Blog Archive - December 2009

December always turns out to be a busy month for us at IHOP because we host our annual onething conference on December 28-31. This year, we’re expecting perhaps close to 20,000 young adults to gather in downtown KC’s Bartle Hall for 4 days of worship, prayer, teaching, and ministry. As usual, I’ll be playing keyboard for several sessions – as of right now, once on the main stage, and 3 times in the prayer room (which moves from our south KC location to the downtown area for the 4 days).

The theme for this year’s onething conference is “what is the Holy Spirit saying to the church?” The emphasis of the teaching will be centered on the deception that is creeping into the church regarding holiness, God’s grace, and the person of Jesus. Mike Bickle and several of the other key IHOP leaders and teachers will be sharing at the sessions. Check out this letter from Lou Engle and Mike Bickle for more information on the conference.

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.

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.

If you’ve attended or watched any of the IHOPU Student Awakening meetings at all by webcast, you’ve probably noticed an increase in the physical manifestations of the Holy Spirit on peoples’ bodies compared to what we normally see around here. When the awakening meetings first began back on November 11th, I was a little shocked as to who and how many people were moving their bodies in bizarre ways. Shaking, laughing, and falling down would sometimes occur in ministry lines at our weekend services, but never in a room corporately with so many people for such an extended period. It was obvious that something unique and different was happening in our midst, and it was clear to me that there would be new dynamics that we would all have to navigate in our hearts as a result.