Category: speaking in tongues | Page 5

Focus on Church or Jesus?

We often speak of the difference between following religion and having a relationship with God. Many of us, while in the United Pentecostal Church or similar churches, ended up getting caught up in religion and our focus shifted.

Below is a quote from an article written in The Reporter News (a local weekly paper near the Houston area) on March 15, 2006. A minister by the name of Casey Jones is the author.

…if I had tried to convince some*one to become a Christian, it would have been a matter of my trying to get them to agree with me, rather than wishing for them to meet and experience God.

The above quote says a great deal. Think about it for a bit. How many focus on getting people to their church or at least their organization? How many focus on getting the person into the baptismal tank or to have them speak in tongues?

Compare these things with wanting the person to learn of and have a personal relationship with God. See the enormous difference? Perhaps you have been guilty of the same? I know I have.

Some other believers could go door knocking or send out invitations to their church, but would have been happy if, as a result of their efforts, someone went to another church in the area. While they would have welcomed the person at their church, it wasn’t just about filling up their pews or hurrying up to drag them to their water baptism. For them it was about the people coming to know Jesus.

Do you see the difference?

This brings another thought to mind, and that is how some are in such a hurry to drag people into the baptismal tank and get them to speak in tongues. They will gather around and stay with the new people until both happen and then move on to the next ‘unsaved’ believer. It is all about getting two acts completed so a person is ‘saved’ and often there is little focus on helping them develop their relationship with God.

Something to think about….

Baptism and Re-Baptism Part 1

This is probably going to end up being an ongoing debate between me, myself and I.

For a long time after I left my former church, I believed that baptism in Jesus’ name was right. Then I thought it was better. Then a Oneness Pentecostal argued with me about baptism in Jesus’ name, thinking I was Trinity. And I realized how wrong some of their arguments were. Reading back through some of my blogs tonight, I realized just how much my thinking had shifted even since then- in a good way.

Now, I’m considering getting re-baptized, and think I may keep notes of some of what I’m studying and some of what I’ve learned here.

OK, for starters, I’ve considered re-baptism for a number of reasons since leaving, some good and some not so good. One of the first reasons I considered was making a clean break from the Oneness movement. That was not a very good reason for me. For starters, baptism isn’t meant to be used as a way to take a stand against a group of believers. Also, a “clean break” is really not possible when you still live among the group you’re breaking from. They wouldn’t even know I’d gotten re-baptized–any “break” would only be in my own mind.

Separating myself from them eventually came in the form of wearing pants and short sleeves even when they might see me. Curiously, most of them have been more accepting of me since I changed the way I dressed. Even just tonight, riding my bike, one drove by, smiled, waved and called my name. No disgust–he actually looked happy for me! (Which makes me wonder how many of them truly believe what they’re living… but that’s another blog for another time.)

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Again, I considered it simply because there’s so much division caused as a result of the debate (of baptism in the name of Jesus). Yet getting re-baptized won’t stop the debate, and I’ve already shown whose side I’m on by where I attend church, how I live my life, and so forth. Yet it might be done for unity’s sake. That one I need to think about more.

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Re-baptism can definitely be a public testimony and witness. But of what? If my testimony is “I’m not one of THEM,” indicating another group of believers, that’s not a good enough reason for me, personally. However, if my testimony is an answer of a good conscience toward God, a way to say, “yes, I truly believe,” then it might be right. Motive is the key in that case.

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I also have to consider historically and Biblically if re-baptism is acceptable or right. I don’t find anything in the Bible that says people were re-baptized, except in the case of the disciples of John in Acts 19. My personal feeling is that these disciples, not “having heard whether there be any Holy Ghost” probably were not familiar with Jesus’ death, burial and resurrection. They had been baptized to repentance but not baptized into the body of Christ, or as believers in Jesus. When they were re-baptized, it was to signify their belief in Jesus, whereas before it had not.

Historically, from what I can tell, believers were baptized once, except in the case of those who, like Anabaptists, were christened as children and re-baptized as adults due to a change in beliefs.

I find nothing for or against re-baptism either historically or Biblically. Research in these areas leaves me with no answers, and if anything possibly a few more questions. How do I fit into either of the groups in the paragraphs above, if I do? My beliefs have changed drastically even over the last few months. My understanding of Jesus and His sacrifice has expanded. But is that, in my case- since I believed in Jesus when I was first baptized- something I should be re-baptized to signify? I don’t think so, at least for me. Each person is different, though. If I’d ONLY been baptized once, in Jesus name, I think I’d feel much differently about my answer.

