Originally Posted by Roxanne Murphy (Post 1291903)

This journey of change began about 2 years ago. My dear husband had completed his MBA and had started a course for our church to help folks live more on purpose to thus better reach a lost and dying world with the gospel. He and our pastor felt that one of the key issues that God was dealing with our church was about transparency. At the same time, our church was growing and our pastor and his wife had started a midweek Bible study in their home that soon grew into a daughter work.
My pastor, his wife, my husband, myself, our youth pastor and his wife were all finding ourselves asking: how do we truly and effectively communicate the gospel to our area? How do we reach people? Evangelizing ourselves is not fulfilling the Great Commission!
Then, people from the daughter work who came to visit our main Sunday services began to ask our pastor: why do the ladies in your church only wear dressed? Why do they not wear jewelry or use make up? Why do they not cut their hair? So my pastor set out to prepare good, sound, scriptural reasons to explain why our ladies looked as they did. He realized that he would be presenting these teachings to honest, well educated people who were seeing the Word of God through eyes and hearts not previously influenced by the 'holiness' culture that our church had, compliments of the denomination to which we belonged. He soon realized that he could not honestly make the scriptures say that these things were sinful.
Now, at the same time, my dear husband was taking another look at these very same things and very exuberantly discussing them with me. I was not interested, in fact was afraid of what I was hearing, and actually one day told him, "I don't wish to discuss this please stop!" I was very distressed and found myself asking God to please restore my husband's sanity. But as I continued to pray about these things, God began to take me for a spiritual stroll through the gospels and pointed out how the Pharisees were so entrenched in their traditions that they missed what God was doing, in fact, fought against Him! This was a painful realization for me because I had been quite a zealous holiness Pharisee; this was all that I knew and I had become accustomed to judging everything by those man made 'holiness standards' that I had been taught from my childhood. (To be continued)

Originally Posted by Roxanne Murphy (Post 1292124)

My pastor who could be considered a 'pedigreed Pentecostal' had also heard these stories. He decided to find out for himself if they were true; he soon discovered that what had been said about those who 'backslid' was not true. This information was shared with me to help answer this very serious concern. I must say, it is a painful thing to discover that those people who you trust and believe to be honest Christians have been spreading lies. (To Be Continued)

Originally Posted by Roxanne Murphy (Post 1292124)

The Journey, Part II:
While God was giving me a good look at myself in the mirror of His Word, my pastor was coming to the realization that he also had some decisions to make. He could either do what some licensed UPC ministers do and just passively not teach 'standards' anymore while signing the affirmation at license renewal time, or he could be honest and transparent with the members of our church. He decided to do the latter. He and his wife sat down with each family and single person and explained what had been happening in his search to find an honest Biblical way to teach true holiness. He explained that the Bible teaches principles and relationship, not rules and regulations, and that it is the responsibility of the ministry to teach the principles and equip the saints to properly apply those principles AS they grow in their relationship with Jesus. It is NOT the duty of the ministry to make rules.
And meanwhile, I had cautiously began listening to my husband again as he talked about how much license the holiness movement had taken and how they relied heavily on the faulty premise that New Testament ministry took the place of, and thus had the authority of, the Old Testament priesthood, and by extension had an obligation to judge everything and make rules to cover all facets of life. This was a fearful conversation for me because this was the only thing I had ever known, and questioning the authority of the ministry was most definitely setting the stage for being deceived and being lost. And there were all the horror stories about those who cast off 'holiness' how they went 'off the deep end' into terrible sin. My pastor who could be considered a 'pedigreed Pentecostal' had also heard these stories. He decided to find out for himself if they were true; he soon discovered that what had been said about those who 'backslid' was not true. This information was shared with me to help answer this very serious concern. I must say, it is a painful thing to discover that those people who you trust and believe to be honest Christians have been spreading lies. (To Be Continued)

Originally Posted by Roxanne Murphy (Post 1292124)

The Journey, Part II:
While God was giving me a good look at myself in the mirror of His Word, my pastor was coming to the realization that he also had some decisions to make. He could either do what some licensed UPC ministers do and just passively not teach 'standards' anymore while signing the affirmation at license renewal time, or he could be honest and transparent with the members of our church. He decided to do the latter. He and his wife sat down with each family and single person and explained what had been happening in his search to find an honest Biblical way to teach true holiness. He explained that the Bible teaches principles and relationship, not rules and regulations, and that it is the responsibility of the ministry to teach the principles and equip the saints to properly apply those principles AS they grow in their relationship with Jesus. It is NOT the duty of the ministry to make rules.
And meanwhile, I had cautiously began listening to my husband again as he talked about how much license the holiness movement had taken and how they relied heavily on the faulty premise that New Testament ministry took the place of, and thus had the authority of, the Old Testament priesthood, and by extension had an obligation to judge everything and make rules to cover all facets of life. This was a fearful conversation for me because this was the only thing I had ever known, and questioning the authority of the ministry was most definitely setting the stage for being deceived and being lost. And there were all the horror stories about those who cast off 'holiness' how they went 'off the deep end' into terrible sin. My pastor who could be considered a 'pedigreed Pentecostal' had also heard these stories. He decided to find out for himself if they were true; he soon discovered that what had been said about those who 'backslid' was not true. This information was shared with me to help answer this very serious concern. I must say, it is a painful thing to discover that those people who you trust and believe to be honest Christians have been spreading lies. (To Be Continued)

Originally Posted by Roxanne Murphy (Post 1291903)

So my pastor set out to prepare good, sound, scriptural reasons to explain why our ladies looked as they did. He realized that he would be presenting these teachings to honest, well educated people who were seeing the Word of God through eyes and hearts not previously influenced by the 'holiness' culture that our church had, compliments of the denomination to which we belonged. He soon realized that he could not honestly make the scriptures say that these things were sinful.

Originally Posted by Roxanne Murphy (Post 1292124)

While God was giving me a good look at myself in the mirror of His Word, my pastor was coming to the realization that he also had some decisions to make. He could either do what some licensed UPC ministers do and just passively not teach 'standards' anymore while signing the affirmation at license renewal time, or he could be honest and transparent with the members of our church. He decided to do the latter. He and his wife sat down with each family and single person and explained what had been happening in his search to find an honest Biblical way to teach true holiness. He explained that the Bible teaches principles and relationship, not rules and regulations, and that it is the responsibility of the ministry to teach the principles and equip the saints to properly apply those principles AS they grow in their relationship with Jesus. It is NOT the duty of the ministry to make rules.

Originally Posted by Roxanne Murphy (Post 1292124)

My pastor who could be considered a 'pedigreed Pentecostal' had also heard these stories. He decided to find out for himself if they were true; he soon discovered that what had been said about those who 'backslid' was not true. This information was shared with me to help answer this very serious concern. I must say, it is a painful thing to discover that those people who you trust and believe to be honest Christians have been spreading lies.

Originally Posted by navygoat1998 (Post 1292176)

:popcorn2