Ben Lemery’s blog

I have always wondered what a sponge feels when water hits its surface and the water is able to penetrate and fill it to a supersaturating point.  If you look at a sponge when it is completely dry, you could bend it and it might break in half.  Put some water on it and you can't break it anymore. 

In this season I am in, there are days where I feel like the dry sponge and then there are days like today where I feel like the sopping wet sponge, filled with the awesomeness of God. 

God as a father is revealing Himself to me but also walking me through the path of my life, so that I can be set free from all these different chains that have held me down from my past.  Much of my past couple of months have come in a form of self-medication and self-indulgence to pretty much not think about those things of the past.  God doesn't want me to live in the past.  Instead, he wants to break me from the past so that I can have a free future. 

Today I was refreshed when a friend called me and was telling me story after story about how God is using him to impact the people around him.  On top of that, he has really embraced everything that God has thrown at him and has attempted to stay on track with the Lord since he started his journey.  So, I hung up the phone and thought, "God, I have to stop playing the game and start making this real." 

God is so big and the reality of His greatness will always be so much bigger than what we can take in, but even better, that means it is everlasting.  =) 

The enemy comes at me in so many different ways because I still have the hooks of insecurities all over my life.  God gives me small victories daily and I have to treasure each one.  When I went on facebook, I saw that someone had posted some pictures of his 4th of July weekend up.  I perceived this person to always have the upper hand in life and always being able to get ahead because of who he is.   So, as I am looking at the photos and I have these feelings creeping in, the Lord just says to me, "you don't have to be threatened by him Ben, my plan is just right for you, don't worry."  Well, heck, that was a relief to hear.  I am being real.  Why would I have to be threatened at another of God's creation?  So, victory in Christ. 

It says in 1 John 2:1-3, "My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.  By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments."

Jesus, by what He did on the cross for us, has become the Victor over sin and when we choose to give that over to Him, the Light comes in us and the darkness of our heart fades away.  It is over my head, but I certainly know that it is beyond great.  Ponder with me on that.  =)

So what does it mean to be in the wilderness and suddenly realize that you haven't done anything to draw nearer to the Lord?  It's been 4 months since I moved out here and the first month was glorious.  It was as if God and I were skipping gleefully down the yellowbrick road to Oz where I would be crowned the king of all Oz.  Then, like the game Jenga, he pulled out that one block that kept the whole structure I was standing on and I found myself laying flat on the ground.  (Also, falling on a bunch of other little wooden blocks doesn't feel good) 

The expectations I had coming out to Santa Cruz had all come tumbling down in an ugly heap.   The one catch to expectations for me is that it totally crushes me and drains me of all belief at that moment.  I simply look at the situation in disgust and walk away.  That is where I have been for probably the last 2 and a half months.  God and I see each other once in a while...Jesus and I converse every so often and sometimes I even get that tickle from the Holy Spirit that we all love.  Instead of drawing back into God's wings of safety and love; I drew into myself and attempted to stich up my own wounds. 

The funny part though is that I have been chasing after oasis's all over the wilderness, hoping that I could find something that tastes better or at least quench my thirst for something more.  Because, in all honesty, what I was tasting simply wasn't cutting it anymore.  My expectations were screwed with and now I couldn't dare give God anymore of myself, thinking that I would actually gain something from it.  Truly I can quench my thirst somewhere else.  You don't realize what deception you are in until you are actually drinking the sand that you think is water. 

I am desperate, but man am I hurt.  Isn't that good though?  Because when I look back at the expectations stated above, I was on my way to fall anyway....better now than in a place that it could have adverse effects in a larger sphere of influence.  I need to learn to love Jesus with a desire that simply doesn't make me want a sip from the bucket that comes up from the well, but instead a crazy willingness to jump into the well to get every drop of goodness that He can give me. 

I remember Lord, I am starting to remember when I felt Your presence for the first time.   It feels so good and I realize that You are all I need.....I can say no more God.

