Rumble 4 America

Let's get ready to Rumbuuuuuuuuul!

Yes, that's right, folks. It's that time again. It's time to rumble with Lou and the crew. We'll be standing in the gap for our nation and sending out the Red Riders to tour the nation with the message of LIFE.

Who knows? Maybe another Supreme Court justice will step down while we are gathered, giving us the third seat we've been praying for!

I hope you all have a wonderful Forth of July weekend and remember to pray for our nation!

Intern Offers Reflection

The Fire in the Night interns I'm living with are pretty rad. There's this one who definitely thinks and lives outside of the box. Paige lives according to the Spirit and lives out a certain amount of freedom, that at times I am provoked to jealousy for. Today I wake up to find the following from Paige on our dry-erase board:

Reflection for the Day:
Bananas are better on ice cream than on pizza.

Question to Ask Yourself:
Would a monkey be mad if you stole his banana?

The funniest part of the fact that she wrote this on the board is that she is on a liquid fast. I bet she'd take the banana from the monkey without thinking twice about it. Oh, and I believe the monkey would fight back.

Learning LOVE is Like Learning to Drive a Stick Shift

Today I came to the realization that learning the love of the Lord is like learning to drive a stick shift. When you begin to learn to drive a manual automobile, you have no grid for how to operate the vehicle (unless you grew up on a farm in the middle of Nebraska, and you came out of the womb knowing how to drive a tractor with gears. In that case, this blog does not apply to you).

When we first try to understand how God loves us and how much He loves us, we have no grid. We were in the world, and we only know how it operates, with all its greed, lust, and selfish ambitions. As we learn to drive, it is very awkward at first, trying to operate the clutch, gear shift, and gas all at once. God's love is not so complicated, but coming out of the world is. It is remembering that the sin, along with all the shame has been removed from us, as far as the east is from the west (Ps. 103:12). It is about realizing that even when we think we are dark and ugly because of the darkness of our hearts, we can still run to the open arms of God and He won't condemn us. It is about recognizing the accusations as accusations, and not what we thought was the truth that the world taught us.

When we are learning to drive, it is so easy to stall. We don't give the car enough gas, or we pop the clutch. We we are learning to love God and receive His love, we fall right on our face sometimes, as we forget the main point of life is to love God and be loved by God. We "pop the clutch" as we think we have to strive to earn His love. We stall out when we seek the affirmation of men rather that rely on the affirmation and love of the Lord.

Learning to engage the gears going up a hill is a whole other story. You think you have got it down until you try to start in first gear going up a hill. It is the same way with knowing the Lord's love for us when we hit our first few mountains, or obstacles, to maintaining a "yes" in our hearts to His leadership. How about Mt. Self, Mt. Doubt, or Mt. Where-Are-You-Lord? I continue to stall out trying to go over those mountains. Even though these "stalls" are painful, the Lord is using them to create more room for Him and teach me of His everlasting love even more.

Eventually though, learning to drive a stick shift becomes like second nature. You don't even have to think about what to do first, or even how high the RPM's are before you shift. It just comes naturally. Even though I have not learned how to drive God's stick shift love-mobile, I am hoping that one day it will become something I don't have to think about with every hill or mountain. I hope that one day knowing the love of God will become not just second nature, but first nature. His nature must become my nature.

Change - It's Not Just Something in Your Pocket

I get home from spending the last 2 weeks living out of a suitcase to find the place a total disaster. I had been staying at some friends' apartment to dog-sit while they went home to Alaska to deal with storage, etc. While it was a very nice time of solitude and slinging dog toys around to be fetched, it was frustrating not being able to do things I really needed to be doing in the evenings because of a lack of internet and no access to the things at my place that I needed in order to get things accomplished. One of the biggest challenges was doing laundry, which I ended up not doing. Thank God I had enough clean underwear! (A tribute to Mom).

Upon arriving to my place to hopefully unpack and unwind I find that last week's tropical storm must have gone THROUGH our townhome. In addition, all the old furniture is gone (including my favorite blue recliner) and has been replaced with new and/or new-to-us-but-used furniture. A few boxes with IKEA furniture is scattered around. Personal items are sprinkled throughout. I guess that is what I signed up for when I chose to live in the intern house. Not for long though.

