Posts in the month of: Jun, 2010
Highlights from Fascinate I, a Conference for High School Students
Each summer we host Fascinate conferences for high school students, to encourage them in the love of God and call them to be transformed by God’s grace, that they might walk in His truth and power. Fascinate I began on Thursday, June 24, with over 1,300 attendees. Misty Edwards and Luke Wood led us into the presence of the Lord during worship, and Corey Russell spoke about turning our eyes away from worthless things to behold the beauty of the Lord (Ps. 119:18, 37). Mike Bickle taught about becoming a person after God’s heart, encouraging us that the Lord is preparing an entire generation to walk in an anointing and calling like David’s.
On the second day and into the weekend, we heard from David Sliker about Jesus the Servant, and from Zack Hensley about God’s affections being our motivation for faithfulness. We can miss out on the joy of the glad-hearted God if we don’t understand that He loves to serve us, even in the midst of our immaturity. Laura Hackett, Cory Asbury, Tim Reimherr, and Marcus Meier led worship. Many people received physical healing during our awakening services each evening, as the Holy Spirit touched lives and bodies.
Visit IHOP.org/fascinate to register for Fascinate II, starting July 22, or to watch archives of our Fascinate I conference.
onething Fremont CA, – July 4-5
Forerunner Christian Church (FCC) is hosting Mike Bickle and IHOP–KC’s onething regionals team in Fremont, CA, over the July 4th holiday weekend. On July 2 and 3, Mike Bickle will be speaking in extended teaching times. Then on July 4 and 5, FCC will host onething Fremont. There will be three sessions each day, and Dwayne Roberts, Luke Wood, and others from the International House of Prayer’s onething regionals team will minister as we seek to exalt Jesus during worship and the teaching of the Word.
The onething conference will have Chinese translation for all sessions.
Invitation to our Fascinate high school conference this Summer – July 22–24
Dear Youth Pastors, Leaders, and Parents,
I believe we are in the beginning of the days of the fulfillment of the promise spoken long ago by the prophet Joel and the apostle Peter: the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on sons, daughters, and young men and women who would prophesy. Here at the International House of Prayer of Kansas City, we are experiencing a move of the Spirit that has brought physical healing and freedom from sin and shame to many. In addition to the individual benefits of this season of renewal and awakening, we find ourselves in a season of divine convergence as the Lord brings the Body of Christ into unity with His heart and His plans.
In light of this, I invite you to come to our Fascinate II high school conference from July 22–24. This conference serves as a touch-point to knit us together in a dynamic way as we serve the purposes of God together for the next generation. Day in and day out, you are pouring into teenagers to prepare them for the days that are coming. My desire is to join with you in your labors to see fruitfulness multiplied beyond anything we can accomplish on our own.
We are continuing to pray night and day for teenagers, high schools, youth groups, and youth ministries across the nation. We believe the time has come to work with a new level of fervency to reverse the trend of what Newsweek recently called “post-Christian America.” The god that many teenagers are worshiping around the nation is not the same Jesus who is returning to judge the nations and fully establish an everlasting kingdom. It is this Jesus we long to present to America, that we might turn to Him and receive mercy.
Therefore, both our Fascinate II conference and our Awakening Teen Camp II, July 10–25, exist to multiply laborers and faithful witnesses—those who know that the glory, power, and mercy of Jesus are the only answer for a nation that appears to be in the midst of a troubling decline. The days to labor with teenagers for breakthrough and the power of the Holy Spirit are upon us. The only hope for America is a fascinated Church filled with leaders, young adults, and teenagers who ache for the glorious King to ignite the fires of revival. I want to stand with you and your teenagers as one, calling America to “be wise” and turn to the One who is soon returning. Will you consider joining us this summer in Kansas City, as together we take our stand for righteousness and truth?
Mike Bickle, Lou Engle, Allen Hood, Corey Russell, Misty Edwards, myself, and many others will be joining with you and thousands of teenagers as we “eagerly wait for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ, who will also confirm you to the end, that you may be blameless in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ” (1 Cor. 1:7–8). I hope to see you soon.
Go to IHOP.org/fascinate to register for the conference, and visit IHOP.org/atc to find out more about our teen camp.
