So, I’ve connected with people and prayed for a couple of complete strangers – like for 2 guys who are serving in relief efforts in LA, and someone else who was sick/having a bad day. Maybe random people pray for me, too. Hope so.

I have to wonder – is anyone using Twitter for outreach/evangelism? I’m not seeing it be as productive a medium as a forum, IM’s, or email could be… but perhaps to plant a seed here and there, or to round out conversation?

But in that half-awake, half dream state, my mind turned to something that it shouldn’t have turned to and for a few minutes I contemplated something that is sin. Then in the deep recesses of my mind I heard a word – “Desecration” (hey! I know that Voice!) – and still in that half-awake, half dream state I spoke to desecration and commanded it to leave me.

Instantly I was awake (and I mean six shots of espresso awake) and my contemplation of that sinful thing was gone. It was like it fell like a house of cards in the wind.

So I wandered into the kitchen (Ken was still asleep) and pondered what just happened. I’m fairly sure it wasn’t a dream. So I talked to God about it, told Him I was sorry for letting my mind wander, and I felt His forgiveness (which – going back to my post yesterday about discernment, I often “feel” things God’s doing as well). Then I talked to Him about a variety of other issues going on, and I felt (and still feel!!) His presence and His love in such a powerful, tangible, literal fashion that I’ve started weeping a couple of times and at times I can hardly type… but I wanted to share with all of you what He’s up to this morning around here… what’s He doing in your hearts and your worlds today?

Found two things of interest to everyone who’s following the Lakeland Revival/Todd Bentley and the issues therein:

The first, from Pray the Revolution, discusses heresy hunters and bereans. Good take on it.

The second, from the Prayer Room blog, talks about Todd’s comments on his situation, through Rick Joyner. I’m copying the relevant portion here – but the rest of what Rick has to say is important, too.

”Todd Bentley asked me to convey his appreciation for all the prayers, expressions of love, and concern while he tries to navigate through this present situation. He is grieved by the trouble and confusion this has caused, especially to his friends, coworkers, and all who have trusted him. He wants to make a clear statement about it, acknowledging his responsibility in this and the mistakes he made, but he feels that he should first meet with Pastor Bill Johnson, who is out of the country and will not be available for a couple more weeks. He asks that you would continue to pray for him, and he thanks those who are willing to be patient. He wants to do this right and not hastily or superficially. ”

http://kayla-worshippingwarrior.blogspot.com/2008/01/shedding-of-innocent-blood-hey-allas.html

Anyway, for some reason my first fully cognizant thought as I stumbled out here to make the coffee was, “I bet a lot of people wonder why the House of Prayer movement does what it does” (If you aren’t familiar with the House of Prayer movement, they’re folks who pray and praise God 24/7/365, in a highly organized fashion. They call their method “harp and bowl” after a verse in Revelation 5:8; it’s basically prayer and worship together, in responsive fashion. See ihop.org for more info)

Our church isn’t affiliated with IHOP in any way, but I’ve been extremely blessed by their ministry on GodTV and their website. A friend’s church is seeking to go to 24/7 prayer but I haven’t seen him for longer than ten seconds to inquire if it’s on the same format or what (Theirs is an AoG church – a bit different doctrine than the HOPs at one major juncture (eschatology))

So I was sitting here sipping my coffee and coming into wakefulness. My morning routine consists of getting Ken’s breakfast, packing lunch, laying out clothes for him, and then sitting here at the computer running through my email and feed reader for about 15 minutes until the coffee hits. Lo and behold, this morning there was a long post from Tim Brownlee of “Not So Daily Timmy” titled, “MY HOUSE” shall be called a house of prayer…. that addresses this very question from an insider’s perspective.

Here’s a great little excerpt:

Isaiah 56:7 clearly says that God’s house is to be a House of Prayer for all nations. If something is called by a particular name that should mean that’s what it is known as.

Now, there’s something to consider: Is YOUR church known as a house of prayer (or is it just called that?) I’m not arguing that everyone needs to shift to this 24/7 format – but perhaps we need a major shift of focus in what we’re doing, how we’re doing it, and why we’re doing it…

Posts to follow…

Tears and hysterics. She’d had a car wreck up in Maryland (where her summer job was), and was pretty sure the car wasn’t driveable.

