You are correct. I do have a healthy distrust of abuse of gifts because in my last Charismatic church in the 1970s I saw so much misuse of prophecy and word of knowledge by those who desired power and control over others. I saw others being told they were healed of their sickness when they remained sick, and I saw people casting demons out of those who had no demons in the first place. I was also in a meeting where the preacher lined up all those who had come forward in an altar call, and went from one to another laying hands on them making them fall down backwards one after another. There was no requesting by the preacher exactly what their needs were or why they came forward for prayer. One guy, whom we all knew had serious social and spiritual issues, went down with a loud shout, and then got up with the attitude, "See, I can do it too!" It looked so false. There was a "senior" elder who used to get up and prophesy "corrections" to the prophecies of others in the meetings. The church was run by a board of elders who were, in theory equal to one another, but this man thought that he was the senior elder and demanded that the others accept his overall control.
So, after seven years in that church and seeing all the falsehood, people not getting healed through all the healing meetings that took place, and the gossiping that went on, I become very disillusioned and left the church and the Charismatic movement. That was 1978.
Around 20 years later, I re-established contact with a friend who founded a prophetic ministry. He taught the correct use of the gifts, and this was like a breath of fresh air for me. He ran a fortnightly "equipping" meeting and bi-monthly prophetic days, where he and his team trained people in the correct use of the gifts, and had group workshop sessions to put the teaching into practice. The Holy Spirit would become involved in those sessions, and we saw some good things happening. This restored my faith in the present day gifts of the Spirit. It is interesting that sensual and physical manifestations were not encouraged as evidence of the presence of the Holy Spirit.
In fact, the elderly pastor of the Pentecostal mission church (not one in the Charismatic church) I attended as a 21 year old in the early 1970s taught that if the Holy Spirit was present, people got healed, demons were cast out, and prophecies were clearly seen as encouraging and upbuilding love letters from God. He believe that when he prayed in tongues, things happened, and they did. The only time I witnessed the glory of God coming down in a meeting was under that man's ministry. But there were no kundalini manifestations, rather than people fell on their knees weeping their hearts out to God and getting right with Him, the fallow ground in their hearts broken up and softened before Him.
I never saw any of that in the Charismatic church I attended from 1973-1978. It is interesting that after 20 years of being in non-Charismatic churches, that the teaching and mentoring of the elderly pastor came back to me, while the teaching and example of those in the later Charismatic church faded into forgetfulness.
So that gives some clue as to my attitude toward sensual manifestations. The Holy Spirit told me that if people are looking for sensual manifestations, the devil is always there to give them one.
