Rumbling in the Heart
http://www.bound4lifeatl.com/home.html
Fluorescent lights really don’t make it easy to intercede. Somehow their glare dulls the senses and annoys the eyes. And a multi-purpose room with a low, pre-fab platform doesn’t really exude ‘coolness’ and ‘urgency’ and ‘intensity’. But, gosh, when something is on the Lord’s heart, His grace is abundant, and you could be standing in the middle of Walmart’s Home Storage aisle and be as engaged as you are standing in a multi-million dollar venue with strobe lights and throbbing bass. IHOP’s multi-purpose room served just fine.
Kathy Coburn, the director of Bound for Life ATL, led about eighty-or-so people in intercession for:
- preservation of the mystery of Christ and the Church as exemplified through marriage between a man and a woman–specifically for the passing of Proposition 8 in the upcoming vote in California
- ending of abortion across the nation–specifically for a third pro-life seat in the Supreme Court (fulfilling a prophecy given over sixteen years ago)
- mercy on Atlanta, the city that proposed the bill that eventually legalized abortion all over the nation
- release of the spirit of adoption–specifically that the Church would step in to adopt unwanted children, as the answer to her own prayer with Jesus to raise up a generation of worshipers and forerunners for Christ’s second return
One of the most precious aspects of these two hours was an abundance of little children running through the congregation the entire time. I am sure the parents felt like they needed to keep their children under control a little better, but I was so grateful to see their little ones joyfully parading their beautiful life before me. It tenderized my heart to the message of the Lord and His invitation to receive the Spirit of the Son that cries “Abba!”.
You are a Father to the fatherless
You are a Lover to the desolate
Ok, no—what we REALLY do ;-)
Kiki the Avacado and Kayla praying
Kristin, Martha, Gonzalo, and Jonathan after foozball fun
Kayla, Jonathan, Derrick, and Daniel chatting and snacking
Alex brings an American rock wall to its knees
Gonzalo, me, David, Kayla, and Alex think no one is ever too old to play on the swingset
But every day we love to sit and wait upon the Lord
What I Really Do
So, the way I live my life now is more different than I ever have before. Since I was four years old I have always been studying. Elementary school. Middle school. High school. College…read textbooks, listen to teachers, do homework, study, and take tests to prove that I did all those other things.
Now, I sit in a single room for eight hours a day talking to God. And some other stuff. So here’s a sample day out of the crazy life I’m living 
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6:15 a.m. I wake up. I live with three other girls in a big basement bedroom of a duplex. I am the ‘first’ shower, so I get up before anyone else. We have to rotate because we all share the same bathroom. Then I eat breakfast and pack a sack lunch for the day. Usually it’s a bagel with ham and cheese, haha. 
I always try to fill a water bottle and drink a lot because we fast (eat nothing) every Tuesday, and it’s really important to stay hydrated.
8:00 a.m. Practising piano is one of my new favorite things to do. My piano is by a window, so I look out into trees and birds in the new morning light. I love playing songs I already know and then taking their sounds and making them different or new to express how I feel. There’s something really lovely about making your own music
8:15 a.m. Martha, Kayla, Kristin, and I jump in the car to leave. Sometimes we have to rearrange the entire drive-way beacuse there are eight girls living in the house; six of us have cars to park in the driveway. I have gotten pretty good at moving cars that aren’t mine without getting a scratch on them, haha. We love rolling down the windows on our way to the International House of Prayer: we spend hours in the same room that has two little windows that don’t even open. I love air-conditioning, but one can only take so much ‘processed’ air.
8:45 a.m. We put our lunches in the community fridge and hurry to sign-in to the Prayer Room. It is a big room full of rows and rows of chairs and a few tables. I like sitting in the front row near the musicians because it is easier to focus. I bring my Bible, a journal, colored pencils, my laptop, lots of different flavors of chewing gum, a bottle of water, plenty of pens, and a few books to study (Knowledge of the Holy, Seven Longings of the Human Heart, etc.).
10 a.m. This is the first intercession set of the day. A full team of musicians come onstage and lead the whole room in several worship songs. Then people in the Prayer Room take turns praying on a mic next to the platform. After each prayer, the singers create a spontaneous chorus using phrases from the prayer, and the whole room joins in. This way everybody gets a chance to intercede on the same page for current events like the hurricanes and upcoming election or the Church around the world or the local community, etc.
12 p.m. We break for lunch. I get thirty minutes to eat, check emails, and make phone calls. Usually, lunch is a lot of fun because everyone is eating and talking together. We tell lots of stories and trade lots of strange foods. One day another intern was running late and only grabbed a raw red pepper for his lunch; he ate it bite-by-bite like an apple!
