Disclaimer: This post is longer than normal.
Also, the title does make sense, though it may not seem like it at first.
Stick with me, EFCC’ers. I promise I have a point.
Up until now, I’ve shied away from posting a “how I’m doing/what God is teaching me” blog. The primary reason is that I’ve followed other racer blogs, but quickly got sick of them because they seemed to focus entirely on personal growth instead of the amazing work the Lord was doing. In fact, focusing too much on the personal journey was a common critique of the Race both before and after I committed to go. Now that I’m actually here, I’m astounded more blogs don’t tell stories from the field.
—> (Shameless Plug: did you know I have a WhatsApp update list? I share many more stories via text than I have time to post on the blog. You can get signed up by downloading the app and shooting me a message at +1 (858) 444-6778).)
That said, the purpose of this trip (as set out by AIM) is not only to share Jesus, but also to walk with Him, similar to how Jesus called his disciples. So with that in mind, I’d like to bring you into something I’ve been wrestling with.
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During training camp, I realized the Race is much more charismatic in their expression of faith than I am. I grew up in a conservative church that holds strongly to exegetical biblical teaching, but we did not sing in tongues, prophesy over people, or cast out demons.
This is not to say the Holy Spirit was not present. I was taught a biblical view of His work, (teaching, encouraging, reminding, and helping us walk in all truth), but also that His primary purpose was to point back to Jesus. He was not intended to be worshipped distinctly (aka: you wouldn’t have a song singing directly and only to the Holy Spirit). Even now, I am not fully comfortable with those kinds of expressions.
Like the sun at golden hour, the Holy Spirit was presented as powerful in and of Himself, but His function was to lend beauty to other things, especially the ugly ones, instead of drawing eyes to Himself. We don’t look at the sun during golden hour and say, “how beautiful!”. Instead, we look at the sunset, golden faces, and glowing streets. We give glory to the painter, but we admire the painting.
AIM holds a different view. To them, the Holy Spirit is meant to be worshipped and revered. People here refer to Him as “Holy Spirit” instead of “the Holy Spirit”, which is a minor, but important, distinction. They teach that He gives gifts such as the ability to speak in tongues (a non-earthly prayer language), prophesy over others (speak a revelation of God that is founded in scripture and confirmed by the community, not necessarily telling a future), and miraculous healings. He can fall on people by something called a baptism of the Holy Spirit, usually experienced because someone with spiritual authority lays hands on you and prays for a baptism. AIM does not hold that a baptism of the Holy Spirit is necessary to be saved, but rather that, just like water baptism, it is confirmation of God’s saving work in our lives.
[One quick aside: Despite the reality of these more charismatic (as my home church defines them) practices, if you read racer blogs like I did, you won’t see evidence of this from the field. My theory is that racers avoid mentioning this because they are not sure how their supporters will respond. In some ways, miraculous gifts like healing, tongues, prophecy, etc., as well as various ways God speaks, such as visions and dreams, have traditionally been associated with the prosperity gospel, which is a byword in Christian circles. But more on this later.]
Personally, I experienced the spiritual side of my faith for the first time at UCLA. Depending on which tradition you come from, I either “had a season of stirring up” in my faith, or received a “baptism of the Holy Spirit”. The catalyst was a picture I saw after a particularly desperate prayer on January 4, 2012. I wrote about it in depth in this blog post (Click here to read That Time I Rejected God).
Growing up, I was told to listen to God, but not how. It seemed a nebulous concept that everyone but me had figured out. After all, God isn’t a human. You can’t get coffee with him like you can with your best friend.
Before that moment, I spent a lot of time talking to God, but never received any concrete response except for vague impressions that I could easily dismiss as my own biblical reasoning. After that vision, I began to realize first that God wanted to have a conversation, and second, a little bit of how that conversation might happen.
I quickly became obsessed with hearing God’s voice.
No one understood why I wanted this so badly. I was either challenged by the leaders of my conservative organization, or encouraged to experiment by friends with similar questions. Without someone to check me, the sweetness of a two-way conversation with God quickly gave way to practices of clear-your-mind meditation and trying to imagine encounters with Jesus.
God can and does show us really cool visions and pictures, even encounters with Jesus, but what I was doing—trying to force it—was divination. And it invited many dangerous things into my life, not the least of which was demonic terrorism. I began to experience the spiritual world like never before. People with inexplicable illnesses would walk into the room, and I would feel so sick to my stomach that I had to leave. Multiple times I jolted awake in the middle of the night, convinced there was a dark presence standing at the foot of my bed. I had dreams of demons doing horrible things to me, and me doing horrible things to others.
In one instance, I ended up curled on the floor of my friend’s room, gripping my hair as the image of my body being dive-bombed by evil spirits scrolled through my mind. It was a little like Snow White in the forest. I prayed furiously, but nothing helped. Three hours later I awoke, completely confused—I had dozed off.
