Page | 116 congregants’ interior emotional world by Jake: “I remember desperately wanting modeling the self on God, or on the self to draw closer to God, and [to have] one as seen from God’s loving perspective. of these inspired Holy Spirit moments ... One of the most important was prayer I wanted those [experiences] and I ministry, where the person for whom the sought them out, but I never found prayer is given is often crying and in myself encountering them” visible pain; those around the person are offering prayers which describe the ways in which the sobbing person is loved by Irene: “I don’t understand the gift of God. Another was treating prayer like a prophecy completely. I’ll probably psychotherapy session. One congregant never will and I don’t have it and I don’t explained: “It’s just like talking to a want it because it would scare me.” therapist, especially in the beginning when you’re revealing things that are deep in your heart and deep in your soul, Here is another congregant who has been the things that have been pushed down able to do so: and denied.” In these churches which emphasize God’s love and intimacy, hell Nara: “T-was ety eaaly on in aay and fear largely disappear. relationship with him. I was just all full The central demand of these of myself one morning. I just had learning practices is to use one’s own wonderful devotions and worships and mental experience as evidence and just felt so close. I went out, and it was content for the responsive presence of the most god-awful day. It was icy rain this God, who is believed to be other and gray and cold and it was sleeting. than oneself, and to use pretend play to I’m just full of the joy of the Lord, and I integrate those mental events into a say, “God, I praise you that it isn’t representation that is persuasively snowing, and that nothing’s external to the self. The emotional accumulating, and that the streets aren’t practices provide both direct evidence of icy”—and then I went around the