She’d been driving back to her room with 3 of her friends and a guy ran the red light. She’s pretty sure that he had no headlights on, because all she saw was shadow. She knew the shadow would hit the side of her car, so she swerved to protect her passenger. It’s a good thing she did, because the girl might well have died. She took the impact on the front left bumper of the car. They spun around a few times and ended up banging into a big light pole.

The kids were jolted around a little bit, and pretty shook up – but none of them were injured.

The guy who hit them parked his car and took off on foot. The cops busted him later and he was in jail last I knew. They towed her car off, and a friend came to give them a ride home (THANKS GAVIN!)

About a week before, God showed me that Kayti would be a car accident before she left Maryland. I didn’t tell anyone – I just started praying. After she called, I told Ken and he said, “God showed me the same thing! I’ve been praying for her safety all week!!”

God answered those prayers. The tow truck guy was amazed the kids had escaped injury.

Since her car wasn’t driveable, we headed up to MD to get her and all her stuff and bring her home. She was supposed to have left Saturday afternoon to drive home ANYWAY!! At that point we were figuring that the car might be fixable. Kayt went that afternoon to get her stuff out of it (AGAIN – THANKS GAVIN!) and sent us a picture:

I, of course, burst into tears. Ken was pretty close. We got to see the car for ourselves the next morning – it looks far worse in person. The front bumper’s gone, the radiator’s smashed right into the engine, pieces of the top of the motor, like the emissions canister, are mangled or gone. The airbag deployed and Kayti says at the accident scene there was oil everwhere – so we think the engine block’s cracked too.

The tow truck guy told us that the insurance company will likely total it. It makes us mad because although it’s an older car, it was in pristine condition. Kayt had just put new tires on it and had some other work done to it. It even got great gas mileage!!

He also told us that by the look of things, the guy had to be travelling a lot faster than the speed limit.

We’re still waiting to hear from the policeman who responded to the scene. The cops say we have to wait 10 days for a police report – which includes finding out the guy’s name and insurance info. WHAT? She’s got to be at school Saturday morning. How’s she going to get there??

So, we’re praying for God to make a way for a speedy resolution to the whole matter.

We could have gotten a midnight call that our baby had been killed. God heard our prayers and protected her!!

So, we drove from Charlotte Sat AM to Greensboro, and rented a car because we weren’t sure the van would make that long of a trip. Drove up to the far side of DC through hours (weeks? years?) of bumper to bumper traffic, and got there so exhausted we decided to get a hotel rather than risk driving home sleepy. So we stayed at the Sleep In in Laurel, MD. If you’re ever in the DC area that’s the place to say. Nice room, nice indoor pool, nice breakfast, nice people for far less money than any of the other hotels in the area!!!

We drove back Sunday afternoon, after seeing the car (and crying some more). Got in lateish last night and went zzzzzzzzzzz. Still feeling tired and achy from so much riding, but so glad to be home with our daughter safe and sound!!

If you want to read something REALLY cool, scroll down to the heading, “A Visit From Jesus”.

ARRIVAL

Thursday morning we packed up and headed down to Charlotte. Our hotel (Best Western Carowinds) was quite nice. They let us check in early. We got a bite to eat and headed over to Morningstar fairly early. We’d never been there before, so we drove around and saw the big field where Friday’s meeting would be, and sort of self-toured their campus.

I’d heard that Morningstar had bought the old PTL (Jim Bakker) campus, but since the whole PTL thing blew up years before I cared about what Christians did, I didn’t know about it. They sunk bazillions of dollars into the place, and apparently even though it was opulent, some of the workmanship was shoddy – especially on the high-rise apartment building that’s going in right next to the church (which meets in the former lobby of the big hotel). Opulent doesn’t even describe the hotel/indoor mall/church… it looks like something out of a fairy tale (and yes, there IS a castle on the premises too – but it seems to be boarded up for now.) Morningstar bought it for 1.6 million in terrible disrepair, and they’ve been fixing it up ever since. It seemed to us that where they were able to preserve the beauty of the place inexpensively, they’ve done so – but where that would cost too much they’ve opted for plainer and more practical.

