Wednesday, September 21, 2011

As I write I am sitting on my wood floor leaning up against one of the French doors to my back porch.  The other door is propped open to let the nice, cool breeze in.  Its a wonderful blustery day and it just rained a little bit.  I just finished a bit of my home work and decided I would take a break and say a few words.

First of all, I apologize for not keeping this thing updated.  But I have an excuse!  It has been a busy week. This weekend we had guest speakers come from an organization called i squared to speak to us on Islam and Chrisitanity.  I learned so much!  All you Biola people, one of the speakers was named Jeff Morton.  I mention him because he said he teaches at Biola.  Funny guy.  Loved him.

I also started working at Panera on Thursday (my birthday, ha ha).  On the note of my birthday, everyone keeps talking about how old I am.  One of my guy friends thought I was married and so, apparently all my new young-in friends (of 18 and 19) think I should be married.  I think they're cute.  I'm not THAT old!  Come on people.

The last major thing on my to-do list is to get a couch.  Things are getting a bit more difficult to squeeze into my schedule now that I have a job.  But nothing is impossible with God.  I have faith that he will still bring us a couch.

I have so many blog entry topics lined up you have no idea!  Actually, they are really just short essays.  You know, thought bubbles that people would normally post in a blog.  However, I am not sharing them as of yet because I have not updated the world in a while about myself so I thought I'd share a bit more about what's happening with me.  As soon as I get into a rhythm of updating my blog I will start to tackle some fun subjects that have been on my heart.

I am so incredibly grateful to the Lord for how he is taking care of me out here.  He has exceeded all my expectations.  I am so blessed with the friends I've made and the classes that I get to take.

On Monday was the twelfth anniversary of the prayer room so we had a big celebration.  Mike Bickle shared some of the prophetic history and had some other people get up and share.  There was even a video of Bob Jones telling us the visions he had seen about IHOP.  Also, random tangent, just throwing this out to all you Vineyard old folks who would remember, Bob Jones was at the Vineyard in 1989?  Sam randomly mentioned that in class one day.  I think thats cool just because that was the year I was born.  Anyway, it was a really cool to hear the stories in their entirity and recommit ourselves to night and day prayer.

I will try my very best to update tomorrow if not in the next week. :) Blessings.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

So I moved into my bedroom on Saturday!  That was exciting.  Man, I've just learned so much about spiritual warfare in the last week that I was just not aware of.  I mean its like as soon as the Lord shows you his goodness Satan tries to take it away.  I'm very aware of it now, which is good.  I was so sick last week though.  I didn't have a bed and so on Friday I slept for a while on Sam and Brooke's couch.

Saturday: we did a treasure hunt at some festival thing in Independence.  It was fun!  I got a word that someone's ankle was going to get healed and we did pray for an ankle, but a skeptical and hurried father ushered the kid who prayed for away from us.  But before he left I made it clear to the kid that the Lord loved him because I showed him the paper and said that I believed his ankle was going to get healed.  I really believe that it did.  Also, I had a seen a picture of a kid in a basketball jersey and, sure enough, when I went to go buy something from a stand the kid was wearing one.  I struck up a conversation with him and his band members (they were raising money for their school's band) and I showed him the piece of paper I had written his shirt down on.  He didn't want prayer.  But me and my friend Elizabeth kept pressing in.  The group said, "Oh, you can just pray for our band."  Then a girl was like, "Yeah, we've had a lot of injuries."  It turned out her and her friend sitting right there had injuries.  So we prayed for them.  No, we didn't see miraculous healings but the Lord started downloading words into my friend Elizabeth for these girls and she just spoke God's truth over them.  They were really touched.  It was pouring rain on and off during this whole thing so we all rain under this tent to wait for the bus that would take us back to the parking lot we were parked at.  All of the crazy ones were running and jumping in the rain.  It was unforgettable.

Things God is doing in me: causing me to give up everything (things I didn't even realize I was holding onto), and fortifying walls of persistence and endurance. This week was my first time doing early morning prayer but God gave me so much grace.  Consistently this week he has reitorated the importance of being persistant in prayer and really being obedient to the Lord, even when you don't feel anything.  This guy shared at the EGS service that we have here on Friday nights that one month he really wanted to pray for deaf ears so he decided to make that month "pray for deaf ear month."  So basically stalked people who needed healing in their ears the whole month and was obedient to pray for them.  All month he did this and didn't see one healing.  Instead of giving up on prayer, he persisted.  Since that time he has seen increasing healings in of the ears.  It made me think of how one summer I had committed to praying alone with the Lord every day.  So, even when I didn't feel like it, I did it.  I mean, as an intercessor, I get burdened a lot, but not everyday.  But once I postured myself in a place of prayer, growth happened.  I may not have seen fruit at the time but months down the Lord God was doing crazy things in me.

In TCI Sam's word for us is "endurance."  This is interesting because it is a byward in Revelation, which we are studying in our class during the week.  He had been talking to us about endurance but he didn't explain until last night at our first TCI dinner at his house that the Lord had spoken that word to him for us out of a verse from Timothy about being soldiers.  I thought that was cool because before I left the Lord told me he was going to make me into a fighter.  Anyway, so last night Sam had us all cram into his tiny family room and watch this movie called Endurance, which is about this team of adventurers from Europe who decided to take the longest boat journey through this one icy sea (somewhere in the arctic).  Their ship got stuck in the ice and the movie told the story of how they spent 2 years trying to get out and succeeded!  It was a really prophetic word for our group who have to combat a lot of spiritual forces in prayer as we come up on our solemn assembly (the Call) 11/11/11 in Detroit.

Room mates: I have two lovely room mates now named Sonnet and Megan.  They are my age and older so I have a great balacne between all of my young 19 year old friends and them (I also have a friend who's 29 which has been good for my sanity).  You can be praying that we continue to grow closer.  This is a crazy time for Megan because she's a fourth year.  Sonnet and I have a spent a lot of time together.  I'm hoping to grow closer to both of them though.  And pray we get another room mate soon that is who needs to be here because we have one more empty room to fill.

Along with that I've met some pretty wonderful people.  Saturday night I "hung" with a fun gang of youngsters and also have been frolicking in parks in this amazing weather we've been having.  Sunday we have a picnic!

Other short but sweet news: I bought a bed.  This is good because sleeping on the floor wasn't going to work for me longterm :) (although I may need the practice for the Call).  I got a job.  I work at Panera.  The stars are amazing at my house when I walk out to my car at 5:40 every morning.  I love it!