CRI Part 1 – Sean Malone’s Message

A few weeks ago, we had a very stirring message at our weekly FCF service. (If you are interested, you can buy the MP3 for $2.99 here. I think it is well-worth the money and the time.) Sean Malone, the director of Crisis Response International (CRI), shared and introduced his ministry, which is now becoming more officially connected with the International House of Prayer.

If you haven’t already heard of CRI, I strongly recommend checking out their website: www.criout.com

In summary, CRI is a disaster response ministry. Borrowing a sentence from their website: “Our vision is to train an army of end-time, prophetic, mercy missionaries, mobilized in the spirit of night and day prayer, to release great demonstrations of power, reach the harvest in crisis and rebuild cities on the Kingdom of God. “

Yes… that is a pretty loaded sentence. I am fluent in IHOP-ese and I STILL have a hard time keeping up with that sentence. Rather than unpacking each of those terms here, though, I seriously recommend listening to the message. He breaks it all down and gives a very clear summary of what CRI is all about. (And he tells stories. Who doesn’t love a good story?)

I had multiple people tell me that they were thinking of me during this message. And it makes sense that they were.

When I heard the message, what I experienced was more than being stirred by a great vision. When he cast the vision, it fully resonated with something that I have been carrying in my heart for years. It was an incredible moment. This thing that I have been weeping about for years was beginning to take shape. My own vision found greater clarity and I sensed the beginning stages of something I have carried in prayer finally coming to fruition.

In a few days, I will be heading into the woods with CRI to do a four-day training. I am more excited than I can articulate. I am also fairly nervous. It is a sober but hopeful expectation. I know that I am going to be REALLY stretched. But I feel the Lord in it and I trust His leadership. Please pray for me. The training will be taking place October 8-11.

I have more to say about all of this than I could fairly put in one post, so I will be writing a series of posts about CRI. If it’s any indication, I wrote 14 pages about this in my journal the other night. And training hasn’t even started yet.

If you are interested in hearing the message but don’t have the money (or feel sufficiently MP3-savvy), let me know. We might be able to work something out.

A Lot to Say

I find myself incapable of blogging, at the moment. The reason? I simply have too much to say.

We, the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, celebrated our 10th anniversary last weekend. 10 years of 24/7 worship and prayer seems like so much… and so little.

As part of the celebration, Mike took us back through the prophetic history. Mike simply shared stories from the last few decades about how the Lord was giving vision for this ministry (really, this movement) and beginning to ready the hearts of our leaders to keep a growing body of mostly 20-somethings centered in the Word and in the heart standards of Intercession, Holiness, Offerings to the Poor, and the Prophetic.

Every time I listen to the prophetic history, it stirs me. Never has it gripped me and shaken with the intensity of this last week. I also felt like I was getting a lot of correction from the Lord as we heard the stories and were given exhortations. Correction is always painful. However, I must also say that I am feeling the Lord’s kindness, in His correction, and that my heart is greatly encouraged.

At the end of the celebration, we committed ourselves to 24/7 works of justice to accompany our 24/7 prayers for justice. This means a much greater emphasis on evangelism and on serving our community. I am so grateful for this. It has been a growing longing within my heart, and I am overwhelmed to see it begin to come to fruition in our community. I have been weeping over this in a distinct way for about a year and a half.

No simple words exist to describe the major shift that is happening in my life right now. I feel like this is such a critical time for me. I can no longer live the way I was living before. I am feeling a greater weight of responsibility. I am also feeling a greater grace to walk in the risky things that the Lord has set before me.

Even in the last week, things have been happening to me in the place of prayer that I have experienced only rarely. And I am finding a boldness growing within me that I never imagined was possible, before.

My heart is full of hope. My heart is also very heavy, as the Lord has been sharing His emotions with me and causing me to feel the pain of injustice. In particular, there is an unsaved man that I have been carrying in my heart this week. Never have I felt such a “burden” of intercession.

I am also getting ready to do training with a ministry called Crisis Response International. I was originally planning on writing about three posts on this alone.

So, as I find time and language, I will begin to give expression to the many things that are shifting within me… and shifting around me. I could write pages about each of the above sentences.

I really encourage you to check out the videos and audio from our 10th anniversary celebration. I will post in more detail, recommending specific videos that are especially meaningful to me. But, if you want to go check it out, everything is available online at www.ihop.org.

More to come!

Feeling Very Loved

Bob Sorge spoke on Friday night. Incredible message. Wendy and I watched the archive of it on Saturday night (her sabbath; I love what that girl does with her free time).

I cried. A lot.

Bob talked about the letter to the church in Laodicea (Revelation 3). “As many as I love, I rebuke and chasten.” He also, as one might expect, talked a bit about Hebrews 12.

In short, I’m feeling loved. Very loved.

I really appreciate it when Bob speaks. It’s a rare event. Due to a vocal injury several (16-ish?) years ago, it is very painful for Bob to speak publicly. Very painful, and little more than the loudest whisper he can muster up. But I find that I am tremendously blessed by it every time he does speak.

It’s amazing what God will do with a heart that says yes to him in the midst of pain and hardship.

If you can, watch the archives of the message. I think we keep all the services archived for at least a week. If nothing else, check out one of Bob’s books. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

Old Habbits

Sometimes I wonder if it will ever become difficult, truly difficult, for me to shut down emotionally. Sometimes I wonder if I will ever be so alive that I can’t so easily deaden myself.