At this point in my life, nothing has gone how I expected it to go.  At 27 years old, I am newly moved, still single, practically friendless locally and wondering if I will ever get out of myself long enough to just die.  When I became a Christian in 1999, I went 200 miles per hour and did great things for God.  I started a prayer network that connected campuses like we have never seen before; then I transferred to Central Michigan University where I started Campus Cry and brought hundreds of students together to cry out for God's move on the campus and to bring in the best so they could get trained up.  Then I worked at my church to assist where I could and end my time there with a bang by helping with the Infuse Conference. 

So when God said, "move to California."  I expected that this was "my moment" where I was finally going to be able to enter into glorious ministry and see the thousands trained up, all under the awesome power God had given me and I would be able to pose and have my picture put on the back of a book.

I say some of that sarcastically but most of it passed through my mind.  It is a somewhat sheepish thing to admit just how carnally minded I was when I began to plan for myself.  So, when I am in my present state, you have to make a choice.  This is something I have actually seen those young and old make a mistake in and that is: Adversity isn't always from the enemy, sometimes God places it in your path so that you can sit for a moment and think about His way through the issue as opposed to your own.

For some reason, we were told a lie.  We were told that if we did all the right things and connected with the right people that we would be blessed and move into greater things.  What a lie!  How utterly unbiblical.  I am not here because the enemy is jackin me up.  I am here because God said, "It's time to form a deeper well in you and the only way it can happen is through character building."  It's part of my life becoming His life and His glory showing out of that place of death.  That Christ may live through me, not beside me. 

I have seen Christians become very bitter and jaded towards God's heart in the seasons that He calls them to character building. Instead, they toss it to the side, thinking that it's the enemy and another layer of callousness forms on their heart because they have once again refused the prompting of God on their heart.

Why can I say that?  Because I have done it for years and even in the present I am not fully at the choice to say, "God it's Your game, it's Your turn, I give up, just do what You need to do."  No matter how hard I try, this is the reality I am faced with daily and not a night goes by when God asks me, "are you desperate for Me?"  Many nights I can only admit that I cowardly say nothing and fall asleep.  I don't say that condemningly, it is simply the bare bones truth.

Amazingly I am finding more things about me in the wilderness than I ever did when I wasn't in it.  You go to the wilderness to be surrounded by nothing but the thing I have realized is that you really go out to the wilderness so that you can be surrounded with all of your "stuff."  God does the whole yard sale right out there, getting rid of item after item until you are finally clean.  So it's my life but it's mine to lose.  Can I make that choice?

Psalm 62 seems to be my new seasonal verse. 
My soul waits in silence for God only; From Him is my salvation.

To be very honest, everything that I am going through seems contrary to what the status quo is.  There is so much talk about what God is doing, yet God is drawing me to this place of silence and letting Him soley be my salvation.  This is difficult as the things I hear Him saying are not what looks like is going on in the visual realm of the church right now.  Then I tell people about them and they look at me as if I have just shot them with mustard. 

As I was telling one of my elders the other day, "like I woke up, wanting to be a dissenting voice to all things seen."  The Lord spoke to me and said, "Let your soul wait in silence for Me and let Me work out your salvation."  He said this through the Psalm of course, so don't think that I am some super spiritual person.  When the logos Word becomes a rhema Word, then I have to take it to heart and allow the Lord to do His work. 

Verse 2 says,  He only is my rock and my salvation, my stronghold; I shall not be greatly shaken.

One verse leads to the other but there is process from this point A to point B.  God puts us in situations where He becomes our all and that on Him we make Him our stronghold.  Silence allows God to speak to our hearts and to establish that place of unshakeable foundation.  Of course, I don't do this alone, I am surrounded by the authority God has placed me under here.  Not only can you hear God clearly in the silence but also the enemy.  It was in the wilderness that Jesus stood face to face with the devil, being tempted with the greatest tempations in the world; only to speak back with the foundation that He allowed the Father to ground into His soul. 

In this process of allowing the Lord to deal with me, I have almost lost my sense of salvation.  The wilderness is not a time of sensual filling but a time of flesh emptying.  That doesn't leave a great deal of room for skipping in the meadows with the Lord, haha.  I am not saying that that conception is wrong; at the moment, it isn't where the Lord has me.  Clearly, God has different times, seasons and moments that He touches us.

