Last night, I attended a pretty large house church worship service, led by two "Holy Ghost bartender" types, (renewal, Toronto Airport Christian fellowship, etc etc...I'm learning the different derivations of "christian city" as my sis Chanin puts it)These guys, (who will remain nameless..lol) brought with them a whole large following of basically 'drunks', although when the meeting started everyone was fairly sober. I brought a couple of homeless brethern, and a pot of mashed potatoes, coz it was a potluck. I mingled briefly, and then worship started, and I was trying to be SO open, coz I knew what was on the agenda, "getting drunk in the Spirit" (or shud I lower case that s?)I did not want to judge, I wanted to be open to whatever God wanted to do in this miserable canyon. Heaven knows the Name of Jesus is rarely lifted up in my community on a corporate basis, so as long as people were going to be LIFTING UP THE NAME OF JESUS, I was gonna be right there with them.It wasn't to be.There was more talk of angels, than the Savior of the world.And something started grieving me intensely, (even now its hitting me, still, 24 hours later)so I went outside, and found a patio chair, got on my knees and started to pray, I remember asking the Holy Spirit to fill me, fill this house, search out hearts and answer prayers, etc. I asked for a Divine Covering on the house, and in Jesus Name to bind up any demons of confusion, etc.I remember before worship, a couple of participants were already "loaded". Its funny that I feel inclined to use the verbage of my own wicked and sinful past. And they were laughing , and I remember thinking, 'o brother', and then I thot I heard the voice of God say, "Neil, whats so bad about people laughing in a dark world?"....and as I type this, I'm wondering WAS that God I heard, or was it the author of confusion?anyway, after worship, I got off my knees, went back in the house for the speaker.......oh boy.....it started out good, he popped open the Bible, which is always a good sign(lol) and then he gave a small exhortation, that while prophecy is good, getting "drunk" is good, we "have to have the Word as the basis"....all good, and then.............he proceeded to yammer and blither on for over an hour......right after he stammered "2nd Samuel and.....uhhhhh........lets see"...he launched into a very incoherent diatribe, that at times would be punctuated with "eeeeeee....ahhh, bing bing bing bang booooing".I'm not kidding. He made this noise, it was some kind of machine, and he would repeat it after he made another after another inane point .."bing bing bang bang boooiing".He had a British accent and he started to sound like Dudley Moore in "Arthur", the whole thing was intensely depressing. I could feel the Spirit grieving, I could feel demons lurking and laughing at this sad sad spectacle, draining the Cross and the Spirit of Its Power, making the faith into some kind of bizarre foolish fleshly circus.I was begging God to give me a word, give me a tongue to lay on this whole thing,to lay on this assembly... and He said, "why? ,...so you can put yourself forward, you be quiet".What really made it bad was this, the implication was, that the way to God, (the Name Jesus was rarely used....maybe once in a worship song) the only way to God was to get drunk in the Spirit, and the rest of the church who didnt get drunk were just a bunch of pharisiacal fools. He spent a lot of time putting down the church, or as he said, he "got delivered from being a pastor"....and then the assembly laughed derisively when he repeated the word "pastor".One of the brothers I brought up with me left in disgust when the man slurred out a story of how a weepy punk rock girl came up to get prayed for, and the man laughed and said he blew snot on her and gave her a "snot blessing".I'm not kidding.and the whole assembly found this very very funny, I started to pray for the punk rock girl, that God did NOT let this one be driven off by the foolishness of man.He then continued to blither on, about how the stale ole fuddy duddys in the church always took "offense" at him, because they were building a "fence", and he was just knocking down that "fence"......there was a whole chorus of ejaculatory....'uuunnnh's!'...or 'shoooooe!'its a similar sound thats made by this subset, its supposed to be spirit led, but I do believe its auto suggestive.then the man yammered on some more, and then realizing an hour had skated by without any Scripture, begrudgingly he read a verse out of 2nd Samuel and started to shriek and whine about how we must go from Hebron to Jerusalem, and "knock down fences".The everyone got in circle, holding hands, and they started to "get drunk". Folks were falling onto the floor, shaking their heads, laughing insanely. I went to get a cupcake.Understand, all this time, I was NOT in judgement, I did not have that spirit, I was in constant prayer, I was grieving, interceding, I was actually in pain over all the confusion. It was very sad.I went out to the porch and sat with the other brother I had brought, whilst the revelry continued unabated. After a bit the speaker came out, coz he was going back to his hotel. I shook his hand and asked where he lived in the UK, he told me, and I said 'prayer for me brother, coz I want to visit the Hebridean Islands in Scotland and I have no money'...we spoke every so briefly on Duncan Campbell and Evan Roberts, and he asked me if I know about a website that has Duncan's sermons, I said "yes, its sermonindex dot NET" (lol) and then I hugged his neck and he was gone.Y'know, that whole 'drunk in the Spirit' thing is a terrible deception. I want to write why, but I've spent ALL day in the house grieving, I actually MISSED church...I couldn't go. I feel miserable, I feel empty, I feel very alone in this community, its so terribly dark here, so terribly post-Christian, and there are NO other workers here, no other Spirit-filled men here.But you know what? I have Jesus, and He lives inside me.That I do know, praise God.