More specifically, I wondered tonight.

In our worship team briefing tonight, we talked a bit about solitude and silence. (Popular topic, considering our two months of voluntary 12am-6am silence as a community.) We talked about the way that, in the place of solitude, you encounter your anger and your grief.

Anger and greif… ick. Not tonight. Please, not tonight. I’m too tired for this.

Hello, Change

Our community is ever in a state of flux. Perpetual, significant change is just a norm. The intensity and the facets of the seasons of transition ebb and flow. Sometimes there are simple, gradual changes. Sometimes there are huge changes like death and birth, people leaving the country, people leaving the NightWatch.

We seem to have passed into another one of those high-intensity transitional times again.

First, we have the circumstances of change:

Silent Siege

As a NightWatch community, we are taking yet another step in consecrating our time of prayer before the Lord.

A year and a half ago, we did a thing that we called 90 Days of Consecration. The like-mindedness and eager participation of the entire NightWatch community, when our leadership called us to this consecration, was astonishing. And the 90 days had a profound, lasting impact on our community.

As a part of the 90 days of consecration, we removed all talking from the prayer room, with the exception of communication necessarily to run the prayer meeting.

Around the clock at IHOP, there is a general rule of limiting conversations to 30 seconds. While it’s a nice idea, these typically turn into a string of “30-second” conversations and you will see a lot of talking in the prayer room. (And it really is amazing how distracting a 30-second conversation can really be.)

After the 90 days had ended, we decided to permanently institute the no-talking rule. The truth was, we really liked what it did to the feel of the NightWatch. I truly am stunned by what this did to create a more sacred place for prayer… further enabling us to do what we are here to do.

For the next two months, we have been invited to a voluntary “Silent Siege”. From midnight to 6 AM, they have encouraged us to make it a time of silence, before the Lord. We still sing and pray in the prayer room, and communication necessary to lead the meeting will still happen. But what we are now working to eliminate are the conversations just outside of the prayer room, in the lobby, bathroom, and halls (and the groups of people that tend to gather in front of the building).

There are a lot of little phrases that we are holding as somewhat of a banner over this new consecration, but one of the simplest and clearest of them is: “Silent night, holy night.”

I believe that this consecration (or fast, which you could call it) is going to be a really significant season for our NightWatch community. As we consecrate our time of standing on the wall (all NightWatch staff are asked to keep 36 of their 48 service and prayer hours between midnight to 6 AM, 6 nights a week) we are focusing in on praying for the upcoming elections and the ending of abortion, among other things. (I am perhaps too tired right now to be blogging well about what it is that we are doing.)

When Stuart brought the idea before us, he asked those who wanted to commit to this silent siege to stand up. Virtually everyone in the room was standing. Again, I am overwhelmingly encouraged. We really do go further when we are acting as a community. Unity and like-mindedness are priceless.

The invitation came on Saturday night and we began the Silent Siege tonight. My general reaction to the change: this is a really good thing. I am excited and really do have a lot of anticipation concerning the next several weeks. Specific reaction to one aspect of the experience: riding in the car (from one prayer room to the other) with your boyfriend and a friend IN TOTAL SILENCE is VERY interesting.

Personally, I am both excited and frightened, as we head into this. On one hand, I’m borderline giddy, on the other, I’m terrified. I cannot argue that this thing is not divinely orchestrated. But that is not purely a comforting thought at this moment.

But THAT is a subject for another post.

The Houghton Crowd

The IHOP community has drawn a significant number of Houghton College graduates. As time goes on, my affection for this group continues to grow. I am realizing that they are truly among my favorite people.

If I were to give a generalized description, I would say that they are uniquely intelligent, love the Lord, and value prayer. What’s not to love?

Donething

(I stole the above term from someone else. I had to use it. Donething makes me ridiculously happy upon every utterance.)

It consumed the last two months of my life, but it has finally come to and end. Here are the things with which I am walking away from this onething conference:

The Fruitcake that is My Schedule

Why am I calling my schedule a fruitcake? Well, it was the first really dense conglomeration of mushed-together stuff that I could think of. Actually, kind of the only one. One large substance made from a tighly packed collection of thematically related elements.

I am a human being, so there are a few basic scheduling necessities:
I sleep (though I’m working on trying to do more of that and in a more consistent way).
I eat (also working on more consistency with that one).
I hydrate (I consider myself to be quite skilled in this activity).

I am also an intercessory missionary, so we add a few more necessities:
I spent time in the prayer room (and I am not shifting these hours to fall between 10 PM and 2 AM each day).
I go to FCF each week.
I raise support.
I go to things like team briefings.
I have service hours (addressed below).

I am a manager at the Forerunner Bookstore, hence:

Painting with IHOPers

Clay and Sarah Edwards just bought a house. Talk about growing up–married… homeowners… baby on the way. Anyway, a bunch of people from the night watch (mostly Clay’s team) were over at the house to help them paint and clean yesterday (Thursday) after they closed on the house. 10 Hours of bug-sucking, window-scrubbing, wall-painting, and PB-watching.

While we painted, I kept thinking about how unusual our community really is. For one… there’s the simple fact that we were intentionally painting between 6pm and 4am. But the real usual thing is the conversations that were happening around the wet paint.