SoM: the dreadfully overdue update, part one

Hello friends!  Apologies for going three weeks without a post.  Oy vey.  Our schedule has been turning on its axis rather faster than normal the last couple weeks, but I’ll get into that in a bit.

We wrapped up Core Values month in the last week of September with five sessions of prophetic training from the famed, the mighty, the two-and-only Ivan and Isabel Allum!  That was crazy, let-me-tell-you.  Not only were we supplied generously from their fount of wisdom, advice, and admonition, but they also made us do lots of activations (a word that used to give me goosebumps.  Seriously).  (If you’d told me a month ago that I was going to prophesy over half the school in the space of two hours, I would have completely flipped my lid.  Now prophesying and blessing people seems like sort of a regular thing…we’ve done it in the hallways a few times as well as being requisitioned into it at church.) I also got a prophetic word from Ivan, in which he used the word “visionary” five times in two minutes.  So that was super exciting!

We followed that up with a four-day shift as ministry volunteers at the Catch the Fire conference on Sept. 25th-28th.  All the students were on the prayer team in the evenings, in addition to having another duty in the morning or afternoon.  I was on Welcome, which basically boiled down to standing by the front door for four hours giving out “good morning”s and directions (and occasional hugs).  I was a bit amazed by how many people were genuinely excited to be greeted at the door, by someone who wasn’t just checking for registration wristbands!

The conference was full of great highlights, by the way.  David Ruis led the first worship set and I was basically transported back to my childhood.  Two measures into the opening piano of “We Will Dance” and I was literally crying.  We also did this song on the third night, which was one of the most powerful corporate worship experiences I’ve had.  A guy I’ve never heard of named Duncan Smith gave a great message on “Jesus as our magnificent obsession” (it especially appealed to me because he opened it with a literary analogy [about Charlie & the Chocolate Factory, which isn’t one of my favorite stories, but I’m not going to argue with the Holy Spirit’s artistic revelations]).  The very last session was led by none other than Heidi Baker (I’ll pause if you need a moment to fangirl like most of us did) and it was amazing. She just shared about how she got into her current mission field and some of her very early testimony, in addition to a few stories about the lowdown in Mozambique.  She is a passionate, hilarious, fiery, humble, very blessed lady.

God’s still getting down to the basics with me.  Right now we’re working through some forgiveness and honor stuff—which is simultaneously really refreshing and really hard—and He’s also still making sure I’m taking HIm at His word.  Both prophetic word, and Bible word.  We did a fire tunnel at the conference, and because it was following the Heidi Baker session, i was sort of expecting it to be explosive, expecting to get some great revelation or anointing.  I thought that was what i needed—some direction, some clarity, some vision, eh?…
Nope.  I was feeling some stirrings of joy and love and general manifestations of Holy Spirit goodness, but not hearing much from God.  No visions…nothing.  I was physically manifesting pretty intensely, so much so that I had to just lie on the carpet for awhile. So here I am:  the sanctuary is full of shouting and laughing and whooping and people generally having a really great time in the Spirit, and then…quiet.  It’s just me and God.  I try to ask him questions, try to ask for revelation, and I’m still not getting anything at all.  So I gave up.
And then it’s that tickling voice, that quiet, heavy voice, and He says:  “Say you believe Me.”
“Okay—I believe you.”
“Keep saying that.”
“I’ll say it as many times as it takes for me to really believe You, at a heart level—“
“No.  Never stop saying that.  Never stop believing in My pursuit of you.”
So i said it a lot.  I even shouted it out loud—which is really not a thing that I do, not that anyone was going to notice it in the midst of the Holy Ghost party.
And I’m going to keep saying it.  God, Your yes means yes and Your no means no.  I believe You.

I've another post in the works about this past week and what’s coming up – but I don’t want to burden you with my entire autobiography just yet, so I’ll wait a day or two before posting.  Thanks so much for reading!  <3