Sometimes I have a lot of nostalgia for the olden days, back when I bought into all things Charismatic.
Yes, despite what you may think, there was a time when I was as big a proponant of the “Word of Faith” teachings as anyone could be.
I always knew, deep down, that this singular focus on little snippets of Scripture couldn’t possibly be the “whole counsel of God.” I also knew that, despite believing it was God’s will for everyone to be healed, the reality was that many people were NOT healed. Were we to say that these unhealed people were then “outside of God’s will”? I really didn’t think so.
But I silenced that questioning part of myself by speaking positive confessions. I searched my Bible daily for every positive promise, skipping over the parts that didn’t agree with my new level of faith. And for awhile, I truly believed.
I believed that God would answer my prayers. I was outspoken enough in my belief that I would often suggest prayer to people, even if I was pretty sure they didn’t usually pray about things. I’d offer to pray for folks, and most of the time, they’d let me. I’d pray for them boldly, too, speaking Scriptures as they’d come to mind, declaring all of God’s promises over them.
I also believed what we were taught about finances: As long as we were faithful in our tithing, we’d never need to worry about money. I believed there was absolutely a cause-and-effect relationship between offerings and financial needs. If you’d come to me at that point and told me about a money problem, I’d immediately have asked you about your giving habits. Then I would have advised you to “plant a seed” at your church. Then I would have assured you that you would receive a “hundredfold return” on what you gave.
I can remember being so confident in my prayer life and in the reality of God’s promises that I truly had no fear of anything. Once, when I was home alone and heard odd noises outside late at night, I shrugged off my first surge of fear and thought to myself, “If someone breaks in, I’ll just tell them to leave in the name of Jesus.”
Then I turned over and went to sleep.
Those were some good times.
But then, as we’ve shared in many places on this site, we were forced to face the reality that the “Word of Faith” message didn’t seem to work as well as we were told it did. We began to realize that many of the seemingly prosperous-looking people around us – folks who faithfully trooped up to the offering buckets every Sunday - were actually struggling financially. Also, as I said, there was that nagging sense that we were neglecting a huge portion of God’s Word, picking and choosing only what supported what we wanted to be true. We indeed were ignoring the “whole counsel of God.”
And all this time, we were seeing many things at our “Charismaniac” church that also didn’t jive with what we were being told. We had to acknowledge, for instance, that Pastor Smith (a pseudonym) wasn’t the accurate prophet he claimed to be. We watched as the Smiths made so many decisions that were totally self-serving rather than for the good of Living Word Church (another pseudonym) and its people. We observed what seemed to be an ever-increasing level of control and manipulation from the pulpit.
Finally, it all got to be too much. We had to acknowledge that something was wrong somewhere.
We began the slow and often painful process of going back to the Bible and evaluating everything we’d been taught. I say this process has been “painful” because sometimes, it has literally HURT as we’ve had to sort through what was real – what was GOD – and what was the product of Smith’s skillful manipulation.
At times, the easiest way has been to write off the whole deal as a total deception. It’s certainly a lot safer to reduce Pastor Smith to nothing but a money man, to see him and his positive message as just another smooth-talking scam artist.
But then…
Well, what do you do with the parts of the “Word of Faith” message that DID work?
Yesterday, I had a conversation with a good friend. We chatted for a couple of hours about all sorts of subjects. At the very end of our talk, she suddenly brought up a subject that I’d thought we’d never discuss again. She mentioned a time, well over a year ago, when I’d believed I’d received a “word of knowledge” about a situation she was facing and had offered to pray for her.
That definitely had not been one of our most comfortable conversations! For one thing, she is a faithful Catholic, not someone accustomed to spouting the Bible at every turn (as I did at that point). I’d absolutely put my own “take” on the Christian faith on the line that day as I declared to her that God answers prayers, that all she needed to do was ask Him to intevene in her situation. I told her to EXPECT the miraculous and she would then SEE the miraculous.
And then I prayed for her.
It wasn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, what felt like a “good” prayer. My words didn’t flow as smoothly as they usually did, and we were interrupted more than once as our kids ran in and out of the room. And then afterward, a slight awkwardness decended upon our friendship, to the point where we didn’t discuss “spiritual things” again for many months. I’d never had the courage to ask her about how her situation had worked out. In a way, I almost hoped she’d forgotten the entire thing.