In a couple of weeks I will be moving - again. This is something I tried to avoid a few weeks ago, when faced with the choice to move a few houses down, but now it seems as it is the Lord telling me it is, in fact, time to move on. I will be moving in with the couple in which I dog-sat for. They are a sweet, young couple, and about 12 weeks pregnant! I am looking forward to helping her get ready for the baby, and being able to maintain having my own room. One of the reasons I am moving out is because in about a week, about 3 more interns will be moving in, which means the RA would move into my room with me, making the grand total of people living here = 8. No thanks. Been there, done that. I've already lived in a dorm and a sorority house for more that my share of time. It really is time for me to go.

On top of that, my hours at IHOP will be changing too. I will be joining the evening section, as that section of the "wall" is the weakest right now and I have a burden for it. Good-bye evening hang-out sessions with friends. Good-bye dinners right out of the oven. Good-bye social life. Hello wilderness.

Just in case it seems like I am complaining - I am not. I am looking forward to what God is going to do in me during this next season. There is really no reason for me not to change my hours, except to stay in my comfort zone and swim with the main stream of society. Praise the Lord for swimming against the stream and being a little bit radical for Jesus. He sure is worth it!

Chuck's Wedding

The wedding was beautiful. The bride gorgeous, and the bridegroom radiant. It truly was a picture of the longing of Jesus for His bride. The whole event was fun and a prophetic witness to the coming Wedding of the ages. The ceremony was complete with a chupah and Jewish dancing. It was great to see a lot of my covenant family and to be able to celebrate with Chuck and Susan of their new life together. One of my favorite parts of the wedding (besides us ushering in the groom's party & Chuck) was when the bride (Susan) gave all the unmarried ladies a white rose to symbolize the faithfulness of the Lord. She did this instead of throwing a bouquet, and it was very eloquent and appropriate. The whole weekend was refreshing and a much needed trip, as it was my first in six months. Praise God for weddings!

Live, from ZHOP

This is a post live, from the Zadok House of Prayer in Ft. Mill, SC. The set I'm sitting in is rockin'. The main worship leader is singing on John 17 and abiding in the love of Christ. Oh how funny God is. It is so often that I find myself sitting in the prayer room and the worship leader and/or prophetic singers are singing about something the Lord is speaking to me about. He's been stripping my heart down again, causing me to question what I really believe. I have found a lot of doubts in there, but I realize that it is just so that He can show me the real truth. He's revealing His love to me in a deeper way and really putting a cry in my heart to want to see Him and hear Him.

On a different note, it is so good to be here. I decided to drive up for Chuck Mervin's wedding and I am so glad that I did. The drive was beautiful and the Lord spoke to me, as He usually does on road trips (that's another blog for another time). It is really good to see my covenant family. This afternoon there was a rehearsal for the wedding, which I was in, because I'm actually in the wedding! Cool enough, though, not just me, but all the spiritual sons and daughters that are in town for the wedding. Apparently it is a Jewish custom to usher in the groom. So we will line up in two lines and the groom (Chuck) and his party will walk in between us. Oh, and we get to sing the Doxology while we are forming the lines (a little memoir from the Trail of Tears).

I have a lot more to say, but it's getting late, and they've also put all us spiritual children to work in the morning to help set up (typical Cause style). More to come later....

Eternity-Minded?

Another week has gone by. Time passes more quickly than I've ever realized before. The hours pass quickly in the House of Prayer and I am faced with the fact that yet another week has passed. I don't feel very different and I am doing almost the same thing day in and day out. It is not boring at all, but an adventure of sorts, without the cool landscape. It seems that the older I get, the faster time goes. Or, maybe since I pray for the urgency of the hour, God is helping me gain a new perspective that time is of the essence and that HE REALLY IS COMING SOON. Of course, when we say soon, it could be like another 30 years or more. In fact, it most likely is, because God is going to end abortion and that will birth a whole new generation, that I believe will see the coming of the Son of Man. But that's a whole other blog...

Last year, before I got to IHOP, I was planning on being here for only 6 months, and that seemed like a long time to me. Now, I am reflecting on the time and I can't believe it's already been 6 months. What's more is that I know that I need A LOT more time in the HOP before I can really be good for anything. 6 months was like a drop in the bucket. I wonder if I'll be saying that 10 years from now?...

