Completely Stoked…

Somebody is praying for New Jersey on the IHOP webcast right now… I have never heard anybody pray for the states of New Jersey or Pennsylvania (or any New England state except Massachusetts for that matter). Until last week, I had never heard anybody pray for Maryland, but then 4 people did all of a sudden. Baltimore has yet to be named in my hearing.

Because the God TV webcast is down right now (I’m watching the backup without the view of the prayer mic) I don’t know who that was, but I suspect it was Ed B, whom I met at the last JoCo retreat.

Somebody just prayed for “Pittsburgh… Kansas”. Close, but no cigar.

I’m sure the whole region has been covered, but I do tune in quite a lot… Pray for Philly!!!

IHOP Aftermath

Got back on the plane late Sunday and back home @ 2AM yesterday.

A big thank you to the 3-5 people who prayed (preyed?) on me, including Chris. I came down to get some major prayer, and until my last 2 days, God really limited the amount of revelation that people had for me. I realized this was happening from the Lord, too. The final prophetic session and the AM prayer after church coupled with maximum Prayer Room soaking time before departure helped immensely. It was hard to leave the prayer room because (1) I didn’t want to leave, and (2) I could barely walk without keeling over!

On my 2nd leg of the trip, I got in the line next to a dude with a Hustler shirt on, which proclaimed “Hardcore since ’74.” I was so tanked from the prayer room that I almost didn’t mind the shirt too much, and decided to whip out my Bible to balance the feng shui of the airport terminal, and partly to see what would happen.

Nothing really happened other than a benign conversation with the dude, who seemed like a really nice guy who had just enjoyed himself at a Vegas bachelor party. No further progression to this tale unfortunately.

When I got home the next day I was delighted to see the massively upgraded Prayer Room Webcast trial offer. The quality of this is so good, I feel that I am still there which is a huge blessing. I want to thank the nightwatchers for your ministry since I now sleep with the webcast on. I will note any increase in supernatural dreams and other phenomena on this blog.

IHOP Day 3

Well I’m recouping from a rather intensely quiet prayer slot in the 10am today. Drinking my juice in the coffeeshop.

A couple metaphors for IHOP have been striking me in the past day…

The Simpsons
I don’t mean this in a comedic way, but it is just so bizarre to be sitting in the Prayer Room or the church service and seeing all the people from the various media including the webcast, conferences, and even many of your blogs that I follow. Every one here is unique and it is kind of like watching the Simpsons, in that you recognize various people and want to say hi to them.

The Zoo
I also don’t mean this in a weird way, but the HOP is sort of like a zoo. All of the worship leaders are now on global display and the worldwide broadcasting has necessitated a heightening of the platform, which I would suspect could be very much like a cage. The greater platform comes with the price of less spontaneity and a casual atmosphere gives way to a formal one.

I also suspect that it can be somewhat highly annoying to be engaged in pacing around the room and have people who you don’t know are out of town blog lurkers saying hi and trying to converse while in the prayer room. “Who is that?” So I’m trying to give you all space.

Stadium Prayer
I could not really fathom the logistics of stadiums full of intercessors praying and fasting. How do they walk around? I gotta walk around when I pray. I am realizing that you actually can have an intense prayer meeting and be limited to your seat due to population density. The stadium is just a much higher level than this, and I now have a vision that it can happen… at least for those who ramp up to it.

The Juice Challenge

Still up for buying brown water or juice for those who seek it. Just go to the “About Me” page for a photo of what I look like…

Trip to IHOP, Day 1

In the interest of my readers who are not here at the KC IHOP I will be blogging my experiences here from my outsider’s perspective. Perhaps these perspectives will be amusing or even insightful for the locals here. If you didn’t pray for my uncle, please do.

Forerunner Christian Fellowship: AM
After attending churches in Philly suburbs that have 25-50 members for the past year, attending a small megachurch was a bit different. No room to walk around, you are stuck in between people. Very little jumping around or outwardly demonstrative worship in the congregation.

The Camera-Probe Droid

There was a funky videocamera attached to a 50 foot pole that would capture the worshippers in the middle of their interactions with the Divine, for the thousands of voyeurs on the other side of the monitor or TV. I find these weird cameras swinging around reminiscent of a droid from Star Wars. It puts a frigid vibe on my worship anytime a camera is in front of me. This may be because I was jumbo-tronned at a PK gathering awhile ago.

Forerunner Christian Fellowship: PM

This was the same thing. Makes sense since the poor nightwatch people probably don’t make it in for the AM.

The Men’s Room

Due to flight restrictions banning liquids, I was a bit dehydrated yesterday, so I drank extra water during the service, which was a problem towards the end of the AM service. It took me 10 minutes in the cattle herd at the end to reach the bathroom. I was even more incredulous that the men’s room had a single stall? Had to wait behind three other guys in there. When I got in, I realized that I could select from a #1 (urinal), #2, (toilet) or take the literal plunge and shower under my choice of 5 shower heads. Never have I had such an array of selections for my hygienic needs after having to wait in line for so long.

Nightwatch

My evening is about to come to a close. It is 140 am and I have a JoCo retreat to register for in 6 hours… still wired from my flight out here and the events of Saturday. My hosts are calling me “Jack Bauer” because I was up for nearly 24 after doing a 4-6 am at a “24” service in PA.

