Broaden Yourselves to Prevent Despair

Broaden Yourselves to Prevent Despair

I think one of the most important things an Ex-Pentecostal person should do is to make sure that the majority of social contacts in their circle are non-Pentecostal. I cannot stress this enough. Remember that Pentecostalism isolates you from the wider community because it is so weird. When you are sufficiently isolated, they can manipulate you because you do not have an outside source of challenge to the insanity within. However, as an Ex-Pentecostal, you must actively and boldly fight this tendency toward isolation. Some of us might whine and complain that it is hard to do; however, we must do it. If we find problems in this area, we probably have terrible social skills and can use some professional counseling to improve our Emotional Intelligence. We must connect with other people. Think of the times of despair you had recently as an Ex-Pentecostal. I would bet that a large portion of this anxiety and despair was because you felt isolated, lonely and afraid. We did not consider our options. We were not connected to the larger community of non-Pentecostals to offset the radical de-socializing effects of Pentecostalism. We sat alone, and we suffered alone. Make sure that the overwhelming majority of people in your social circle are non-Pentecostals. THIS IS EXREMELY IMPORTANT!

So, please, broaden yourself socially. This is extremely important.

After we broaden ourselves socially, we should also broaden ourselves in other areas like careers and hobbies. I think that we are capable of a hundred times more things than Pentecostalism would allow us to think. Pentecostalism restricts our ambition, our creativity and our consideration of the World of Options. There are millions of options that we were never exposed to within Pentecostalism. Pentecostalism straight-jacketed our brains into not even being able to see our options.

Ask yourself a few questions:

In your wildest dreams, what would you like to do? Why are you not doing this right now? What is limiting you? Are you limiting yourself?

You are standing at your own funeral and people are giving their respects to you and your effects on their lives. What do you want them to say about you? What do you want your children to say about you? What do you want your neighbors to say about you? Now think about this: what is stopping you from being that person right now? Will you give them a reason to say all these good things about you at your funeral?

If you had 10 million dollars (or whatever currency for our international members) what would you like to do with it? Make a list. Now, what is stopping you right now from doing this? Is it really money, or is it your inhibitions that Pentecostalism has limited you to? Can you do perhaps half of these things with the situation you are in right now? Can you do one-fourth of these things right now? Think very hard about that. You might not be as limited as you think when you really consider the possibilities available in the larger world out there.

What are the five most important things in your life right now? Are you scheduling time for each of these things every week? How much time are you giving to each of these things? Count the number of hours and days. Now, are you dedicating enough time to these things that YOU say are truly important? Why are you not pouring a significant amount of time into things that are most important? Are you again limiting yourself because you are isolated and do not know your options? Or, are you stuck in a Pentecostal rut of not thinking too much about the most important things in your life? How will you change in the next two weeks? Will you take action on these five most important things?

Where are you spending your time? What three things have you spent the most time with in the last two weeks? Are these among the five most important things you listed in the previous section? If not, why not? Will you be more careful with your time in the future to focus on the five most important things in your life? If you say they are the most important, you should be spending your five most busy times during the week on things that are most important. Are you sacrificing urgency to importance? When things are urgent, ask yourself if it is merely urgent, or if it is truly important. We must focus only upon those things that are important – urgent or not. Remember that as Pentecostals we focused our time on things that were NOT important like emotional self-indulgence for the most part. Remember not to fall into the trap of allowing emotional self-indulgence to sap our time and energy.

What other ideas do you have to broaden yourself? What have you done in your life that makes a significant difference?

JPI