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Slain in the spirit

One of my biggest concerns, is when Christian ministries excoriate other Christian ministries, and rightfully so, because they are using discernment, and the response from those other ministries, is that using discernment is somehow, a bad thing.
 
steve said:
The problem is that The Gifts are merely gifts, they were never intended to be protocol. We are tempted to treat them as an obligation of the Almighty. They aren’t, they are just reminders of how life should be if we were to actually walk in the way that we were intended to walk.
It’s not a matter of whether or not they exist and are for today. History is replete with people receiving a gift and then building a ministry out of it. But gifts are temporary in their very nature.

Lifestyle is what we are called to, not gifting.
Think about buying a house. You give the seller an “earnest money” check to show that you are serious. But the house does not become yours until you have completed the rest of the transaction. Gifts are just the earnest money in anticipation of the lifestyle.

Soo...., do you want to know what the lifestyle is?
Me too. o_O
But I am committed to learning what it is.
We will either get past the glass ceiling of what we perceive as the low expectations that Yah has for us, or we will continue to repeat everyone else’s experiences.
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I totally agree. I have had one experience where I got totally gob smacked by the Holy Spirit. I know it was God because I am not any emotional person and I was bawling may eyes out and with no one near me, I started to fall out. I think one has to be willing to let God do with them what he so chooses to do.
 
Daniel DeLuca said:
One of my biggest concerns, is when Christian ministries excoriate other Christian ministries, and rightfully so, because they are using discernment, and the response from those other ministries, is that using discernment is somehow, a bad thing.
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Yes, I agree.
We don’t spend enough time discerning and exposing each other.

After all, we are to be our brothers keeper.
 
steve said:
Yes, I agree.
We don’t spend enough time discerning and exposing each other.

After all, we are to be our brothers keeper.
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When someone uses the term "brother's keeper", my nitpicky side gets jostled a bit, since I know that the expression has come to mean something completely foreign to what Cain intended for it to mean.
 
Daniel DeLuca said:
When someone uses the term "brother's keeper", my nitpicky side gets jostled a bit, since I know that the expression has come to mean something completely foreign to what Cain intended for it to mean.
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Yup
 
steve said:
We don’t spend enough time discerning and exposing each other.

After all, we are to be our brothers keeper.
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This didn’t raise any red flags?
 
A lot of what you witnessed is 'going through the motions'. There was a big 'move of the Spirit' that resulted in great things and they take this as the model for how it must be done and keep doing that. Even after the move stops. Even when someone as yourself needs something else; you don't fit what they're selling. This isn't just about charasmatic things, many different denominations go through the motions of the things they used to do when people flocked to them decades ago (ex. tent revivals, etc).

I say this without claim as to whether these charismatic moves were from God, from the evil one, or just simply hysteria. But the last time I visited a church such as this it was all emotional fakery, a preacher using music, words and energy to amp up people and create a hormonal/emotional sense of excitement that people would experience as the spirit moving.

FollowingHim2 said:
Something happened to me, and it didn't feel like God. That is what is concerning me.
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That is my concern. There is a tendency for most people to fall into two camps: to decry it as all fakery or to uncritically accept anything smacking of a move of the spirit as from God.

But the Christian worldview accepts not just miraculous/spiritual things from God but also from evil spirits. Demons. Fallen angels. Women with a vile spirit who could see the future. A man possessed by a demon who did feats of strength. Not every miraculous thing is from God.

It is my sense that the laying on of hands is more than mere physical connection or symbol and that one should be careful about who you let lay hands upon you.

Asforme&myhouse said:
Is being slain in the spirit, as performed in modern groups, mentioned in Scripture?
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I tend to take a logical approach to judging such things by scripture and see if scripture describes them as coming from God or the evil one. At first blush one would say no, we do not see the modern practice of slain in the spirit in scripture. But we do see something similar it....

Then one of the crowd answered and said, “Teacher, I brought You my son, who has a mute spirit. And wherever it seizes him, it throws him down; he foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. So I spoke to Your disciples, that they should cast it out, but they could not.”

He answered him and said, “O faithless generation, how long shall I be with you? How long shall I bear with you? Bring him to Me.” Then they brought him to Him. And when he saw Him, immediately the spirit convulsed him, and he fell on the ground and wallowed, foaming at the mouth.

So He asked his father, “How long has this been happening to him?”

And he said, “From childhood. And often he has thrown him both into the fire and into the water to destroy him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”

Jesus said to him, “If you can believe, all things are possible to him who believes.”

