Clouds

I'm sitting on the patio outside Higher Grounds, watching the clouds. There's a storm coming....

It reminds me of the End Times. But then everything reminds me of the End Times.

Yes, I know...

...I haven't updated in a long time. May is almost over and I still haven't posted the April recap yet. Bleah. I will blog at some point. But right now time is precious and I'd rather spend it making memories (with G-d in the prayer room and with my friends in various locations). The cool thing is, our internship is really moving in the prophetic as a unit. Pretty sweet.

I had a sucky day today (pardon my French). I asked Killer, CJ, Loch, and Sky to come into one of the side rooms and pray/prophesy over me. Good stuff. CJ is so funny...she giggled or said "Hmm" thoughtfully whenever she got a word. Which was often.

I like the Holy Spirit...He's pretty cool.

Yeah, so more later. Maybe. I'm going to stop making promises so that you won't be disappointed.

Lists

IHOPers who need to make CDs:

• Misty (who has like a bazillion songs she hasn't recorded)


• Luke Wood (one of the treasures of the PR...so, so good)


• Grace Falkner (just come to her sets or listen to her tracks on "Simply Beautiful" and you will be convinced)


• Jon Thurlow (if I could marry his voice, I would)

Things I have learned about contemplative prayer:

• It's hard. Really hard.


• If nothing much is happening, it makes me really, really sleepy.


• It is Biblical, but the church (aside from the Catholic church) doesn't really teach on it.


• It is about focusing outward, not inward like Oriental contemplation.


• It is healthy...instead of focusing on myself, I focus on Jesus.


• It makes me realize how much I don't know about fellowshipping with the eternal G-d.

What I want to eat right now

• Chocolate


• Peanut butter


• Chocolate *and* peanut butter

I need to get on home. I was doing some job-hunting on Monster.com, but not coming up with much. Misty's doing a solo devotional set...I think she got a haircut in the last few days. Pretty cute. Oh, her brother Clay did worship at FCF tonight for some reason...it was AMAZING. They didn't do spontaneous singing (which is like my favorite part of worship now...I keep going back to Rev. 4 and 5), but worship was definitely awesome. Hal Lindhart preached, since Mike's still out of town. His message was on Phil. 2:12 -- salvation doesn't mean that we can just do whatever we want; obeying G-d and fearing Him is our calling. I love that phrase: "work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." Good stuff. Okay, I should go. Oh, hey, I prayed on the mike at intern intercession for the first time in a while (I went to our intern Worship with the Word set and contemplated, which maybe helped get the juices flowing). What did I pray for? Ah, I prayed out of Col. 1:9-10, about being filled with the knowledge of G-d's will so that we'd have a walk worthy of Him (and of being His bride). I guess it went okay. I forgot my water under the chair and had to go back for it after I finished praying. There was a random hair floating in the cup. I hope it was mine. But still, pretty gross. I dumped it out in one of the plants in back of Multipurpose. KitKat thought it was pretty funny. I hope the plant appreciated the water...

Bleah. I am rambling. I don't want to go home because this is a good set...she's singing "Be Near" and "Yearn" by Shane Bernard (those songs are often paired, to great effect). Yet go I must, for curfew approacheth, and I will turn into a pumpkin or something if I'm not home by 11:00. Type atcha later.

Videos and pics

I am in the process of uploading a ton of pictures...here are some of my pics from our internship's latest outing.

I just discovered that PhotoBucket can store video. I'm not using it for pictures because of the storage limit (not using Flickr for the same reason), but I'll store some of my vids this way. Here is a movie I took of the prayer room. I think we were praying for a bunch of YWAM leaders...I wish this had sound; we were singing in tongues over them. It was pretty amazing.

Edit note: I want to take down the other video...sorry.

Stuffage

Today is corporate M.I.F. We are all going to a park to play and hang out. It's cloudy with a chance of showers, and right now it's a little chilly out, but the forecast is 80 degrees for this afternoon. Should be fun. I am bringing my camera -- last time we all went to a park I forgot it.

