The outpouring of the Spirit that is happening right now is wonderful. Let’s face it. The lives and hearts of many are being restored and transformed by the power of God. It may look silly, unsanctified… what ever little irksome adjetive you want to ascribe to it but it is REAL. Unfortunately I traveled to the Awakening over the Thanksgiving holiday when many IHOPpers and visitors were home visiting family and so the atmosphere wasn’t as intense as I thought it would be but some friends are saying that the presence of God is even more intense right now than it was when it first began. I experienced the weighty presence of God when I was there and received some really significant words of knowledge that impacted me a ton. Those are all fun experiences, to be filled with joy of the Lord, to feel the fire of God on your body, to hear a powerful word of knowledge.
But I don’t want to just have experiences. The restoration that is happening in the lives of of God’s people isn’t just about a cool phrase or a charismatic cliche or hype and excitement. These encounters have to point to Jesus. And they do!… the difficulty in this is that we have to REMEMBER that it is about Him. That when someone gets set free of homosexual tendencies that it is the kindness of the Father being manifest in their lives. His attributes are being revealed through the transformation that is being imparted. Many are being surprised at the goodness of God in this hour.
Let’s use this move of God to find out about Jesus!
Filed under: Revival
When I am not so overwhelmed with life, I will post something about my thoughts and experiences during the IHOP Student Awakening in Kansas City.
I knew that the dates that Keisha and I were going to the revival were significant. Last night Todd talked about this being a shift of the second wind of the Spirit in this revival. I can’t even describe what happened last night. It was amazing. Todd announced the #14 and #15 resurrection from the dead that has happened since the beginning of this revival.
Also last night I felt that Jesus was really given precedent above everything else. Above the signs and wonders and above the emotion, Jesus was in that room and enjoying the adoration that we were giving Him. The whole night was about Him. I also felt this infusion of longing for holiness and purity of heart. In the beginning of the service I saw Jesus walking around with a big syringe and sticking it in the chests of various people. The he came up to me and stuck the syringe into my chest and shot this dark, silvery liquid into my heart. I felt that this was grace to live holy before the Lord. It turned out that the rest of worship the worship leader and Todd both were prophetically speaking about maturity and walking in holiness. I felt like I was sitting on the cusp of an extremely important moment in history.
Filed under: IHOP Operations, Life in General, Manifestations of the Spirit, Revival
Tomorrow I’m heading to Lakeland Florida to participate in a crazy healing revival. I will first fly out to Nashville, where another girlfriend will be coming from Kentucky to pick me up in which we will then drive the next 10 hours down there. It will be a week of the manifest presence of Jesus. There couldn’t possibly be a better vacation than that. However, things got a little tricky after this morning. I was informed that instead of returning to KC on the the 3rd that I must stay in Lakeland, as a bookstore manager and help Eddie James with his merch table until the 11th. This vacation has now morphed into not one but two weeks of the presence of Jesus… while being surrounded constantly by people.
Just a little peek into my personality. I truly do love people, however, I also love being by myself and openly proclaim that I am peculiarly a classic introvert. There are two things that only the closest people to me know provoke me to insanity and absolute crankiness and this is A. lack of food and B. lack of alone time.
This might get interesting.
Friday night I had sushi with pals Rebecca, Aaron, Lisa and Ann in which Rebecca, Lisa, and I gathered again to see Prince Caspian. Saturday Aaron and James helped me move and then Lisa arrived with a beautiful bouquet of electric blue delphinium and we sat and talked for some time. The rest of the afternoon and all of Sunday I was able to spend completely alone. While I probably would have preferred several more days of complete isolation in order to contain myself for the next couple of weeks, I’m hoping that one and a half days might suffice.
Either way… I’m not sure if I will be posting again for the next couple of weeks so bonjour!
Filed under: Revival
I am flying down to Nashville on May 27th and will be meeting my friend Keisha who is going to pick me up there where we will head down to Lakeland Florida for the biggest move of God I will see yet (though it will only intensify from there on, I’m sure). I cannot wait to be under a manifest presence of God like that and see miraculous signs and wonders night after night. I’m anticipating this trip to be life-changing. Woo hoo!
1 After Jesus had finished instructing his twelve disciples, he went on from there to teach and preach in the towns of Galilee.
2 When John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing, he sent his disciples 3 to ask him, “Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?”
