Posted on 04/09/2016 12:04:27 PM PDT by SetFree
Right. I agree with that. The Spirit-led worship leader, helps the congregation enter into the worship and there’s a self-fuelling progression of joy, greater awareness of The Spirit’s presence, etc as the people engage in worship.
I think we’re on the same page.
The trucker went to a Nazarene Church in Kentucky. Whatever kind of prayer group, I don't know how they prayed, when the police finally got a description of the vehicle and the license plate, very shortly after that, at night, the trucker pulled in a rest stop in Maryland.
He had heard a description of the car and recognized it in the rest stop. I'm not sure how he was so certain, but he called 911. The dispatcher asked him if he could pull his truck to block the exit but not get out of the truck. That he did. There may have been another witness who also called it in. In a short time, the car was surrounded, they had been sleeping, and surrendered peacefully. It was in the news but they usually don't like to publish too much about Christians, answers to prayers or miracles.
Maybe I got a few details wrong, but Snopes reports that the story is True and has a lot more specifics.
Catching the DC Snipers (my title) - Snopes
Just let the rest of it go. I sense you mean well but I also sense that if I don't do as you say, I'll be judged badly or something. I can't be judged harshly for not having a total gift of discernment and going along with a crowd of people. Maybe I've already had to pay a high price for dabbling in that whatever spirits are behind it.
I left out a few details. A lady from my church became a surrogate mother to me when mine died when I was age 26 and at a loss. She did nice things, had had a harsh experience when her husband died, her daughters had joined Baha Ullah, Ba Hai, that cult. She got heavily involved in charismatic circles, and I let her drag me into it. Yes, I did experience some "wonders". Of course I wanted to believe I had found favor with God. My involvement mainly was with a small group at my Methodist church, the Full Gospel Business Men's Fellowship founded by Demos Shakarian, a persecuted refugee from Armenia, and eventual regular attendance at a local Pentecostal Church pastored by a very charismatic individual who went on to have a thriving ministry in the Phoenix, AZ area. So it was all through people I met in those areas. The healings, you have to take their word for it. I just saw too many bad things happening to the people I was involved with. The original lady came to my house unannounced and wanted me to do something sexual which was a shock. Much later one of her daughters called me, we chatted for a bit, and she said, "whoever is in my mother, that is not her". In other words, her mother had become either possessed or seriously mentally ill. And on and on and on and on.
The reason I left the Pentecostal church is one Sunday they played an extremely loud and dramatic film way before Left Behind was written. It was about the rapture. I watched it, didn't get too scared, it was pre-trib rapture. And the purpose was to scare people into accepting Christ. Well, I sat there and it came to me, maybe myself talking to myself, but I thought we were a blessed generation materially, the saints in the early church died horrible martyrdoms, and why should we be spared at the end of the age by being raptured up to heaven to escape it? That's not to say it's not possible, I just determined to prepare myself for the long haul to the bitter end of the persecutions eventually to come.
metmom, I owe you one, will get back to you when I am up to it. Can only deal with some of this a little at a time as I think I've been traumatized by the years of what I've been through involving not just charismatics but promulgators of false Marian spirituality.
Sorry it's so long, wanted to wrap it up.
Textbook? Which one.
excuse me for being skeptical but somehow I cannot imagine that you could be touched by God and not know it and be left with uncertainty about it.
When I was filled with the Holy Spirit, I did not have the static/electric charge kind of felling but I was overwhelmed with waves of love, peace, forgiveness, joy, a sense of wholeness and acceptance that I had NEVER experienced before.
It had a very long lasting effect on me and I was delivered from many things that I had been struggling with for a long time.
Every move of God comes with the enemy trying to fake it or discourage it, or whatever.
The way we can tell if something is of God or not is if it lines up with Scripture and results in the kingdom spreading.
And unfortunately, what I see happening is emotional feel goodism within the church with precious little effect on the unbelieving world except to drive them further from God with the excesses that are not checked BY THE CHURCH.
The church should be having the discernment to expose and stop the Ugly, and it's not.
And those who are trying to are accused of trying to quench the Holy Spirit.
I agree with you about the noise aspect.
I’ve seen churches hand out those little foam earplugs for their services because of the volume of the worship band.
And too often, I’ve seen people whipped into a frenzy, mere emotionalism, by the *worship leader*.
It’s one thing if people come together and worship becomes loud, but when it starts out that way and people are *encouraged* to do this, that, and the other thing, then it’s not Spirit led.
And, no. When they tell everyone to give the Lord a shout, or everyone say *fill in the blank*, I don’t do it. I am going to worship God MY way, not someone else’s way. I’m not a child that needs to be led into worship as if I don’t know how to do it.
Take your time.
I’ll be praying for you for inner healing.
“...somehow I cannot imagine that you could be touched by God and not know it and be left with uncertainty about it.”
