Our Nations Captiol

As we all climbed out of the Greyhound bus and gathered our suitcases, we were greeted with a cheery, "Well team, welcome to our Nations capitol!" from our very own leader, Sam Harper. We had finally reached a location that we could call home for an entire month! This was a little over 2 weeks ago, and little did I know how intense our time here was going to be.

Our first couple days was primarily consumed with getting to know our contacts here at the Justice House of Prayer (our base). Hearing stories of how JHOP was started and its vision was so inspiring. We also got to hear alot about the birth of the famous red LIFE tape, a prayer movement for the ending of abortion. Those first couple days we were also given the privilege to do our first LIFE siege. As we all lined up in front of the Supreme Court, the smell of red duct tape over my mouth, I began to pray for the ending of abortion. As I was standing in the cold wind, I looked to my right to see a family taking their picture on the steps. The Lord started speaking to me about all of the children who will never have the opportunity to go on family vacations, to take pictures with their mom & dad, or tug on their mothers shirt to tell her that they're hungry. I instantly began to bawl. As the tears started coming faster, I realized I couldn't really breathe anymore... I still had the tape over my mouth. I thought to my self, "gosh, I can't even cry!" and thats when I heard the Lord speak so softly with such a sadness in His voice, "Exactly... they can't even cry. No one can hear them..." - That broke my heart.

^ My team standing in front of the Supreme Court praying for the ending of abortion.

Don't get me wrong, it's not all depressing. At the same time as this, there are always people who are talking to our spokesperson. They're given the opportunity to share our heart for the power of prayer and the love of Christ. We're often even encouraged by passers-by! (passers-by may sound like incorrect grammar, but I'll have you know I had the greatest English teacher my senior year, Mrs. Pile, and I now know that passers-by is correct! haha) - We've gotten to do many sieges, and will be continuing throughout our stay in DC.

My favorite story so far is from when we on a tour of the National Mall. As we were ending our tour for the day at the Jefferson Memorial, we had some spare time before we were to be picked up. In the lower level of the memorial there is a museum type area with souvenir shops and such. We noticed a quote written on the wall above a nook that stated that "the knowledge of man is happiness" or something of the sort. My leader Levi instantly prayed out, "No, the knowledge of God is happiness." - We somehow ended up sitting around in that nook wasting time, when Jackson pulled out his guitar to just play quietly during our spare time. As he played, we were all quietly singing praises to the Lord. I guess we picked up some volume over time though, because when we opened our eyes we were greeted to a crowd of people who had gathered to listen. We were all a little startled to see so many people watching and taking pictures, but Levi stepped out to proclaim, "hey guys, uh.. we weren't really planning on this but we're Christians and we believe that Christ died for all of our sins. and if any of you guys would like to talk or pray with one of us we would love to." - As Levi was saying this, the Lord began to speak to me about a middle-aged woman in the crowd. So I weaseled through and tapped her on the shoulder. Our conversation went something like this:

Me- "Ma'am? The Lord just wanted me to tell you that He sees you. That He is wanting to comfort you in this time. That He sees what is going on in your family and He just wants to let you know that He is holding you...."

Woman-- she instantly started to bawl and threw her arms around me. As I stood there hugging her as she cried, she looked up to me and said, "My mother just died last week." - and continued crying while thanking me through her tears.

Me- "Is that your daughter right there?" (the Lord had highlighted her to me as well) and sure enough, it was. "I feel like the Lord is wanting to bring you two together in this time. To mend your relationship." I think I said a few more things, but by this point the mother and daughter were both crying and hugging each other.

That was quite possibly the most incredible thing I have ever experienced. As I was praying for the mother and daughter, my team was quick to jump on the opportunity to prophesy over the other bystanders. Kayla was hugging a teenage girl who was bawling, a few of the boys were ministering to this teenage punk boy, while the leaders were each talking to people as well. It was so humbling to see how the Lord will use people who are willing and listening for His voice at all times. I think that is what I am learning the most about... to simply listen at all times. If you're always listening for God's voice, then He knows He can use you because you're ready to respond.

Our team will be in DC until May 24, when we will venture to New Jersey and New York for a few weeks! That will be SO exciting! After that we have a short 3 day debrief in South Carolina and then back home to Hawaii for graduation!!! I can't believe the time is going to quickly!

I know I am failing miserably at updating my blog... but with such a busy schedule it is kind of hard to find the time to type up all the the thoughts and emotions that go on during the day. Hopefully I'll get better at it!

God bless you all!

Madison

Hello East Coast!

My time here has been absolutely amazing so far. My team has become family. We are in New England, Connecticut and the Yale campus looks like Englad! It's almost as if God is giving me little pieces of Europe in America! The Lord is already moving in the most amazing ways possible.. and He's actually using ME! I cannot believe it...