Despite all of this, I still tried to meditate. I saw it as prayer, and therefore a way to counteract demonic oppression. In reality, the opposite was true. Eventually, the visions changed to things I knew weren’t biblical and after that, I ceased all meditation practices. My dreams stopped, and so did the overt demonic torment.
Instead of relief, however, I sunk further into depression. I graduated and moved back home, but the same spiritual haze permeated my life. If you had asked me to look back, I would have told you that the five years since I graduated have been nothing but pain and suffering. Even in that admission, I felt the wrong-ness. There have to be some good things, I admonished myself. And there were, but remembering took effort.
I fought with scriptures—oh did I fight! I could quote all the verses about who God says I am and my freedom in Christ, but nothing seemed to stick. I dismissed the church-y answers of to “just speak truth over your life” or “preach the gospel to yourself every day”, as people not understanding the reality of suffering. Conversations with my friends about my mental state inevitably ended with the phrase, “My brain is sick”. They reassured me the opposite was true, pointing to specific instances in my life, but even as I made myself speak the truth, doubt lingered. I knew something was wrong.
And then came the Race, where I heard—along with all the stuff about gifts and prophecy, etc.—that those occult practices in college were the spiritual equivalent of me inviting demons into my house for a meal… except my unintentional guests hadn’t left.
It’s not possible for someone who is a temple of the Holy Spirit to be possessed by a demon. But demons can have influence, or strongholds, in the lives of Bible-believing, Christ-following, Holy Spirit-empowered Christians. The difference is that because of God’s protection, demonic forces can only have those things if we allow them access. If I make a “legal agreement” with them, so to speak, they have permission to remain.
Our Race mentor taught us that we make agreements when we choose to believe lies that are spoken over us. For example, as a child you might have experienced a moment of frustration when a parent refuses to listen to your explanation, and instead of seeing it as sin or misunderstanding, you instead accept the lie that you are not worth listening to.
To do a prayer of deliverance means to ask the Holy Spirit to reveal the moment where you first believed the lie, repent of the belief and any sinful actions it may have caused, tell the spirit to leave in Jesus’ name, and then remind yourself of God’s truth. Sometimes these lies are buried in our history as family curses. Sometimes they are things we choose as a result of sin—others’ against us, or our own.
In my case, demons had gained influence through lies passed down in my history and lies I had accepted myself, but they had set up strongholds during college, when I unknowingly practiced the occult in the form of divination. The difference between influence and strongholds is that with a stronghold, the lie is so much part of you that you don’t even recognize it as a separate thought. You feel powerless. Helpless. Like you need brain surgery in order to think differently.
You feel like your brain is sick.
No matter what you believe about deliverance prayers, I experienced a very real change. Fearful, controlling, self-despising thoughts that had plagued me for years were suddenly silenced. It was as if a loudspeaker in my head had simply vanished. Now, when I experience moments of fear, control, or self-hate, it is an easy matter to dismiss them by turning my mind to God’s truth.
Okay, so why am I telling you all this? Because I’m still struggling. On the one hand, I’ve experienced very real things, both at UCLA and with the deliverance prayers on the Race. God gives me pictures—like visual analogies—and dreams that reflect biblical values. I think I’ve even experienced interpretation of tongues (you wouldn’t believe the number of times people speak to me in other languages and I know what they’re saying, even though I can’t understand the words).
On the other hand, I’ve been in charismatic services where the speaker asks people to stretch their hands toward a sick person so we can all pray and they can be delivered. I’ve seen friends ask if they can pray “just one more time” for healing. I’ve heard stories of Christians screaming as they try to cast out a demon from a person showing signs of possession. I’ve had friends be overcome with so much laughter, ostensibly from the Holy Spirit, that they disrupt the speaker. And in all of this, I think, wait a minute—this isn’t how Jesus did ministry. When Jesus healed people, they were healed instantly. When he cast out demons, he said nothing more than “get out”, and they were gone. There was no shouting, as if a louder volume would give him more power. In every way, he was respectful to the authorities placed over him (Caesar and the synagogue leaders) while also walking in the awesome and incredible power of God.
My grandpa used to say, “If you’re really good, you don’t have to say anything.” He meant sports, but I think the same principle applies spiritually. If you really walk in power, you don’t have to shout it or show it off. You can walk down the street and someone who brushes your clothes will be healed (Mark 5:27-29, Acts 19:11-12).
Here, on the Race, I am seeking a biblical balance between what I’ve been taught and what I’ve experienced. When people tell me they’ve seen demons or angels, I believe them. When they give me a word of prophecy, I accept it after checking it against the Bible and what God has been speaking to me personally. I’ve seen a miraculous healing result in an entire family accepting Christ.