Ehh...what else. Oh. Since Mike and like half the senior leadership are out of town (a bunch are at the Onething conference in Tallahassee), Misty preached last night. On Hosea. W00t!! Unfortunately, I got drafted to usher, and then wound up counting the offering for about 40 minutes. I missed most of the message, but I got a voucher for a free copy of the sermon at the bookstore. Sweetness. Anyway, I drove to the Missions base to get a seat for Misty's 10:00 (she sings, she preaches, she prayer leads...she would annoy me if I didn't like her so much). Her set was out of this world. The team didn't even use any loops or weird instruments...just the straight-up IHOP sound, but it was intense. They did some awesome choruses based on Song of Solomon ("So come into Your garden," "I'm no longer my own / I'm Your garden," "Here, O L-rd, have I prepared a place for You"). Great stuff.

So I should get to the PR. We don't have to be in the prayer room before 10:00 on Saturdays now, but I like to get there a little early to study A.W. Tozer's Knowledge of the Holy. It's a good book -- short but packed (I could spend months on the first chapter). I highly recommend it. Okay, off we go.

Pics!!

I am too lazy to upload my pictures...I have like a gazillion. I think I win the award for most pictures in the internship. My hard drive is all eaten up by photos...that and all the recordings of classes I've done.

So anyway, here's a link to my roomie's pics. I love this one in particular...three of my favorite people in the internship.

Jesus loves me. For real, man!!

So I was just thinking about how G-d loves me...I've been feeling dry lately; I haven't been in the Word very much. I went to a seminar all day yesterday (it was on how to raise support) and didn't read the Bible at all. Today I cleaned toilets and hung out at home. Stiles came over and played her guitar for a while, singing through Rev. 4 and 5. Good stuff, but as she sang I kept feeling gritty and dry inside...a few months ago I would have tried to soothe that by hanging out with people or whatever, but this has happened to me often enough that I know I need to go straight to the Word. I came to FSM early to read the Bible before service started. I started thinking about G-d's emotions before I even cracked the book open. So G-d is perfect, right? Yeah. And He feels every emotion perfectly and to the fullest. So He loves me perfectly, even in my "weakness," "immaturity," "brokeness," "darkness," or whatever IHOP word you want to pick. Basically, He perfectly loves imperfect people. I don't know...I found it cool. I opened up Song of Solomon, naturally...I have been living in that book for the past month. And Withit's Song of Solomon track this week was a-MAZING. I just want to read it every day. It's the book that's most changed my relationship with the L-rd.

Tracks

FSM classes have ended, so in those timeslots we now have tracks. Tracks meet for an hour and a half and are taught by OTI leadership. I've put up my new schedule. I'm excited about the tracks I'm taking. Today I had Heart of the Judge, taught by Fearless Leader. It was pretty good...I am looking forward to falling more in love with the Man whose innocent death makes Him worthy to judge. After that I had Contemplative Prayer. Tracey Sliker taught that; did a good job despite a cold. I am excited about "wasting" time just lovin' on Jesus. That's really what contemplatives do, I guess.... They don't just sit around and love Jesus and not do anything else...good contemplatives are apparently also good multitaskers: thtey fold laundry and love Jesus, drive to the grocery store and love Jesus, or (in my case) clean toilets and love Jesus.

Oh, on Sunday I had the prophetic track with the Falkners (Grace's parents). They are awesome; the class was well-taught. We played a "prophetic game" for most of the second half of the class. We picked one person as the subject, then prayed and asked the Spirit to give us one single word to describe the person. Then each of us (about twenty or twenty-five people were there) gave our words one by one. At the end of the round that person got a list with each word on it. Some of the words seemed pretty random, but as we continued to play the game the Spirit's presence definitely increased; even the weird words started to make sense. Sometimes people even got the same word (we were not allowed to change our word, even if other people had already gotten that word -- it served as confirmation).

I got picked as the last person for the game; I got a pretty amazing list, too. I'll type it up:

• Delightful/full of delight


• Explosion


• Adventurous


• Joyful


• Potent


• Princess


• Bird's nest (two words, but whatever -- it's packed with symbolism)


• Yearning


• Passion


• Chosen


• Excellence


• Boldness


• Strong


• Vision


• Adamant


• Healed


• Staff


• Fingerprint


• Steady


• Enduring


• Strength


• Foundation


• Shooting star


• Strength


• Open


• Seeing

Cool, eh? I thought so. I was pretty high on that when I went to my friend's house for dinner...and then at service Mike preached an amazing message on "The Wonderful Worth of a Woman." A perfect Mother's Day message. I hope my future husband somehow hears that message. :-D

Random habitual quotes from interns

Yeah, so these are really only for the interns who read this blog...but even if you aren't an intern, you may laugh at these quotes if you wish.