4 Jesus replied, “Go back and report to John what you hear and see: 5 The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is proclaimed to the poor. Matthew 11:1-5
Many have been questioning the authenticity of the revival that is happening in Lakeland but how can we really know if Jesus is in the midst of it? In the above passage Jesus is explaining to John’s disciples that signs and wonders are a sure sign that it is the Messiah at work. Satan isn’t doing the healing because Satan is a liar, a thief and wants every creature of God to be destroyed. It is out of God’s love for humankind that He is manifesting Himself to heal, restore, and bring the lost to Himself (Isaiah 61).
I can see a theme working in this whole movement and it is this: He is offending our minds to reveal our hearts because this isn’t from ourselves but from Him. Who can understand the mind of God? I have read outrageous statements from Christian leaders saying that this whole thing is driven by emotion and not God. They go on to explain that ‘true revival’ is when we are all reading our 5 chapters a day. Are you kidding me? Not that reading 5 chapters a day is bad. I actually read more than that but if that is revival than I am highly disappointed.
Jesus came to do these things? He didn’t just heal broken bodies, end at that, and then go up to heaven and twiddle his thumbs until He’s ready to come back down to earth. He told us that we will do greater things than these! He has His very spirit living inside of us and we are suppose to be preforming miracles that were even more creative and extravagant than His!
11Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at least believe on the evidence of the miracles themselves. 12I tell you the truth, anyone who has faith in me will do what I have been doing. He will do even greater things than these, because I am going to the Father. 13And I will do whatever you ask in my name, so that the Son may bring glory to the Father. John 14:11-3
If you believed that the resurrection happened and Jesus rose up from the ground with a new body than you should believe in the power that still exists to do that very thing… raise the dead. Why must you think that Jesus wants us to suffer through sickness and death when we are here on earth. He loves us! Of course He doesn’t want that! That is one of the reasons He sent His Holy Spirit!
If you don’t believe these occurances are for today, I encourage you to ask the Spirit of Truth, Himself. Ask Him if they are from Him and if you believe in having a personal relationship with Jesus, then you should believe that He will answer you.
It feels like I’ve been praying the same things over and over since childhood. These are the same prayers and requests I make to God on my bed each night, even still, as an Intercessory Missionary. Prayers for the salvation of my brother, for revival… personal requests. In almost 28 years I’ve never seen any of these requests answered. Not the big ones anyway. I guess I’ve been feeling like giving up. In my stubborness, I’ve had to force myself to remember that this isn’t about me and my list of wants. He wants me to know Him first. It’s been difficult lately trying to talk to Him when I don’t understand, when nothing seems rational… when I can’t even behave like a rational person myself.
Have you ever had those times when you just don’t want to talk to Him and you’re doing something totally random, not thinking about Him at all and He just shows up and won’t leave you alone? Lately, with me, I’ll be reading Anna Karenina or something and my heart will start burning and I will just sort of wish He would stop. Finally, tonight, with me being stuck in the house all day due to snow, He is showing Himself relentless as usual. He doesn’t give up, which amazes me every day. So I put my down my book and I just sat there. Not knowing what to do and I heard Him say I miss you.
I said to Him… I don’t understand. Won’t you please just answer one of these big requests… just one to keep me going? I just need to know that what I say to You each day is actually doing something out there. I feel powerless.
And then I heard Him say, Isaiah 62:6.
You would think I would know that reference by now but I didn’t. I flipped open and this is what I read… it’s definately a familiar one on the base:
6On your walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen;
All day and all night they will never keep silent
You who remind the LORD, take no rest for yourselves;
7And give Him no rest until He establishes
And makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth.
I knew this was an alarm being sounded. I’ve been giving myself a lot of “rest” but it’s not a time for retirement. It’s so easy to sit back when you don’t see a single prayer answered. It’s so easy to give up when you feel like you’re wasting your time.
God… why do you run your kingdom like this?
Because this is how I get to spend time with you.
Filed under: IHOP Operations, Life in General, Literature, Missions, Revival
1. I was an English major, however, I took almost no interest in grammatical studies. I love to read and write (though I can’t say I write well) and that is precisely why I studied English… not to figure out sentence structure but to read and study fantastic literature. In fact, the authors I enjoyed the most were Faulkner and Joyce, both known to be the most spastic, nonsense, stream of consciousness writers in existence. Faulkner is thought to have over 350 spelling and grammatical errors in The Sound and the Fury but I love his writing because it is compelling, thought-provoking and you have to actually THINK when you read his stuff… not to mention the extreme intensity of his stories that are always likeable to extremely intense people like myself.
