i'm getting continuously rocked

so one of the things that they prophesied over me yesterday was that i've been searching a lot and am going to find what i'm looking for. i've been continuously rocked since then.

1. i've been asking for the Lord to show me the supernatural.
2. i've been searching for purpose.
3. i've asked for breakthrough with other people.

the answers i've gotten?
1. i got a word for an entire class of children today.
2. said word was about stinking purpose, plus what we did today at OCA is, i think, my purpose.
3. small group is rocking me. we talked for like 35 minutes about what it means to guard your heart, which is something i'm not even completely sure about, much less good at. in fact, i think it's the thing i'm the worst at, especially recently. but we got to talk it over! and go deep into the Lord's wisdom!

my foundations are being rocked. in the best possible way. the Lord is so good!

oh my heavens

be forewarned: this has the potential to be a really long story...

so it all starts saturday, march 21 around 11:45 pm when i'm reading and praying and the Lord asks me to think hard about my summer plans. at this point, i'm 100% going home to bluffton and working at Outside Hilton Head, like three other summers before. for some reason i got this complete unrest about it...so that got me thinking.

i started to think what the ideal summer would look like. i made this (silly) plan to just travel and paint and take photos and try to sell my work. (which might still happen, just not in the way i thought.) so anyways i'm totally sold on this plan because it screams freedom and life. the only problem is that i need a way to make some real money.

i meditate and pray about summer plans for a few days and am starting to get nervous when i get a voicemail from laura westby on tuesday. this might be the most exciting message i've ever received. i listen to it a couple times just to process what she is saying. something along the lines of "i babysit for this couple who is planting a church in summerville because of a vision the wife got and they need a children's minister who is very into creativity and i told them about you and they want to meet you."

so i call her back, do some listening (and some squealing according to laura...) and decide that i want to meet them. so we make plans for me to drive down for dinner on saturday.

turns out these people are total ballers. they went to toronto airport school of ministry and flippin KNOW the Holy Spirit. so we eat dinner, talk a little about a bunch of stuff like why i feel called to ministry (a really cool story), what kind of things i'm into, how i got interested in kids + art, etc...then laura and i decide to go to their church service in the morning. they got excited and decided to have their ministry team do prophetic ministry with us, and laura got nervous because she's never gotten prophesied over. so they were like "oh, well we'll do a trial run right now and you can get a feel for it."

this turned out exceptionally well. both laura and i were totally touched, encouraged, edified, etc and went back to some of the most restful sleep either of us has ever had. then we go to the church in the morning and it's SO LEGIT!!! great worship, great message, and then we got more prophetic ministry! (with different people who happened to say some of the same things as the night before...totally resonated) as austin would say, it was "sweet conf".

so long story short, i'm going to be in charleston regardless of whether or not i get the internship and i know where i'm going to live and i have a friend trying to find me a nannying job to make some money. the Lord is so faithful! all we have to do is follow Him and PERFECT plans fall out of seemingly nowhere...

RAIN DOWN!!!!

can i just say that i am having so much fun with the Lord today? it used to be that on a rainy day i would get like most people and be totally blah. NOT TODAY!!!

so all day i've been humming the lyrics to "rain down". i'm walking from class back to my car in d.square when the Lord tells me to start singing out loud. so, with a couple weird looks, i start singing out loud "rain down, all around the world we're singing rain down, can you hear the earth is singing rain down, rain it down!" when i get to the last "rain it down", the sky busts open and a torrential rain starts.

whoa. and bros and sisses prayed power over me last night. today i got shown the authority i have in the Holy Spirit that when i pray something, it will happen. (also got that nugg from a bill johnson sermon this morning!)

well, when the sky breaks, i can't help but start to dance. i lower the hood of my rain jacket and just start dancing in the street with my arms up. i'm totally soaked by this point, but it's just further evidence of how much the Lord is pursuing my heart right now!!!

ahhhh! He listens when we pray!!! (or sing, as it were)

oh my faithfulness!

ah! He is so faithful! i asked Him to move in Jittery Joe's and He gave me a word for a lady sitting a few tables over. after about an hour of being like "are you sure God?", i decided to step up in boldness and go over. Anna was there, so i asked her to come with me to deliver it. i introduced us and then told her that the Lord is preparing her to step up in a role of authority and how she has all authority in her and the Lord is ready to move with her. and she didn't call me stupid, or ignore me. she had tears in her eyes. the Lord moved in someone's life because of me. ah!

Saint Louis

God moved in St. Louis. He moves everywhere. But He let me watch him this past week.

Our group was the prayer group, so we didn't really have a set schedule. SUCH a blessing.

