There is an old saying that has proven to be very true throughout the years…

You can take the boy out of the country, but you can’t take the country out of the boy

The phrase was used specifically to describe young men who were raised on the farm but who eventually left the agrarian life and went away to college in ‘the big city’. However, the more I thought about that statement, I began to realize throughout 2009 that I could substitute the word ‘country’ with the words ‘pentecostal/charismatic movement’ and get a ‘new saying’ (not to be confused with ‘new thing’ of popular pentecostal/charismatic ‘new thing’ theology) that was equally as true

You can take the boy out of the pentecostal/charismatic movement, but you can’t take the pentecostal/charismatic movement out of the boy.

I have always heard that similar phrase where the word “country” was replaced by the word “Catholic” in basic theological discussions, but there was something about the year 2009 where I felt as if I was at a crossroads and point where I had to make a whole-hearted and legitimate attempt of

You must still keep the man from going back to the pentecostal/charismatic movement, while at the same time take the pentecostal/charismatic movement out of the man.

It started in January of 2009 where I figured out that I had to do something about this. I felt as if life was beginning the process of repeating similar life patterns experienced around ten years ago which brought back from the repressed and cobweb memory a very popular concept within pentecostal/charismatic churches that I would like to refer to as simply…. “test theology”

“Test theology” in the pentecostal/charismatic mindset is defined as going through the exact same process and life patterns over and over again until you eventually ‘get smart’ to ‘make the ‘right’ decision’ that God will approve of before you can somehow go forward into the ‘next level’ (another theology of it’s own). Every life experience was viewed as this ‘divine’ test that had to be ‘passed’ by making the ‘right decision’ before one could go further or be considered as being ‘anointed’ enough to be viewed as either ’saved’ or ’spiritual’.

Of course, if you failed, the typical excuses of ’secret sin’, ‘lacking faith’, and ‘disagreeing with your pastor or a televangelist’ was the force-fit answer of why you were not spiritual enough to receive the blessing of making the right choice…..

what a blooming idiot I used to be for believing this crap….

I had to do something as pente-anxiety started to try to work its way back into my life and instill more and more fear than it was supposed to have liberated me of. I had to do something that the repent-a-thons, mega-fasts, hyper prayer rallies, etc could never do….

I had to go back deeper into the Word and literally learn to ‘deprogram and reprogram’ myself into some new thought processes by studying the Word with a new fervor all by myself.

There was only one way to ‘effectively’ do this…..

Skip church every other Sunday and devote that time you would have spent in church into a very deep Word study and prayer session.

WHAT?????

And that was what I did throughout 2009. I took every other Sunday off from church and devoted those mornings away from church into a very deep Word study and prayer session with God. Call it skipping Church, call it playing “Holy Hooky” LOL!

In fact, the first major battle of getting the pentecostal/charismatic movement out of the man was addressing the fear (instilled in the pentecostal upbringing) of missing church on Sunday. Growing up pentecostal with a holiness slant, you didn’t miss church on Sunday, you didn’t go out to lunch after church (the early years), you didn’t go to the department stores that were opened after the repeal of the ‘blue laws’ on Sunday in fear of not keeping the day holy and in fear of getting the ‘holy heiney beating’ from God and ‘holy hexes’ on your life. And don’t tell anyone you watched football either. In fact, you were expected to be there sick to get prayed for (but somehow the pastor and deacons were somehow ‘exempt’ from this requirement).

I vividly remember one time where a family prominent in the church walked into the church thirty minutes late all tired and sweaty. Their car had broken down due to a fan belt breaking (attack of the enemy in their eyes) and the father got on the microphone and bragged of how they walked all the way to church from their broken down car to the point of ‘overcoming temptation’ by walking past the open auto parts store in fear of dishonoring the Sabbath and placing more ‘wrath’ on their lives while passing up rides from other ‘Christian looking people’ claiming that he was going to receive his ‘mega blessing of prosperity’ for giving the devil a black eye…. Twenty years later, he was dead from a major organ failure, still living in the same old small house working at the same old job, and months after his death when seeing one of his daughters for the first time in twenty years at a department store; she asked me not to talk about Jesus because of all the shame and ‘persecution’ she experienced at school growing up because of the ‘pentecostalism’ (always in dresses, low self-esteem, always looked poor to appear holy, never pretty) that the other kids laughed at….

