Ben Lemery | Church & Culture

The San Diego Winter Conference: Days 1 & 2

I am sitting in the coffee shop at the San Diego Campus Crusade Winter Conference.  This is my first time in San Diego, it's a beautiful city.  However, what is more beautiful is what the Lord is doing in the hearts of the students attending this conference.

Students are attending from Arizona, Hawaii and California. There are less than a thousand attending, which seems small compared to the big events happening at Urbana and Onething, an estimated 20,000 attending each.  But, even in small gatherings, the Lord can move powerfully.

My favorite thing so far is meeting students who simply are Christians, who have no idea what they want to do with their life, don't have a clue how to answer the question, "what is your passion in life?" and are simply trying to do this whole "Christian" thing.  Some get prayer, some haven't prayed in weeks.  Some understand holiness, some are just trying to stay on track in the midst of real hardship. 

If anything, there is a raw form of Christianity that is resonating here, that I find rather attractive. 

I like watching how God moves in the meetings.  The first night, you could tell people were feeling out the event, kinda overwhelmed from Christmas, they didn't come in necessarily expecting anything but instead are glad just to be here.  God was so good to provide a speaker that took the group through a navigational journey through great scriptures on our need for Christ, our need to worship and our need to press in even deeper. 

As tonight progressed, you could feel a tangible shift happening in the room.  It wasn't the songs, it wasn't the speaker, it was the Holy Spirit moving and touching peoples' hearts.  He was beginning to do a new thing in their hearts.  In my own heart, I feel Him challenging me to go deeper and get past my own roadblocks in life. 

Please pray for the college students who are attending this conference.  Please pray that God would light a fire in their hearts, that they would gain an attainable vision for what they are to do on the campus but also for their life.  Many came hurt, broken, ready for something different or expecting big things.  In the process of stepping through those things, we have to believe that these students will be instrumental in bringing revival to the campuses of the Pacific Southwest. 

I am so thankful that I have met so many awesome people here and look forward to who else God brings across my path.

Merry Christmas!

Dear Friends,

First I want to wish you a Merry Christmas.  We have much to be thankful for and it is a privilege to live in a country where we can focus our eyes on Christ at least once a year.  Hopefully the hustle and bustle will not shout out God's gift of Peace on earth that He gave us almost two thousand years ago.

Second, I want to thank you for the encouragement, challenges and simply reading the almost two hundred posts that I have written this year.  Challenging the status quo has created some great conversations.  As we enter into 2010, I hope to find more people who can share their voice on the blog and also expose you to different aspects and opinions regarding the topics I am sharing.

This has been a year where I saw a very good friend get married.  I had the privilege of standing in his wedding.  Other friends have dealt with diseases that could have been fatal.  While others are simply dealing with the difficulties of life.  Please pray that God would reveal His perfect will for all of us entering into 2010. 

Until then, I will be taking a break from the blog until after the New Year.  My best journey will be traveling down to San Diego for the Campus Crusade Winter Conference.  This will be my first year not attending the Onething conference since 2005.  I am looking forward to hanging out with this cool guy who attends San Francisco State University and getting to know him more.  At the conference, I will be meeting people and making new connections.  Pray that God will refresh me and bring the right people into my path during that time. 

I have many topics that I am pondering over for the New Year, but until then, have a great Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Love,

Ben

The IHOP Spiritual Awakening: Joshua Hawkins on Manifestations, Part 3

Joshua Hawkins, an intercessory missionary from the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, continues his blog series on Manifestations.  Thanks to Josh for allowing me to post his blogs here.

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The IHOPU Student Awakening: Manifestations, Part 3
By: Joshua Hawkins, Intercessory Missionary, IHOP-KC

If you haven’t read the first two posts in this series, be sure to read them here and here.

In the first two posts of this short series, I’ve taken the time to show Biblically that when a human encounters the presence of God, there’s often times a dramatic effect on their body. For many in the church in the West today, seeing this can sometimes be very distracting or can cause confusion or offense - simply because we are used to our existing church culture. But hopefully I’ve given some encouragement thus far to understand the Lord’s heart for all of us in the midst of moves of God like this is to become more and more humble as Christ was.

Manifestations and bizarre things have been a common occurrence of past revivals. Charles Finney, Charles Spurgeon, and Jonathan Edwards experienced much of the same things that we see today, and revival historians have documented it well. I may take a post later on and talk about this a little bit, but I want to take this post in the series to answer several of the common questions I’ve received about this topic.

Continue reading here...

The IHOP Spiritual Awakening: Joshua Hawkins on Manifestations, Part 2

I asked Joshua Hawkins, an intercessory missionary at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, if I could post his blogs on manifestations.  I have received many questions about this, so I wanted to find someone who could give a different perspective while providing scripture. 

Joshua desires comments, questions and concerns about what he is writing about.  Please post either on here or on his site.  Continual thanks to Joshua for letting me utilize his writings for this important topic.

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The IHOPU Student Awakening: Manifestations, Part 2
By: Joshua Hawkins, Intercessory Missionary, IHOP-KC

As the IHOPU Student Awakening continues here in Kansas City, the Holy Spirit continues to move by healing bodies and hearts. His presence has come and filled so many with peace and joy in a fresh way. So many friends that I have spoken to personally have been changed from the inside out and filled with a new measure of the Holy Spirit. Jesus is truly preparing His bride to meet Him through this time of refreshing!

With this increased measure of the Holy Spirit’s activity however has come a new level of “manifestations”, or human bodies reacting to the nearness of a holy God. For some attending and watching via webcast unfamiliar with such manifestations, this has created confusion, offense, or distraction, so I wanted to write a series of posts to bring biblical clarity to what is happening so that our perspectives can be aligned with the Lord’s in this move of the Spirit.

In the last post in this series, I gave a little bit of background and some scriptural evidence for corporate “manifestations” of the Holy Spirit. If you have not read it, be sure to check it out here. It will make this post make much more sense!

Continue reading here....

The IHOP Spiritual Awakening: Joshua Hawkins on Manifestations, Part 1

A friend told me that Joshua Hawkins, an intercessory missionary at the International House of Prayer, had written some blog posts on his site about Manifestations.  I have never met Joshua but I have seen him on stage in the prayer room, Onething, etc.  He has always been one of my favorite people to watch because he always looks like he is enjoying Jesus, plus he can rock out on the synthesizer like none other.  After reading these blog posts, I am thankful for his perspective and hope that you will be able to learn from it. 

Joshua said he would love to hear comments, questions or thoughts.  Please post on here or on his own site.  Thanks to him for allowing me to participate in this discussion.  Enjoy the next three posts and learn from them.

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The IHOPU Student Awakening: Manifestations, Part 1
By: Joshua Hawkins, Intercessory Missionary - IHOP-KC

I've received several questions and emails about this topic, so rather than answering them all individually I want to take a few posts and give you some of my thoughts on physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit. Are they from God or are they demonic? Are they carnal and fleshly? Are they biblical? And if so, what is their purpose? Often times we look for easy answers to difficult questions like these, and I’m not so sure that the answer is as cut and dry as we’d like – mostly because God the Holy Spirit is a Person with a personality as opposed to a coin-operated vending machine that dispenses Himself in a predictable measure every time.

To give you some personal background, I grew up in a church where the gifts of the Holy Spirit were welcomed and honored, but I don’t remember any physical manifestations of the Spirit on a person’s body that ever took place in the way that many would refer to them today. When I say “manifestations”, I refer to things like joyful dancing, falling over or being unable to stand under God’s power, being filled with God’s overwhelming joy and laughing, or shaking uncontrollably because of the Holy Spirit’s presence on a human body.

Continue reading here...