Upperclassman...How Did That Happen?

October 15, 2012

I am officially an upperclassman! Man that’s weird to think about. I am now in my third year at IHOPU. I had a restful summer and was super blessed to come home for 2 weeks to see my friends and family…and so many babies!!! Then my mom came back with me for the week before school started. I was actually worried that it was going to be hard to switch back my schedule to nights, but the Lord totally gave me and my mom grace and I had no problem sleeping. My mom is a champ. She switched her schedule and did 2-6 am in the prayer room with me every night. All my friends were impressed. We had a really nice week and I think she left rested and encouraged.

I cannot begin to tell you how the Lord has blessed me in the area of finances. I am still tutoring my sweet little Korean girl over Skype. I do this 3 times a week at various times between 4-6 in the morning depending on the day. We had some technical difficulties at first, but we have worked out all the kinks now. I really enjoy that little girl! I am also officially certified to be a substitute teacher. I had never thought about it because on the old schedule it would have never worked, but on this new schedule my mom brought up the point that I have all day Friday open. Plus we get 2 Sabbaths as students and since one of mine is Saturday, I can always sleep in if I have to stay up a little longer. I had to fill out a bunch of paperwork and get fingerprinted but I officially turned in my application last week. If I do it once a week that will be an extra 400 a month! Since all the paperwork is basically the same anyway, I am also going to go ahead and just get Missouri certified because you never know what I might need in the future. 

There has been much transition in my actual house as well. We had a new chick move in to our house this year and she is a 1st year music academy student from Norway. So far things have been good with her, although because of our different schedules I really only see her on the weekends. But since she is international she does not have a car. It has worked out really well because my car just sits in the driveway after I go to sleep at 4 pm so I told her she can use it any time after that she wants. We had talked about just splitting gas because that’s all I pay, but she has been so blessed by me letting her use it that she is just paying all the gas herself so that’s an extra $100 a month I don’t have to worry about at least for the next 10 months. Man it’s so encouraging to finally see some breakthrough and answered prayer in that area!

On a super sad note, my roommate Dia, who I have lived with since I moved here is officially moving out at the end of this month. =( She got a new job that is farther away and she found a place that was much closer to work. We are going to set a weekly get-together time but it won’t be the same. This is the longest I have ever lived with someone who wasn’t family, and she has basically become like family. Please pray for grace for my heart in this transition.

This first quarter I had 2 classes. Theology of Suffering and Justice with Stuart Greaves and Shelley Hundley and the Pauline Epistles with Wes Adams. So far the justice class has been my favorite. Stuart taught the 1st half and now Shelley taught the 2^nd half. We got to do a video group project and we had the choice of either making our own group or waiting after the groups were made to assign ourselves to an open place. I decided to use it as an opportunity to put myself out there and meet new people so I waited to be assigned. My group was so fun because they were all internationals. They were from Holland, Austria, Bolivia, and Germany so it made for a fun get together. Our assignment was to pick a social justice issue and we had to come up with a list of interview questions and then go around and video tape random people answering the questions and then put together a 5 minute video. We chose the issue of a fatherless generation and the effects it has on the household as well as society in general.