Immediately the father of the child cried out and said with tears, “Lord, I believe; help my unbelief!”

When Jesus saw that the people came running together, He rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to it, “Deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him and enter him no more!” Then the spirit cried out, convulsed him greatly, and came out of him. And he became as one dead, so that many said, “He is dead.” But Jesus took him by the hand and lifted him up, and he arose.

And when He had come into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why could we not cast it out?”

So He said to them, “This kind can come out by nothing but prayer and fasting.”
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This is an hostile spirit controlling a child, throwing him to the ground. The physical action is much the same as 'slain in the spirit' (thrown to the ground). So is the convulsions (if I understand how the practice goes in some cases). Now my impression is that today this is more likely to result in a daze or fits of laughter than being burned, this is the closest analog in scripture that I can think of and much closer than anything spoken of as from the Holy Spirit that I'm aware of.
 
steve said:
I have no doubt that in what you observed there existed a lot of “Wildfire” (as an old pastor called it) that Yah had nothing to do with, but He is more often in the experience of the few than He is of the many.
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That is an excellent observation. God often works in individuals in circumstances where others don't see Him working at all - because He isn't working with everyone there, just specific people.
 
julieb said:
I grew up in an Assembly of God church in Orlando, the very church where Benny Hinn met his wife. The first time I saw being "slain in the Spirit" was when he came and preached for the first time at that church. There was no clucking like chickens or barking like dogs. I personnally can't imaging anyone thinking that stuff like that would be spirit breathed. My experience was people just falling back like a great wind had pushed them down. I know that many would say that it was all fake and that Benny Hinn is a fraud but I didn't feel anything but peace and awe during those services. I have never experienced it myself. I did have someone pray for me in a service many years ago where it was happening. The pastor's wife who was praying for me said she felt like I didn't have anything to "work out" with the Lord at that time and that he didn't need to "slay" me to work on/reveal something to me. Again, I didn't feel that anyone was acting or that the leadership had prepped people to fake it in this medium sized church. Many who were "slain in the spirit" that day said that God revealed things to them thru visions that were encouraging and challenging.

I may have never experienced this "act" of the Spirit but I have experienced thae healing power of God when I was in 6th grade. I had been born with a disfigured right foot. The Doctors tried to fix it but my foot was never really the way it should be. It bothered me more as I grew up and I ended up having to wear a plastic foot support in my shoe that helped my foot walk correctly. The summer after 6th grade my family went to an Assembly of God summer camp and there they had a healing service for the kids. I thought "what the heck, I can at least ask the Lord to fix my foot. If he decides not to that is okay but it would be great to wear sandels more than a few hours! (Hey, I lived in Florida where people lived in sandels year round and I was a fashion concience teenager!) So, I went forward and asked for prayer. The minister sat me down in a chair and had me hold out both my legs together and he held my ankles and prayed. He prayed and held my ankles for at least 5 mins, I think, it has been along time since then, and then told me to stay there until I felt that God was done. He then let go of my ankles and walked away to minister to someone else. The crazy thing was that I could still feel hands on my ankles holding them up and my legs never got tired as I sat there for at least another few minutes. I was listening to the music being played and praying. Then all of a sudden it was like I woke up and remembered that my Mom would be wondering where I was and that I should go. The feeling of the hands left me and I got up and met up with my Mom. I excitedly told her everything that had happened and then asked her if I should remove my insert? I had heard that people should show an act of faith when they recieved healing. She wisely said it was up to me. I smiled and removed it from my shoe and never wore it again, nor ever needed to wear it again.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it. :)
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I had a similar, but quite different experience. My tail bone broke my senior year in college and the doc wanted to remove it. I asked him if it would help and he said no. I would have phantom pain the rest of my life. No thanks, so I went to the healing team for prayer every Sunday for months. One Sunday as they left me there praying after praying for me I was quite gently placed on the floor. I heard gasps and had many tingling sensations and my low back popped. I was instantly healed! The gasps were because as they left I began to go back very slowly as if some one unseen was lowering me to the floor. No camera phones in those days! I am sure it was a cool thing to witness. I sure felt the most incredible peace. Went to doc got new xrays and it was like it had never been broken. He could not wrap his head around that I had been healed by God. I think God did that to increase the faith of many, including mine.

I have seen crazy things and not all from God that is for sure. I just say I got healed, not slain the spirit because I am not sure about that description.
 
A true physical therapist could have reset the tailbone. Our PT did with internal massage. Let your imagination go wild- Yup she did that.
 
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