Have you ever planned to write your blog and then just gotten distracted by email and other things? Well that is my excuse for not writing for weeks…I’ve thought about it many times and it’s on my list of things to do, but that doesn’t really mean anything unless I sit down and actually write.
Wow…so much has been going on these past weeks I don’t know where to start.
Love my new house. I’ve gotten used to the fact that the toilet and bathroom are carpeted. Not what I would personally choose to put on the floor, but it works and not focusing on it makes it liveable. Getting settled and just being able to relax in the peace of this house has really strengthened me and makes me so thankful for God’s provision. It’s so nice to be able to wake up in the morning and see the sunshine through my window (unless it’s a healing rooms morning, in which case it’s still dark when I get up at 4:30 am). I also love having my room on the 1st floor (i.e. up one flight of stairs). It really means that when I go to my room I’m not in the middle of the living space and can truly shut my door and have space. And we have great neighbours.
Life has been really busy though, and with my schedule changing slightly I’m still in the adapting phase…And now I need to take a break as I’m off to meet a friend for coffee….
The last weeks have had a lot of comings and goings. One of my good friends, Rosanne, moved to Amsterdam to work with the house of prayer in the red light district there. And other people come and go. We had some Norwegians here for a few weeks which was lovely, and this week another team from Norway comes and a good friend of mine, so that will be nice. It’s all part of the flow of life here.
A few weeks ago was an intense weekend, but oh so good. IHOP-KC celebrated 10 years of 24/7 prayer. Which means that they’ve prayed around the clock non-stop for 10 years now. That’s amazing…especially as in the beginning they didn’t have that many people here (one thing is doing it when you have hundreds of people to share shifts, another thing when you only have a handful of people to do it). It was really encouraging to hear the prophetic history told again, and hear different people share their memories and experiences during this time. We finished it off launching into 24/7 works of justice alongside the prayer. I am so excited. The vision is huge. But we have a huge God! And when it was laid out it connected with my heart and made me so excited. They want to reach the city with the gospel, minister to the poor and needy, restoration of the broken, and be a place where orphans and those without homes can find a home. A lot of it’s already being done or well on the way to be planned out, other parts are still being worked on. The thing that really excites me is that I came here carrying a heart for justice, and now, after being her a year, justice is becoming one of the main things on the agenda.
All that said, another thing I loved about this new launch, was that it wasn’t to replace the 24/7 prayer, but come alongside it. The 24/7 prayer is at the core of who we are and what we do, so we’ll keep doing that, just adding the 24/7 justice to it. Everything we do will continue to be centred around the prayer room.
I love this focus and I love the way I can see how God is so working through the basis being prayer. Yesterday I got to go to the inner city project called “Hope City”. This week they were doing an outreach in one of the rough areas of the city. But it wasn’t an outreach focused on talking to as many people as possible. It was an outdoor intercession and worship meeting, praying for the area and bringing God’s presence into that area. It was powerful! Needless to say people from the area came along to find out what it was all about (the free hamburgers afterwards helped with that too), but again the focus was prayer first and out of that we actually saw people saved through the outreach. I was able to chat to 2 lads who’d come along from the neighbourhood and share a bit about Jesus with them and see them move one step along on their journey to giving their lives to Him. Now I can lift them up in prayer as I spend my days in the prayer room. It was so great! The prayers in the intercession time were so powerful and real and my heart was alive. I am not able to go to this project every week because of meetings and other commitments, but when I do, it feels like such a gift from God. He has given me this heart for the broken and needy, but also for the city. And being in the inner city just makes my heart come alive!
On that note, it’s been really cool this week. As I’ve been praying and reading the Bible, God has been drawing my attention to how the Bible talks about cities. I’ve been looking at what God’s heart for cities is and how I can better pray for this city and other cities in the world based on the Bible. It’s a cool journey I am excited to be on.
I think I’ll stop there so that this doesn’t become yet another unsuccessful attempt at getting my blog updated…
Wow…so much has been going on these past weeks I don’t know where to start.
Love my new house. I’ve gotten used to the fact that the toilet and bathroom are carpeted. Not what I would personally choose to put on the floor, but it works and not focusing on it makes it liveable. Getting settled and just being able to relax in the peace of this house has really strengthened me and makes me so thankful for God’s provision. It’s so nice to be able to wake up in the morning and see the sunshine through my window (unless it’s a healing rooms morning, in which case it’s still dark when I get up at 4:30 am). I also love having my room on the 1st floor (i.e. up one flight of stairs). It really means that when I go to my room I’m not in the middle of the living space and can truly shut my door and have space. And we have great neighbours.
Life has been really busy though, and with my schedule changing slightly I’m still in the adapting phase…And now I need to take a break as I’m off to meet a friend for coffee….
The last weeks have had a lot of comings and goings. One of my good friends, Rosanne, moved to Amsterdam to work with the house of prayer in the red light district there. And other people come and go. We had some Norwegians here for a few weeks which was lovely, and this week another team from Norway comes and a good friend of mine, so that will be nice. It’s all part of the flow of life here.
A few weeks ago was an intense weekend, but oh so good. IHOP-KC celebrated 10 years of 24/7 prayer. Which means that they’ve prayed around the clock non-stop for 10 years now. That’s amazing…especially as in the beginning they didn’t have that many people here (one thing is doing it when you have hundreds of people to share shifts, another thing when you only have a handful of people to do it). It was really encouraging to hear the prophetic history told again, and hear different people share their memories and experiences during this time. We finished it off launching into 24/7 works of justice alongside the prayer. I am so excited. The vision is huge. But we have a huge God! And when it was laid out it connected with my heart and made me so excited. They want to reach the city with the gospel, minister to the poor and needy, restoration of the broken, and be a place where orphans and those without homes can find a home. A lot of it’s already being done or well on the way to be planned out, other parts are still being worked on. The thing that really excites me is that I came here carrying a heart for justice, and now, after being her a year, justice is becoming one of the main things on the agenda.
All that said, another thing I loved about this new launch, was that it wasn’t to replace the 24/7 prayer, but come alongside it. The 24/7 prayer is at the core of who we are and what we do, so we’ll keep doing that, just adding the 24/7 justice to it. Everything we do will continue to be centred around the prayer room.
I love this focus and I love the way I can see how God is so working through the basis being prayer. Yesterday I got to go to the inner city project called “Hope City”. This week they were doing an outreach in one of the rough areas of the city. But it wasn’t an outreach focused on talking to as many people as possible. It was an outdoor intercession and worship meeting, praying for the area and bringing God’s presence into that area. It was powerful! Needless to say people from the area came along to find out what it was all about (the free hamburgers afterwards helped with that too), but again the focus was prayer first and out of that we actually saw people saved through the outreach. I was able to chat to 2 lads who’d come along from the neighbourhood and share a bit about Jesus with them and see them move one step along on their journey to giving their lives to Him. Now I can lift them up in prayer as I spend my days in the prayer room. It was so great! The prayers in the intercession time were so powerful and real and my heart was alive. I am not able to go to this project every week because of meetings and other commitments, but when I do, it feels like such a gift from God. He has given me this heart for the broken and needy, but also for the city. And being in the inner city just makes my heart come alive!
On that note, it’s been really cool this week. As I’ve been praying and reading the Bible, God has been drawing my attention to how the Bible talks about cities. I’ve been looking at what God’s heart for cities is and how I can better pray for this city and other cities in the world based on the Bible. It’s a cool journey I am excited to be on.
I think I’ll stop there so that this doesn’t become yet another unsuccessful attempt at getting my blog updated…