Hastening the day,
David Sliker
IHOP–KC Student Ministries
onething Dallas/Fort Worth – Recap
This past weekend, June 4–5, there were over twenty-five prayer ministries in the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) area that came together in a collaborative effort to host an IHOP–KC onething regional. Two thousand hungry believers gathered to worship and cry out for revival in DFW, and to receive teaching and prophetic and healing ministry.
After speaking about Mary of Bethany in the opening session, Brian Kim gave an exhortation to live with wholehearted abandonment, spending our lives at the feet of Jesus. Hundreds responded to the message with tears, and with a fresh commitment to love God with all of their heart, soul, mind, and strength.
Matt Gilman and Justin Rizzo pressed in for the presence of God as we exalted Jesus in powerful times of worship, dance, and adoration. Matt and Justin, along with their worship teams, also led a breakout session, to teach musicians, singers, and worship leaders about the honor and importance of building the house of prayer in this generation.
Wes Martin ended the weekend with a message to summon forth forerunner messengers like John the Baptist and with an invitation to commit to the Sacred Charge. He spoke from Mike Bickle’s recently released book, 7 Commitments of a Forerunner: A Sacred Charge to Press into God. Nearly 400 people responded as we bowed before the Lord to ask for grace to stay the course.
Let’s continue to pray for God to increase the hunger in us all, as we stand in allegiance to Jesus, that we would be those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
Begin to pray for our next regional conference— onething Fremont, CA: July 4-5 Register
IHOPU faculty’s Shelley Hundley shares her healing testimony
Shelley Hundley is vice-president of curriculum and teaching for International House of Prayer University and director of the Forerunner School of Ministry. Shelley serves in various programs of IHOPU, such as the Apostolic Prayer and Preaching program, as well as providing pastoral care for students and teachers. She also helps give leadership to the International House of Prayer’s prophetic department. Read on, as Shelley shares a powerful testimony about her walk with the Lord and His faithful leadership and willingness to heal.
I came to know the Lord during my sophomore year in college and quickly met Allen and Rachel Hood and joined their discipleship group. We traveled around America to different churches, visiting Pensacola and Toronto, because there were revivals going on, and also spent time in Kansas City.
I later moved to Kansas City to attend Grace Training Center, the Bible school which was part of Mike Bickle’s church in the eighties and nineties. At first I didn’t have a car or a place to live, and I cleaned movie theatre bathrooms to pay my way through classes. Grace Training School was small then, but the teachers were phenomenal. I loved my two years there.
The prayer room began in 1999, followed shortly by the Forerunner School of Prayer, our Bible school. It was around that time that I became sick.
I thought I had the flu, but it went on for days. I went to a hospital and they ran some tests. When I woke up, my close friends and leaders were in the hospital room. They told me I had Crohn’s disease. I didn’t even know what that meant. Crohn’s disease causes internal hemorrhaging all the way from the esophagus to the stomach and intestines. There is a lot of bleeding and inflammation. I almost lost my vision at one point, and had excruciating pain that would make it very hard to walk. I used to crawl from my bed to the bathroom.
As a child, I went through some pretty horrendous physical and sexual abuse, and Crohn’s disease mimicked that abuse. Crohn’s disease hits hard, and then pulls back into remission, much like the cycles of abuse that I received. I was in the hospital every month. I had never been sick like that before in my life.
I would be covered in bruises from the IVs, looking like I had taken a beating. I remember coming home, taking a shower, and seeing the bruises and battle scars. The physical feeling was like being beaten, and I would weep before God.
It was the very same valley that I went through as a kid, but this time I had a family fighting for me. I’ve never seen anything like it in my life. I was not one to ask for help, but I had friends that would never leave me in the hospital by myself. There wasn’t a time when I didn’t have intercessors or musicians in my room, interceding and praying. Nurses and medical staff came to the Lord because of them.
I was sick with Crohn’s for three years, and during that time, Mike Bickle and Allen Hood gave me assignments. Mike said, “This will be your seminary training.” Mike came to the hospital once, slammed a three-volume theology set on the hospital tray, and said, “OK, Allen will give you the assignments.” I had to do a church history assignment, an assignment on a book of the Bible, and a theology assignment. Allen and Mike kept me going.