I think I mind less and less what people think of me at this point because it is simply what He thinks about me that matters.  As long as I am submitted to Godly authority, then I know that I always have that safety net to steer me in the direction of the Biblically founded Christ that lives in me.  At this point, that feels pretty nice. 

1 John 2:15 says, "Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him."

Amazingly this verse was written just under 2000 years ago by the Apostle John and mirrored by Jesus in the Gospels.  I would sense that if John had written that in the current day, people would laugh at him; if anything, they probably felt the same way then as we would now.  Because the things we want, may not be what God desired for us to have in this present life. 

The things we want are the basis of everyday humanism.  There are many on my list that I present God everyday, here are some of them:

• a wife
• a healthier body
• money, money, money
• a 42" plasma screen tv with High Definition satellite and surround sound
• every electronic gadget known to man
• respect
• and many other things

And I am not kidding when I say there are many more things.  If I walked into Best Buy with an unlimited spending account, I would buy every best thing there and then upgrade whenever something new came out. 

That isn't bad to want cool things but it does become bad when it becomes all we want.  I feel that my generation has a sense of entitlement engrained in them.  Coming out of the "blue-collar" workforce, where parents worked hard to make sure their children could have it better has now created a lack of responsible leaders.  I think that is why I am going through this season in my life right now.

I love my job, in fact it has been refreshing to step out of ministry, the church circle and simply serve with a Christ heart.  My job is to make my boss look good and overall make the industry look better.  The difficulty is, I don't get to go to any of these shows that we attend to promote the industry.  My flesh rises up everytime to say, "why don't you get to go!"  That wasn't what I was hired for, to travel, but everything in me WANTS to go to these places.  Why?  Because I want to.  However, that's not what I was hired for and God is using it to say, "are you willing to simply serve, with no reward at hand but a reward in heaven that you impacted with My glory?"  Goodness that penetrates me deep.

If I cannot learn to serve but only crave what I want, then I create new idols in my life to worship, pushing aside Him who sets my path and I begin to labor over my own path.  If we could only see how much work we put into laying every stone on our own path as opposed to the path the Lord has already laid out for us, we would pick His in a heartbeat.

You have to carry a vision that is not self-seeking because it has no distance.  I believe I looked down one day and realized that in my own self-seeking, my hands were now bloody, my back hurts and my knees were worn down to the bone because I had been laying every stone on my own path.  What looked good in the process of laying my own stones and finding prideful achievement in each stone laid, it is all vanity when I see that God has my whole road laid out and I am only two rows built in mine.

So here I am, let me serve or die.  Cause I can't serve myself. 

The Pool of Bethesda: Old Transitioning to New

In John 5:1-17, Jesus visits the Pool of Bethesda.  This pool was a place where great healings and miracles would take place, but it only happened when an angel would come and stir the water.  Then you would have to race down to capture your miracle…first one there received a healing, if you were second place, you had to get back in line and hope that you crossed the finish line the next time the angel came. 

In many ways, we are living in times when this Biblical picture becomes alive again.  Around the pool sat quite possibly hundreds of people, sick, blind, lame and withered.  The man that I believe the Holy Spirit quickened to Jesus when he approached the pool, had been sitting near the pool for 38 years.  That is older than I am by over 10 years.  This shocked me that for 38 years, a person would sit next to a pool believing that his time would come and he would be healed.  One, that he had no hope beyond that pool for his healing and two, he had made a commitment to find his healing there whether he lived or died.  That is desperation in the fullest. 

Within that desperation, Jesus appears on the scene.  He brings a new way of doing things and in the midst of this old pattern that God had established, Jesus brings a new blueprint on how a healing can happen. 

