'Deconstructing' my Pentecostal experience.

In 2012 I had an encounter with God that shook my understanding of tongues, prophesy, faith-healing, signs and wonders. It really awakened something within me. Something my previous church was yet to engage with. From this encounter, I decided to try out my local Pentecostal church and I met some amazing people there. People were manifesting throughout worship, shaking as they were being prayed for, screaming in tongues, prophesying and being healed. There was one occasion of demon possession and on one occasion, a preacher preaching and out of nowhere shouting ‘Ariba Ariba’ (at a Pentecostal conference). This was wacky to me and to be honest, despite feeling initially uncomfortable, I decided to go along with it out of naivety. Whilst attending, I was asked the million dollar question… ‘are you a Christian and if so, have you been baptised in the Holy Spirit’. My response was ‘yes' and 'what?..’. This resulted in several people laying hands on me and blowing onto my face shouting ‘FIRE!’. People around me starting falling to the ground and talking in tongues and I remained on my feet. The longer I stayed up, the longer they prayed and then out of nowhere, I fell to the floor. Throughout my time at this Pentecostal church, I found myself believing certain things about who God is, what his Word says and the implications of this on the Charismata expressed in these gatherings. I found myself becoming misled in my understanding of Mental Illnesses. I believed that God wanted all people to be healed and if the person wasn't healed, particularly from Mental Illness, they were either ‘believing a lie’ or they had 'a demonic stronghold’ or ‘lack of faith’. It didn't matter what the situation was, I believed that God would always show up and heal, deliver and set the captive free. The theology behind this was very similar to the Word and Faith movement. Don’t get me wrong, there are some fantastic Pentecostal churches out there that are sound theologically so if you are one of my ‘friends’ via social media and attend this denomination, please don’t think I'm making an objective claim to Pentecostalism as I am sure these practices can be found in other denominations also.

In 2014-15 I found myself struggling with depression and anxiety. During this time, I tried ‘speaking life’ into my being, I was ‘contending for freedom’ and ‘rebuking the spirit of mental illness' out of me. I even found myself questioning my faith and salvation. I hit rock bottom. By the beginning of 2015 I started going to counselling and my counselor was a Christian! They didn’t lay hands on me and pray for my 'freedom’ once, they simply sat back and counselled me. What a relief! After 6-8 months, I found myself completely free from depression and anxiety. God freed me in this, not because I knew 'the right prayers’, ‘increased my faith’, ‘rebuked the lies of the enemy’ or ‘spoke life’, but because I reached out to someone who would care for me, listen to me, encourage me, challenge me and pray with me.

Since graduating from Bible College, I have found myself thinking about my Pentecostal and ‘super’ Charismatic roots and beliefs. I took another look at my theological understanding and experience and found that, for the most part, my experience determined my theology. I realised this was unhelpful. First came my ‘initiation into the church’ (showing evidence of the Spirit Baptism). The Pentecostal church(es) views on Spirit Baptism vary. Some would adhere to an evidence-based baptism which requires a physical manifestation such as tongues or prophesy, while others don't require this evidence. Some would say that being ‘Baptised in the Holy Spirit’ is critical for Missions and Christian life. (Gosh, if only the Baptists, Anglicans, Presbyterians and etc had this… they’d still exist… hmm!!) I looked at the ‘messiness’ of church services and literally found 1 Corinthians, when Paul speaks about orderly worship, ringing in my ear. Within Charismatic and Pentecostal worship, in my experience that is, there have been times that sung worship were focused more on personal encounter and less to do with giving God all the praise, all the honor, all the glory and all the attention.

I also looked at my experiences of being prayed for and falling to the ground. Let’s put it this way, I can’t even count how many times I have fallen to the ground and spoken in tongues, left the service and still carried on living in habitual sin. Then comes the issue of ‘spiritual warfare’. I believe that demons are just as real as angels, but I really needed to address my understanding of the “things that go bump in the night”. This process was very challenging. I wanted to use discernment and to now allow my bad experiences to influence genuine encounters. That being said, I do believe that there is an ignorance regarding spiritual warfare. If you have seen ‘The Waterboy’ with Adam Sandler, there are several scenes in which the Mum doesn’t want her son to play ‘foosball’, go to school or even have a romance and continually suggests that ‘it’s the devil’. I can’t say I have found the ‘perfect’ theological stance regarding this kind of attitude within the Church but I do find myself saying ‘it’s the devil’ a lot less than I once did. In doing this, it has allowed me to recognise areas of humanity that are ‘fallen’ and seeing God’s Sovereign Decree and Will differently. Once I found myself ‘deconstructing’ my Pentecostal and partly ‘wacky’ Charismatic roots, I was introduced to the Reformers and Puritans. With an open heart and mind, I began to look into their understanding of who God is, what Christ has done, the wickedness of humanity, the sovereignty of God, the five-solas, predestination and election. I have been extremely challenged by their commitment and, in most of their cases, their executions, as they fought to uphold the truth of who God is. Lastly, the film The American Gospel nipped it in the bud for me and solidified my views.

In spite of what I once beleived; Mental Illness is not the devil! Believers die everyday and it is not because of their lack of faith! The likelihood is that the creaking in your house is probably old floor boards and not demons! If you have accepted Christ and were baptised (in water), you DO NOT NEED a baptism of the Holy Spirit – The Holy Spirit is not asleep within you needing to be shaken or yelled at in tongues to wake up in order to use you. Scripture mentions Spirit Baptism as a new stage for the Early Church, not a new stage for all of the Age.