So you can imagine my surprise when yesterday, she brought it up herself, more than a year after the fact. I was stunned as I heard her say, “Listen, I have to tell you, remember that time when you prayed for me? Well, that has made me become an absolute believer in the power of prayer! Everything really WAS different after that day. And it’s been a year, and it’s STILL different. It truly was a miracle!”
As I listened to her words, I felt the faint stirrings of something I haven’t sensed in a long, long time: HOPE. I think that’s the thing that I’ve missed the most about Living Word, the Smiths, and everything we experienced there. Their message was full of such HOPE! Even in spite of all the rest of the garbage they threw at us, in the middle of it all were these powerful exhortations to keep believing, to keep having faith, that God’s Word is true, that God really does answer prayer.
Sometimes, it’d be nice to hear once again that the day of my prophetic destiny is right around the corner…
You see, the root problem of the Charismatic message for me is that it’s kind of an “all or nothing” message. To be bold enough to believe in prayer to the point where you’ll risk humiliation (or a friendship) to offer to pray for someone, you pretty much – at least, I do – have to believe in it all. In order to have that level of faith, I have to maintain a single-minded focus on God’s promises and the side of God’s nature that DOES seem to want us to “above all, be in good health and prosper.” I also have to maintain confidence in the trustworthiness of the individuals preaching that message to me.
And I’m not sure anymore whether I should be furious at Pastor Smith for tainting my “true believer” status with all of his money-grubbing self-promotion, or if I should be grateful to him for at least giving us a few years when we were full of wide-eyed, true-believin’ HOPE.
Or both.
One of the most terrible abuses by authoritarian ‘pastors’ is that of doubt. When a pastor declares you do not hear from the Lord (as well as he does), that you do not know the Lord (as well as he does), that you do not understand the Lord (as well as he does), and that you are not serving the Lord (as well as he is), it becomes obvious you have a different Lord.
And if one is right, the other must be wrong.
The spiritual abuse that says “you do not know your Saviour”, “you do not know your Shepherd’s voice”, “you can’t trust God”, “you can only come to the Father through His “anointed one/apostle/leader/pastor” etc…” – these things are wicked, vile abuses.
It is because of this abuse that I no longer believe in “church” (small c). I believe in, participate in, and a member of Jesus’ Church (big c), and still know the fellowship of the Body, but church as an institution is a hutful, abusive and horrible place – we have strayed so far from the early church model. Until we let God alone govern the churches, people will continue to be abused; smouldering wicks will be snuffed, and bruised reeds broken.
May Jesus be glorified in the Church – and in us!
Just about the time that I started to really suffer at the hands of the leadership for sticking by other people in our abusive church, I started to develop allergies and my husband’s migraine condition from childhood returned. I’m still, to this day, unable to take anything but tylenol (which does little) and strong narcotics for pain. Having several chronic conditions, this makes life a bit of a drag. There have been days when I wanted to just give up and take a Motrin, even knowing that I would be in the emergency room later that day, just to get some relief.
So it was recommended to me as well as my husband that we pursue hypnotherapy to aid in the non-pharmacological management of pain. Well, this is dangerous stuff for anyone, let alone a Christian…. After many years of thinking about it, I figured that I had nothing left to lose.
So I trained as a hypnotherapist (rather than go for hypnosis), and I learned a great deal. It really helped me take back a part of myself that I’d lost in many ways. But the real benefit to me was discovering how very much hypnotherapy is just like Pentecostalism.
What was wonderful about the initial stages of this training (though it was rough because I was the only verbally dissenting Christian in the class and I refused to do regression for religious reasons) was the pleasant and familiar message of thinking only good things. Before I delved into the deeper understanding of hypnosis and observed the lives of those who practice, I was able to appreciate the truly beneficial aspects of “naming and claiming.” I’m so glad that I was able to receive this message, and I gained a great deal of validation as a result of the hypnotherapy training.
And I was certified in the use of hypnosis for pain management during childbirth, so that was a wonderful thing as well.