This is evident in the church today.  Where great outpourings of God have happened in the past, they become places of pilgrimage and hope that this is the only place that God could touch a person.  Hundreds of thousands of people have traveled to Toronto, Brownsville and now Lakeland, Florida, desperately desiring an outpouring from God.  Seeking a moment where God will touch them and heal them of their infirmity.  Matthew Henry says that the pool was created because “it was a token of God’s good will to that people, and an indication that, though they had been long without prophets and miracles, yet God had not cast them off; though they were now an oppressed despised people, and many were ready to say, Where are all the wonders that our fathers told us of? God did hereby let them know that he had still a kindness for the city of their solemnities.”  (Matthew Henry’s Commentary on the Bible)

Isn’t that similar to today?  We are asking the same questions today and wondering where is revival, the miracles and the hope of glory that is promised in scriptures for those who follow them?  The pool of Bethesda held a purpose of God’s mercy in the midst of a vast wilderness of God speaking to His people.  However, with any pattern that the Lord creates, there is a season for everything.  (Eccl. 3:1-9)  When Jesus approached the pool, I believe that God rapidly wanted to shift wineskins.  When wineskins shift, it not only means that we are doing something different, we are now thinking differently.  The dreaded change of a mindset is the hardest thing to overcome.  Jesus approaches, doing the Father’s will, on the Sabbath, completely contrary to the set structure at that time. 

God’s glory and how it manifests is not set in the boundary of how men thought the Sabbath was meant to be but instead it is confined to His glorious nature and all it contains; which is a whole lot of goodness. 

In that moment, when Jesus approached the pool, He was approaching the old system of how people thought God moved and then brought the new, which was the manifest power of God.  How beautiful a picture; how radical a heart that Christ had; and how impacting that one event had in reaching so many people.  Because when the man, now healed, went into public, the temple priests could not see the miracle, the new thing but instead saw the law and the old way that God had moved.  It was offensive to them.  How sad that they missed the greater purpose…God was relevantly in the place and they didn’t want anything to do with Him. 

Jesus went to those who were sick, He didn’t pat them on the head and tell them to pray harder.  Instead He radically broke through the way they thought it had to be done and said, no, there is more and greater, will you take it! 

God will move in these days in great ways but remember that the kingdom lives in you because He dwells within you.  Part of that revelation means that we are able to tap into all of the resources of heaven and not depend on one place to get it all.  I want that but I have to be desperate for it and know that God wants to do a new thing continually. 

I have lived in Santa Cruz now for over two months but it feels as if I have been here for years.  Today, I sat in the outdoor section of Lulu's Coffee Shop and realized that I feel no different than I had when I first found the place at an earlier date.  In fact, my routine has relatively stayed very consistent, creating a "Stranger than Fiction" feel in my life.  Even with my job and the change that brought, I now have an even simpler schedule.  I wake up at 6am, shower, leave by 6:55am, stop at Peet's in Capitola, maybe make a phone call to someone in Michigan, make it to work by 7:25am, work from 8-5pm, leave work, pray that my car won't clonk out on the freeway, make it back to Santa Cruz and either stay at home for the night or go to Lulu's or go to church on Tuesdays for intercession.  I try to be in bed by 11pm, so I can fall asleep by midnight.  Only to wake up and do it all over again.

Don't mistake my scheduling as me being bitter or even discouraged, it is what it is at the moment.  As I am reading different sections of the Bible to find out about the wilderness, I am finding that everyone went through this at one point or another.  Moses, possibly the best snapshot of a wilderness dweller, sheep farmed for 40 years before God decided to use him.  The difference between him and I, he wasn't looking for how God was going to use him, I think he just was happy to be alive, have a wife and became well content with being a sheep hearder in the middle of nowhere.  How much more work has to be done in me to not even really want God to use me but to just be content in knowing the Lord. Argh! 

It was in the mundane, day by day, that Moses became simplified again.  Then, when God decided to change his previously scheduled day to show up in a bush, Moses had to see it because it wasn't in the simplified moment that had been apart of his life for years.  I am not asserting that I will be driving down the freeway and a building will be on fire but it really isn't. (though that would be cool) I am simply stating that God is taking away all the distractions of my life to simplify my heart and make it Him and me. 

I haven't written in here for awhile because the Lord is doing some deep, personal things in me right now that I am only able to share with a few people right now.  That wasn't written to be made into an uber-spiritual suggestion, it is simply what it is.  To give you a basic summary of where I am at right now, I am in the wilderness where God is dealing with some deep things that I have kept well-hidden for many years.  However, to give you a glimpse of where I am at right now, I wanted to share with you an excerpt from Arthur Katz's book, "Apostolic Foundations."  Arthur Katz is one of the best writers to ever have lived and I have been changed by the words that I share with you below.