I remember being very sick at one point, and Allen came over to my house and asked, “Do you have your assignment done?” I said, “No! I can’t read, I can hardly talk to tell you this right now, and I’m crawling around my house because I can’t walk. I can’t even go to the house of prayer. No, I did not get my assignment done.” The assignment that I was supposed to have done was a written, paraphrased version of the Song of Songs. I had only done the first chapter. Allen said, “It’s time for you to memorize all eight chapters. I’m going to talk to your roommates. They will record it for you on some tapes, and you will memorize all eight chapters.” He said this stone-faced, and then he walked out. I didn’t know until years later, but he went out to his car and wept, because it was one of the hardest things that he had to do, to push me through those years.
Another aspect of the disease was that it kept me from speaking. I had a very limited amount of time per day that I was able to talk. If I chose to accuse the Lord in my heart and turn from Him, I would be cutting off the one person that I could really fellowship with.
At first I kept asking God why He wouldn’t heal me if He loved me. It was like I wanted Him to prove to me that He loved me. Then I realized that He doesn’t have to prove His goodness and kindness and love towards me. He proved it on the cross. Even if He had never spoken another word to me, He would be righteous and kind in all His ways. I began to have the revelation that He would heal me because it’s in His nature.
Sometimes it was so hard to ask Him to heal me. Sometimes I would go through a whole day without asking Him. I would lie there at night and say, “Ah, I didn’t ask Him to heal me today. I can’t stop asking Him. To stop asking Him is to make a judgment about Him; it is to assume that my Father is not good and doesn’t want to heal.”
Eventually, I began to play out the drama in my mind as I was sitting in my bed, saying, “You didn’t heal me today. It must have been very difficult for You to hold back that part of who You are. I thought You couldn’t handle it one more day, but I know that you are doing something in me every day. What if tomorrow I’m healed, and today is the last day to love You in the darkness?” I felt like the clock was ticking and I would be healed soon.
By the time He healed me, in my heart it was as though I was already healed. It was bizarre, but it felt like He had already kissed my heart with His justice.
I was healed in an everyday, mundane prayer meeting. I raised my hand and stood up for prayer. People came around me to pray. They didn’t say anything profound. There was no prophetic download. They just prayed for me and sang in the Spirit, and within five minutes I knew it was my day. I felt “electricity” throughout my body, and I fell to the ground. No one else in the room seemed to be getting touched. Misty was singing on the worship team, and she looked over at me in surprise at the timing of the Lord.
I got up, and Kirk Bennett walked over to me, grinning. I think he already knew. He asked, “How do you feel?” I had not had a painless day like that one in three years.
I went to see my doctor, who had been an atheist, and she said, “There is a God! He does miracles! You do not have Crohn’s disease.” I told her, “His name is Jesus.” My brother, who was also an agnostic doctor at the time, looked at all the medical charts and later came to the Lord. They removed the diagnosis completely.
My experience with Crohn’s disease fuels my teaching; because, at the end of it all, when I was healed, the Lord had put life messages in me.
When I was healed, the Lord gave me the passage, “Comfort, comfort my people.” I came up with a plan to teach about God as the Judge in order to understand suffering and His heart through it.
A year or so after that, the school became the Forerunner School of Ministry and Allen Hood became president. More recently, the music academy and the media institute were added, and we became IHOPU. Our school exists to train and call forth forerunner messengers. We want to send out ones who will prepare the Church and the earth for His return.
IHOP-KC News Video
IHOP-KC News June 2010
Title
IHOP-KC News June 2010
Description
Coverage of the Korean Passion For Jesus conference, Fascinate podcast, and the IHOPU 2010 graduation
IHOP–KC’s June news video features Jono Hall, David Sliker, Misty Edwards, and others. Hear about the first ever Passion for Jesus conference in Korean, as well as the video podcast with Misty and David talking about the emotions of God. Watch highlights from the IHOPU graduation ceremony, and learn more about this summer’s Fascinate high school conferences.