At a burn Friday night (at the church we're living at) One of our leaders Levi called people up for healing. I don't know what came over me.. I don't know how it happened.. but God actually used MY hands to work through. I prayed for 3 people, who were ALL healed. One lady hadn't been able to lift her extend her leg since September, and she even showed me how she couldn't raise it. After I prayed for her she just kicked it right up! After another prayer all pain and tightness was gone too! She kicked so high she accidentally kicked Kayla in the hand! haha I was flabbergasted.. This other lady had abscesses in her stomach or intestines, I can't remember. But it was constantly painful and she couldn't eat without excruciating pain. I prayed for her and she said, "um.. it's a little better" - So I prayed again, but then God started giving me different words for her. So I just started praying over her and emotional stuff. and she started shaking and weeping and almost fell over because the Holy Spirit was shaking her so much. After that she kept thanking and hugging me.. I totally forgot about her stomach. but as she was walking off I was like, "hey wait, how is your stomach?!" and she started feeling her stomach and looked back at me with a huge smile, "It doesn't hurt at all!" ... I saw her at church this morning and she said she ate breakfast for the first time without pain.. unbelievable.

Last night was an awakening meeting on Yale's campus with the IHOP University students. Lou Engle's son Jesse was there. And he prayed over me! He is SO cool! We got to talk for a while too afterward. During the meeting we were praying for students and people in the community that were in the room, and I got to pray over a few people. And God actually spoke through me! I can't believe it actually happened. People are falling out in the spirit even when it's only me who is praying for them! The girl came up to me afterward and explained how dead on my words were. I almost cried. Like crazy accurate stuff that I could have NEVER done on my own. Its AMAZING! The Lord is so good.

Easter Sunday is incredible. This incredible family invited us over for dinner. We got to spend the whole afternoon playing games outside, relaxing, eating a ton, and simply lying around together. I love my family here. They are such a blessing!

I'll try to update as much as possible, but our schedule is ridiculous! We've been getting to sleep around 130am and going all day!

Love you all!

Last day with Steve - Day 4

Once again, I'm going to copy my notes verbatim in hopes of somehow expressing the incredible concepts given to us in class.

If you are a believer you are a part of a new humanity, a redeemed humanity. And the Holy Spirit abides in you and guides you into all truth.

A supernatural quality of life and ministry is possible, beyond past experiences or what has ever been seen before. Do you believe that? You can know it in your head that it's possible, but that is only knowledge. Until you believe in your heart it will have minimized effect on your life. Romans 10:9

Self-evaluation is chronically sewn into our cultures to try to fix ourselves so that we can "help" God. Our self evaluation is us thinking that what God made wasn't quite enough, that we have to someone improve. The Bible says the righteous are bold as a lion! But we have an emotional reaction to confidence of thinking that it's setting yourself up for failure. We're thinking that from a perspective of what we can do in and from ourselves and not from God.
We're afraid that if we truly believe we are beautiful we will become vain or arrogant. But when your belief that you are beautiful comes not from self-evaluation or comparing yourself to others but from the voice of the Father over you, it can be believed in complete humility! The world wants us to be encouraged but is terrified we'll believe it.

The result of Adam and Eve eating the fruit in the garden was that they now looked at themselves They now had self-evaluation. They saw themselves and for the first time saw that they were naked. Before this they did not know anything about themselves except for what the Father told them. So when God came to the garden, instead of running towards God they ran away from God because they looked at themselves and knew they were naked.

We are so often afraid to complain to God. But it's right smack dab in the middle of the Bible! David complained to God and God called it worship! God just wants you to talk to Him! If we engage God, He will engage us. We're so wrapped up in our theology that we answer a lot of our own questions instead of going to God.

John 16
verse 7 - "It is better for you that I go away, for if I do not go away the helper (Holy Spirit) will not come to you." - Jesus
The disciples were living a supernatural life with Jesus. Healing the sick, seeing crazy miracles. But the Lord said that we will live a better life with the Holy Spirit. We're supposed to be living a more supernatural life with the Holy Spirit than the disciples lived with Jesus on earth!

The Holy Spirit does not come to convict us! He comes to empower us! Focusing on all of your wrong will only disable you from doing what is right and what you were created to do!

There was some more, but I don't think simply writing it on a blog would do it justice.

BLOW my mind - Day 3

Once again I am going to copy down my notes from class word-for-word. Some of the stuff is very raw and super blunt.. but so good at the same time. Please don't get offended. =)

Getting born again is not about getting heaven when we die and forgiveness when you sin. It's about making all things new. When you are born again, you are not just a normal person anymore. You are to be living with a chronic sense of God's pleasure over your life.

