Adventures in Charismania I

I grew up charismatic. I still am a charismatic. I believe that the gifts from the Holy Spirit to the Christian Church listed in Romans, Corinthians, and Ephesians are still in operation today. In case you didnt know, thats what defines a charismatic theologically speaking. What you are probably more familiar with though, is not the theology of charismatics but the practices of charismatics. Everybody has heard stories, seen stories, or even made stories, and lived to tell about it.

I've seen demon posessed people roll on the floor and make crazy, scary sounding noises. I've seen people run around like their hair was on fire. I've seen people sit and laugh for hours. I've heard endless prophecies, words of wisdom, and knowledge. In fact, I dont think I have enough time in one life to do all that I have been prophesied to do. I've been told that I was an evangelist, a teacher, a prophet, and a pastor. I'm still yet to be called an apostle. I've seen people give a preacher over 100,000 dollars for a 45 minute sermon because they believed the anointing was so great on his life that they had to give a lot of money to him in hopes of being blessed by God in return. I've seen people healed of various physical problems. I've heard a thousand people pray in tongues in a church service all at one time. I've seen people "slain in the Spirit". I've seen people roll on the floor and hollar like they were on fire. I won't say I've seen it all because I know people who claim to have seen goldust appear on people's bodies, objects levitate, and on and on and on.

I've seen enough to write a book on it for sure. But instead, Im going to write maybe a few notes about some of my adventures in what I like to call Charismania. My hope is just to share a few stories from my time in Charismania. Some of them are very humorous, to me at least. Others are sad, some are scary, and some are deeply touching. My intention is not to bash Charismatics, afterall, I am one.

I will begin with a story about Benny Hinn.Benny Hinn is probably the most famous charismatic in the world today. He's the middle-eastern man with the white suit who is most known for knocking people down by placing his hand on them, waving his hand at them, blowing in the microphone, or by some other means. He comes on TBN (the christian station) daily. Oh yeah, he has a wicked comb-over as well. Hopefully you know who I am talking about now.

I think the year was 2002. That would make me nineteen years old. Myself and two friends, Matt and Blake, decided to go to a Benny Hinn "Youth Crusade". It was held at Creflo Dollar's church near Atlanta, Georgia. I'm not sure what we were hoping to experience exactly, but I think there was some general hope of experiencing God's power in some physical sense. We didn't want to be healed or made Christians. We just wanted to feel God's power in some way.

When we got to the service they had the front portion of the church roped off, I suppose for church members and/or important people involved with the "Youth Crusade" somehow. My friend Blake, ever the bold one, demanded that we go beyond the ropes and act like that was what we were supposed to be doing. I was very hesitant but as I recall Matt was willing and so there was a 2/3rds majority. So we did it. We walked up to the rope, lifted it, and casually walked into the special seating area. We found great seats only about 5 rows back from Benny Hinn. I remember joking that I was close enough to spit on the back of his head.

The service went on like a typical charismatic youth service. There were probably between 5,000 to 8,000 youth there, depending on how you define a youth. We all sang very loudly. The noise was thunderous and reverberated against our bodies in a powerful way. After the worship Benny Hinn began to speak.I honestly remember only a few words that Benny Hinn said that night. I don't guess words were what we were there for anyways. We were there in the hopes of experiencing some power, maybe in the hopes of having our faith strengthened by the undeniable experience.

About halfway through the service Benny had an altar call. He asked for all the men between 17-25 years of age (dont quote me on that) who felt called to full time ministry to come to the front. He said he was going to pray for the fire of God to fall on us, I think with the intention of empowering us for ministry. We were excited. This was the moment we had come to Atlanta for.

We made it to the front quickly as thousands rushed to the front of the church to be prayed for by Benny. I was grateful that Blake's boldness had helped us get such great seats. I soon found myself completely surrounded by other young men, and maybe women, I cant remember. We were packed into the front like a can of sardines. My shoulders were touching the people beside me and if I moved one inch to the front or to the back I would be touching someone.We wainted intently as Benny began to speak to us.

At some point he stopped speaking and began to pray for us. The 10,000 seat building was quiet except for Benny's voice coming through the speakers. He prayed in a low voice and with noticeable calmness. My head was bowed and I was intently listening, my heart focused on receiving some powerful touch from God. Suddenly, Benny interrupted his quiet prayer by yelling at the top of his lungs, "FIIIIRRREEEEEE!!!!!!!!".

The mass of people around me were immediately startled and began falling like dominos. There were people falling backwards into my legs and sideways into my knees. The guy directly beside me grasped my arm as he was falling down and nearly pulled me down with him. He would have succeeded if I did not somewhat violently jerk my arm free from his grasp. In an instant the front of the church had become a field full of bodies laying all over one another.