Another thing that one never did on Sunday was to start the annual summer vacation on Sunday but instead leave town on Monday. I vividly remember the stories of the family that would do this to experience something bad happening on that vacation ranging from wrecking the car to a visit to the emergency room for some bizarre accident and how they would cry and ‘repent’ for not going to church that Sunday because those things was the wrath of God for skipping church on Sunday. I remember growing up one summer where my father had to go to a week long work-related training seminar in another state and took the family with him as a form of summer vacation. We had to leave that Sunday afternoon to be at the hotel by Sunday evening. I remember not being too far from our destination when dad saw that the fuel gauge indicated that he was about to run out of gas. He started looking for gas stations and could not find an open gas station. I still to this day remembering the anxiety, heart racing, cool sweats, and worry that overtook my body thinking that running out of gas was going to be the ‘punishment’ for traveling on Sunday and started silently praying to God asking for forgiveness for all my sins (and invented ones as well). I vividly remember when dad finally found an open gas station with the fuel gauge near empty and filled up the gas tank, I was finally able to feel relaxed and un-tense and felt like God loved me enough and that my sins were indeed forgiven and we wouldn’t miss the rapture…. Further relieved when we made it to the hotel safely.

I had to overcome that anxiety first of things happening to my car and/or my body for skipping church. I was in an anxious mess that first Sunday this past year when I decided to skip church to start the in-depth study of the Word, fervent prayer, and killing of ’stinking-thinking’. I went after watching Charles Stanley on tv and got breakfast that morning, went to the grocery store for groceries, and filled up the car at gas station praying for forgiveness of my sins before stopping and restarting the car each time fearing the potential mechanical breakdown, the potential wreck, or the potential grand theft auto crime that could somehow take place because skipping Church on Sunday now “opened the door” for one of those things to happen. I made it home safe and sound.

It was during these times where I had to do many things:

Rediscover my Faith in God and that Faith was not a formula

Had to re-embrace my Christian Spirituality as Gospel truth instead of doing things in fear of superstitious repercussions

Had to rediscover the ability of attending church for the purpose of worshiping God in Spirit and in truth instead of the ‘mafia-like’ obligation it eventually turned into from past ’stinking thinking’ learned as a child fearing a beatdown from God if I skipped.

Had to deprogram stinking thinking and bad pentecostal / charismatic / word of faith / third wave fear-mechanisms and theology and literally reprogram myself with the pure and adulterated Word of God myself

and for every other Sunday, that was what I had to do…. to survive!

This became the “Life Fight” that I had to do myself

And those Life Fights (on those alternating weekends I took off) usually started on late Saturday nights all throughout the night into early Sunday morning. On some of those overnight sleeps, I would vividly remember dreaming about being dragged into some back alley and getting a gang-style beat down to eventually wake up in the middle of the night in a cool sweat but at the same time feel every muscle ache in deep throbbing pain to where I felt like I could not walk without the help of IcyHot and a deep hot shower with the water pressure on ‘jet’ to massage my muscles. I physically felt as if I had gotten beaten up and left there in pain. I would later tell my closest friends that I felt that the meanings of that dream applied to both the spiritual and physical realms.

Some overnight sleeps did not even involve sleeping at all. It involved 3 AM prayer sessions where I would pray about conquering the stinking-thinking, praying for my deepest desires for a Godly wife, and praying for my loved ones and my closest friends to see God move in the midst of their lives.

Unlike the famous song by the Commodores, those Sunday mornings were not “Easy”. The mornings would start out at 5:45 AM with a short prayer time, a shower / shave, getting dressed, and some Bible reading until 7 AM when Charles Stanley would come on television. After Charles Stanley’s program ended, I would go to a local breakfast house for breakfast buffet because I needed the food for the intense study, prayer time, and blog time that would follow throughout the rest of the morning until noon when I broke for lunch and by 1 PM to 5 PM, take a long nap to recharge my batteries.