Then Shelley taught us on the heart of Jesus as the Judge. This is the part I was both excited about as well as terrified about. She said that she is taking the class list and praying for each of us by name that God will reveal and bring up an issue of pain on our own lives that He wants to deal with. She says we can’t comfort people with a message we haven’t been comforted by ourselves yet and we can’t give anyone Jesus as Judge until we have encountered Him as our own personal judge in our own circumstances. This is an answer to many of my prayers. I have been telling the Lord I can’t give away what I don’t have. I can’t comfort anyone when I have yet to be comforted myself. So it’s exciting but also terrifying because I don’t know what He might bring up. Our first assignment was a silent day. Class was cancelled and we had to take an entire day away from people and internet and cell phones, basically any distractions and just get silent before the Lord and wait for Him to speak. It was a wonderful day! I decided to spend the day outside in nature. (Now that the Lord has healed my allergies I am discovering that I LOVE to be outdoors…who knew!) I found this place called the Overland Park Arboretum. It was free and open to the public. The day before the weather looked like it was supposed to be terrible- windy, cold and rainy. So I asked the Lord if He would change it for me because I really wanted to spend the day outside, and He totally did. It was the perfect day. It stayed in the 70’s the whole time! I was wearing a tank top and didn’t even need a hoodie and there wasn’t a drop of rain. He was so kind! I spent the day just walking around and enjoying the different gardens. There were like 8 different ones (The picture above was from one) and my favorite was the water garden. There were waterfalls everywhere! I spent the entire day there and alternated between praying, reading my Bible, people watching, reading my book for class and just taking in the beauty. Then I ate my picnic lunch I packed and headed home for bed. 

This was my favorite waterfall!

It was really interesting because Shelley routinely incorporates silent days into her daily life and she has been through a lot of traumatic life circumstances, but she told us that this last time she did the silent day she was surprised by what the Lord actually brought up and wanted to talk about. Out of everything she’s been through He wanted to talk about the time when she was 12 years old and her family told her they were going to be moving where she lived to America. The Lord wanted to talk about her heart in that situation. She was surprised but I was super encouraged because the fact that He remembers that she was upset as a 12 year old because she didn’t want to move shows me that God really does care about our hearts and even the little things that we may have forgotten or just brushed aside, He never has. So I was curious to see if He was going to bring anything up. If He did, I didn’t hear Him. Oh well. It was still a lovely day. We were also supposed to have a 10 on 1 with Shelley this quarter where we meet with her in a smaller group of about 10 people to have more of a personal time where we can ask deeper questions than we could in class. Mine got rescheduled though and it won’t happen until the middle of November. Haha what can you do?

The Pauline Epistles class is kind of a funny story. When we received our class choices and the descriptions the description of the class talked about 1 and 2 Peter and how they are overlooked books. I love Peter’s books and I was super excited about a class about them. Well Pauline Epistles is actually all of the letters of Paul, not Peter. So I thought it was kind of weird but figured they had misnamed the class. Then over the summer when the book list came out, all the books were about Paul. So I emailed and asked about the description talking about Peter and get this, they said they don’t even know where the description came from, they are not offering that class even in another year and don’t have any thought of it being offered anytime soon. So apparently the Lord really wanted me to take this class and He knew the only way I would do it was by signing up thinking I was taking a different one. It wasn’t my favorite class because Paul led a hard life with lots of trial and suffering and I am having to fight offense in my heart towards the Lord for His leadership. I did like the class because we focused more on his life as a person, more like a biography, and everything culturally and contextually that was and would have been going on around the time he wrote each of the letters. That part was really good because I so quickly forget that the people in the Bible were real people who lived real lives so I really enjoyed that part of it. Plus it was kind of a continuation of the Acts class and taught by the same teacher, so it was easier to follow the different journeys Paul took knowing the background I learned in the other class. My favorite thing about the class is that at the beginning of each class our teacher Wes gave a devotional, just basically whatever he felt was on the Lord’s heart for us. Those were always very encouraging.

Last week was the end of the first quarter and definitely the most hectic week so far in terms of assignments. For Shelley’s class I had to write 3 different sermon outlines. One on Jesus as Judge, one on suffering and one on justice. I actually kind of lucked out a little because the sermon I wrote for the teaching/preaching practicum last year was on the suffering and the Judge. So I just combined that into the one sermon and fleshed it out because each had to be 4 pages, so that one since it was combined was 8 pages total. I am pretty proud of that one. Then the justice one is by itself. Then in Wes’ class I had to do a commentary final project. At the beginning of the semester he gave us an outline of each of Paul’s letters. We had to choose one of the books and use 3 commentaries. He said his outline was like the skeleton bones and he wanted us to put flesh on it. I really enjoyed that assignment. I chose 2 Corinthians because he made a comment in class that it was one of the most misunderstood books, so I wanted to understand it. It was a very time consuming project and I practically lived in the library while I did it, but I had never really used a commentary before and I found it really helped me to understand what I was reading in the Bible.

