Yet another lengthy, boring update. No, really

I am getting tired of doing highlights for each day. I don’t really have time to blog during the week, so I end up doing these cumulative posts that take forever to type. But I don’t want to leave details out. I know my family likes to know what’s going on with me. Plus, this blog is serving as my diary, and I know I won’t remember details a year from now. So here goes, but in reverse chronological order (ha!):

Friday (today): I just spent four hours doing detailed cleaning — meaning we scoured a couple bathrooms from top to bottom. The guy’s bathroom smelled. The only guy on our team (he reminds me of the actor Ben Browder: same loud personality and cowboy swagger) complained the whole time we did bathrooms. “I hate toilets!” he proclaimed. So do I. I have a bit of OCD when it comes to germs, as my family can attest, and I really didn’t do a good job cleaning the baseboards behind the toilet. I mean, I would have had to squeeze between the toilet and the stall’s wall. Even though my team had just cleaned both, that’s still gross.

Cleaning frustrates me because this place is open around the clock. People always come in and mess up whatever we just cleaned. I went into the girls’ bathroom by the PR literally ten minutes after we cleaned it, and someone had already gotten water all over the counter. Sigh. My teammembers and I kept telling each other we are learning humility and servanthood.

Thursday: I went to SuperTarget (not Wal-Mart, for once) and crammed a bunch of people into my car. We got back in time for the intercession set. I skipped supper and stayed for Misty’s prophetic worship set, as is becoming my habit. I liked the music they did for about 15 minutes at the beginning. It was spacey – the type of sound my dad would call “headspace music.” After the set, I wanted to check out the other 24/7 IHOP: the International House of Pancakes.

The House of Pancakes has been around a lot longer than the House of Prayer, so they could have taken issue with IHOP-KC’s usage of the name. Instead, I think they decided it would be more publicity for them. The cool thing is, our IHOPers get a 20% discount if we show our nametags. So a couple of us – Gem, Carol, Red Hot, Erni, and I – stuffed ourselves on discounted pancakes and talked. I predict we will go there many more times over the next six months.

Wednesday: Nothing at all happened on Wednesday. I kid, I kid! We sat in the PR for four hours. Then we sat some more while we listened to a CD of Mike Bickle telling us about IHOP-KC’s prophetic history. A couple of us brought laptops and played solitaire or looked at pictures. (Red Hot and Arco, who were sitting next to me, loved the pictures of the puppies.) Near the end, half the room was almost asleep. The message wasn’t bad; he said quite a few intriguing things (though I still am not sure if Bob Jones is sane or not, Mike definitely believes so).

Tuesday: Today was awesome. Specifically, the 4:00 – 6:00 intercession set was awesome. That’s one of the sets devoted to interceding for Israel. I wanted to pray on the mike for Israel, so I got up my courage as the music started to rise. I sat down next to Princess, who is not sure if she is Jewish but goes to synagogue anyway (or used to; our classes interfere with synagogue attendance right now). Her rabbi and somebody else from her church came up to pray, too. We waited in the intercessor chairs as the music kept going. And going.

And going.

Okay, I’m pretty sure I’ve explained how intercession goes, but let me reiterate here for effect. First, the prayer leader or the associate PL prays. The prophetic singers echo, rephrase, or otherwise interpret whatever the prayer was. Sometimes they catch a chorus. Other times they help the intercessor lead the room into warring in the Spirit. The intercessory might pray again, the singers do their thing, and then the next intercessor is up. All of the intercessors go up, one after another, and sometimes the worship team goes back into a worship song. That cycle may repeat three to four times during a set. This time, the associate prayer leader, who happened to be Stuart Greaves (head of the Night Watch and a really good speaker), prayed. The singers started singing, and they never really stopped. They kept going back to a bunch of choruses, and I can still hear some of them in my head: “Have mercy on Zion, have mercy on Zion,” “Come…to…Jerusalem! Turn…the city…upside down,” “Hal-le-lu-jah,” “Your mercy triumphs over judgement.” People started dancing up front – the IHOP dance team and about thirty other people bopping out to the music. The rest of the room was on their feet, clapping so hard our hands hurt. No one could sit still; the energy was infectious.

I can’t actually describe the experience. I have never, ever seen a set so good, and I’ve seen a bunch. It wasn’t by our talent or power, either. I mean, the worship team was really good – I think Rizzo was leading, with Misty as chorus leader and this awesome guy named Paco doing Latin rhythms on the congas. But everyone in the room could feel the presence of G-d. That sounds really corny when I say it. Type it. Right. But it’s true. In fact, at the end of the set, when G-d finally let us come down off of our high, Dave Sliker stopped the team and talked to the room for a while.

“What just happened was amazing. It was the kiss of G-d,” he said. “But I don’t want you to walk away feeling satisfied. I want you to walk away feeling just a little unsatisfied. We need to continue to press in as intercessors, and it’s significant that this happened when we were interceding for Israel.”

After that we went to our End Times discussion groups. We had intern intercession next. Luke Wood’s set was okay, but I actually resented going to the PR again. I wanted to preserve the memory of that set. Sliker’s right, though. We have to persevere in intercession, even when we feel nothing.

Monday: Awesome Song of Solomon class. Dave Sliker was supposed give a broad overview of chapters two and three. He barely got through two – he had to really speed up the last couple of verses. But it was gooooood.

So yeah, that was my week.

Things I’ve been thinking about lately: Not seeking glory in man, but finding my identity in G-d. How He delights in me, even in my immaturity and compromise. How we fit into the already perfect love between the members of the Trinity. What it will be like when G-d comes and dwells with man on the earth again. Also, how contacts are awesome and how I need chocolate.