IHOPU Student Awakening

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.

Though I’m an intercessory missionary in my day-to-day occupation, my university degree is in computer science, making me still a bit of a technology nut. So when Jesus and technology are combined in really cool ways, my heart really begins to fall off its rocker.

Wes Hall, IHOPU’s provost and one of the main leaders of these awakening meetings, mentioned last week that there were over 10,000 viewers in 163 nations watching the meetings by webcast. The latest statistics from our webcasting department show that there has been between 6,000 and 10,000 unique viewers each night for the awakening services, which is about fifteen times the normal amount of viewers usually watching IHOP’s weekend services (which typically sees between 400 and 700 simultaneous viewers). The average view time has been over an hour and at the peak evening so far the servers have transferred about 1500 GB per evening. Wow.

It’s absolutely amazing to see how the Lord is using technology to connect people with Jesus as He touches their hearts, heals their bodies, and provokes them to a deeper level of commitment to the First Commandment. I personally know people across the US and across several nations (including Egypt, Canada, and the UK) that have been tuning in and receiving from the Lord. We’ve received testimonies from so many nations of lives being touched – simply because we turned on a video camera, connected it to a computer, and published a website. Praise God that the Holy Spirit, the third Person of the Trinity, is omnipotent, omnipresent, and is certainly not confined to a small 2,000 seat building in south Kansas City!

There’s been so many testimonies of people receiving emotional or physical healing from the Lord as a result of the extended meetings at IHOP’s FSM building that we are now calling the “International House of Prayer University Student Awakening” (see my previous post). If you haven’t been tuning in, you can watch some of them directly on IHOP’s website at http://www.ihop.org/watch through the player by clicking on “testimonies”. Live broadcasts will continue to be through this Saturday from 6p-midnight Central time.

As I said in my last post on this topic, the Holy Spirit has three general purposes when He releases His heightened activity – power for salvation and healing, wisdom, and humility. The main one I’m absolutely sure He is establishing in every single one of us, even external participants and observers to the meetings, is humility.

Here’s an illustration I am sure you can relate to. You know the story – there’s that guy – the one weeping uncontrollably across the aisle, and then that girl, the one jumping and filled with the joy of the Lord in row three. And there’s you, sitting there at the meeting or even in front of your computer screen watching the webcast, not feeling a thing. Everything within you says “why God?” And you believe a lie in that instant – “I must not be receiving from God. He must not want to touch me. What’s wrong with me?”