Is this what it means to be "eternity-minded"?

Feast of Weeks (Shavuot)

Last night the Lord drew me to Beth Ha'Mashiach (a Messianic congregation) again to celebrate a feast of the Lord. Since He said "these are My feasts," I am honored that He called me to celebrate and come before Him (Lev. 23:2). It was funny that this feast came up this weekend, since we'd been studying it in our End-Times class and in our egroup, as it relates to the End-Times. Each of the seven feasts point to Jesus and all of them will be fulfilled by Him, if they haven't been already. The Feast of Weeks was fulfilled when Jesus ascended into heaven and then sent the Comforter down on a group that was gathered in an upper room. This is now known as Pentecost, or when the Holy Spirit came and descended upon those in the Upper Room with tongues of fire (Acts 2:1-4).

So last night I was blessed to be able to celebrate by offering "fruit" (as a firstfruits offering) on the altar. We tied ribbons around the fruit, bread, or flowers, worshiped and placed the offerings on the altar. It was beautiful and I felt the Lord's pleasure over it. I had brought some white lilies to offer (that the Lord had highlighted to me in the store), which had a special meaning to me, after I had "coincidently" been meditating on Songs 2:2 earlier in the week:

Like a lily among thorns, so is my love among the daughters.


Isn't it funny how the Lord highlights even the smallest things to point to the fact that He is always there and is speaking to us with words of love? He is so good.

E-sword sweetness

So today I was perusing the E-sword website to see if there were any better bible translations available and I came across the "Extras" page. Wow! Was I ever excited happening upon this finding! I was like a little kid in a candy shop! I downloaded maps - which I am HIGHLY excited about since I am a visual learner. Many times I just skim over passages in the Bible with city names because I can't get a handle on them, because I don't know where they were originally located. Hopefully this problem will be remedied with my newly acquired MAPS!

I also downloaded a couple of free books that I am quite excited about reading, including ones on prayer by EM Bounds, The Pursuit of God, by AW Tozer, and Finney's Systematic Theology. I've already started the Tozer book. Sweet! I'll be occupied for a while...

Yesterday was eventful. I woke up at 6:10am (a rarity for me) to be at E-group by 7. Somehow I made it all the way there without coffee (my old roomies took the coffee pot with them when they left and I didn't have time to stop at Starbucks - bummer).

E-group was fun. It mainly consisted of us discussing the Feasts of the Lord as it relates to their fulfillment by Christ at the end of this age. I think majority of the time we spent "discussing" our holidays and how they are not biblical. We talked about how we would provoke the Jews to jealousy by beginning to celebrate the Feasts (not out of duty, but out of heart revelation). This is something I've wanted to do anyway and now that I know there's an extra added bonus of hopefully causing the Jews to seek God, I am all for it! We are privileged to have a Messianic Jew in our egroup, so that gives us a little bit of insider info, if you know what I mean.

The day in the prayer room was good. My prayer room team is meditating on Song of Solomon right now. We had one of the best debriefs yet and God kissed us with a little bit of revelation. He is so good!

On Wednesdays, my old roomie, Ashley, cooks dinner for anyone in the IHOP community who wants to come. Before dinner I got to connect with a new friend who is so interesting. She was in my Intro to IHOP class, and we haven't hung out a lot, but she has given me some amazing prophetic words and powerful prayers. Well, it happened again last night, and she really read my mail, so to speak. She really ministered to my heart in an area that really needs it right now and the Lord was all over it.

Lately we've been sharing testimonies after dinner and we jokingly call it "youth group" since it kinda has that feel. It's good though. Last night 2 girls shared, one of them being the friend who prayed for me earlier. She has one of the most amazing stories I've ever heard. The Lord has specifically chosen her as a prophet (and I do not say that lightly) and then brought her to Atlanta, from Long Island, NY, of all places (that HAD to be the Lord)! Believe me, if you heard her story, you would agree. Now I am provoked. I want the Lord to talk to me and move in my life like He did for her. But, maybe He already does, and I am not listening, or am unaware.

Help, God, I want to hear you!