Today I start a new quarter. My classes will be Romans with Dave Sliker and Theology of Israel with Wes Hall. Man I love school!

Grace and Peace!

Halfway There!

June 20, 2012

What a whirlwind! I am officially done with my 2^nd year at IHOPU. I cannot believe how fast it has gone! Next year I will be a junior. Man time really flies the older you get. So it’s been awhile since my last update so I will back up quite a bit. This past quarter I had 2 classes. One was the Book of Acts which was taught by Wes Hall and Wes Adams and Theology of 24/7 Worship with Stephen Venable. I know I’ve said this about almost every quarter but I think this quarter may have been my favorite so far. Our first class for the Book of Acts was kind of an introduction to the course as well as the teachers casting vision for what they thought the class would look like. Wes Hall gave his spiel and then Wes Adams got up and told us a little about his background since we had never had him for a teacher before. He had an accident when he was about 16 and he has now been a quadriplegic for about 50 years. He was telling us that morning when he had woken up and was getting ready for the day, he was praying and asking the Lord what was on His heart for our class and he felt that the Lord drew his attention to the fact that in our class we had about 120 people. At first I didn’t understand what the significance was but then He said that in the book of Acts when the Holy Spirit was poured out in that upper room there was ABOUT 120 gathered. He told us he thought there was something very special about our class. I really enjoyed this class. I didn’t actually know that the book of Acts is a continuation of the book of Luke. The gospel of Luke talks about Jesus’ ministry while He was still on the earth and then the book of Acts chronicles the way that Jesus’ ministry continued after His death and ascension through the work and power of the Holy Spirit in the believers. It is amazing to read of all the amazing signs and wonders and miracles that the Apostles did because Jesus’ said that His people would do works that were even greater in the latter days. I can’t even begin to imagine what that will look like when the apostles were healing people, casting out demons and raising people from the dead. It’s exciting to think about though! Our class as a whole even prayed for Wes Adams 2 times as he felt that the Lord wanted to use our class in a powerful way. Though God did not heal Wes in those times, both times were very unified and powerful times of prayer and I felt honored to get to be a part of it. It was really amazing to witness the faith of this man who has believed the Lord for his healing for over 50 years and truly knows he will be healed in his lifetime before the Lord calls him home. When he gets healed it really will be a true testimony to the power and faithfulness of the Lord.

My other class this quarter was Theology of 24/7 Worship. I was really excited about this class because the teacher was the same man that gave the message on the worth of Jesus and night and day prayer that helped me make my decision to move back to Kansas City, do the nightwatch and start IHOPU. This class did not disappoint. The teacher is very smart and used some big words so I had to really work to follow along but overall it was so good! He spent about half the class sessions talking about heaven and really going deep in Biblical understanding about it. As Americans, and really just humans in general, we tend to have this notion that heaven is some ethereal realm with a bunch of cherubs playing harps on clouds. If we are honest, we don’t really believe heaven is a real city, that God the Father is really there sitting on a real throne with Jesus at His right hand. We don’t really think that much about it at all and that is the major problem. We’re so focused on this world and our 70 maybe 80 years with strength here that we do not set our mind on things above, which in truth is our reality. Our reality is that there is currently a city in the sky. There is a real throne where God the Father sits and Jesus is seated at His right hand. And even this very second there are multitudes of seraphim and angels worshipping and praising and extoling the worth of Jesus day and night without ceasing. This is our reality and when we die and go to heaven, or Jesus comes back and brings heaven to earth, whichever one happens first, we will be a part of it forever! It’s glorious! The class was very meaty and so a group of nightwacth students that stayed here for the summer are planning to go back through the class notes and discuss it. I am looking forward to it. I know that doesn’t even do justice to what I learned this quarter but it was so much if I continued this would go on for pages…I’m already wordy enough!