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By the same reasoning, I can conclude that it doesn’t matter if we believe baptism is salvational or not–the main thing is that we are believe and are baptized, not exactly what we believe about baptism.

These being the case, my baptism is as acceptable as anyone else’s. Also, to be re-baptized to join A church rather than THE body of Christ is a little beyond my means right now. That concept seems more than a little small-minded or limited in concept to me. And maybe even a bit divisive. It’s also slightly stuck-up, for lack of a better description. How could a church say, “Yes, you are a Christian, a Heaven-bound member of the body of Christ, but you would have to be re-baptized to be part of this local church?” (This church hasn’t said I’d HAVE to, but still…)

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Regarding baptism as a means of becoming part of the body of Christ rather than a local church, though I didn’t understand it at the time, when I was baptized in Jesus’ name I was also (unwittingly) baptized into a set group of believers. And THAT group later said I wasn’t even a Christian until I’d been baptized their way. So the above is an almost laughable concern in some ways.

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Apparently, no one is asking me this time to deny my first baptism. No one is driving me to join their church or telling me that there’s only one right way to be baptized. It would bother me if I were told that I had to deny my whole Christian walk up til this point, which is what happened after I was baptized in Jesus’ name. No, no one said that verbally, but it was indicated in many smaller ways. As far as the United Pentecostal Church was concerned, I started living for God after I got re-baptized in Jesus’ name and spoke in tongues. And that was NOT the case. I had to deny or ignore some wonderful things God had done earlier in my life to accept that. It wasn’t until I left the UPC that I finally understood how conflicted that had made me.

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I also consider what I’ve been taught through the years: that baptism was necessary for salvation, that getting re-baptized was completely wrong for any reason (due to a severe twisting of Heb 6:4-6), and, finally, that if I’d been baptized in Jesus name and then was re-baptized using the traditional Trinitarian formula I’d be hell-bound. I’ve wondered if I’d make myself sick or face residuals either before or after getting re-baptized because of these harsh teachings, and I’ve wondered if there were any truth in them. (I don’t think there is, but…) Would I make a public commitment and then not be able to follow through, end up explaining that I’d been taught these things and that they were giving me nightmares? Or are those things far enough behind me that getting re-baptized could be the joyous commitment that it’s supposed to be?

In other words, I think I believe a certain way, I say I believe a certain thing, but if faced with acting on the beliefs I claim, would I?

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I’m also more than a little nervous about making a public commitment of any sort to church again. Even a good church that I really enjoy. Will I stick with it? Will I want to be there in a year? In three? Will they change after I join and become like others I’ve experienced?

To be continued….

Lessons Learned: The Light Came On

Today I had an eye opener, epiphany, revelation, whatever you want to call it.

It all started out when I heard a loud KA-BOOM! I thought, sounds like a transformer. I could not see that the lights were out at first, until I went to the garage to let the dog in from the backyard and noticed the light in the garage was out. Then I noticed the electric clocks on the stove and microwave were out, too. Oh, goody.

So I texted the electric company to report and to make sure I did that right I called them. Two hours was the estimated time of repair – what they always said. I could not do much inside so decided to go to the grocery store for a couple of things and then go run another errand. As I checked out and was leaving, I noticed a man looking at me. I stared a moment and then realized it was someone I knew and he smiled, so did I, and then a younger man who was a worker there noticed me and said “Are you (my name)?”

I said “Yes. Are you ‘Little Tommy?'” (name changed for his privacy.) (He is not little now, probably close to 6 feet tall – his dad was known as Big Tommy and was very tall).

He said let me walk you to your car and I will also take your bag (small bag of groceries – 4 items lightweight). I said well, thanks, I am parked over there. So we got to may car and began to talk. He asked if I was in any other church. No I am not at the moment. Well he had gone back to my former church – his dad and stepmom had gone there at one time. So we talked a bit.

