The other day I was mulling over my serious case of blog neglect, and it occurred to me that I feel like I’ve lost my voice.
No, not my literal voice, where your throat gets all raspy, and, try as you might, you can’t manage to squeak out anything above a whisper.
Rather, I’m talking about “voice” in the way they’d toss around that term in the different writing classes I took, or in some of the better teacher in-services I attended years ago.
For a writer, “voice” refers to how you speak out to your audience, how you come across. Do you write the way you talk? Are you conversational? Or are you writing from some position of authority? Think of all the types of writing you might read in a day. A news article will have a much different “voice” (factual, seemingly detached) than an email from your husband (familiar, conversational) or a wedding invitation (usually formal).
That’s “voice.”
And part of being a writer is finding your true voice, your own unique way of relating to your readers. For me, this blog has always been about honesty, about sharing the sometimes mundane, occasionally exciting, but always REAL adventures I was having in my walk with God. As I stated in “Why this site is here,” I felt like I was learning so much—felt like the Holy Spirit was showing me so much—that I wanted to share these insights with others. This site would be a place to publish my ever-increasing testimony, a place for relating God’s goodness and the lessons He’s taught me.
It was virtually effortless to launch into most of my stories. I was joyful, I was fruitful. God would teach me stuff on the way home from the mailbox. Having a blog, having a “voice”—well, it was easy, and it was fun.
But then, about six months ago or so, my adventures with God began to shift. It was a very gradual shift at first, almost imperceptible, that began because of my growing uncertainty about certain aspects of what I’d call “Charismania.”
And then, I suppose, if you wanted to be dramatic, you could say that we experienced something of a “crisis of faith.” This crisis didn’t involve questioning any of the basics of our faith in Christ—our salvation, the reliability of the Bible, or even the gifts of the Spirit—but it did involve re-examining what we had thought was a lifetime commitment to our Charismatic church.
Those of you who have been visiting this site for awhile might recall that four years ago, my husband and I left our middle-of-the-road (and now, sadly, “Warrenized”) Evangelical community church for the more exciting fires of an independent (non-denominational) Pentecostal congregation. On our first visit to the new church, I had what I refer to as my “Holy Spirit experience,” where I spoke in tongues and was radically changed. Seriously. You can check out the full story here.
I’ve never been dissatisfied with my Holy Spirit experience, or with speaking in tongues (my “prayer language,” as I soon learned to call it), or even with the way God Himself would seem to speak with me (as recounted here and here). But after a few years of absolutely faithful and enthusiastic participation in our new Pentecostal church, we began to grow more and more dissatisfied with certain aspects of Charismatic culture…or perhaps it’d be more accurate to say we grew more and more uncomfortable with certain aspects of the culture that had developed in our particular church.
For one thing, some months back, we found that we could no longer overlook the church’s ever-increasing emphasis on materialism. While I still believe that most of Christianity talks far too LITTLE about faith-filled prayers and God’s material provisions for His children—after all, Jesus Himself said, “Seek first the kingdom of God, and all these things [our earthly needs] will be added to you” and, “Ask, and you shall receive”—we became frankly disturbed by the way just about every sermon seemed to end up talking about money. This escalating focus on money struck us as unbiblical. For every reality of God’s care and concern for us here on this earth, there is an even greater reality—the Bible clearly teaches that our reward is in heaven, and that our focus as Christians must be on the kingdom of heaven and not on the things of this world.
Our church also placed a tremendous amount of importance on modern-day prophecy. Again, before elaborating, I feel compelled to add a disclaimer: I believe that most churches, in their discomfort with anything that might seem to be “extra-biblical revelation,” tend to commit the sin of “despising prophecy,” according to I Thessalonians 5:20. I am not a cessationist. I still believe that the gifts of the Spirit, as they were revealed in the New Testament church, continue to be real and available for today’s believers.
But while the official belief statements of our church SAID all the right stuff about valuing the written Word of God, the reality was that most of the congregants were MUCH more excited about receiving a “personal word” (prophecy) through the pastor than about anything in the Bible. Even if the pastor did do a pretty good job of sticking with the Bible in his preaching (which also happened to be passionate and entertaining), he seemed to encourage an atmosphere that over-emphasized his own “prophetic gifting,” stressing again and again that, according to I Timothy 1:18, we are to “wage war with the ‘Thus saith the Lords’ over our lives.” And by, “Thus saith the Lords,” he clearly meant the personal prophetic words that we had received, from him or other “prophets.”
