Quote:
Originally Posted by Coonskinner
A person who is sincere but just off can be dealt with gently.
But there are those who have an attention seeking attitude and who want to come rolling in and show everyone how "spiritual" they are.
That is another matter.
Embarassing someone who is sincere is never my intent.
Most of the time a church that is well taught and has some discernment will know immediately when the false comes forth.
Furthermore, it is often my practice when a prophecy or interpretation goes forth to say something after it comes to affirm to the church that this is a good word.
If I don't do that, but just move on to a chorus or ask everyone to pray, the absence of my affirmation speaks a lot to the saints if for some reason I feel not to publicly address the falsehood. We really have had very few instances of fake or out of order tongues, so it isn't a big problem.
If there was nothing in the message that would be harmful or divisive, I might just move the service on without affirming it in any way. The church would know I didn't feel good about it, but without embarassing a sincere but immature person.
As I said, attitude and motive make every situation different.
A lot of these "off" messages are so general and mild that the worst harm they do is creating a disruption and cheapening the gift in the minds and hearts of those who don't have enough maturity to recognize the human element and see beyond it.
But that is enough to make it worth teaching on and dealing with.
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This is very close to echoing exactly what I would say on this subject. Intent would be the deciding factor for me. The folks at NLC are strong and savvy enough that even a "harmful" message in tongues wouldn't sway them.
I have only had to stop someone once and then I had him escorted out. It was a strong "trinitarian" who had been attending and I found out that he wanted to be pastor before I came. We had been going back and forth in private conversations on the godhead issue. He had basically been calling me a heretic for being oneness. I didn't even call him that. I just tried to love the guy and have patience with him. He didn't have a following so there was no real threat.
The Sunday after 9-11, he rose and gave a message that was pretty good until he got to the part where he said, "There is one thing you need to change yet, and that is the doctrine of Oneness..." When he got to that point, I felt like it was a spiritual terrorist attack and told our ushers to escort him out of the service.
The only reason I took such drastic action was due to him taking extreme advantage of my kindness and patience toward him. I certainly wouldn't let him preach or teach in any way so that was his only outlet to the congregation.
The rest of the story is that 2 yrs after that, (he left the church a few months later) he came to me to apologize in tears for what he had done and asked for my forgiveness!!!!!
I forgave him unconditionally and didn't mention how wrong it was for him to do what he did. His repentance, I felt, was genuine.
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