Help! Tormented dreams

[votivesoul]

Several years ago a family came into church. One of the children, a daughter about 11 years old, came up to the altar to pray. The youth pastor and another person began praying with her. She began to cry and lament, and tremble. Then she fell to the floor as if unconscious. The people who had prayed with her claimed she had received the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues. Someone else nearby was all ecstatic, saying something about "Slain in the Spirit!"

This young girl was then immersed, and upon coming out of the water, manifested an evil spirit, convulsing and shuddering and moaning. The pastor went over to her, put his hand on her head and said "Get out of there", and the demon left and she received the Holy Spirit, for real.

Here, this girl was demon possessed and some misinformed, undiscerning people thought she had received the Holy Spirit and was speaking in tongues. But it wasn't the case, no matter what they had originally claimed.

A few years later, she went to go out of town to visit some church friends and while there, she attended a service at the local UPCI assembly. Somehow, some people there convinced her she had an evil spirit that still needed to be cast out.

When she came back, she was all confused and hurt, and didn't understand how she could still have an evil spirit when she was already delivered at her baptism and had received the Holy Spirit. I personally reassured her that she did not have an evil spirit, and the people who had told her she did were wrong.

But the issue threw her so badly, it took nearly three years to help her get back on track, to again be able to walk with the Lord in righteousness, just as she had done before these super-spiritual dingbats deceived her into thinking things about herself that were not true.

They didn't know her personally (sound familiar???). They hadn't been observing her walk with God over the course of time (sound familiar???). They just jumped on her and scared her and nearly completely derailed her with their pseudo-spiritual garbage.

This is the kind of thing I am trying to address in this thread. We need to rise above this kind of thing, and learn how to judge righteous judgment.