Anyway, to get to the point I am finally taking time to not only read some good literature (aside from all of the Bill Johnson, Art Katz writings) like Anna Karenina but have also decided to brush up on some grammar, having actually purchased a college grammar text book. I hope this helps because I have become intensely lazy about my usage, sentence structure… heck even my spelling. I need to become un-lazy.
Back to Tolstoy. He is a Russian genious not to mention he became a follower of Jesus later on in his life and later dedicated many short stories to the Lord… many of them analogies for the sermon on the mount (I own a big chunk of the collection).
2. This morning Elizabeth and I were both blow-drying our hair at the same time in two seperate rooms. For a brief moment I thought “I wonder what would happen if we blew a fuse.” Of course, seconds afterward we actually did blow a fuse and neither of us knew where the fuse box was. Suprisingly, after scrambling around the house trying to find a working outlet, I was actually 10 minutes early to work.
3. I think I may have a chance to go to New York in December/January… not sure yet but this is a huge possibility. I have always wanted to visit NY since I was a little girl. My parents lived there for awhile before I was born and they absolutely loved it. I use to read all kinds of stories like The Cross and the Switchblade (about the supernatural beginnings of Teen Challenge –an organization my dad worked for which is basically a spirit-filled rehab center with an 86% success rate of recovery), Run Baby, Run and Jesus Doesn’t Live in Brooklyn. Lately, the Lord has been really stirring things in my heart about New York. When I was in London, I actually received a prophetic word about New York and a week after I got back, Julie Meyer gave a prophetic word about the city.
The truth is I have a heart for people in general. Mostly people who’s hearts are hard toward the gospel. When large cities like London, New York, and Paris get hit with massive out-breaks of the Spirit, it’s just inevitable that the rest of the world will follow. Yes, getting touched by the presence of God is amazing but I want to see people fall in love with Jesus. I want to see countenances changed and hope restored in the lives of broken people. Okay… before I go more on a tangent…
4. Yesterday, I was helping Laura and Erin in receiving and as we were working, Erin popped in a DVD with Heidi Baker speaking. I thought… hmmm… this is far different from my last job where witches would come up to me asking me where the occult section is (I worked at Half-Price Books in Dallas). I love the fact that I work at a job where we can stop for a moment and worship Jesus. I guess I am becoming less and less bitter about being away from my friends. God is really doing things. I’m encouraged.
Filed under: Biblical love, Family, Friendship, House of Prayer, Intercession, Missions, Revival, The Church
Polzeath is much slower paced than London but in a good way. As the Combrinks suggested, I was “gallavanting all over London”. I loved to take the tube (or subway) all over the city and walked from street to street observing the people and history yet at the same time being in solitude and keeping to myself. I am an explorer at heart and am secretly, intensely spontaneous and maybe a bit of an enigma.
But here in Polzeath it’s much different. The scenery is the complete opposite. The surfers and villagers are more of the “chill” type, far different from the fast-paced and often uptight lives of the city folk. And here it seems that I am much more surrounded by people. It is wonderful feeling like I am a part of a family again… that I am connected to a group of people. I’m finding it surprising that I can’t think of anyone that I have been so connected to at IHOP that I actually miss them. The Farnham’s are such an inclusive, loving family. The kids are hilarious and I wish that I could post some of the silly pictures we’ve taken together. It’s been actually quite healing for me being around people that I know accept me and care about what goes on in my life. I have to say that this is one thing about IHOP that often disappoints me.
Yesterday, Paul, Shirley and I climbed the moors that overlook the ocean. It was the most beautiful scenery that I have ever viewed before. We climbed to the highest height in Cornish country and prayed over the land. I can’t even describe in words how lovely it was. We even spied some wild ponies that were grazing on the side of the hill.
Later last evening we joined with a couple named Chris and Ness who came for dinner. They are surfers who run the Tubestation church here in Polzeath and are an amazing couple. It was really exciting for all of us to really share our burden for harp and bowl here in Cornwall and the transformation that is really possible because of corporate prayer but ENJOYABLE prayer (something that I don’t think many people understand around here).