Sometimes when I’m praying, God will give me a picture that speaks to my spirit. I occasionally have dreams that are too lifelike and symbolic to be anything but Him. Most often, he brings verses to mind or gives impressions that mirror biblical principles. My journal is filled with conversations in alternating color pens—my thoughts, and then what I believe God is saying. I ignore anything that does not agree with the narrative and overarching themes of scripture.
At the same time, I struggle when our team experiences a something like the miraculous healing with the Cherry family, but then leaves without speaking honestly of the suffering that will surely be theirs for Christ. Praying multiple times for people while reassuring them that healing is always God’s will doesn’t line up with what I’ve found in scripture. A mental picture of a demon perched on top of a nearby building could just be my imagination. And praying for a headache instead of taking ibuprofen seems foolish.
Are we leaving people with a roses-and-sunshine version of Christianity? What if they see Jesus’ power and simply assimilate him into their pantheon of other gods who have also helped them in the past?
If we’re called to walk like Jesus walked, then let’s do that. If a healing doesn’t happen, maybe it’s not in God’s will. If we can’t cast out the demon, maybe the victim doesn’t desire freedom, or maybe there is something about that particular spirit we don’t understand, like the disciples in Mark 9:28-29. God is creative, spontaneous, and gives freedom, but he also desires order. Even during Holy Spirit-inspired laughter, or while speaking in tongues or prophesying, God has given us a spirit that allows us to remain in control of our bodies—unlike victims of demonic possession. That’s the entire point of 1 Corinthians 14.
I don’t know what the answers are, and to be honest, posting this terrifies me. Each person reading has an opinion all along the spectrum. Some of you will think I’m on a dangerous path toward New Age Christianity and that if I keep going I’ll end up preaching a false gospel. Others will pray for me, believing that my inability to shed my “rigid upbringing” is somehow hindering the work of God by preventing me from stepping into all Holy Spirit has for me. I risk offending people on my team, forfeiting any opportunity for leadership, and being inundated with opinions by people who care more about debating theological points than my very real struggle to figure out how God speaks and what ministry should look like.
So I would ask that if you do share your opinion, that you would do so with a humble heart, with a biblical basis, and with the intention of encouraging me to seek Him. And this not just for me, but also for anyone you meet struggling with this topic.
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This post wasn’t exactly meant to be… this. I started off intending to write a letter to my home church and what came out was a dissertation on the biblical basis for the working of the Holy Spirit. I debated changing the title, but eventually left it because I know that my home church is entering into a time of wrestling with these same issues. We just hired a new senior pastor. We are thinking about expanding our statement of faith. In light of all that I’ve shared, I want to speak to EFCC specifically. If you’re not part of that church, you can feel free to skip to the bottom =).
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Dear Emmanuel Faith,
Thank you. The more people I meet and the longer I travel, the more impressed and grateful I am for the strong basis of theology on which I stand, which is the result of your faithful witness and commitment to teaching the truth of God as revealed in his word. More often than not, when I ask God for clarity on one of these issues, he brings to mind teachings from our church; some of them from years past!
I have an unshakeable foundation, because of this church. I know who I am in Christ because of this church. I know who God is because of this church. You taught me to defend my faith and showed me what healthy community should look like. I developed a heart for the world and youth ministry through conferences and job opportunities you provided. God used the youth ministry to call me into full time missions work.
You’re not perfect. For one, you’re glacially slow. This used to frustrate me, until I realized you act slowly because we take the time to consider Biblical truth and how the Holy Spirit is leading before acting. With 80 years under your belt, this strategy has proven wise. Our world may be changing fast, but we also need to be sure we are acting in a manner worthy of the calling we have received.
That said, one thing I did not learn from you is how God communicates. And unless my generation has biblically-grounded leaders who seek to understand (not simply dismiss) our longing to hear God’s voice and our very real experiences with the Holy Spirit, they will walk toward things that have the potential to harm them. It happened to me—but for the grace of God, I would have walked away from the Church altogether.
I’ve known people to leave home, experience the Holy Spirit, and then dismiss EFCC as “spiritually dead” or denounce us as culturally irrelevant. This is false. If I have learned anything from this church, it is how to be faithful to the Holy Spirit’s leading. He is alive and active in our church, and he LOVES us, both individually and as a collective whole. These ideas, on the surface, might seem to threaten the very fabric of our existence. But I would encourage us to search scripture, being conscious of the bias with which we have been raised. If we ask God, he will remove the blinders and show us what he is saying. Knowing this, I am confident that He has begun a mighty work within our doors, and that He will carry it on to completion for the glory of Christ Jesus.
I am excited to see where this goes.
Love,
Sarah
P.S. Pastor Keating, I showed your method of sharing the gospel to an evangelist in Nepal, and she loved it. Not only was it simple, but it also ends with the same gesture that is used to greet each other and bestow honor. So any Hindu who hears the gospel will forever have a reminder of God’s truth whenever they greet someone else.