12:30 p.m. Most days we all go back into the prayer room. Usually in the afternoon, there is one musician on stage for two hours at a time. They play quietly on their instrument–guitar or piano usually. Everyone in the room reads or studies quietly. I like to pace in the open space at the back of the room while I think so that I can stay awake. The music and singing is so peaceful and relaxing, that if I have been up late the night before, I could fall asleep, haha! These afternoon sessions are some of my favorite times to sing quietly to myself. I love making up new songs using verses from Scripture. It helps me think about all the different meanings in each verse and allow the music to help the truth encounter my heart. Often I will get an idea and sit down and draw pictures representing the relationship between my feelings and my new revelation about the heart of God, etc. I have almost a fourth of my journal filled already
4 p.m. Everyday there is another intercession set at this time, but some days I help take care of the little kids while their parents are in the prayer room. Last week I got to take care of the 1 to 2 year olds–they are so precious! I am not really good at interacting with babies, and this is a chance for me to allow God to enjoy me in a setting that I feel really weak in. It is so humbling to be prayed for by a little child!
6 p.m. Two days out of the week, I take a class in the multi-purpose room at this time. We are taking Life of David and Sermon on the Mount as an internship. These classes are fascinating and challenging; I always have tons of notes in the margins of the outlines they hand out. My heart comes alive to see the Scriptures woven into a well-taught idea that I can take back to the prayer room and talk out with the Lord. We are really tired by this point in the day, but there are other people from the community (not in an internship or on-staff at the Prayer Room) in the class, and the presence of new people helps bring energy to the room again.
8:30 p.m. We ladies go home and cook dinner together usually. We talk about our day, experiences we had in the prayer room or class, and joke and laugh. I can’t cook, but Martha and Melissa are excellent cooks, and sometimes they will treat us to dinner. Usually we are really, really talkative because we have been quiet all day in the prayer room. We all firmly believe that females have a certain quota of words to speak everyday before they feel satisfied, lol 
11 p.m. By now we have cleaned up and moved downstairs, talked and joked and shared about our lives before and after this internship, planned the next day, done some laundry, played on the exercise ball, rolled around in the desk chair, rearranged our notes, listened to some new music or teaching from IHOP, and repeatedly complained about how tired we are. At least we don’t stay up until 3 a.m. like the guys
11:15 p.m. I love reading a little bit of Les Miserables before I got to bed every night. I love the story and characters. Often I find in each section something related to what I was thinking about in the prayer room that day. I am reading it slowly, but I don’t think it will take me six years to finish like the first time I read it, lol!
A Simple Plan
me in the Prayer Room during a 10 am set
This morning I woke up from an anxious dream, and the first thing that popped into my head was this refrain from a song I heard recently in the Prayer Room:
Let this truth sink (grow) deep inside of me
I was made for You
And You delight in me
And we will be together forever
It resounded through my brain incessantly as I got ready for my day. While I was eating breakfast. Doing my make-up. Packing my lunch. Finally, I decided that it must be pretty important, haha. As I considered it further during my first few minutes in the prayer room, I realized that it was just what I had asked the Lord for: direction for meditation.
When you spend six to eight hours a day sitting in one room, you get bored regardless of what’s going on. When you add to that intensity the fact that what is going on in that room is coming out of your own focused attention…you realize (a) that you have nothing to offer in and of yourself–you run out of ‘you’ a lot faster than you think you will and (b) if you keep focusing anyway, God delights in your desire.
But, what exactly do you do?
You think thoughts in the direction of God, addressed to Him so-to-speak. You sing songs other people thought of. You sing Scripture verses other people wrote. You sit and listen. You copy Scripture down in your natural handwriting. Then you write it again in your ‘cool’ handwriting. You dance a little so you don’t get stiff. Then you pace up and down reading your Scripture again and again and again…
God loves this! It’s so weak! It’s so opens up your soul and spirit to truth–which is weird, but true: I have done it.
It’s comforting to have a plan going in, to keep your mind focused. That’s why I just love that the Lord gave me that song: it’s a game plan. So I’ve put together a sheet of Scriptures on which to meditate or to consider my way through the points in the song. Enjoy! And let me know what you think, how you encounter God’s heart.
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I Was Made For You
- Psalm 139:13 : For You formed my inward parts; You wove me in my mother’s womb.
- Ephesians 2:10 : For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand so that we would walk in them.
And You Delight In Me
- Isaiah 62: 4, 5b : It will no longer be said to you, “Forsaken,” nor to your land will it any longer be said, “Desolate”; but you will be called, “My delight is in her”…So your God will rejoice over you.
- Psalm 16:3 : As for the saints who are in the earth, they are the majestic ones in whom is all my delight.
- majestic : gloriously grow up, increase, be risen, triumph; excellent, famous, gallant, glorious, lordly, mighty principal, worthy
- delight : satisfaction, gratification, joy, pleasure
- joy : prospect of possessing what one desires
And We Will Be Together Forever
- Hosea 2:19 : I will betroth you to me forever.