PARTNER’S MEETING

After we registered for the partner’s meeting, we ate a nice and inexpensive lunch in the church’s Missions Cafe, then wandered through the bookstore and such. While we were eating, we got to say a quick hello to Rick Joyner. I gained a lot of respect for him over the two days we were there. Many senior pastors of important ministries expect everyone else to do the work, and the pastor expects to sit in the air conditioning and get the glory for it. Rick was out there talking with team members, making sure they had what they needed… and on Friday he was out driving a golf cart around working!!

Eventually we bought a book and got in the book-signing line. I highly recommend that everyone read Todd’s latest book – The Reality of the Supernatural World. He signed it for us, and chit-chatted, and shook our hands. I do admit that it’s nice to know that it’s possible to be touched by Todd Bentley and NOT end up on the floor!!

The partner’s meeting was nice. We weren’t sure what to expect. They talked a lot about the work in Uganda, especially with the child soldiers (made me cry!) and they took up an offering, of which 100% of it goes to that work.

IMPARTATION

Afterward, we had a healing/impartation prayer line. This time when Todd touched me I went out on the floor (most folks did) and I had an experience with God that was just incredible. I could feel the heavy weighty kabod glory of God, and peace and warmth and love flowing through me. I just lay there for a long time, just drinking in His presence. After it was over, no one wanted to leave!!

FRIDAY’S REVIVAL SERVICE

On Friday, we got up and found the Starbucks We eventually made our way over to Morningstar. It was a big open field, but fortunately the main building was open and air conditioned, so before the service started at 5, we were able to go in and rest a bit. We sure got sunburned! But interestingly the sunburn doesn’t hurt…

CARNIVAL?

I’m sure a lot of people who see it on GodTV or youtube will say, “It had a festival (or carnival) atmosphere”. Well, sure. If you get a coupla thousand people together in a big open field, and make sure their needs are met, it’s going look like the county fair minus the rides. People need to potty – and so there were portapotties everywhere. People need to eat, and drink, and so there were food vendors (most of which were reasonably priced!). People also brought in coolers with dinner and bottled water. Since it was in a field, most people brought lawn chairs or blankets to sit on. People want to buy stuff, so the bookstore had a tent with books and t-shirts and such. Music or video was playing. Was it a festival? Yes!

One neat thing is that it was 08-08-08 and it was 88 degrees (the temp dropped 10 degrees between Thursday and Friday — THANK GOD!!). Still hot but not enough to really cause trouble.

The worship was great, but it was a little difficult for us to get into because we didn’t know ANY of the songs. The musicians were fabulous, and we did pick up on the choruses of a few songs along the way. So, we just had to determine to worship the Lord despite that. It was good dancin’ music!!

A VISIT FROM JESUS

The first highlight of my evening was when Todd announced that they were going to have a special commissioning for ministry prayer for people ages 25-40. Bob Jones had given a prophetic word prior to the meeting about a “new breed” of Christians – which I took to mean the younger generation rising up and really believing in, and acting upon, God’s Word.

So I stood up along with hundreds and hundreds of others, and Todd prayed over us all. Mid-prayer I suddenly couldn’t really hear him any more. It’s not like I went deaf – it’s more that my focus changed and his voice became part of the background noise.

I had my eyes closed and my hands raised and I was praying to receive everything that God wanted to give me.

Suddenly my eyes were filled with light, and out of that light I saw Jesus coming toward me. I was filled with awe and holy fear and anticipation all at once. I started crying, because I could feel His love for me. He stretched out His hand (I saw the scars!!) and He touched each of my hands, and my forehead. I very nearly fell out on the ground!! Then He was gone from my vision…

I’m not sure how to describe what I felt in those moments, except that after He had gone from my vision I could sense His presence in a greater way than I ever could before. For me, that’s really saying something, because the instant I was saved I could feel Him there with me, and that sense of Him has been growing ever since. And yet Friday that grew so much more that… wow.

I also had a literal sense of commissioning, and a confidence in God and in His ability to use me, to strategically position me, to speak through me.