Then I had my remaining practicum rotations. I told you about CEC and justice, but the other two were preaching and teaching and prophetic healing and deliverance. I of course was terrified of preaching and teaching because I actually had to write a 7 minute sermon and preach it to my peers. We all know that speaking in front of people is my own personal hell. I mean I took public speaking during the summer for a reason. We also had to pray on the microphone in the prayer room 2 times during our 6 week rotation. That part was just as scary. Both times my knees were shaking violently but I did it. I don’t think I will do it again anytime soon, but I did it. My sermon went pretty well all things considered. I was pretty sure I was not a preacher and after the class I definitely know that I am not, but I am totally fine with that. It was a really good experience though because they have a couple of teachers get up after you preach and give you feedback and as it turns out the feedback was actually very positive and edifying. One of the teachers got up and said that he really liked how I just talked to him. He said he hates when preachers get up and just preach at an audience. He compared me to Harry S. Truman and said that he had a gift of leadership where he was able to just talk to people and he was very popular because of it. He said that he thought I had that gift as well and offered to pray for me to receive the mantle of Harry S. Truman. I don’t really know what that means, but I never turn down prayer, especially from someone older who has been walking with Jesus longer than me. They actually recorded our sermon and emailed it to us but I can’t bring myself to watch it yet. Maybe one day…

The last rotation was prophetic, healing and deliverance. This one was probably my least favorite out of all of them but I think it’s just because it was at the end of the year and everything is just so busy with finals and papers and such. There was a really interesting week on dream interpretation though which I thought was really helpful. Then at the end we had to choose our concentration for next year. It was a very hard decision. We all got to listen to each of the concentration leaders give their spiel on their track and then choose which one we wanted to do. I was about 99% sure I was going to choose CEC but was leaving my heart open in case the Lord wanted to direct me elsewhere so I was praying and trying to discern very carefully during the spiels. The thing that made me choose CEC ultimately is that there was going to be a focus on curriculum writing and development. As soon as they said that I knew that the route I was supposed to go. That is the one area that I struggle with the most when I think about leading the next generation into the Lord’s battle. If you give me ready-made lessons I can teach those no problem. But as soon as you tell me you want me to write my own lesson, I will freak out. I already don’t think I hear very well from the Lord. So now you tell me you want me to try to hear for God’s chosen generation what He wants them to hear and learn? I still wonder why God thinks He can trust me with this precious generation but for some reason He does. And I just want to be faithful to the calling. So I know that part of it is going to be challenging and will probably open up all kinds of heart issues that I will not want to deal with, but I know that is where God wants me. So I am super excited for that next year. As far as I know 3^rd year won’t look a whole lot different than this year. Our practicum will be our concentration so that will really only be the area we are split apart. We actually got to choose our classes ourselves this time. Which I hated! All of the classes sounded so good and I had such a hard time making the decision. But ultimately I can’t lose. Any of the classes would be awesome and I am happy with my final choices. I will let you know what they are next year ;) Also, in addition to being in our own discipleship small group, as 3^rd years, we get to lead our own group. So I will be paired with another 3^rd year student and we will have a group of either first or second year girls to disciple which is scary and exciting at the same time. I will find out who my partner will be and who my girls will be once school starts.

As for life outside of school, this has continued to be a season of transition for the nightwatch. I told you in a previous blog post about the new nightwatch schedule. Well as it turns out, the schedule has actually caused many people to leave the nightwatch and switch to days. This includes all the CEC families except for one so there has been quite a lot of shifting going on. I was thinking about it the other day and I realized that it truly was the Lord’s kindness that I had advance notice that my job would be ending. Because as it turns out, now with only 2 kids left on the nightwatch there wouldn’t have been a need for my position anyway. In fact, the girl that was my boss is actually switching to days because there is no need for her position either. So ultimately the Lord in His sovereignty knew what was happening and in His kindness gave me much advance notice, and for that I am very grateful. So now I only do CEC 1 day a week on Thursday. The kids are so fun though!