• "Even now, for such a time as this" -- everyone


• "Dangit!!" -- various


• The famous delayed laugh: "HA ha ha ha!! *embarrassed silence as everyone else laughs*" -- Withit


• Exchanging shots in a Song of Solomon battle: "My beloved is white and ruddy!"
  "Oh, yeah? Well, my beloved is chief among ten thousand!" -- various


• "Pa-RAISE the L-rd!!" -- HoB; CJ


• Wes Martin: "Can I get an 'amen'?"
  Everyone: "Glory! Hallelujah! Testify!!!"


• "I amaze myself daily" -- CJ (after making a mistake)


• "I'm serious!!" -- Helena


• "I love Jesus more than food" -- me, when trying to keep fasting in the presence of sweets


• "Any 'monies? No? Good." -- Corey Russell making the obligatory request for testimonies when he really wants to move on with class


• "Blast you, Sliker! Give us Barabbas!" -- everyone to Dave Sliker when we are annoyed with him


• "Ooo...oooooo.....ooooooooooh darn!!!" -- Garner, me, Princess, and anyone else who wants to make fun of a Minnesota accent


• "That's not OK" -- Killer


• "Good to know!" -- Princess


• "We have no grid for that" -- everyone

Mmm

That smoothie was good. Orange and banana with ice and honey. I have gotten quite good at making smoothies over the past few months, if I do say so myself.

Anyhoo. I have briefing in five minutes; just thought I would drop a note to say that the baptism service was awesome and things are going well here. FSM classes are ending; we had the last meetings of Corey's class (Eternal Glory of an Intercessor -- and let me tell you, the ministry time was intense) and Allen's class (Excellencies of Christ -- the resurrection, good stuff). Today is the last day of Dave Sliker's End Times class. He hates it when people sit in the bleachers, so all of us interns are going to sit there this afternoon to make him laugh. Also, I am making two signs with sayings we have picked up from him: "Blast you, Sliker" and "Give us Barabbas!" Inside jokes...okay, g2g.

Happy Birthday IHOP

Seven years ago today the International House of Prayer started. It didn't go 24/7 until September 1999, but this is still a landmark date. We interns celebrated it by...going to other churches?? No, it was kinda fun, but I would rather have gone to both the 10:00 and the 6:00 services at FCF. Instead, Killer, Carol, and I went to the Grandview Assembly of G-d, right by FSM...the one that really doesn't like IHOP and has all sorts of "No IHOP parking" signs in their parking lot. We had to be very careful when the people there asked us where we were from...they were very friendly, though. I would rather not say more than that because I'd be tempted to say not-positive things, and Tracey encouraged us to think positively about these churches, especially when praying for them at our intern intercession churches. (The reason we went to local churches is because we often pray for the overall church of Kansas City, and Tracey thought it would be fun for us to go and actually see the people our prayers affect.)

I have to go home now and clean my apartment. It shouldn't be too bad since we did deep clean last weekend (for three hours...ack). I'll probably go to the prayer room and get all juiced up for the baptism tonight. Dude, I am so excited...especially after that three-day deliverance seminar. It's gonna be awesome. Type at you later.

Quick update

I am working on the comprehensive update for April...might get that done later today. Our schedule is crazy right now. We just got done with the Global Bridegroom Fast, and now we are attending Graeme and Sabrina Walsh's three-day seminar on deliverance. It's pretty amazing...all teaching so far, with a ministry time scheduled for Saturday. I'm on break right now and am looking forward to the last session for today, which will be on Freemasonry and its effects of spiritual bondage and demonic oppression on generations of family members. Getting back to the schedule, most of our internship is getting baptized again on Sunday...which happens to be IHOPS's seventh anniversary. Allen Hood wants to make the baptism a part of the 6:00 FCF service...we'll probably worship and then just get dunked one by one. The baptism service will include deliverance and anointing with oil for various things. The cool thing is that there will be an army of people waiting to pray and prophesy over us as soon as we emerge from the water. It is going to be *awesome*...and G-d's favor is definitely on us. I mean, how many people get to fast for three days, go through a deliverance seminar for three days, and then get to renew their baptism? Sweet!!!!

Okay, my battery is dying, and I need to get back to my seat soon anyway. I promise to post more later, especially about the baptism of the Holy Spirit, which I am fasting for today (and have been since Sunday...I've had real grace for that). Much love to all y'all....