Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?

I have large news! I am moving to Kansas City, Missouri, on September 30th, to join staff with the International House of Prayer.
ZHOP Charlotte is officially closing its doors mid-October because God is calling most of our leaders home to Kansas City. They moved here for a specific season, and now the Lord wants them back in KC. What is crazy is that God started talking to all of them seperately, and then they told each other and were all feeling the same thing. I believe that the Lord still wants to move in Charlotte and to raise up his house here, and that he hasn't finished the work that has been started here. But as painful as it is, ZHOP is not the one to carry it to the end.
So - when all this was decided, Mike Bickle, the leader of the IHOP in KC, extended an invitation to all staff at ZHOP to be on staff there in Kansas City. In my heart, I feel compelled to go there because I love the House of Prayer, and I know that the time the Lord has given me to stand and serve - to be a part of this minstry - isn't over.

About the Prayer Movement in as Few Words as Possible:

Harp and Bowl: In Revelation 5:8, we see that in heaven before the throne of God, the elders and the four living creatures fall down in worship, "having each one a harp, and golden bowls full of incense, which are the prayers of the saints." The harp represents ministry and worship to the Lord, and the bowls are constantly filling with the prayers that Christians on the earth pray, which smells like incense to the Lord. So this is what we see going on in heaven to God, and this is what we try to copy in the House of Prayer with our worship and prayer.

Tabernacle of David: In 1 Chronicles 9, it says that King David had 4,000 musicians and 288 singers in his tabernacle, whose only job was to worship. They were fully paid and freed from every other duty to do this. David's tabernacle was different from Moses' for many reasons, one of which was that David allowed men from the ages of 20 and up to be a part of it. The cut off age for Moses was 30. So David had this young adult movement going on that worshipped before the Lord with their whole lives. Why? Because God loves extravagant worship, and he loves his house. Throughout the Psalms, David talks about his tabernacle being a place to encounter the presence of God and find wisdom in the word. For him it was a place of refuge and a place for repentance and worship. He loved the tabernacle. This is another Biblical foundation of the House of Prayer in our day.

Intimacy and Intercession: Intimacy and intercession go hand in hand. When we join with God in praying for the things that, according to the Bible, are what he is passionate about (Isreal, the lost, the church, righteousness, justice, love of the Father, etc. etc.), we are in partnership with him and we learn more about his heart. As we pray for these things, his desires become more and more our own desires, and we begin to love what he loves. Mary of Bethany poured out a bottle of purfume, which was her entire inheritance, on his feet as an act of extravagant love. She sat at his feet and listened to him, and her heart was intimate with his. When Lazarus died, Martha said "Jesus, if you had been here my brother would not have died," and Jesus answered that her brother would live again. When Mary came, she said the exact same thing to Jesus as Martha did, and Jesus wept and "groaned in the spirit." Jesus knew that Lazarus was going to live again, and that everything would be ok, but Mary's emotion so touched his heart that he wept. That is true intimacy. In John 15, Jesus says abide in the true vine. 1. How to abide - obey my commands (John 15:10) 2. The command - love one another (John 15:13) 3. The ultimate expression of love - to lay down your life (John 15:13) 4. How to lay down your life - Intercede for another (Hebrews 7:22 - 8:6) In the Hebrews passages, we see that Jesus "always lives to make intercession...at the right hand of the throne." So as Jesus, who is Love, lays down his life for us in prayer, this is how we also can lay down our lives for another and abide in intimacy with Jesus.

What The House of Prayer Actually Does: We keep 24/7 worship and prayer going - IHOP has kept this going continually for 10 years so far. We pray apostolic prayers (not ONLY apostolic prayers, but at least biblical prayers), which are any prayer that an apostle (Peter, Paul, etc.) prayed in the Bible. As the inspired word of God, the prayers that are in the Bible are from the heart of God, and to pray them back to him is to agree with him about what he desires. At the IHOP, they have recently announced that as well as praying for Justice and mercy on the earth, we will begin to act out works of justice and mercy as well. This means evangelism to the lost, discipling new Christians into a lifestyle committed to the Lord, feeding and helping the poor, working with the homeless, adopting orphans and making a way for mothers to choose adoption instead of abortion, taking women and little girls from the sex slave industry and housing and feeding them, and teaching them english and finding work for them so they don't have to return to prostitution. So to be a part of the House of Prayer is to join in these things.

What I do in the House of Prayer: I lead a missionary lifestyle, living by faith for finances, working and praying for about 50 hours a week at the HOP. I sing on two-hour worship sets and study the word, and I help run the bookstore. When I move to the Kansas City IHOP at the end of this month, there will be a lot more choices in the kind of work I might want to do, and I'll be able to make outreach a part of my daily life, which I am excited about. I would love to work in the Justice Acts department teaching english and the word to the women and girls who have been rescued, and I'm going to see how I can be involved in that when I go.

The Loving Killer

The other day I had a half-day off, so I sat beside a little pond in my neighborhood for a while. I took one of my old journals from 2006, back when I was in college and still trying to deny I needed or wanted God. It was amazing to remember my mindset then - so blind and willfully wrong. But what was more amazing to me is that every other entry is about God - the dreams I recorded, how much I agonized over what truth could be if it wasn't Him, the events that obviously lead me back without me knowing at the time, and sometimes even small admissions of how much I missed Him. He so obviously had His hand on me then, and equally as obvious was how much I wanted Him even if I pretended to myself that I didn't. 

It is amazing to me how able I was to recognize exactly what I needed (I always wrote about how I know what the truth is, but am outside of it), and still run away from it. Why does the human heart have such capacity for fear of what they know is good and true? Maybe because we don't want to give in to such kindness. We feel unworthy, we don't want to be important to anyone especially God, we would rather continue hiding with our wounds because it has become our comfort zone. And from there it's a vicious cycle of feeling unworthy, so we sin, then we feel even less worthy, so we hide from our friends, then we feel alone and unworthy, so we think we deserve more of the same, and then we sin, and then it starts all over.

The trick here is to realize that I am worthy. (Scandalous - I almost want to take it back, but..) Who spoke the heavens and the earth into existence? Who upholds the earth by His word? And who said over us that we have been given a new heart, called children of God, given the fullness of His delight now, while I am on earth - not when we die, later on, when hopefully we make it into heaven and can then be good enough? He said that when our hearts condemn us - which they do all the time - He is greater than our hearts, and knows all things (1John 3:20). So, He knows what the actual truth is about us, and we do not.

Shame, guilt, the inability to live how God made you - those are not who you are. Those things just take you out and defeat you. But they aren't even real.

I mean - God made the literal reality by His word...that chair you are sitting on is only there because it's being upheld by His word...And God cannot lie...So is what He saying about you that you will never measure up, that you are afraid and cowardly, that you'll never be who you feel you are beneath all the junk piled up on you? His word about you, which is more true than anything you believe about yourself, is not condemning you. All my unworthiness, all my beliefs about what I'm not brave enough to do,how I can't measure up to that horribly high standard - all that is irrelevant. It doesn't even matter in the face of how His word can change me.

AND - I'm very excited about this one - He is coming back to avenge us against those who try to put us to shame. AND WHAT DOES THAT INCLUDE? Our own hearts. He's going to avenge us against ourselves. He avenges us against self hate and fear, self destruction, the things we speak over ourselves, the beliefs we have about ourselves. That's how He loves me: He kills the parts that aren't good for me, that aren't really me like I was meant to be. He gets me out of that comfort zone.