I just ask you now that I might be physically attracted to this guy. Lord, if you want me to marry this man, I’ll marry him." We met and we hit it off and dated over the next few months. Because I was spit-shined and polished, she had no idea where I had come from, but eventually I couldn’t hide it anymore. I had not fallen in love with the Lord (yet) and I didn’t have a relationship with Jesus, so the shine eventually dulled. You can only go so long in a relationship (before the truth comes out) and she began to see the real Luke and we began to gradually drift apart. I began to play music in other places as the fullness of where I had been came out and the probationary period from Florida was revealed. I had no relationship with God and Heather began to understand where I was at. Heather never let go of the promise that she had received the first time her mother told her about me. She prayed and said, "Lord, you brought this guy into my life andI feel like this is his final chance, that if this doesn’t work out for him, he will be dead, this is his last chance." Her and Bob Newman (a pastor friend of ours) and my mom, would anoint my belts and shoes when I wasn’t around. She interceded for me.I had played some music at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach, Florida and some photos had been taken of me there, so my mother gathered up these photos and Heather mailed them to a worship leader in Pensacola named Lindell Cooley. The Brownsville Revival was going very strong. At the time, he was probably getting thousands of letters a month. Heather wrote and told him about my situation, that she felt as if I was on my last chance, and she wanted him to pray for me that I would come to the fullness of what God has for me. As I was riding around in the city where I was staying, in my car I got so overwhelmed with grief - I became so convicted and I just became so aware of the presence of God in my car. I could not escape Him, He wouldn’t leave me alone — He just came hounding me and pestering me and coming after me, I just couldn’t get away. I ran until I could not run any more. I went and told the guy who headed up the band, "I can’t play music with you anymore. I got to quit and go back and work with my dad at the church," — he wasn’t a believer and he didn’t have any idea of what I was talking about, but he said that was fine. I felt so relieved that this weight had been lifted off of me. I was pumped up inside as I was driving around and I thought about Heather. I had made many trips by her house just to make sure there weren’t any other strange cars parked there. I knocked on her door. It was very late at night and I told her I had quit the band and I was going to go back to the church and work with my dad. It was a step in the right direction, but it was another polishing episode. Heather was excited and told me how awesome it was that I decided to come back to
the church. She had been praying for me over the days and months and she showed me a journal where she had written my name and who all had been a part of it. All kinds of people from my parents to Bob Newman had prayed for me knowing how bitter I had gotten. They all were reaching out to me in the situation I was in. My heart was so hardened toward the church, but all of those prayers had an affect on me. I had heard every sermon, but none had ever had the affect that these people praying had. It was late at night and the house where she was at was her grandmother’s house. She hadn’t been to the mailbox that day, but out in the box was a letter from Brownsville Assembly of God. Lindell Cooley had written her back! She didn’t even open it, she just handed me the letter. It said, "Dear Heather, we have received the pictures of Luke and they are on our prayer table, we’re praying for him and we believe that he will answer the call of God on his life." As I held the letter in my hands, I wept and I wept and I cried and I thought, "How can a waster and user like me receive such love and mercy?" Heather and I were engaged two months later and got married the following year. But the truth of it was - even though I had come to terms with all these things, it was still a polish and shine job on my life. I had not truly fallen in love with Jesus even though I had rededicated my life to the Lord. I hadn’t surrendered the intimate part of my life that was so hard and tough to handle. Years of seeing fake people in the church hadn’t changed my life. I knew now that Christianity worked, I was smart enough to know that.
Heather and I had been married for a few years when we went to an Awake America in Charlotte, North Carolina. My wife had been to Brownsville many times. When we were in the meeting and the music started I just wanted to cry through the whole meeting. Something was happening to me that I couldn’t explain. No matter what they were doing, I was on the edge of a complete meltdown. I could not explain what it was and I just became so afraid, I had a guilty feeling and I just wanted to run away. I must have gone to the bathroom ten times. If I could have had a seizure or a heart attack just to get out of the meeting - I would have done it. I was a believer, I had accepted the Lord, but at the end of the meeting when they started moving chairs to the side, I felt like an orchestra was tuning up on the inside of me. I felt like horses gathering in a stable. The ministry team was at the front preparing the Bull Run and I was in the redT-shirt. Here they came like a flood, laying hands on everything they could get their hands on, kids, babies, teenagers — people were flying around everywhere. I ran and dodged and hid, looked like a preacher at times and helped catch, whatever I could do to dodge getting prayed for - I did. I was scared to death. My wife was pushing and I was pulling. I escaped the meeting by the skin of my teeth.

It was a miracle that I didn’t get prayed for, but something happened to me at that meeting. Something attached itself to my life. Something got all over me that I really didn’t want on me. As weeks and months went by, I felt myself beginning to change. I began to get hungry for God like I had never ever been hungry before. I had this desire to find out who God was like I had never felt it before. I got filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. It was the first time I didn’t fake tongues in my whole life. I could speak in tongues for an hour completely faking it, but this voice that came out of me was of supernatural inspiration and somehow I knew it glorified God and brought me into a deep intimate relationship with Him.

There is a mercy in God that you cannot explain in human terms. As hardened as some people are, you’ve got to keep on giving the altar call, you’ve got to keep on praying until there is breakthrough. That is what happened in my life. People continually brought me before God and prayed for me until I am where I am today. No man is an island in this Christian faith and if it hadn’t been for the dedication of my wife, my mom and dad, and several others, I couldn’t have made it to where God has me today."

In October of this year, Luke and Heather Varvell packed up all
their belongings and made the trip to Florence, Kentucky to accept a
position as Worship Leader for Heritage Fellowship Assembly of God and Pastor Cleddie Keith.