The Danger of Unbound Beauty
“Ascribe to the Lord glory and strength…Worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness.” Psalm 29:1–2
There’s a common saying that is disastrous when taken seriously and even heretical when taken spiritually. Maybe you’ve heard it: beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Sounds humble enough, doesn’t it? It’s the idea that each of us finds beauty in different things or experiences in a different way from the person next to us; that if we tried to define beauty we would rob one another of human enjoyment by applying narrow and artificial parameters. But the subtle buy-in of this statement is that beauty is not something “out there,” beyond our own finite consciousness, but is something “in-here,” a human-centered value and invention. Taken to its limit, this little platitude means that none of us can say for certain whether or not something is good or whole or valuable. It means we must accept, with however painful an acquiescence, that it is perfectly normal for someone else to be repulsed by the very thing that enthralls us, be it a concerto, a sunset, or God Himself. It means we must make our peace with radically differing preferences, as if it were completely natural for some of us to prefer total darkness, while others of us prefer light. If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, then it is nowhere.
The deepest mystery of what it means to be a human created in the image of God is explained by the eye. Jesus said, “The eye is the lamp of the body” (Mt. 6:22), and he would know. After all, He designed humans to be enraptured by splendor, to gaze and go on gazing insatiably on beauty. So if we insist that beauty cannot be defined, or geo-located, then we are in trouble; we have lost our bearings in the search for our deepest significance.
And “lost” aptly describes a culture such as ours that exults in visions of terror and immorality. Take the pornography industry for instance—over 11,000 new pornographic films are released every year (about twenty times the mainstream movie output). Two and a half billion pornographic emails flit through the interwebs every day, and “sex” is the leading search term entered into our web browsers. What’s worse, there is a strong correlation between purchases of pornographic magazines and recorded rapes, but that may not come as a great surprise when you consider that most mainstream pornography is extremely violent. It’s not hard to see how these trends could lead to much larger and pernicious trends such as human trafficking. There is nothing remotely beautiful about any of this. The “beholders” have gone astray and, as a result, beauty and justice lie fallen in the streets.
What the pornography industry demonstrates is that when our perspective of beauty is separated from the Creator of beauty, soon after, it demands that we give expression to every vain and worthless thought that pops into our heads. The generation of Noah knew this well and they tumbled into a global culture so depraved that God pronounced “every intent and the thoughts of [man’s] heart . . . evil continually” (Gen. 5:5), just before He washed them all away.
As we survey the landscape of our planet and see daunting social justice issues such as human trafficking, what can we infer except that the minds of millions of wicked men have dreamed up monstrous evils and are now acting out their vision? The crimes committed across the globe were first dreamed up by people in the privacy of their mind’s eye.
As our eyes have wandered in search of truth and beauty, the answer has been staring us in the face. Acclaimed Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias, when cornered with the question of relative beauty, answered this way: “Beauty is an extraordinary gift given to us, but it is not given in a vacuum. Scripture says worship the Lord in the beauty of holiness. It must be bounded by the very person and character of God.” Unbound beauty is to blame for a thousand ills. But put in its proper place—to, from, and through a holy God—beauty becomes the magnet that pulls us into our destiny. This is in part what the psalmist meant in Psalm 29, when he wrote: “Ascribe to the Lord glory and majesty.” Credit God as the author of beauty, and you will be drawn into consummate beauty, God himself.
The most private issues of personal sanctity to the most grandiose social justice agendas begin with a reformation of the eyes of our heart. If we don’t embrace the clear understanding that we are not the reference point of reality and wholeness, we will miss the critical point: God is our reference point. When we choose to gaze on His beauty, we find our innermost desires satisfied and a plan for humanity birthed in the mind’s eye of a holy God, beyond anything we could ask or imagine.
Author
Bret Mavrich is the Director of Abolition at Exodus Cry, the IHOP–KC department formed to address human trafficking. Exodus Cry is developing a feature-length documentary called Nefarious: Merchant of Souls, unveiling the roots of immorality fueling human trafficking and the global sex trade.
IHOPU’s New Campus
Last summer, a generous donor gave 3.3 million dollars for the purchase of Grandview Plaza, a mostly abandoned strip mall, to become the new home of IHOPU. Another donor gave IHOP–KC a challenge, promising that they would match anything we could raise, up to 1.5 million dollars, for the renovation of the property. We managed to raise the full matching amount, bringing the total renovation funds to 3 million dollars. We have more to raise to finish all three phases of renovation for the 100,000 square foot facility, but we have begun construction and phase one is on schedule.