I’m sure the heresy hunters will have a field day with my vision of Jesus… oh well. I think I’m going to make a heresy-hunter-hunter’s site this afternoon They need to get over themselves and read the book of Acts. They might even get saved…

RAIN

At one point, Todd brought up a young man from the Morningstar school (they’ve got a K-12 school there apparently). He and several friends had been to Lakeland, got some, brought it back and kicked off revival services there – they’ve got meetings 6 nights a week! That was one on-fire kid!! During the offering, they played a video of revival services there… WOW. People giving glory to God and burning with passion for Him – healings and miracles – and twice, rain… you could see on the video that literally drops of liquid were forming out of thin air and falling from above. It was WILD!!

HEALING

Todd started to call out words of knowledge. One was for a pain in the side, which Ken’s had for months. He reports that it’s gone. There were several dramatic healings that night.

MINISTRY

When we sat down, a mom and daughter sat next to us. It was obvious that both had health problems, and that the daughter had some muscle problems. She didn’t move right, speak right, etc. God spoke to me, “crack cocaine”, torment, and the name Ashley, and several other things. We planned on praying for both of them during the healing ministry, but late in the evening the daughter took off. The mom told us she was laying down in the car, feeling really awful. So we prayed with the mom (who’s on dialysis), and went out to the car. We prayed with the daughter, confirmed the accuracy of those words of knowledge, counseled her about unforgiveness and a few other things, and ended up going out for a late-night dinner with them. Lovely people. It’s hard for me, when I do God-encounter ministry like that, because it’s rare that I find out what happened afterward. They’ve got our phone number, maybe they’ll call us one day.

CAR WRECK

We were just about to pay and leave the restaurant when my cell phone rang. Why would Kayti be calling after midnight? I answered and she burst into tears. She’d just had a car wreck… and I’ll continue about that in my next post.

 And when I found out that if she hadn’t swerved to miss the guy, it’s likely that her passenger would have been killed. It turns out that she didn’t avoid him completely – just changed the impact location – and so her car is almost certainly totalled. It filled with black smoke, the air bag deployed, and the windshield’s busted on the driver’s side.  The tow truck guy says there’s no way the ins co will consider it worth fixing, so that’s what we’re going on. (If we thought they’d fix it quickly on Monday we might stay up here. But even if it were fixable it’d be no quick fix, that’s for sure.

The guy who caused the accident shot through a red light – she thinks with no headlights on, she says all that she saw was a shadow and she swerved to avoid that (it was very late Fri night when this happened). The guy left his car and took off running. The cops caught up to him at the 7-11 and arrested him. We still don’t know anything about him – name, whether he’s got insurance, whether he was drunk – but we’ve started praying that he does have insurance and that he gets to know Jesus.

The KICKER is that about a week ago I got notice from the Lord that Kayt would be in a car wreck before she left MD. So I have been praying all week, tho tempted to chalk it up to a momma worrying too much!! I didn’t even tell Ken about it!!  When she called, hysterical, to tell us what happened, I knew that God had answered my prayers. I told Ken and his jaw dropped – God had told him the same thing, and he’d also been praying all week!!! What a wonderful God we serve!!!

The trip to Charlotte was lovely – and the ministry was absolutely incredible. I had an experience with Jesus that just rocks my socks off, and I’ll say more about that later too.  We got to minister to a mom and her adult daughter after it was all over, and God gave me several incredibly accurate words of knowledge for them – things that not only could I not have known, but things that the daughter didn’t want to admit but finally did. The presence of the Lord in that big field was so incredible I don’t know how to describe it.

PLEASE join us in praying that the insurance companies will settle this quickly because Kayti’s GOT to be in Lakeland, FL early Sat morning for college!! If she doesn’t have a replacement car by then, we very well might need to rent a car and drive her down, or possibly put her on the Amtrak (which she despises, but it’s cheaper!!) I guess if we did that, we’d have to fedex all her stuff to her too. But God’s got a solution!

Gotta run!

Anyway, I saw a LOVELY small totebag (a little bigger than a pocketbook, but not big enough to qualify as a suitcase) of quilted fabric. I “picked out” the blue one as the one I liked – then fainted when I saw the price tag ($53!!!!). I said, “Lord, I’d like to have one, but I’m not spending that amount of money for it!!”

Today, I got a “nudge” to go into the Goodwill thrift store, and guess what I found there? Same bag. Same maker. Almost-new condition. Different price – I thanked God, and paid $3.

I’ve long known that God answers prayer big and small – but it always delights me to know that He delights in small things as well as big things!!