By Caroline W.
I was seventeen years old when I first began to question Pentecostalism. My older brother was already away at college, and I was in my senior year of high school. Facing this transitional period of my life, I began to wonder: what happened? All my life I had been told that the Great Tribulation was imminent, that we were heading into a great Last Days revival of mighty miracles and signs and wonders even in the midst of persecution, and ultimately, the return of Christ. I was told that God would do great things if only we believed, that we would cast out demons and heal the sick and raise the dead.
I had lived in constant expectation, always expecting some mighty outpouring of the Holy
Spirit that was just around the corner but never quite here yet. I had fasted, prayed, worn old-fashioned clothes, and believed with all my heart . . . and yet it was always to no avail. God never seemed any closer. The miracles never came. The prophecies were never fulfilled.I was only seventeen, and yet I felt worn out. I had spent my entire childhood feeling that God was somehow just out of reach, that I wasn't quite doing enough to win His favor. But, despite my best efforts, I seemed always on the verge of hell. I had tried everything that I knew to try, but none of it was enough.
I sorted desperately through my memory for some sign that God had done something, anything, that proved that He really was with me more than with other people who weren't even trying so hard . . . but there was nothing. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that, in all my seventeen years of Pentecostal life, I had not witnessed a single real, definite miracle.
I began to look at other families in a different light. I had always been told how lucky I was to grow up in a Pentecostal/ Charismatic family where we were so full of the Holy Ghost. But now I began to actually wish I had been born to different parents. I envied the teens who wore nice, normal clothes, went to movies, and chatted on the phone with friends. I realized how much I had missed out on over the years, running around from one church to another putting on performances and pretending we were doing great things for God. I wished my life was simple and fun, without the terrible fear always haunting me that I would lose the blessing of the extraordinarily-easily-offended Holy Spirit.
Those thoughts sent me into a spiral of depression. I thought surely it was a sign that I really was doomed to hell that I would even wish that I didn't have to think about God and ministry and healings and miracles with every waking thought in order to barely maintain my salvation.
It was finally utter exhaustion that brought me to the point of giving up on Pentecostalism. I simply stopped trying. I felt that it was pointless anyway, since I never seemed to get anywhere.
It was only when I stopped trying on my own that I was at last able to see things for what they really were, and I began to finally comprehend the staggering enormity of the deception into which I had fallen.
I started reading the Bible and theology books, and I discovered something extraordinary: the Pentecostals were wrong. As much as I had had the Bible crammed down my throat all my life, I had never really read it before just to see what it said, without any agenda to prove something to somebody. I found a God spoken of in the Scriptures who was not anything like the God preached to me by my parents and by Pentecostal pastors.The God of the Bible was not some weak, desperate deity waiting for people to get everything right so that He could unleash His powers. The Bible spoke of a God who held the fate of the entire world in His hands. After all, who had fasted and prayed for the flood that He had poured out on the world in Genesis? No one . . . and yet, God had done it. How had Saul prophesied when he clearly had never gone through the agonizing process of surrendering himself to God and becoming a worthy vessel? In fact, God seemed to always do as He pleased. But the most amazing discovery of all . . . that God seemed pleased to save me.
It was all there in the Bible that I had carried with me all my life: salvation by grace, not by works--a gift of God, Christ who loved us and died for us while we were yet in our sins. For the first time, I saw the mercy of God to sinners. God didn't demand that we come to Him blameless and completely surrendered before He could save us. He called sinners and He forgave them their sins.
Why had God never seemed any closer for all my trying? Because He was always there . .. His divinity is never diminished by my humanity. Why had my works never seemed to win His favor? Because salvation was always free and His favor always unmerited.
Amazing grace, how sweet the sound,
That saved a wretch like me,
I once was lost, but now am found,
Was blind, but now I see.
_____________________
Taken with the author's permission from her website at PentecostalFreedom.org
Carolyn also maintains a blog, The Unlikely Calvinist, about her experiences in Pentecostalism and her transition into Reformed Theology and the Orthodox Presbyterian Church
3 comments:
Thank you. Wonderfully descriptive. I am trying to leave and still going through alot of emotionalism. Your article helped.
My mother is in this religion, I am going to print your blog in hopes she will read it and fully take in what you have described so clearly. Your blog has me in tears and a huge lump in my throat because everything you said is true. Stay strong:)
If the Pentecostal church you were in stated that salvation comes by works, as I understood from reading your article, then that was not a real Pentecostal church. I go to a [true] Pentecostal church that preaches salvation by grace through faith alone and where real miracles happen (I am a witness)! Just wondering ... what do you currently believe concerning salvation, Jesus, and miracles?
P.S. I'm not trying to argue here - just sharing.
THANK YOU :)
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