Sunday we got to pick what church we wanted to go to, so we went to Gateway House of Prayer (based on IHOP in KC) with Blair and Joye's group. We weren't really sure what to expect, but once we got there we found out there was a church meeting there. They said that they had already done the worship section of their service and were moving into a different room to have the teaching portion. When we showed up, we basically doubled their church attendance. They were so accommodating, and once everyone had chairs, the pastor asked to speak to our leaders. We sent Austin and John, who did an awesome job communicating to him why we were there. The whole church was stoked to see us. It was so encouraging to us to be so welcomed. They decided to continue with worship in this smaller room, which was some of the most intimate worship I have ever encountered. They split us up by group and laid hands to pray for us, which was so encouraging to us. Many things were prayed over our group, but one of the most influential to me was that God would use us on whatever campus we stepped foot on. We'll come back to this later. We also got to go to this sick free zoo in a place called Forest Park... We talked to a few people and definitely enjoyed ourselves...

On Monday we went to a park in the inner-city where four groups were doing soccer and basketball camps. When we got there, there wasn't much to do in the way of actually helping, so a few of us went prayer-singing with the guitar and djembe through the streets. We met some awesome people and got to pray with them, and the Lord walked and sang with us. Kids would come out of doors and Ashley would grab them and take them back to where they were holding camps. The FCA groups in that area were such a light. The kids couldn't help but love them. After an incident with a guy who was obviously drunk and probably on drugs too, our group fell apart a little, not for our sakes, but for the sake of this guy's nephew, who didn't understand why this was different than any other day and couldn't comprehend why we were crying.

On Tuesday we got to go spend some more time with Joye and Blair's group (which included a bunch of ballers...they were stacked) at Hope Lodge, a place run by the American Cancer Society to house patients who lived too far away to commute every day. After meeting some amazing people and praying over some people, Austin brought out his guitar and Ryan grabbed the djembe and started a short worship sesh, two hymns that the people would know and finishing off with "love joy peace and righteousness in the Holy Spirit whoaa ohh ohhhh" (I don't know the actual name of the song). This big burly guy starts weeping because God has encountered him for the first time in like 30 years and he rededicates his life. After praying with a few other people, we left and got ready to go back to GHOP for their Tuesday night services. Again, so intimate. Great prayer, great worship.

Tuesday on our way to Hope Lodge we drove past Saint Louis University's campus and as we were driving by I said, "We should come minister here tomorrow." About 30 seconds later, Austin took in the surroundings and said something to the effect of "Dude, why don't we minster here tomorrow?" So the group leaders agreed without knowing it and we decided to minister at SLU on Wednesday. (Remember the part before about the GHOP people praying over us that we were going to bring the Lord's glory on every campus we set foot on? Yep!) Before we left the hotel that morning, we got to talk to the Lord and ask him for things to look for when ministering, like clues on a treasure hunt. Different people got different words. Austin got "satellite", Charron got "frisbee", Anna got "lion" and that she was supposed to pray for a pregnant woman, and I had a vision of a building on campus with an Asian guy sitting on a bench in front of it. There were many more, but I just can't remember them all. We also prayed to meet the people

So we're driving onto campus and between two buildings I can see the building from my vision. I was floored before we even got out of the van...and it pretty much didn't change the entire day. On our way walking onto campus, we see a building with lions in front of it, so Anna goes in. While she is inside, we meet Josh, a student at SLU. Some of us start talking to him, and walk with him on his way further onto campus. We pass a church and most of the group goes in. They get pulled inside and have an impromptu worship session and then get to pray with some people, one of whom Anna found out afterward was pregnant! While they're doing that, John, Kathleen and I get to hang out with Josh some more. We play frisbee with him some when I remember to go find my building. I sprint (with some interesting looks from some students) over to the place I think it is, and sure enough, that's the exact building from my vision, and there's an Asian guy on a bench in front of it. That's never happened before, and I had just been praying to know and discern the voice of God. WHOA!!! So I sprint back to Kathleen and John with the intention of grabbing one of them to talk to the kid (I chickened out from talking to him alone), but they're in a serious conversation with Josh. I wait for the rest of the group to come to where we are, and once they get there, I grab Austin and Ryan, but by the time we got back, the guy was gone.