I can appreciate that line of thinking. Plain fact is, though, there are people who grew up so anti- as far as the faith goes that, when they begin to turn and reach out for it, every little thing about it triggers an elevated degree of trepidation such that even “the real deal” can leave them with uneasy feelings about the experience.
Then there are those who grew up in Christian families teaching the Bible, and going to church, but had their heads stuffed with warped notions about “the Gifts”; taught they aren’t around anymore; taught to be afraid of things that look like manifestations of the Gifts, because — well, they’re OBVIOUSLY fraudulent, and probably even Satanic. Some of those folks are more anti- than many of the atheists I’ve known. At least an honest atheist will admit to the necessity of being, in reality, merely philosophically agnostic and thus dismissive of ideas about The Spirit working among men in any evident way. That’s NOTHING compared to the vehemence you can get out of a dyed-in-the-wool cessationist — WHEW! And THAT’S coming from someone who’s supposedly on the SAME TEAM and loves Jesus!
Now, you get an individual who’s grown up in that way of thinking, and God decides to deliver a Holy Ghost wake-up call — Katie bar the door, ‘cuz you never know what you’ll see happen next. Either you’ll have another road-to-Damascus type of moment, and see the chains of cessationism broken forever, or the poor sod will be on his feet running for the hills shouting some inanity about unclean spirits.
Where would we BE had St. Paul done THAT?
I’ve encountered both types. However, the point I was making was that if you are touched by God there is no uncertainty about it, regardless of how it’s received by the individual.
When I first got saved way back in the day, my best friend got saved at the same time but through a totally different route and I had no idea about it at the time. She got saved through an AoG church, I got saved through the witnessing of a dyed in the wool, cessationist GARB Baptist.
Well, he warned me in no uncertain terms to stay far away from her and that sort of stuff because speaking in tongues is satanic. That was quite a thing to load on someone new to the faith who got saved out of Catholicism.
So it colored, or maybe tainted would be a better word, my whole view of the Pentecostal movement from the get go. It made me suspicious of any spiritual activity and I can see in some ways that it is a good inoculation against a genuine move of the Holy Spirit cause you are always left wondering if it was really God or not, that you are being deceived by the enemy.
I certainly don’t want my faith to be based on how I feel, but there’s no way to divorce the feeling that comes from it. It can leave you in quite a quandary.
I’ve been involved in Pentecostal events and on occasion attend a Pentecostal church. Many if not most of them, do associate with the word of faith people and I see much excess and error and have noticed right from the get go, that people in the Pentecostal movement as a whole, are not well grounded in the word.
One interesting thing I have noticed about Pentecostalism is that while they preach against legalism, which I have no use for, they are not as free and open minded as they like to believe. They have their own brand of legalism.
Instead of identifying by what they don’t do, don’t drink, dance, smoke, or chew and don’t go out with girls who do. The Pentecostal movement also judges people on what they do do. They speak in tongues, they fall over, they raise their hands in worship. See how spiritual they am. I’ve heard from the pulpit in Pentecostal churches about how spiritual and Spirit filled they are cause they don’t worship with their hands down by their sides; they raise them up in the air.
So the judgment is still there, it’s still condemning, just coming from a different angle. Especially if you are dealing with a chronic health issue that you haven’t been healed from. Man alive, you don’t have enough faith, your faith needs to be stronger, you have generational curses, there’s sin in your life, yada, yada, yada. The ensuing guilt and condemnation is awful, until you break out of that mindset.
I especially wanted to thank you for your prayers. I am left with the feeling that I pulled a pity party for myself, have been known to get in such moods, but honestly, I think my motive was to try, albeit knowing the futility of it, to warn off others from extreme practices.
I met a fellow on the web years ago who was just as disillusioned with the charismatic movement as I was; I wasn't sure if he was mentally stable (I am not always maybe, who knows?). Anyway, I have never gotten so close to anyone that I wanted a personal involvement by meeting them in person, etc. But he encouraged me to write my testimony.
I am not even tempted to write my testimony. There are others better suited to it than I, but I am so appreciative of your prayers and wanted you both to know that I didn't want to leave you hanging even though we have pretty much exhausted all the angles associated with the event and spinoff matters.
God bless you both abundantly and all others of good will who participated in this thread. Your opinions were very helpful even though we were not always in complete agreement.
Hey, thanks for the follow-up post; really — I appreciate it.
FWIW, I don’t want to discomfort you or be adversarial; it’s not my foundational purpose. I want to go on-record as saying it’s NOT bad to want to talk to people about practices you think are extreme. I also want to explain how it is that I think there’s danger in carrying that conversation past the point of spiritually-constructive criticism.
As you well know, along the spectrum of “Christian” Christian and christian experiences and practices — no matter what goes on regularly in your church — there’s pretty much ALWAYS someone out there who’s more “extreme” than you’re used to. There always seem to be “those people” who seem to think things have changed, and it’s OK these days to just step up and TOUCH The Ark, because — after all — The Holy One hasn’t outright flambe’d anybody for a pretty long time, so it must be OK, right?