So I am not going to lie. This new schedule has not been an easy transition. The whole point of doing the nightwatch is that I was always a night owl. I hate getting up early and I hate going to bed early. But on this schedule, it’s basically like I am doing 6 a.ms. The prayer room is now at the beginning of my day which means I have to be very disciplined in what time I go to bed and what time I wake up. That is probably the thing I dislike the most. There have been days where I have toyed around with the idea of switching to days but ultimately the positives just far outweigh the negatives. And I think the 24/7 class really helped me because when it comes down to it, I have so many reasons for loving and doing the nightwatch, but ultimately it comes down to this. Jesus is worthy of worship at 3 in the morning. And He is worthy of me switching my life and my schedule around so I can give it to Him. I pray this season lasts forever. But even if it doesn’t, for however long He allows me to stay here and on the nightwatch, I will give Him all of my love and devotion. He is worthy.

Summer is going to be pretty low key and restful. I am going to be a camp counselor for the signs and wonders children’s camp here at IHOP. I am really looking forward to it. There are also a group of nightwatch students that remained here for the summer as well and we have planned a good mix of social activities as well as Bible study type things to keep our hearts burning and not lose the ground we took this past year. I am looking forward to running with these lovely ladies of the Lord. I plan to come home in August for a couple of weeks so I will let you know when I know for sure when I am coming. Looking forward to seeing ya’ll!

It's All About A Wedding To Come!

March 23, 2012

Well the new semester is in full swing! I am really enjoying my classes this quarter. One is Foundations of Biblical Eschatology and the other is Basic Christian Beliefs. The Eschatology class is basically just the study of end times. Although somewhat hard to follow at times because there is just so much, I have really enjoyed the class because he is taking us through the 150 chapters in the Bible that have to do with the end-times and it’s kind of like he’s putting puzzle pieces together and I am beginning to see how this verse fits with this verse and why people think that means this. I also love it because he’s not just saying this is what IHOP believes and so you must believe it too. He is actually playing devil’s advocate and giving arguments for things that IHOP doesn’t believe and making us search it out for ourselves and make sure that we understand for ourselves. That’s one of the main things I love about this place. They say it over and over again; don’t believe anything I say unless you can find it for yourself in the Bible. They want us to be like the Bereans and search it out for ourselves.

The first day of Daniel's class was so good! IHOP gets a lot of flak about studying the end-times and it tends to cause people to think it is cultish. Well Daniel made such an amazing point to open the class with. History started with a wedding (Adam and Eve) and it will end with a wedding (Jesus and His bride). We are the bride of Christ. What bride have you ever met that wasn’t actively engaged in preparing for and planning her wedding? What if she just set a date and then went about her life living as though she wasn’t getting married? Then she just showed up the day of the wedding and expected everything to be perfect for her wedding. She didn’t even take the time to get to know her groom! THAT is why we study the end times. It’s because we are preparing for our wedding! The book of Revelation is actually called the revelation of Jesus. Not only is it God’s end time plan for how things are going to go down at the end of the age, but it is the revelation of who He is and what His heart is really like. We give ourselves to studying it now and getting to know Him now so we will be in agreement with His heart on that day. That’s why studying the end times is so important. We are getting to know our bridegroom as well as being prepared and preparing ourselves for that glorious day when Jesus splits the sky and finally gets to have the desire of His heart- He gets to marry His bride!

We had to write a final paper for our Basic Christian Beliefs class about the "good news of the gospel." Here are my 2 concluding paragraphs of that paper. I feel like it communicates my point.