Now it came about in those days, when Moses had grown up, that he went out to his breathren and looked on their hard labors; and he saw an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, one of his brethren.

So he looked this way and that, and when he saw that there was no one around, he struck down the Egyptian and hid him in the sand. ~Exodus 2:11-12

Though Moses was called of God, he was not yet qualified to be a deliverer.  He lacked the fear of God, and the awareness of God.  His whole posture was horizontal:  He saw and he acted, but there is no consideration of looking up.  Merely because we see something that needs to be rectified is not hte justifcation for doing it.  There is nothing more opposed to the purposes of God than the well-meaning intentions men perpetrate in their own human and religious zeal.

There is something about the whole strcuture of church life, and the necessity to perform something to justicy its existence and its perpetuation, that compels it to act without waiting.  There is no greter death than waiting, which is at the very heart of priestliness.  Priests did not commence their priestly activity, or ministry, until seven day of waiting were fulfilled.  Seven is the number of completion, and the completion was the final death of their well-meaning intentions to do for God.  Until that dies, there is no true priestly service, and if it is not priestly, then it is not apostolic.  Jesus is the High Priest and Apostle of our confession.  The first must precede the last.  Impatience, self-will, religious ambition, the necessity to do and to be seen doing, to be recognized and acknowledged is death to the purposes of God.

When a church is impatient to perform and to do (how else does it justify itself?), and if ti is not doing or performing, and not having a program, how do they pacify the congregation?  Why should they continue to come?  They are required, therefore, to implement programs in order to draw and keep people.

In his eightieth year, when God confronts Moses at the burning bush and sends him, what does Moses say about that, "Who am I that you should send me?"  He is a broken man, one who has no assurance of his qualifications.  he has been completely emptied out of all of his human qualifications, which were supreme and sublime, both genealogically, being a Hebrew of the Hebrews, versed in all of their wisdom and knowledge.  But this is now a man truly emptied of himself and has not a wit of confidence that he can perform anything, let alone deliver an entire people out of bondage.  There is no many more qualified than the one who believes in his deepest heart that he is without qualification.  The whole preliminary work of God is to disqualify us before we can be qualified.  This is totally contrary to the whole relgious mindset.  It is absolutely wasteful in their eyes because he is a man, who at the age of forty and full of vigor, is ready to do great things for God.  How many of us are itching to go out and make our mark for God?  And yet God does not think it lavish, wasteful or extravagant to give Moses another forty years of waiting in the wilderness until he is completely emptied out--and then He calls him.

So, that is a little bit of what God is putting me through right now and in all honesty, I don't think I could have written it better or exegeted it more precisely.  In the meantime, "The Ben Show" is dying and "The God Show" is coming up out of the ashes.  It isn't fun but there is hope on the other side.

College ministries have been around for hundreds of years and many of the revivals that have hit the world started out of students who prayed for God's Spirit to touch them and move mightily across the campus.  During my ministry sabbatical I have had moments to reflect and ask the Lord about why we have not seen a campus revival in many years. 

Since I was saved in 1999, I have seen about every 3 or 4 years another cycle of students who are zealous and want the greater things of God but in between that cycle, the church on a campus is plainly silent.  I recognize that this is a blanket statement but allow me the grace to explain in more of a statement like that to make a greater point later on.

On most campuses, fellowships usually rule and reign with one big fellowship, that has an enormous amount of people, who all operate out of one main flow or culture, and the others fellowships tend to be smaller and for people who are in the minority subcultures in America.  For instance, the larger fellowship many times will have a very active sports driven, jock & cheerleader feel to it.  The small fellowships will many times have the groups of computer minded, geeky & nerdy types in it.  Trust me, I am more of the computer guy, so I enjoy being a geek. 

Why I bring this up is because how a campus fellowship forms it's identity has become of the utmost importance in today's overall campus cultural experience.  With the great increase of technology that has now become financially accesible, campus fellowships are now overloaded with videos, graphics, lights with worship, blogs, t-shirts and a pencil holder to keep it all in one place.  Prayer groups are now replaced with marketing teams.  Depending on our own efforts to bring people in through flashy media and catchy slogans. 