At the beginning of our time at this church, we were as fascinated with “the prophetic” as everybody else. We quickly learned just how much importance our fellow worshippers placed on these personal prophecies when we were handed transcripts of a “word” that my husband had received on the previous Sunday. In fact, two of our church friends considered it their own little ministry to type out and distribute all the “words” to their recipients. We were encouraged to keep these transcripts and refer back to them often, again because of that verse in I Timothy.
But after a few years had passed, we began to notice some rather disconcerting things about these “personal prophetic words.” For one, most of them were rather vague and generic, to the point where they could probably fit half the people in the room at any given time. For another, the “words” were ALWAYS positive, speaking of great blessings, great “anointings,” and great miracles that the recipients would experience. While I still believe in the pastor’s essential sincerity and don’t think he ever intentionally set out to manipulate or deceive anyone, I just could not escape the nagging feeling that these “words” did not sound like they actually came from the God of the Bible, despite the pastor’s occasional lapse into King James English.
But I think what confused me the most about this type of “prophecy” was the fact that the single detailed prophetic “word” that my husband received—it contained specifics about timeline and certain events—did not come to pass in any way, shape, or form.
Of course, I know, from various books I’ve read, that the typical explanation offered up for inaccurate prophecies takes one of two directions. Either we’d be told that we had dropped the ball somehow by not having enough faith to believe in the “word” (and our disbelief had allowed the devil to “steal” it from us), or else we’d be told that modern-day prophets are not 100% accurate the way the Old Testament prophets were…that somehow, these new prophecies were of a different caliber than those contained in the Bible.
Either way, after experiencing that mistaken “word,” I just could no longer feel the same about the way the “prophetic” played out at our church. With all the emphasis placed on receiving a personal “word,” with how often folks were told to cling to these “words” as a source of hope, with how the subject of inaccurate or failed “words” was never addressed from the pulpit…well, it sure seemed like the prophetic, as practiced by our church, was a dubious exercise at best.
On the most basic level, it was diverting attention and enthusiasm away from the pursuit of legitimate knowledge of God’s infallible WRITTEN Word. And then there was that whole conundrum of, How do you know which “words” to trust as from the Lord? How do you know what to throw out? If there is the slightest possibility that a particular “word” could be incorrect, then which “Thus saith the Lords” are you going to cling to?
Even more troubling, since EVERY prophecy given by our pastor was ALWAYS presented as the authoritative word of God, and since we now knew firsthand that on at least one occasion, one of those prophecies was definitely NOT the authoritative word of God, didn’t this whole exercise run the risk of portraying God as a liar?
If our church were a typical Evangelical church, with typical congregational-style rules for church governance, we probably would have requested a meeting with the elders and pastor to ask some questions and express our concerns. But because our church is essentially a one-man show, with a pastor who has often stated from the pulpit, “If you don’t like it here, you can leave,” we were keenly aware that there was absolutely no place to go with our uncertainties. As my husband and I would talk late into the night about all that troubled us about the place, we even remembered how the pastor had sometimes expressed from the pulpit his scorn for folks who tried to set up appointments just to “debate theology” with him.
So what do you do when you find yourself growing increasingly out of step with the teachings and practices of your once-much-beloved church? Especially when there’s no available avenue for expressing concerns or asking questions?
Well, one thing you DON’T do—at least, if you’re ME—is blog. When I came to the realization that we were confused, I no longer had much of a desire to publish any observations about my walk with God. For a long while, it’s seemed like the stuff that God was teaching me wasn’t all that inspirational or blog-worthy, anyway.
I guess you can consider yourselves lucky that I “lost my voice” over the past few months.
But lately, I can feel my blog vocal chords coming back. As I’ve seen God work in a simple but nonetheless miraculous way to remove us from one situation and then bring us to a whole new place, I am growing encouraged once again to remind you, my reader, that our Lord is still the God of miracles. He’s still the God Who answers prayers. He’s still the God of supernatural provision.
He’s even, still, the God Who speaks.
Often it’s through that “still, small voice.” Occasionally, it can even be through a modern-day prophet. But always, God speaks through His written Word.
I may experience writer’s block, but God didn’t. His truth is still in the Bible, and His promises are still “yes” and “amen.”
Hallelujah!
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