Your assumption is that none of us have experienced these things. I have experienced these things. From the age of eight until the age of eighteen our family church was a Pentecostal one (International Church of the Foursquare Gospel to be precise).
At the age of twelve a guest evangelist came to our church one night focusing primarily on reaching out to the younger people, so my parents brought me and that night I came forward to receive "baptism with the Holy Spirit". I had seen at on other occasions where people had been "slain in the Spirit" and so I went up, I saw others fall down, when the evangelist placed his hand on my head I also went down. A warm sensation flooded my body and, in the midst of others uttering glossolalia I began repeating certain syllables over and over again.
It was quite the remarkable experience, and afterward I became much more passionate at church. Where before I hated going to church and preferred to sit in the pew and doodle, I became more actively engaged.
Of course this was also during the onset of puberty, and facing the struggles of puberty I also came to try and rely on the rush of endorphin during worship to help satisfy my need to feel like I was accepted by God. Because the rest of the week my mind was rushing everywhere about sex and girls--you know, because I was a twelve year old boy. I had moments where I "knew I was saved" (a struggle I had dealt with since I was a small child, but that's part of my longer story), and then moments where I was convinced I wasn't saved, and even that perhaps I was unable to truly be saved. Why? Because I should have been experiencing the joy of the Lord, I should have been bearing fruit, I should have been getting certain sins under control if I was truly saved and truly had the Holy Spirit I should see some evidence of it in my life. It was a yo-yo effect, between spiritual highs and spiritual lows; and as an adolescent I simply didn't have the ability to deal with that kind of stress.
It's very possible that I suffered from what is called
scrupulosity. But that's only hazarding a guess.
At the age of sixteen I joined my church's youth group on a mission to San Francisco. The first week of the mission was spent at a YWAM training camp. I had a powerful and very profound experience in that week, one that I kept with me for the rest of the duration of the trip, and kept with me in the months following.
I was very passionate about my faith, very zealous. I would spend hours in my room reading Scripture and listening to praise and worship music, pouring my heart out to God, laying prostrate in tears. I could easily work myself into a passionate frenzy of emotion in my room just as I could at my youth group and Sunday morning.
And then there would be weeks where I didn't experience anything. And that terrified me, I was convinced in those moments that I had offended God, and so He deprived His presence from me. So I worked very hard to try and avoid the sins I believed were most heinous and resulting in my being disciplined. But inevitably, no matter how hard I tried, I'd fail--of course I did, of course I would. And those old dreaded thoughts continued--I was unholy, I wasn't good enough for God, I didn't really mean it when I gave my life to Him I just thought I did. All I wanted was to feel like God loved me, to feel accepted by Him. I wasn't popular in school, I never was, but at least God would accept me; so I needed to feel accepted and loved. I never truly felt like I reached that place of being accepted by God, but I knew deep down that if I just kept trying, then I would grow and mature and become a better Christian, one that really loved the Lord and one that truly led a holy life. I knew I couldn't become sinless, but I was supposed to sin less right? So why wasn't I? Why was I sinning the same week after week?
That continued all the way through high school and into my earliest years as a legal adult and into my early twenties.
I
know those experiences, I've
had them. I've
felt them. They are incredibly strong, and incredibly profound feeling.
That's also how I know how destructive depending on them is.
-CryptoLutheran