I fear that the Lord would come back and reveal our hearts in front of everyone, only to show us who would get into heaven and who wouldn't based on where their commitments lie.  Would we be surprised if we found that the percentage of those who may go to hell would outnumber those who are going to be in the kingdom, simply because we never thought to really care?

The lack of foundational teaching has been eye-opening.  It amazes me that out of God's grace, He allowed groups to grow when they had no vision to even have a prayer ministry.  Leonard Ravenhill states that a man is only as spiritual as his prayer life.  So what are we teaching?  When we stand before the Lord to state what we have done on earth and how we furthered the kingdom, what will we say to the Lord?  That we coordinated good worship?  That our graphics were spiffy?  That we gave a good teaching on love?  That through all of the small groups, social events and great preaching that few hearts were shifted greatly to increase more in the Lord so that we could become nothing.

The word holiness is almost scoffed at in this present day.  We talk about sex like it is unstoppable in relationships and when women become pregnant out of wedlock, we overlook it in fear that we might offend in bringing that sin to the brother who allowed the sin to manifest.  Where is the holiness that God demands above all else?  Yes, the child is a blessing and we don't overlook God's creation but let's not forget that there are still hearts that have not yet turned to God.  If we want the child to be raised in Godliness, then wouldn't we want the parents to be that much more Godly? 

Campus Ministries need to take a look in the mirror and ask themselves where they are right now with God?  Are we truly teaching God's Word?  I am not talking about hellfire and brimstone but instead, the freedom of God, that we do struggle with sin, that we need to confess our sins one to another so that we might be prayed for and set free; and that we have to confront our brothers and sisters when they are not living in God's holiness.  Why don't we talk about prayer and it's need for seeing revival sweep across our nation again?  Why don't we focus on prayer anymore and have faith that our prayers are shifting things in heaven?  We all have time to gather on a Thursday night to sing and hear a short message and then socialize till we are drunk in friendliness but when it comes to the Tuesday night prayer meetings, they have at the most 5% of the total campus fellowship attendance there. 

How could I ever hold another training event for leaders if prayer is not taught, not exhorted and encouraged greatly?  Would it even matter if we hold an event, only to find out that we discard it as soon as we move onto our next item on the agenda?  These are all things that I ponder as I ready myself to potentially move into campus ministry here in Santa Cruz.  Will it even be worth it if I am not willing to pour a solid foundation for the students God has called me to serve?  Aren't these the important things that God reitterates throughout His Word through and through?  It is worth chewing on, eh? 

"'But if the slave plainly says, "I love my master, my wife and my children; I will not go out as a free man,' then his master shall bring him to God, then he shall bring him to the door or the doorpost.  And his master shall pierce his ear with an awl; and he shall serve him permanently.'"  ~Exodus 21:5-6

I have really been wanting to write more about what God is revealing to me in His Word.  Thankfully, I had time today to really dig in and let His Word penetrate me.  With my new job, it seems that I get home around 6 and I end up having about 4 hours to do anything else.  Getting into the Word of God is something that I have to steadfastly commit to daily because it is the food that nourishes my spirit.  It also searches my heart for any ungodliness. 

As I was reading the above scripture, I was taken back by the seriousness that the law brought to the Israelites.  In the midst of my former study of being a servant of God, this scripture fit to well into the current state of my being.  Because I am called to be a servant, a slave to God, it is important that I allow Him to pierce me, to signify that I am His and His alone.

What is an awl?  An awl, according to Dictionary.com, it is a pointed instrument for piercing small holes in leather, wood, etc.  Thankfully, God made another way for us to be his bondservants and that was through the piercing of His Son on the cross, but I think that the scripture can still press our hearts into another level where we begin to ask the Lord to take us and pierce us.  Make us Yours God.  The piercing was a sign of ownership and a willingness by the slave that they would serve their master permanantly. 

This is something I desire more than ever, to go before the Lord and let Him have my total heart.  That may sound corny but it still is a revelation that is so lost in the present-day church.  Could something that seems so cliche sounding actually have some of the greatest truths in it if put to action?  That is the deeper thought.  So, I pray that we allow the Lord to pierce us and let Him be our master, which in turn, brings us to deeper submission, and love to the Lord.