I think we’re in line with the heart of God to discuss HOW such attitudes are potentially dangerous, and probably it’s OK to lay out some scripture and make the observation that there’s some perceptible misalignment between what The Book says, and what’s being done. But I think we’ve got to stop there. We’ve got to leave it up to God to deliver His critique, in His way even when (or perhaps ESPECIALLY when) we’re CERTAIN others are out-of-line in terms of their teaching and practices.
[SIDEBAR]
My own thinking is that we don’t take God’s “vengeance is Mine” declaration nearly seriously enough. Just look at all the Hollywood movies where you spend the entire film being shown just how totally vile “the bad guy” is just so you can go “YEAAAAHHH!!!” when he finally gets obliterated in some appalling fashion. We’re being taught that vengeance can be OURS, and the more explosive, the more satisfying it is.
[END SIDEBAR]
I’m wary — VERY wary — of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I absolutely DO NOT want to be found in the place of mistakenly criticizing something that God really is doing, and His hand is NOT always clearly evident at first blush. There are men whose style of preaching just DANCES on my VERY LAST NERVE. I have been TOLD — in no uncertain terms — NOT to levy criticism against them. The holy Spirit VERY clearly apprehended me and POINTEDLY asked me “Who are you to criticize another Man’s servant? That guy will bring people into The Kingdom that nobody else could EVER reach. He’s Mine; he’s doing what I’ve called him to do, and you don’t get to criticize him.”
Consider how Michal, Daughter of Saul, accused King David of being too extreme, and became barren for the rest of her life because of it. She despised David’s worship, and that spite got her a lifetime of fruitlessness in return.
None of that is to say who’s right or wrong, and we’ve all got our own tastes, and I think the diversity of churches is God’s method of accommodating us all graciously. All God’s chilin’ got a place in the choir, and some sing lower and some sing higher...
What I’d hope is that all the sheep would look to God, and hear His voice as to which section of this massive choir they’re supposed to be part of. Since The Almighty plans to bring in saints from every nation, tongue and tribe, it’s a sure bet He’s not going to have difficulty with a horde of denominations and theological streams.
Stay focused on Jesus, maintain a sold-out love for The Truth, and — no matter how we “do church” in this mortal sphere — we’ll all be there “when the roll is called up yonder.”
ASf or you, personally; I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name, and ask that He would grant you, according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your heart through faith; and that you, being rooted and grounded in love, may be able to comprehend with all the saints what is the breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ which surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled up to all the fullness of God until we all attain, at long last, to the fullness of the stature of the whole man — even Christ, our LORD.
Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever.
Amen.
But at this point, I know what is best for me. God can nudge me however He chooses, I'll try to discern what it is and that's all I can do.
I don't mind people talking about just about anything with me, or sharing, just really get annoyed when people preach at me, like it is their way or the highway. Or worse, judge me and my eternal destiny in an authoritative and menacing manner. You didn't do that I don't think.
I guess I really don't know how to take you. I'm not going to easily change at this point other than possibly find some faith group offline. In some ways it would seem that the Orthodox suit me doctrinally at this point in my life. But their services and practices are difficult and arduous, too much for me at my age and condition.
I don't ask for God to judge anybody remotely Christian; I do ask lately for God to deal with unbelievers well never mind. But I have seen bad things happen to people who engaged in disobedience to sound teachings of the Catholic Church. It doesn't happen always. So maybe God has a longer leash for some than for others.
I do give more weight to men of the cloth than lay people, but even they can be found false teachers. We are in such troubling times and there is so much heterodoxy in every church, there don't seem to be any truly holy ones. Maybe the Orthodox, but on my own I have come to wonder if it was a mistake to allow the practice of icons (Eastern) and images and statues (Western) in worship. Or has God become more permissive
So one person's extreme may be normal for centuries for others. Sometimes I find comfort in the church fathers in small doses. And apart from Jesus, the books in the bible that have most sustained me although I may not have interpreted everything correctly are St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John.
“I didn’t mean to imply that I am any expert in all.things.God.”
Fear not; you don’t come across that way.
“Just because I think a practice is unwise doesn’t mean God sees it that way.”
If only everyone in all the churches thought as you do; The Body corporate would be FAR better off.
“I guess I really don’t know how to take you...”
Well, at the very least I hope I’m saying some things that are encouraging.
“And apart from Jesus, the books in the bible that have most sustained me although I may not have interpreted everything correctly are St. Peter, St. Paul and St. John.”
EXCELLENT choices! Consume daily for best results. The Gospel of St. John is wonderful! And St. Paul’s epistle to the Romans — MAGNIFICENT! One of my most favorite books in the Bible. And if you like Romans, read Hebrews; it’s just masterful!
I guess everything could be made just exactly this simple: just be Jesus to everyone you come in contact with. Love as he loves. Do as he would.
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