Of course he invited me back and I declined politely. He was always such a nice kid and was one of two boys (10-12 years old) who would wash my car. He ran the litany of who was still there, all my former friends (one he mentioned, I thought ‘not her’ but did not say anything). Some people who left the state seem to be moving back, too. (How nice, my private thought, a bit sarcastically to myself.) I told him that just because I left, I had not left God. He jumped on that and agreed, he had not left God either when he was out.

He also wondered why I left and I told him personal reasons (I was not going to get into exactly why – that the pastor’s wife and the pastor had done pretty much irreparable damage to my family. And that the last two years I sat on the pew I kept asking myself, “Where did they put Jesus?” and they preach “Christianity without the cross.”) We talked a little more and I had to get on, to do my other errand and get back home.

When I got home my lights were back on. I was sitting here knitting on a toddler sized afghan to give my hands something to do while I watched a show on Netflix and began to think about my conversation with Little Tommy. I began to have the conversation all over again but inserting some things I did not say: I did not leave God when I left the church four years ago. Jesus has always been my savior even before I ever heard of the church I spent 18 years in. They had stopped or maybe they never did preach Jesus. They preached a lot about how to dress, wear hair (cut vs. not cutting it). You must speak in tongues every day to be sure you still had the Holy Ghost (in other words, to be sure you are still saved). You must pray every day over at the church even if it means getting up after only four hours of sleep because church lasted until 11 pm the night before and it was midnight or after when you finally got to bed. All these things and more to make sure you keep your salvation. Rules, rules, rules.

I suddenly realized I was saved BEFORE that church ever became part of my life. I was saved when I did not speak in tongues. I don’t do formalized prayer (think prayer chart to give X minutes to each part of your prayer), I just talk to God like I did before I ever went to this church. No, I don’t go to church every week and have not been for nearly a year to any church.

It is hard to put down here exactly what I was feeling but I had to stop everything I was doing and come here to put this down. I knew all these things before and after I spent 18 years “in.” But being out four years has been helpful so that I can look back and see more clearly that by joining that church I was missing out on more of God than learning about him. Too bad I did not leave much sooner than I did. Lessons learned. The hard way.

It just seemed to come together tonight and was triggered by my meeting with Little Tommy.

One thing Little Tommy mentioned was that the pastor is not the same person as when he left years ago – the Pastor is the same man, but has changed. Little Tommy said he thought God was working on him. I don’t know how exactly but I thought that was probably good. But I still don’t believe I want to visit – everyone would want to drag me down to the altar and pray for me and I would not want that. They just don’t understand.

🙂

Questioning Teachings: Is There Any Biblical Precedence?

In unhealthy churches, people are often told things and given no biblical support to back them up. For instance, I recall being told by a United Pentecostal Church pastor about either having non-confessed sin in my life or a lack of faith as to the reason I hadn’t spoken in tongues while ‘tarrying’ during a visit to his church for a special service. He shared nothing from the Bible to support his claims.

Let’s lay aside the basic question of speaking in tongues and instead simply examine whether the Bible gives support to things many of us have seen or heard taught. The same could be applied to other church practices and teachings.

Do we read where Peter or Paul, or anyone else, admonishing people that they didn’t speak in tongues because they had non-confessed sin in their life or anything else which gets stated in Pentecostal/Apostolic churches? Do we see people ‘tarrying’ for God’s Spirit- day after day, week after week, month after month- like happens at some churches today?

Do we see other believers crowding around new believers, trying to ‘help’ them receive God’s Spirit? Do we see believers grabbing people’s mouths or chins, trying to shake their tongues loose? Do we see them telling people to “hang on” or “let go?” Do we see believers being forced to hold their hands up in the air for long periods of time? Do we see anyone being told to keep saying “Jesus, Jesus, Jesus” or “Hallelujah?” The list could go on…

Here is where many do not stop to fully look into these matters. We didn’t check the practices we were introduced to with scripture, to see if we found them or anything similar there. Instead, we went by what we saw and were taught and thought it must be the way it should be. Many of us simply repeated what we witnessed others do in services because it was all new to us.

Take some time to really think about this. Why are people being taught and encouraged to do such things when we can find no similar practices in scripture?

