Quote:
Originally Posted by Amanah
It seems as if you have left your roots and are searching for spiritual experiences in new age practices.
Does your current house church share your beliefs? in what ways does the spirit manifest in your current assembly?
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I've been Pentecostal for over 25 years. I haven't abandoned the core Pentecostal teachings I learned after I came to Christ. I'm not out here "searching" for anything. In fact, I was talking to a friend of mine at work about having a living faith compared to having dead religion. He explained that he was reading about a form of prayer that he had never heard of and how it has blessed him. A couple days later he hands me a book on contemplative prayer. I read through a portion of it (in all honesty, it was rather boring) and I decided to look up more information on Contemplative Prayer independently. That of course led me to articles on soaking prayer, because the two are quite similar. If I had to draw a distinction between the two, "contemplative prayer" (as it's called) is more "Catholic". Soaking prayer is more "Protestant". As I read up on soaking prayer I realized something... we Apostolic Pentecostals have been doing this for generations. We just never called it "soaking prayer". We'd just call it something informal conversationally, such as "waiting on the Lord", or "tarrying in His presence". When I gave the book back to my friend I told him, "I'm Pentecostal. We've been meditating on the truths of Scripture and soaking in prayer for generations. Do they do this in your church?" He said they didn't, it was something he was looking into on his own. I invited him to come to a prayer meeting if he wanted to see and experience how it is done among Pentecostals.
That's all.
The house church we're currently involved in is an open house church. There are different perspectives present and we welcome them in our conversation. But we don't tear one another down if we disagree. We have what some might call an opening prayer before our meal and that is pretty general. After the Lord's Supper we will sing and worship. We clap, raise our hands, speak our praises aloud. Now, it is a house, so we aren't screaming at the top of our lungs or running. But we pray and worship openly and freely. We speak in tongues. Sometimes the gifts of the Spirit might manifest through an interpretation, word of knowledge, or word of wisdom. It's essentially very much like a home Bible study with Spirit filled believers who are seeking more of Jesus and less institutional church.
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