We have been taught that the promises of God are dependent on us and what we do. But its not! In Luke 11:1 the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to pray. This was after Jesus had sent them out to cast out demons and heal the sick. So why do we keep thinking we aren't ready or not equipped enough? Shoot! The disciples hadn't even been taught how to pray! When you truly realize that you are a new creation you will start trying to act like one.

Luke 1:74 - We can serve God without fear in holiness and righteousness all the days of our life! Not serve got FOR holiness and righteousness, but IN them. Because Christ has made us holy and righteous in Him. Some may think that saying that is arrogant, but it's not. How can you be arrogant if what you have was given to you? It's a gift! You can rejoice in that the Lord has made you righteous and holy and you can serve Him all the days of your life.

We were so much time trying to lessen ourselves, misquoting scripture to say that we ahve to be weak so that God can be strong. News flash! God is strong all the time! And he doesn't want there to be less of you, He created you!

Christianity has been systematized self-hatred produced by religious language.

Genesis 3
It is said that the serpent, Satan, is crafty/subtle. So you have to be looking for the subtleties of Satan's deception. Satan says, if you eat of this God knows that you will become like Him. What a subtle deception! Because that was implying that they weren't already like God, when it says that they were made like God in the beginning! The second deception was that God was trying to hide something from them (the knowledge of good and evil), so God must not really be that good. Satan uses subtle deception to trick us.

- God does not have love, a temporary emotion. God IS love. Everything about Him is love! We are going to be discovering for eternity the goodness and kindness of God. When you experience God's love, it is the most transforming thing you will ever encounter. So powerful is His love! We have to get rooted and grounded in His love.

We have been taught that "your sin separates you from God!".. the deception in that is that God leaves you. That the holy spirit removes his presence from you. Which is so not true! In Genesis 3 when God's children sin, He comes searching for them, to walk with them. Mankind ran away, not God. Because mankind felt guilty, he ran.

Before deception, we only knew what God told us about ourself. We instantly believed and manifested what He spoke. God said "you have authority!" and we simply walked in it. He said "you are like me!" and we agreed and knew it to be true. Self-evaluation was a result of the fall. We have never really seen a generation who is living how the Lord intended. We're so consumed with all sin and how messed up we are that we aren't living how He had in mind.

God has made us NEW! So why are we always trying to fix ourselves? We are called to live by faith. How much faith does it take to believe that you have sin? We have to live by faith in that we are made new, we are righteous and holy.

Thats pretty jumbled, but everything that he said was ust blowing my mind. I hope some of you dear friends find some of this interesting and challenging!

The Spirit and the Bride say "Come!"

Once again, I am going to word vomit all of my notes from class. Because I really want to be able to share this week with everyone. Basically it is amazing, so try to bear with how scattered it is!

So.. this may offend some people, or really rock your paradigm. But please don’t get offended.

- God is not in control of things on the earth. –

Gen:1:28 – God gives mankind authority in the earth. God has authority in the earth also, but He gave control to us. If God was in control would there be sickness, crime, poverty, abortion, sex trafficking, or abuse? No. If we believe that God is in control of our planet, then why would we have any passion to change the earth? Yes, all power belongs to God, but He gave us control over the earth. Why do you think the battle is over mankind? Whoever is influencing mankind is controlling the earth because mankind decides which direction the earth goes.

We were made to control the earth supernaturally. But not out of anger or forcefulness, but out of love. And by our supernatural compassion people will be drawn in to worship the living God.

We are called to replenish the earth and subdue the enemy. Bu the recent western church has been so angry with the world for living in sin that we have been trying to subdue the people of the earth and by doing that we were replenishing the enemy.

Hebrews 10:10-13 --- Christ sanctified us ONCE for all time, and since then He has been sitting on the right hand of God, waiting in expectance for His enemies to be made a footstool under His feet! We have to realize that we are so important! But you also have to understand how much He loves you or you will become too overwhelmed with the pressure. You have to understand that God wants to use you regardless of your flaws. He sees your tripping, stumbling obedience and He loves it!

We have been teaching people how to act like Christians instead of being Christ-like. We are teaching people how to live in a culture of concealment, how to act instead of exposing the problems so that someone can help. Because we’ve been taught that having sin issues is bad, no one will admit it. But by keeping it inside, in the dark, you are permitting it to cultivate.

We are supernatural by divine birth. We may say “well, I don’t feel supernatural” because we feel that we have to do enough good in the natural, be religious enough before we become supernatural. But that is false! We were born supernatural! “The Spirit and the Bride say Come!” but “creation is longing for the sons and daughters of man”. The greatest thing you can do for the planet is to walk in your supernatural anointing because it is GROANING for us! We need to no longer be simply doers of good, but be containers of God.

Don’t pray and worship to get somewhere with God. Pray and worship recognizing that you ARE with God. He is in you and you have been placed in His Heavenly Throne room.

That was alot... sorry.. but please pray over some of this stuff. It's changing my life. God is so good.

