The following is part one of a six part guest series from Alicia Sounier Dwivedi, a former United Pentecostal Church member.
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As a very young child of about 5 years old I began attending Sunday school at a United Pentecostal Church in Augusta, ME with my cousins, and I LOVED IT! When I was a 10-year-old girl, my mom started attending our local UPC regularly, and I LOVED IT! I even got to switch out of public school to the UPC’s Christian School, and I LOVED IT! I feel like I blossomed after being moved out of public school into the Christian school at around 10 years old. The church, school, community, and all its functions were some of the best things that ever happened to me. I am thankful for the people who invested in me from the time I was a small child. I love most of the memories I made, and love the people who were part of my community.
Now in hindsight I realize some of the things I struggled with, that tore at the very core of my being, I should never have had to go through and neither do countless others. Due to these same issues many people sit on pews wondering at their place within the church. Some walk away giving up on God altogether, and others, like me, walk away from the UPC – but not God. However, we’re considered ‘backslidden‘ or ‘prodigals’. My previous pastor said this to me not so long ago in a kind tone of voice. I’m being serious – he’s known me since I was 5 years old, and he was being lovingly kind about it.
I can remember praying with all of my little heart to receive the gift of the Holy Ghost with evidence of speaking in other tongues many many many many many times as a little girl. Being so emotional and wanting something so badly, with tears rolling down my face, I can remember pleading with God to fill me with the Holy Ghost. I began wondering why he just wouldn’t give it to me. What was wrong with me that God wouldn’t give me this gift he said he would give when I asked? I was doing what I was told…I repented, and yet God was withholding something so precious from me (salvation). An innocent little child becoming a beggar at the altar. Little did I know I was being handed an unnecessary burden I would carry for the next 40 years.
Church service after church service would go by, and a child here and there would get the Holy Ghost (or be refilled) – but not me. You know if you are telling a small child to ask nicely for a treat of some sort, but don’t actually give it to them, they’ll start questioning your character. Then you keep telling them to repetitively ask “the correct way” so they’ll eventually get what was promised them, then they’ll not keep asking with any sort of faith they’ll actually get it. How heartbreaking for any child to stand with hands outstretched and pleading eyes WAITING AND WAITING. I was walking away empty handed time again all the while knowing until I spoke in tongues I would go to hell if I died. I wouldn’t do this to my own precious child, and it breaks my heart imagining how God must feel watching his children being placed under the burdens of faulty doctrine. I loved and wanted God so much, but legalistic teachings began entrenching itself into my little mind.
FINALLY one service my Sunday school teacher started celebrating while praying for me stating I’d gotten the Holy Ghost. I was confused because I hadn’t heard any new language coming out of my mouth. Sure, I had stammering lips and tears, but there was no new language. I also didn’t feel any different. I remember her shaking her head yes, and saying “Yes, Alicia. That’s the Holy Ghost, Alicia.” Then she’d speak in tongues off and on again, but break off to encourage me in English. I later learned this Sunday School teacher was known for saying kids had spoken in tongues when they actually hadn’t.
From a 5-year-old little girl until 30 I attended the UPC church. I left the church around 30, and it hasn’t been until this year as a 45-year-old woman that I FINALLY figured out some things and have closure. To this day I truly don’t know if I ever really spoke in tongues. Instead I believe what I was experiencing was a wildly emotional response taught to me by my peers.
Growing up in the church and being a part of its functions were right up my alley. No one had to force me to go to church – I ABSOLUTELY LOVED MY CHURCH & CHURCH FAMILY! It didn’t matter what I had to do to be pleasing to God, I would do it without much thought or hesitation. Don’t cut your hair – OK. Don’t wear makeup – OK. Don’t wear pants – OK. Come to church three times a week and five days a week during revival – OK. Sleeves down to your elbows and skirts below the knee – OK. No worldly music, no cussing, no drinking, no smoking, no premarital sex – OK. Standards didn’t overwhelm me, and I did them because I thought this was what God wanted. My issue was elsewhere – SPEAKING IN TONGUES.
Being a part of a church that taught speaking in tongues as not only the initial evidence of the infilling of the Holy Ghost, but it was also something that had to be repeated (should be daily), but also needed to be done again on cue if asked to ‘pray in the Spirit’ at any time during a church service. I COULDN’T DO IT. I would wonder what was wrong with me that I couldn’t speak out like ‘everybody else’. Questioning my salvation was regularly on my mind and in my heart. I cried – A LOT (understatement – I can’t adequately describe the amount of tears). I became very self-conscious in not only praying for myself, but praying for others. If I couldn’t speak in tongues properly – therefore not being saved properly – how then could I pray for anybody else to get the Holy Ghost? I would feel so relieved when the Pastor would come take my place while praying for somebody. My prayers were not as effective as his…
I begged God service after service to change me. Do anything he needed to do to me to allow me the ease of speaking in tongues to be absolutely sure of my salvation. I had no reassurance when I died I would go to Heaven, and was literally petrified of death.
I would ask various people I respected about why it takes some people longer to receive the Holy Ghost. I would never reveal I was asking for myself, but it was always for “another person I knew.” The consistent answer was there was something within that person that was wrong and stopping them from receiving the gift of the Holy Ghost. So, something was wrong with me, yet I couldn’t figure out what it was. Church service after church service would go by, year after year would go by, and there I was still stuck begging God for just the basics of salvation.
There were infrequent times I thought possibly I spoke in tongues, but these situations were few, far between and very questionable. I had to be bawling my eyes out, extremely emotional with tears, stammering lips, and there’d be slight repetitive syllables softly rolling off my tongue. When this would happen I would then immediately start to pray for God to kill me. Let me die now! Die in my sleep, get in an accident on the way home, or just a death that wasn’t too painful. PLEASE LET ME DIE NOW SO I CAN GO TO HEAVEN. This is all I really wanted. I wasn’t too concerned with my future or what God wanted me to accomplish with a full life. I just wanted to go to Heaven so badly. I was a healthy teenager who loved God, yet there I was praying for death. Also when these situations would occur I didn’t feel any extra peace, happiness or reassurance. I still questioned myself.
I remember this one very well-known evangelist who came to our church to minister. Our church would be packed out when he’d show up, and I always looked forward to his arrival. At the altar call of one service he was praying over a teenager in our youth group. Because the evangelist had the microphone up to his face and the young man’s he was praying for, the whole church could hear the young man praying in tongues. His tongue sounded almost exactly like mine. The evangelist proceeded to tell the young man to grow up and gain some depth in God because his tongue was a baby tongue!
I WAS MORTIFIED and so thankful the evangelist hadn’t been praying for me and said that. So not only did I very rarely speak in tongues, but the tongue I did sometimes have was a baby tongue? This was so confusing to me. How did God give us a baby tongue that was supposed to gradually switch over into what? An adult tongue? Where was this mentioned in the Bible? In fact, most of the tongues I did hear going on in church didn’t sound like languages at all. Speaking in tongues wasn’t supposed to be about ‘learning to do it’ like a language we learn to speak. It was supposed to be something the Holy Ghost accomplished within us, right? But what did I know? The people I looked up to and loved said this is the way it was, so this is the way it was.
Deanna Jo of Responsible Faith interviews Alicia:
See Part 2.
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