Stumbling block: a little about what happened to me

Some years ago, I was thrown out of a church because the pastor falsely accused me of things and wouldn’t allow me to even say I hadn’t done what he accused me of. He told me that if he said I did it, he was a Man of God, and God had obviously talked to him about me and revealed the wickedness in my heart. He also preached that I would walk out of church the night he kicked me out and immediately go and cut my hair and wear pants and makeup. I felt like I was betraying him by NOT doing those things, proving that he was a false prophet. I hadn’t done anything wrong, and I believed THE Truth, so I didn’t cut my hair or put on pants. I simply found another Oneness church and tried to act like nothing had happened.

The new pastor told me to just forget about what had happened and move on. But I couldn’t. What happened had created a lot of questions and doubts in my mind, things that I needed to work through and discuss. I needed time to heal. They wanted to act like there was nothing to heal, and that hurt worse.

I always felt condemned for not doing crazy things in church. After being kicked out, something disconnected. I went to church, and would shake “under the power of God.” I’d never done that before. People would tell me how close I must be to God. I didn’t feel close to God. I’d been kicked out of a church, but they didn’t know that, so I felt like a hypocrite. I also knew the shaking wasn’t God, it was me wrestling hard to reconcile what I believed was The Truth with what I had seen, heard, and experienced that blared that it wasn’t. There was such a deep grief and so much condemnation associated with praying, fasting, and studying the Bible… and especially with worship. The new church was very pushy about how much I should worship and exactly how we should and shouldn’t worship. That didn’t help me at all, because so much of what he told us we needed to do seemed unnatural or just plain weird or wrong to me.

It took me years to untangle what had happened in the church I was kicked out of. I had been happy in a way, and spoke in tongues often and danced a lot. When I was kicked out, even though I went to a different Oneness Pentecostal church (where the pastor assured me I was fine), things just weren’t the same. I doubted pretty much everything I was feeling, because the pastor who kicked me out said I was backslid and terribly wrong. If that were true (and of course it must be- he was a Holy Ghost filled preacher) then what I had felt, and the speaking in tongues and the worship I was doing must be all wrong, too. How could sweet and bitter water come from the same source, after all? I almost ‘got past that’ but then with all the show and people really hurting people in the altar of the new church, I started re-looking some things.

At the same time, I went through a time when every time I tried to pray, I’d pretty much immediately fall into heart wrenching grief and start sobbing and speaking in tongues. I knew that wasn’t right. There is joy in the Holy Ghost, and what was happening couldn’t have been considered intercession. I’d focus on God and say “I love you” or think of a recent service or have a happy thought that I’d be able to stay in that church for the rest of my life… and suddenly start bawling, when I hadn’t been sad before that word of prayer or that thought of thankfulness! A week of that would have been one thing, but that went on for a month or more. And I couldn’t seem to pray at all at church. By the end of that time, I knew something was terribly wrong, but I didn’t know what (or wouldn’t admit it) for a few more years.

For the last few years, there have been many false accusations and labels placed on people in my former church. There was a lot of spying and gossip.

The pastor bragged about the spying from the platform, and encouraged people to tell him if they even thought something MIGHT be wrong with someone else. He said if they didn’t tell him, they’d have blood on their hands. So people, from the oldest to elementary school kids, would go in alone or in groups to say they thought they saw someone do this or that. The person they told on would then be called in and chewed out. They were not asked if they did it, or if they denied it they’d be told they were lying. There was no escaping the hurtful words.

I’ve sat in my former pastor’s office sobbing uncontrollably many times as he, my ‘shepherd,’ my ‘man of God,’ my ‘pastor’ would tell me that I didn’t deserve anything but hell, that I was worthless, that I could leave like the other “garbage” (‘backsliders’ were called “garbage” and the churches they went to were called “trash cans”).

In all of this, even when I was sobbing, even when I tried to say something to defend myself, he would continue to pound on me with his words. Where is the mercy or the compassion in that?

If any pastors or leaders read this, please consider. I didn’t leave a Oneness church because I didn’t believe the doctrine. I left because the church stopped believing in me. I got to a point where if I’d stayed I would have stopped believing in God, because the God they preached and showed through their own lives was an angry, hateful, distorted god, not a God of love and mercy.

Mt 18:1 At the same time came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, Who is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven? 2And Jesus called a little child unto him… 6But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea. 7Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; but woe to that man by whom the offence cometh!

1 Jn 4:7 Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; and every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God. 8He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.

I’m not bitter. But some things need to be heard. For too long in churches like the one I left, members didn’t have a voice. It’s time someone listened.