I had to re-read the Word to suddenly realize that the Word stated alot of things that I never learned before and to dispel many bad teachings I had received from the pentecostal / holiness movements. Sometimes, it would go fresh into my memory while some times, I could not focus enough to get those teachings to activate within me. I had to learn to dispel fear and truly learn how to apply Godly faith as the Word of God became my source of inspiration instead of the shock value of oak tree evangelism.

It was me and my Bible on those Sundays and later on, I used the Westminister Confession and the catechisms (with the Bible as the ultimate source of inspiration) for some ‘basic training’ to rewrite simple and basic Bible doctrines coming to a renewed understanding of justification by faith, God really does love me unconditionally, nothing shall ever separate me from the love of God, God is sovereign and provident and omnipotent no matter what happens to Christian America, and that my salvation is secure and firm never to be taken away by anyone, and that Charles Finney is the biggest scumbag to ever walk the earth proclaiming the name of God with his perfectionalism theology.

I’ll tell you, this past year, I have come a far and long, long way forward! Hallelujah bless God. In some areas, I still have quite a bit of distance to go. However, one of the many blessings during the end of 2009 was an article I discovered by Jared Wilson entitled Imperfect Love Drives In All Fear where after reading his article, I felt like I must have known him from somewhere even though I never met the author before because I too grew up with the same types of fears and fearmongering against the same types of people he had to grow up fearing (except his reference to the Baptists was actually “Basically any non-pentecostals”).

But like Wilson, I knew my pastors, Sunday School teachers, and church leaders loved me (I just did not know if God really loved me or not because life was always chaotic that must have been caused by something I did). They cared about my soul. But they also made me a very frightened, timid, paranoid, anxiety-ridden, and powerless believer with no self-confidence and no self esteem. And I too was so ill-equipped for real life, because I too had been given the spirit of fear which was further amplified when life did eventually cave in, crumble apart, and breakdown and those warfare prayers and Charismatic ‘personal prophecies’ for some reason grossly failed….

It seemed that like Wilson, when I went to a new church, a ‘new set’ of fearmongering was at work. Instead of The Smurfs as agents of Satan, people who played the lottery and drank beer, The Olympic Games as the AntiChrist of the Week, and HeMan as the forerunner of New Age thought, it was the DEMONcrats, Madalyn Murray O’Hair wanting to take God off television years after she was dead, and the abortionists that Jerry Falwell claimed to have caused 9-11-01 was the new enemy that it took a repent-a-thon, mega-fast, hyper prayer sessions, 2 Chronicles 7:14 rallies, and defeating the DEMONcrats every November to conquer them.

It was during those alternating Sundays where I did rediscover Faith as the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen instead of a formula. I re-discovered Christian spirituality as a lifestyle of grace instead of being a re-legalism of works. I re-discovered the joy of attending church because I wanted to worship Jesus instead of being an obligation to avoid a visit from the “Holy Hitman”. I discovered that missing a Sunday will not give me a incurable disease only cured by vocal repentance in a church service, wreck my car, bankrupt me, give me the flu, miss the rapture, nor cause me to have a bad week at work.

Looking ahead, I know what I still need to work on, but I also choose to rejoice for the progress that has been made in my life and finally getting to start understanding Colossians 1:9-18

For this reason we also, since the day we heard it, do not cease to pray for you, and to ask that you may be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding; that you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God; strengthened with all might, according to His glorious power, for all patience and longsuffering with joy; giving thanks to the Father who has qualified us to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has delivered us from the power of darkness and conveyed us into the kingdom of the Son of His love, in whom we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins.

He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For by Him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers. All things were created through Him and for Him. And He is before all things, and in Him all things consist. And He is the head of the body, the church, who is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things He may have the preeminence.

Tags: apostacy, Charismatic movement, charismatic witchcraft, cult deprogramming, cult reprogramming, deception, false doctrines, False Teachers, false teachings, fear, holiness movement, legalism, pentecostalism