It was another step in my process of what I call self-integration — or picking up all the pieces of what was left of my shattered self and letting God put me back together. A huge part of that was feeling safe about calling things that are not as though they were again, but with the balance of doing so in accordance to the Word and not out of conformity or under pressure from authority. It was a wonderful gift to receive those things back without any fear, for I no longer served any guru or step-by-step plan.
(And I learned yet more techniques of manipulation along the way.)
I’m so glad that hope has reintroduced itself to you again. Isn’t it wonderful?
I hope we don’t have to through out the ‘baby with the bathwater’!
Just because the ENEMY got in and twisted and distorted and deceived and seduced the leadership into manipulating and abusing the sheep doesn’t mean that the message of faith itself, at its most basic form, is null & void, or should be discarded!
I think we can hold onto some of the basic truths of the Word of Faith message. That the Bible is powerful and full of life giving words that can change us, fix us and help us NOW, if we believe them. That because of the finished work of redemption by Jesus Christ, we live under a new and better covenant that is full of GRACE and mercy and love and forgiveness. That God is all the way for us and in no way against us. That we are His very own children and He is our very own Father.
I believe there’s still plenty of Good News in the message of faith that you can find WITHOUT twisting scripture or taking it out of context.
So, to use an analogy my Baptist-pastor dad used in sermons many times…be like the old cow at the trough, eat around and leave the brambles and briers and just take hold of the good stuff.
Very insightful message. It is difficult, though, without God’s word and the help of His Spirit, to discern what to believe and what to throw away. I have learned that the false teachers/prophets in the WF movement are masters as twisting scripture. It has taken a few years for the Lord to get rid of the teachings I have learned from them.
The problem is, I went from one extreme to another. I just left a church that I attended for two years. This church was very big on exposition of scripture through whole books of the bible. I knew I wouldn’t be there long, but I did not know why at first. I learned that scripture interprets scripture, and I have learned so much more on my own by getting into the word and asking the Lord to give me understanding. But they lacked faith, unless you conformed to what they wanted for you. You had to be “obedient” to the leadership even if it contrasted with what you believed God wanted you to do (and you were not going against scripture). Their lack of faith and love drove me and another sister away.
So, like you, I am now learning that there is balance. We must continue to have faith in the Lord and His word–not believing in our own words or in our own faith. We also cannot “demand” anything from the Lord, but we are to marvel at His graciousness and His faithfulness when He answers the prayers that are according to His will. We have to know Him and be conformed into the image of His Son (painful process, such as it is) and then our wills will be His will and we can be confident that He hears us and that we have the petitions that we ask of Him.
Isn’t this journey with the Lord wonderful? I am in awe that He loved us enough to snatch us from that which was false so that we can know Him in spirit and in truth. We have to continue to pray for those who are our true brethren that are still caught in that mess. We must be ready with our own testimonies of God’s deliverance so that they, too, may have hope.
Blessings!
Wahoo! You guys are back! What happened? Was it just me? I couldn’t get to your site. Anyway, I love your site and I’m glad you all haven’t disappeared from the blogosphere.
Hi, Karen…
No, it wasn’t just you. We took the site private for awhile, because we felt like we’d sort of run out of things to say. But now we’re back. We may not post as much as we used to, but we figure that people still might find some of the older pieces helpful.
It really is a good blog. Even if you don’t ever add another post, it’s still a good resource for those in the process of evaluating whether or not God is trying to pull them out of a wacky church situation.
Thanks, Karen!
Sometimes I wonder what things would have been like if we’d found a blog like this one when we first began having questions about our church. I remember how much it helped us when we discovered Kevin Reeves’ “The Other Side of the River.” His situation wasn’t exactly the same as ours, but there were enough parallels to make us sit up and realize we weren’t alone. His key point – “Our personal spiritual experiences alone cannot be used to validate truth” – was probably the one thing that cut through the fog and made us think. So maybe this site will do the same for someone else.
My family has just left a church like this. It was a painful thing and is still. I read your stories and it sounds just like I wrote it. the same money message and the same twisting of scripture and the same new revalations. Do these guys all study from the same book? It sure isn’t the bible.thanks for sharing your story.