Until tomorrow…

FCF Webcast Down Again

Ugggh. I would be happy to pay significantly more money than I give for the webcast just to be able to tune into the Forerunner church service in the Sunday pm. Starving for food out here sometimes and this is where I used to get it. Now I get this message:

 Windows Media Player cannot connect to the server. The server name might not be correct, the server might not be available, or your proxy settings might not be correct.

The only issue is that the “proxy”, the “server name”, and the “server availability” was just peachy until the signal got overloaded with viewers. Why should I be kicked off the stream? The worship was heating up and I was going for it, but now after 11 attempts I am giving up this week. 0 for 2 the last 2 weeks.

Is it a consolation that I will actually be there next week? Suppose so.  Ugggh.

So much for the FCF Webstream…

Well I was looking forward to the shot in the arm from the pm church at FCF but I keep getting kicked off. Upon logging back in, I hear the same clip – something about taking 4 rows out of the front of the Prayer Room for the “Global Prayer Team”. GodTV, I’m sending up the Bat-Signal. Please fix the webstream so I can get some spiritual food here! Glad it worked well last week for those baptisms, but this week not even the Audio Only stream works. Help!

Super Baptism on the Webcast

Shoutout to the IHOP webcast people:

Thank you for improving your streaming video capability for the church service yesterday! It was a shot in the arm.

Periodically the folks down there have massive baptism services after the sermon. Last night they baptized at least 70 people. Every time I get to catch this, I get massively blessed and find that I have a window of unusual grace to connect with God emotionally, and the “east coast spirit” (I have named him Krusty – because that is what happens to you out here a lot – your spirit gets crusty and hardened more easily than other places, imho) is not able to hold me back from a badly needed engaging with God.

This service went on for about 5 hours. I really got impacted by it, and ended up just leaving the webcast running and going to bed with it streaming so that I could receive the osmosis effect and impartation. The last guy they baptized had the same name as me, which was rather unusual. Eastern time, their service went to about midnight. I got ample sleep too!

What makes it special is the way they administrate it. They’ve got 2 baptism teams and avoid a routine that saps the joy from many a baptism service. The whole thing was fresh. I also appreciated their risks in letting many of these new disciples speak at some length on the mic, since that can be wordy or counterproductive if not well managed. It rocked.

The webcast people are to be praised because lately I have not been tuning in since it is too frustrating – the connection keeps breaking and bouncing me. Now the quality is funkier but at least the audio is consistent and I can get a clue as to the visual too.

Who was on Keys at the 6-8am slot Thursday?

Any idea how hard it is to get any work done when you’re watching the GBF on the IHOP webcast? Well whoever was playing keyboard must’ve had some interesting stuff in his protein shake. It was reminiscent of good ol’ “Dr. Teeth” from the muppets particularly in the style of righteously groovin’ funk that was coming out of that instrument. I didn’t know that you could actually pray along with music of such high-octane funk caliber. Or to paraphrase a popular song… “If [praying along with funky music] is wrong, I don’t wanna be right!”

Unfortunately I really needed to get some work done, and so my webcast came to an end.

Thoughts On Daniel

I posted this over at Sean’s blog. Sean is a wanna-be winner of the Cheesesteak Challenge who lives in Iowa and is most likely not going to make it out here to Philly in the next week to win the challenge. He was talking about Daniel and it so happens that I am also studying his slick navigation of the corporate world. It was a bummer that the IHOP webcast was not working this morning because I was looking forward to the workplace intercession. Anyway here is a little about Daniel.
I learn a lot about his TACT and PERSISTENCE in navigating the corporate world (it was actually the palace/educational system but it works for the corporate world too).

1. Daniel has a Dietary conviction based on God’s word
2. The Powers that be and peer pressure are in conflict with this, and would not be sympathetic with a plea for “respecting my religious convictions”. The argument must be what’s in it for THEM.
3. Daniel is in association with other likeminded buddies with the same convictions. Between the lines, this undoubtably helps with standing up to the Man.
4. Daniel tactfully approaches the department head with the request and is shot down.
5. Daniel is not deterred, and he figures out another plan. I think this is a little bit shrewd of him.
6. Daniel goes Under that guy’s head (not Over his head) and finds an unsuspecting guard in a lower position who has less responsibility and less at stake personally.
7. Through persuasion (and I would kind of like to (extra-biblically) surmise, the “Jedi Mind Trick”) Daniel is able to talk the guy’s language, and this dude gets to look like the Man because after 10 days the guys he supervises are smarter, better looking, and stronger than the rest.

Actually I feel compelled to attempt an exceedingly wimpy version of a Daniel fast at work. Instead of my beloved Tortillini with hot peppers and hot sauce and romano cheese, I am going to eat Albacore Tuna right out of the can for a month, and see if that helps my improving job situation. The tortillini is really good but really lowers my energy level. So today I bought about 15 cans of Tuna and will bring a small closet’s worth of breath mints to work as well.

And that is just the start of the book! As a side note, I do not think even Daniel would consent to the Cheesesteak Challenge, because he invented the Daniel Fast, which is intolerant to Cheesesteaks. Fortunately we are not under the ceremonial law anymore, right?!? I do not claim that a cheesesteak will increase your intelligence! CBB