Imagine seeing hundreds of students discussing the glorious New Jerusalem, the plan of salvation, or evangelistic endeavors as you enter the new IHOPU campus. Imagine a place where the conversation hinges on the name and character of Jesus. This is the future home of the International House of Prayer University, a school designed and built for students of IHOPU. This new home will be a center for training students in ministry, worship, theology, and night-and-day prayer.
Having two 500-seat classrooms, two 250-seat classrooms, and three 100-seat classrooms, along with smaller classrooms and conference rooms, the campus will be the largest working property at the International House of Prayer Missions Base. The parking lot alone will have over 500 available spaces, which is exciting news for those accustomed to the current parking facility at IHOPU.
With a full service coffee bar and café, the on-site coffee shop will be nearly double the size of Higher Grounds Café at the Red Bridge Center. Students, faculty, and visitors will be able to relax and meet informally in the coffee shop. The new campus will also accommodate IHOPU’s library to find commentaries, biographies, or reference materials to aid their studies. At present, the library is in a separate location from the classrooms. Eventually, the plan is to build an outdoor, three-season patio just outside the coffee shop and library.
The entire face of the new IHOPU will be glass, which will allow a stunning amount of natural light to enter the facility. With a bright, open floor plan, the campus will have a welcoming, accommodating feel.
In addition to all of this, a first-rate recording studio, comparable to those of Nashville, Los Angeles, and New York, is under construction. Musicians will enjoy state-of-the-art equipment with plenty of room to feel at home for any CD project or studio training session.
I recently toured IHOPU’s new site and saw firsthand the aggressive construction taking place, to establish a facility of the highest quality for our students. Work began in April and is on schedule to be completed for the fall semester beginning this August, 2010.
onething Dallas/Fort Worth June 4-5
The IHOP–KC onething regionals team is hosting onething Dallas/Fort Worth this weekend, June 4–5. We’re praying for the Spirit of God to continue to do what we’ve witnessed Him do at other regionals this year, as He releases His power in healing, joy, deliverance, and salvation as we worship and exalt Jesus. We’re also very excited to work with and encourage those who are involved in the fire of perpetual prayer and worship that God has ignited in the city area. There is currently a network of over twenty-five houses of prayer in the Dallas/Fort Worth area contending for a mighty breaking in of the presence of God. Don’t miss this weekend!
For more information, visit IHOP.org/onething
A Review of Stephen Venable’s “A Life of Communion with God” Class
Our culture and this generation are constantly inundated with advertisements. They promise fulfillment, pleasure, and satisfaction, and they are growing more prevalent and more intense as Western culture feeds off consumerism and the insatiable human appetite. Few perceive the danger of covetousness dominating the landscape of the soul and stifling the freedom of the heart. Stephen Venable discusses these issues in his class A Life of Communion with God.
Stephen systematically explores the elements of created humanity and our deep desire for love, beauty, and significance. We were made to feel deeply and to experience pleasure, but we find ourselves in a paradox. We live in the tension of being made for contentment, but being mostly discontent. Nothing we do, no matter how much we experience, how far we travel, how many friends we make, or how many possessions we own, will ever satisfy us completely. Until we give ourselves in abandonment to God, we will not find satisfaction. The contemplatives of old were beacons of light, walking in freedom from the things of this world; Stephen traces the development of contemplative prayer and links it to our high calling of encountering the living God.
Stephen delves deeply into the human predicament and into the pleasures of loving God. The purpose of this class is to set our vision on knowing the depths of Jesus. Communion with God is not esoteric or ethereal, but pragmatic and dynamically related to our development as disciples of Jesus. Our vision must not be captured by what we see around us, but focused upon the person of Christ.
Gaining a life of deep communion can be a long, arduous journey with many barriers along the way. Hundreds of things vie for our attention. Only with proper vision will our hearts endure with diligence as we purpose to love God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength. If we begin to understand our calling to be transformed to the image of Christ, then everything along the journey makes sense. If not, we may cast off restraint and become ineffective, lawless, and undisciplined. Deep communion with God is the most important vision one can have, not only for ministry, but also for the sheer pleasure of knowing God.
You can take this full class and others online by visiting the IHOPU eSchool.