I saw that everyone to my right had fallen down. Then I turned my head and looked across the mass of bodies on the ground to my left. As my eyes followed the rows of bodies on the ground they ran into the one other person in the crowd of thousands who had not fallen down...my friend Blake. Our eyes met and we exchanged the largest grins. It appeared that whatever happened to everyone else had not happened to us. Karen Wheaton, another popular charismatic, was there for the crusade to sing for Benny that night. When she saw me still standing she looked at me puzzled. Her eyes filled with some sort of compassion seemed to be asking, "What happened? Why didn't you go down?"

Benny offered a few more signs for the faithful gathered there that evening, but I dont want to turn this note into a book. Anyways, as we discussed the happenings of the crusade that night in the car on the way back to Boiling Springs, South Carolina, we remembered that Matt had fallen down with the rest of the crowd.He said he was knocked down by the people around him. We didn't want to hear it or believe it. We gave him crap about that the rest of the way home. Sometimes I still give him crap about it : )

A song

Jesus, Savior, King Eternal
rescued us in our transgression,
bleeding heart and bleeding hands,
have lifted us to where we stand;
boldly on the promise of God,

Our hope is fixed,
Our hope is sure,
through Jesus Christ we will endure,

Purified, we've been made righteous,
Our soul no longer seeks for treasure,
Our cornerstone who lives inside us,
fills our souls beyond all measure,

We spend our days now under the Sun,
eagerly awaiting your return,
when all that is wrong will be made right,
when joy abounds in your kingdom's light,

We pray, we seek, to know you now,
Your love, your peace, your mercy and strength,
Blessed to stand, we humbly bow,

You've chosen us who sought you not,
who loved ourselves beyond all else,
our wicked hearts would not receive you,
our blinded eyes would not believe you,

Against our wills, and for our joy,
Your spirit came and brought us life,
Your love so sovereign, deep, and free,
has made us yours eternally.
(We love you Jesus)

Take Hold of Your Soul

Emotions. Ever-present, always needed, often hard to deal with. They are given to us by a loving God to experience and reflect him in an amazing way. They are given to allow us to have relationships. In some sense they mean we are alive. What is a human being without feelings, emotions, affections, desires? What is a romance without hearts that understand love and derive joy from it? Emotions are essential to who we are as human beings. But, sadly, we are sinful beings that think and feel in a corrupted way. This is why selfless love is COMPLETELY unnatural to each and everyone of us. We get upset because someone doesn't treat us like we think we "deserve" to be treated. We get sad because someone doesn't approve of us or think highly of us.

Our thoughts and emotions speak to us all the time preaching to us a gospel of self love. As Christians emotions play a crucial role. God doesn't command that we do a big list of commandments from mindless obedience. He commands that we obey him joyfully. He makes a demand on our emotions, often a demand we feel incapable to perform. I often find no reason to worship God in my soul. Looking for an intuition or good feeling about him it seems there is none present. Despite our sense of inability to obey God joyfully, the scriptures say that God has given us "everything we need for life and godliness." So what about our obstinate souls that stand with their arms folded in defiance of the living God? What can we do about our emotions when they are resistant to the reading of scripture, to the singing of songs, and to fellowship with believers?

An obvious answer is prayer. Cry out to God. Repent of any sin that is weighing down your conscience and making your soul cloudy.

In addition to this we must learn to apprehend our souls. We must speak to ourselves. This is not the same as the self-talk that I learned about in educational psychology classes. We do not say to ourselves, "okay, I can do this, I just need to slow down and think this through step by step". Instead of telling myself "I can" I speak the gospel to myself. God can, Jesus can, the Spirit can! I must do as 2 Corinthians 10 says and wage war on any rebel thought that seeks to rise above the dominion of Jesus.Abraham, the father of the faith, circumsized himself. Jesus has circumsized our hearts if we have the Spirit of God in us. But like Abraham we must grow to the place that we can cut on ourselves in a spiritual sense. Instead of listening to our thoughts and emotions and letting them run rampant in us, we should confront them with the truth of the scripture that is "sharper than any two edged sword" and that "divides soul and spirit" and discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart (Hebrews 4:12).

Instead of letting our soul endlessly speak to us, we must grab hold of our souls and speak to them. We must rebuke and correct ourselves, violently refusing to allow self-addicted emotions and thoughts to run our lives.

We must say with the Psalmist....
Psalm 43:5
Why are you cast down, O my soul,
and why are you in turmoil within me?
Hope in God; for I shall again praise him,
my salvation and my God.

This is a daily process. Its preaching the gospel to yourself. We need to do it everyday so that we can grow in grace and effectively serve others. If we are constantly beat up by our thoughts and emotions because we fail to speak to them and fail to force our souls to dwell on Jesus we will not be in a position to help our brothers and sisters because we will be ever-dwelling on our own calamity. There is great joy to be had in Gods salvation, but we have obstinate souls, and as a result, joyful obedience to our God is a violent struggle. Therefore, dont let your soul preach to you everyday. You preach to it. You grow in self-control. You take authority over rebel thoughts that raise themselves up against Christ.