I was more than a little bummed...and mad at myself, but the guys reminded me of the amazing grace that the Lord offers and that helped a little. So eventually we get back to the other people and everyone is talking to Josh about some serious stuff...so good. Anyways, then Austin and Kathleen decide to go pray for a lady that we had passed earlier who had an amputated leg (Austin got a word for "leg" too), so they leave all of us. It's time for Josh to go to class then, so he leaves and we set off to find Austin and Kathleen. We find the lady, but they aren't there. So we start calling and texting them. About 5 minutes later, John gets a text from Austin saying "Dude, we're on the radio show." So we're freaking out a little bit... We ask campus security how to get to the radio show, and she points us toward the student union. We walk in and, sure enough, there are Kathleen and Austin sitting in the recording studio with these radio hosts. You can listen to the show at this link http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/117268/Lunch%20Break%20March%2018th.mp3.

So we get to talk to an entire campus about how the Lord's moving in Clemson and we even get to say "shucks" over the airwaves. Shucks!!! Remember the prayer about meeting the one person who will impact thousands? Again, the Lord's faithfulness astounded me. On our way back to the van we get to minister to a few other people, then head back to the hotel. Some of us go up to take naps, but for me that didn't work so well. As soon as my head hit the pillow I got a sinking feeling in my stomach and the Lord told me we weren't done in St. Louis yet. He told me to get the group and bring the guitar into the streets. So I went back downstairs, got Austin, Kathleen, Anna, and John and told them.

We walk through the streets singing and playing for the Lord and decide to stop at some benches on a certain street corner. A few minutes later, a man comes along and admires Austin's guitar. We talk to him for a while and find out that he is a piano tuner and goes to church every Sunday. He plays a couple songs on Austin's guitar and gets up to leave, but we ask him if we can pray for him. He says sure and we ask him if there is anything specific and he says that his rent is due next week and if he could get one piano tuning job he could cover rent, but as of yet he doesn't have any jobs. So we pray for him to get an abundance of jobs, among other things, like banishing the spirit of loneliness that seemed to cling to him. He gets up to walk away again, but the Lord pulls on my heart to ask him how much he makes for tuning one piano. He says $110. We all start pulling out money, and within about 30 seconds, he has his rent for the next 6 weeks. We invite him to the worship session later that night at the hotel, and he comes. The Lord is so faithful! (When he turns to leave, we look up and there are Anna's lions on the side of the building next to us!!!)

There are so many more stories, but these are the most impactful and the ones that tell the most of God's love and faithfulness. There is a compilation video that Ryan filmed and John edited at this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMzlJjV6x84

Ah. He is so good to us. Shucks!!!

The Birth of Love - Madeleine L'Engle

The Birth of Love

To learn to love
is to be stripped of all love
until you are wholly without love
because
until you have gone
naked and afraid
into this cold dark place
where all love is taken from you
you will not know
that you are wholly within love.

again, by L'Engle

People in Glass Houses

I build my house of shining glass
of crystal
prisms
light, clear,delicate.
The wind blows
Sets my rooms to singing.
The sun's bright rays
are not held back
but pour
their radiance through the rooms
in sparkles of delight.

And what, you ask, of rain
that leaves blurred muddy streaks
across translucent purity?
What, you ask,
of the throwers of stones?

Glass shatters,
breaks,
sharp fragments pierce my flesh,
darken with blood.
The wind tinkles brittle splinters
of shivered crystal.
The stones crash through.

But never mind.
My house
My lovely shining
fragile broken house
is filled with flowers
and founded on a rock.

by Madeleine L'Engle

Lines Scribbled on an Envelope While Riding the 104 Broadway Bus:

There is too much pain
I cannot understand
I cannot pray

I cannot pray for all the little ones with bellies bloated by starvation in India;
for all the angry Africans striving to be separate in a world struggling for wholeness;
for all the young Chinese men and women taugh that hatred and killing are good and compassion evil;
or even all the frightened people in my own city looking for truth in pot or acid.

Here I am
and the ugly man with beery breath beside me reminds me that it is not my prayers that waken your concern, my Lord;
my prayers, my intercessions are not to ask for your love
for all your lost and lonely ones,
your sick and sinning souls,
but mine, my love, my acceptance of your love.
Your love for the woman sticking her umbrella and her expensive parcels into my ribs and snarling, "Why don't you watch where you're going?"
Your love for the long-haired, gum-chewing boy who shoves the old lady aside to grab a seat,
Your love for me, too, too tired to look with love,too tired to look at Love, at you, in every person on the bus.
Expand my love, Lord, so I can help to bear the pain,
help your love move my love into the tired prostitute with false eyelashes and bunioned feet,
the corrupt policeman with his hand open for graft,
the addict, the derelict, the woman in the mink coat and discontented mouth,
the high school girl with heavy books and frightened eyes.

Help me through these scandalous particulars
to understand
your love.

Help me to pray.