Say that again backwards!

It is Monday at 12 noon. And this week has already been radical. Our speaker this week is Steve Thompson, who is unbelievably incredible. I believe my jaw was at the floor the ENTIRE class period. I can hardly contain it all, so I just had to copy down a bunch of my notes onto my blog so that more people can be blown away! It will probably be pretty scatter-brained, but I'm literally just going to copy down the notes from class, so just keep truckin, cause it's so cool!

- God is raising up a generation to demonstrate the supernatural, but not out of stress or striving but out of a place of peace and rest. He wants us to be able to be supernatural without being bizarre. Sometimes we may feel weird by saying "yes, I am supernatural" because we remember all of the times we've tried to pray for healing or be prophetic, etc and nothing happened. But when we do that we're basing it off of what we've done instead of who God says we are. And when you try and maybe fail, it's okay. God is perfect, but He's not a perfectionist. He's a dad.

- People are so concerned about being "left behind" .. well, news flash! You already have been left behind. You've been left behind to make His Kingdom come on earth. We've had our thinking backwards. We, the church, have been trying to make ourselves holy to please God, and hope that in return God would change the world. But we can't make ourselves holy.. God makes us holy. And our mandate is to change the world. We've also been trying to transfer people from the world and into the church. We think if we have a bigger pile of people in the church than the world has, then we win! But last time it was checked, God left His disciples in the world. So why are we trying to come out of it?

- Gods Original Intention-

Genesis 1:26 God made man (1) in His image, (2) after His likeness, (3) and let us have dominion over the earth. So we were created with this intention that has 3 components:

(1) We were made in His images so that we would be His friend

(2) We were made like Him to show his likeness to the earth

(3) We were given dominion over the earth so that we may rule the earth WITH God

We were not created to maintain the status quo. Maintaining is boring! We were created to replenish and subdue (Genesis 1:28).

*God did not put Satan in the garden! He put the garden in Satan's fallen territory, put man in the garden, and said to expand the garden until God's kingdom fills the earth and kicks the enemy off the planet! We were given authority over the earth!*

Don't for one second think you are not valued by God

Genesis 2:7 - God breathed into mans nostrils the breath of life and the man became a living creature. God created EVERYTHING we see by simply speaking, by simply permitting it to be. He "let there be light". But He couldn't handle staying that far away for us. He had to reach down and hand make us with the soil of the earth. And then even that wasn't enough, He wanted to come face to face with us and breathe into us. Personally.

We were made from the earth's soil and then breathed into us was the breath of God. We were made by the natural, and then the breath of God made us supernatural. That is now our calling on the earth, to be a supernatural expression of God.

So you may feel unqualified for what God has called you to, but being unqualified God can still use you to succeed at the highest level. Jesus didn't come to back bad people good. He came to make natural people supernatural. So get going.

Chew on that for a bit! =)

The Sound

Wow

So this past week we had the Tacoma Team here speaking on freedom/deliverance. It was really amazing. The teams prayed with each one of us individually, asking God what our original design was and different things in the past that are strongholds which are keeping us from fully living in how the Lord designed us. So we all got to work through a bunch of crap, which was awesome.

Thursday in class Brian was going to be talking about Passivity and Fear, or something like that. I'm not really sure, because about 30-45 minutes into class he got off on a rabbit trail... or so we thought. He started talking about how there's something different with us. Not only our generation, but our class specifically. He was saying how he's seen classes filled with the Holy Spirit, he's been to radical worship sets with the presence of God in the room, etc. But there's something different about us. He was saying there is a sound coming out of us that people are talking about all over the world. At this point he threw down the class manuel and set the microphone down as he began to pour out his heart. I honestly don't know how to explain the rest of the day, but I'll do my best. Here's the gist:

We are the generation that the prophets have been praying for. The people who are going to do signs and miracles greater than those done by Jesus when He was on earth. Perform miraculous healings and see endless salvations. Somewhere in there the presence of God came in the room, and everyone was wrecked. People were bawling (myself included, of course) with the spirit of revelation heavy in the room. Our leader Amy said when she was a little girl God gave her a vision of an Army, an army emitting a sound that would shake the Nations and beckon the return of the King. She's had the vision many times, and she said we are that sound. Our class didn't move from that room for 6 hours. No break, no lunch, no nothing. Just soaking in the presence of God, praying, singing, worshipping, and journalling. UNBELIEVABLE.

It was in that room, somewhere in those 6 hours, that I knew my life was over. There is too much the Lord wants to use me for for me to have my own life and my own ambitions. My spirit was stirring inside of me because it remembered the sound and knew that this is why I was created. I was created for my Jesus and His glory. For bringing others into His Kingdom. Since that day something inside of me has changed, and will never be the same. I know too much now.

Jesus I'm Yours