Now most people will tell you that’s the end. You ask Jesus to come into your heart, you’re saved and amen you are not going to hell. Praise God that is true, but there is so much more! The good news gets even better because it didn’t end there! Our old history ends with the cross; our new history begins with the resurrection.[1] When Jesus died He didn’t stay in the grave! The cross was just the beginning. He was buried and He rose from the grave three days later.[2] He was resurrected and now He sits at the right hand of the Father unceasingly making intercession for us.[3] This isn’t the end of the story; it’s only the beginning. Now because of His sacrifice on the cross, when we die, we will be resurrected to everlasting life.[4] God’s original plan is going to come to pass! God the Father will have a family and His Son, Jesus will have a bride. It’s all about a wedding![5]

The cross was actually a marriage proposal. Jesus was asking us to give up our lives and be joined to Him forever in the wedding of all weddings. He prayed “Father I desire that they would be with me where I am.”[6] The good news of the gospel is that the Kingdom of God is coming to this earth.[7] Right now, we can rule and reign with Jesus through our intercession, but one day, we will rule and reign with Christ forever as His beloved bride. We were not just saved from something, but we were saved unto something. God does promise us that we will have trials and tribulation in this life,[8] but He also promises us that we have everything we need for life and Godliness[9] because He has sent us Holy Spirit, who is our helper.[10] We aren’t just supposed to grit our teeth and bear it until we get to heaven. God desires for us to have life and life abundantly now and forever.[11] This is our hope and the anchor for our soul.[12] There’s a Kingdom coming down and when it does, Jesus will come with it. He will end the separation once and for all.[13] We will finally marry our Bridegroom and live with Him again in the Garden where there is fullness of joy for all eternity.[14]

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[1] Watchman Nee, The Normal Christian Life ( Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House, 1977), 41

[2] 1 Corinthians 15:1-11

[3] Hebrews 7:25

[4] Ephesians 2:5-6

[5] Revelation 19:7

[6] John 17:24

[7] Revelation 11:15

[8] John 16:33

[9] 2 Peter 1:3

[10] John 14:16-18

[11] John 10:10

[12] Hebrews 6:19

[13] Revelation 21

[14] Psalm 16:11

(That was so cool! I just copied and pasted and it automatically did my footnotes for me!)

Another thing that’s really exciting this semester is our practicum rotations. Because of the new nightwatch schedule, we get to be more integrated with the daytime students and we have the same practicum and chapel as them. This semester is the first time they are doing the sophomore practicum like this and they said this is actually what they have envisioned since the first year the school opened. So we are the first class that gets to do it the way they have wanted to do it so that’s pretty special. Anyway starting junior year, we will get to choose a concentration that we would like to focus on for the remainder of the two years we are in school, basically like declaring a major. So this semester for our practicum, we get to rotate through smaller versions of the different concentrations to kind of give us a feel and experience for each so that we can make a more informed decision, having tried all of them. Each rotation lasts 4 weeks and we rotate through CEC, Justice and Mercy, Teaching and Preaching (definitely not looking forward to that one…) and Prophetic Healing and Deliverance. The sophomore FSM class was broken down into 4 smaller sections and in each section we have about 30 students and these will be the same people we get to rotate with the rest of the semester.

My first rotation was CEC. I was super excited about it because I know I am called to lead the next generation into the Lord’s battle…whatever that means. The only thing about this first rotation was that it was only 3 weeks because the first week was an introduction to the practicum. It’s ok though because since I’m pretty sure this is the way the Lord is going to direct me, I didn’t need as much time to experience this one. Every week we had a teaching by Lenny LaGuardia or one of his assistants and then we got to go and serve in the classrooms on Sunday mornings. I was really hoping to be placed in early childhood in the 3-5 class as that is my favorite age, but I was placed in the 8-12’s. Obviously I have more experience with that age since I taught 2^nd grade, but the little ones are still my favorites. I really enjoyed worship the most because it was all child/teen-led. All the singers and musicians were like 12 or 13 years old. Man I love to watch kids worship! It’s so beautiful even when it’s pitchy and the musicians play the wrong notes. You just know that the Lord is loving every minute of it! My next rotation which starts this week is Justice and Mercy. I don’t know too much about it yet so I will fill you in on that one once I do.