i wrote this tonight on a message board in a community discussion and thought i would also post it here as it is a brief recap of my life in the past few years.
anyway, here’s the deal for me. in 2001 i had been going to a small fellowship gathering (eat, talk, get encouraged). the ministry had just bought this huge house on 20 acres which was adjacent to the 140 acres we already had. nothing at all was going on here, we just had land and no real plans. well, God began moving in the hearts of some people about establishing something called a house of prayer which would be open 24/7 for anyone to come and worship and pray. two of the guys who were in a leadership role went to kansas city and got to experience the international house of prayer (IHOP) there and realized the need for continual day and night worship and intercession and the impact something like that would have on our region. so they came back all fired up about this IHOP thing. I decided go see for myself what this was about and made a trip in november of 2001. during that time the Lord had also be speaking to me about moving out of my zone of comfort, and i had no idea what he meant other than i had just sold my house without really knowing why. so after a series of discussions and messages, i knew that i needed to leave grace college after 8 years. we went on a 21 day corporate fast from jan 1-21 of 2002, and i resigned on jan. 21. i sold just about everything, packed the rest in to a trailer and drove to osceola without a job or a place to live. i was able to move into the big house that we had so there were now 2 of us there. i had a great room though so it was all good. well, it was way different than i imagined because 1. it was open 24/7 with people coming and going at all hours of the night. plus with live worship, things can tend to get loud. anyway, i got stretched real fast about living in a community setting – sharing a kitchen, bathrooms, people just using stuff without asking, banging on the door at all hours… it was a real stretch for me. then another family moved in with 2 teenagers. so now there were 6-7 of us. two of my friends also moved to another one of the houses on the property (there are 3), and another firend moved to another one. Then for a while we had several camping trailers with people living there but someone called the zoning commission and we had to not do that anymore. all that to say, the past few years have been wild for me. we had a 24/7 house of prayer going at about 30-40% live worship, a fellowship of about 150 on sundays, a tuesday night meeting of about 150 (representing about 20-40 churches cross-denominations) not to mention all kinds of seminars for counseling, teaching of the worship models (called harp [music] and bowl [intercession). then we had about 30 horses to take care of… it all grew really fast. during this time i had also started a design company with a friend of mine and it was going well. but about a year into it, i knew that it was not what i was supposed to be doing. my heart was full time with voice. even though the design company was actually in the ministry center… it wasn’t what i wanted to be doing, so i left the company in early 2004 and went full time at voice. that was another scary move. because even though i was not making tons of money by any means, i was surviving. going to voice meant…nothing. but you know, the crazy thing is that through all of this i saw wild stuff happen. i received weird blessings like money appearing in my wallet, bills strangely being paid without my doing so, i saw three people receive cars (in fact one of them was today!), medical bills get paid, yeah i could go on… anyway my whole point, to those who are about tired of reading by now… is that this act of faith was a big step for me. but i know it was essential for my beginning to understand more about the God i have chosen to follow.
so all that to say, yes, i have had the privilege of living with many of the people who i serve and serve with. it is something i would never trade for anything because it shaped me into becoming way more dead to self, and giving up those “rights” (alleged?) that i thought i had, and pushing me into an area of discomfort which was what i really needed. i am still learning and being stretched (that’s a favorite phrase) but as we like to say… the day we stop changing or fear change, that’s the day we become a denomination. after all, what we are doing is all about jesus… not about us at all.