- John 17:24 : Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given me, be with Me where I am.
- Psalm 16:11 : You will make known to me the path of life; in Your presence is fullness of joy; in Your right hand there are pleasures forever.
Ten-Minute Tozer
This is my first read-through of Knowledge of the Holy by A. W. Tozer. To facilitate my effot to wrap my bubble-gum-ball-sized brain around the blimp of revelation in this book, I have summarized it for your convenient perusal. Ok, not so much ‘convenient’ as…’illuminating’: to provide, cover, or fill with light.
So feast your mind on our incredible God and a new way of thinking about Him.
Chapter 1: We must know God as He is, not as our mind construct Him to be.
Chapter 2: We can’t know God because He is God; but He told us a few things that are true, good descriptions of Himself: attributes.
Chapter 3: Attributes of God are not parts of a whole, like they are with us; they are His way, the ‘how’ He is His unified, undivided self.
Chapter 4: The Trinity is not ‘confusion’ but ‘mystery’; but three are are indeed one. Love and Faith go in and gaze; Reason kneels in reverence. For all three act in one throughout creation, incarnation, baptism, atonement, resurrection, salvation, and indwelling. (See the book for a cool list of Scripture references–or if you’re really interested, ask and I’ll post them
Chapter 5: As God Uncreated, He must give account of Himself to no one. He is. The essence of sin is ‘I am’.–yet it is our echo of His image. Thus, our life is redeemed, raised in Christ. Self-awareness separate from God-awareness is the essence of sin.
Chapter 6: God can desire but He cannot need.
(To be continued…)
Fast-Frame
I used to be afraid of fasting. Then I fasted and was proud of myself. Yesterday I broke my fast.
I take delight in the fact that me simply not eating brings pleasure to the Lord’s heart. I can sit there and not do anything—study, sing, pray, etc.—and His heart is affectionate towards me. Of course, it is like that all the time, but the hunger pains of fasting make it really obvious to my blind and stupid heart, haha.
But this fast, I woke up the first night at two a.m. with a massive migraine. The I-can’t-roll-over-in-bed kind of migraine. Like, the stumble-out-of-bed-and-hope-you-hit-the-Advil®-bottle kind of migraine.
So, I tried to pray it through and away. Then, I tried to pray it through and away. Finally, I tried to grit my teeth and bear it. But I couldn’t.
So I trudged (perfect word!) upstairs and tried to find my whole wheat Chex® in my new closet. Groggy-eyed as I was, I did not succeed. But Kristin’s Triscuits® were doing a little dance right under my nose. So, I threw myself on her mercy (which was sufficient in this case) and opened up her crackers. Three triscuits later, I took two Advil® with a sip of water. As I lay down in bed, my migraine slowly receded and sleep took over. But I had broken my fast. I was defeated. My weak love had failed…
But, no! says the Lord. You have simply done something to help yourself get through the fast. You have not disqualified yourself from pleasing My heart. Continue! I am not looking for perfection in weakness, for I am the only One perfect in weakness. I will make you strong if you lay yourself before Me. I long to know you in your weakness, to be let into the place of failure in your life. For there, My strong love will be made perfect in you. There My love will cast out the last iota of fear—fear of failure, fear of disappointment, fear of rejection. And I will give to you a spirit of power, love, and a sound mind. You will not be confused about My love, for you will have laid yourself bear and discovered that My feelings towards you never change. They rest on the strength of Christ’s love as poured out in blood over the mercy seat, the delight of My heart. Your heart will be awakened in love, tenderized and vulnerable because you have laid down the defenses of your own righteousness. And I will give you the oil of gladness to anoint your head and beautify your weakness. For all My delight is in you.
Through the Eye of the Needle
the Grand Canyon of my soul
This summer I have been quiet and confident. Two weeks of anxiety and grinding my teeth—yeah, gross but totally real, haha. Then deep and steady rhythms of receiving my Beloved’s love.
I was determined going into this internship that I wouldn’t be ‘wrecked’. I have heard from intern after intern (including my own brother) that you are ruined in the internship. I.e. that you loose your self-concept and are torn apart by a realization of who you are in the light of God–usually not very pretty or becoming or lovely.
That didn’t jive with the concept that the Lord had been feeding this whole summer, though. And I didn’t know what to embrace: what people said or what I thought God was saying. The answer seems obvious, but I am still new and young in this way of relating to God. So, perhaps I should listen to people that had done it before. After all, isn’t wisdom a thing to be desired? Experience a thing to be honored?
Well, I decided to listen to the Lord instead. I was beautiful, and every morning I sat and repeated to myself over and over that I was lovely in His eyes. And, indeed, it healed my soul of the self-inflicted wounds of self-righteousness, trying to carve a perfect marble sculpture out of living flesh. But today, He ushered in a new idea.
Reaching the end of myself and laying prostrate before Him would invite a revelation of who He was.
