Day 17 & 18: Kansas City

Well, Aaron and I arrived last night at around 10:30 p.m. and met up with Steve from my home church, Relevant, back in Detroit. Steve works here through the week and flys home for the weekend. Believe it or not, Kansas City is pretty cool. They have a night life and they didn't re-elect Kwame Kilpatrick!! Aaaarrrrggggh!! I digress.

We are staying with Steve, who graciously opened up his digs for us to crash in. We are forever grateful.

As I am writing this I am sitting in the "Higher Grounds Coffee House" at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City, Missouri (from here on known as IHOP). Yes, they have free wireless internet!

Where to begin... Just a little background on IHOP. They have been praying and worshipping God 24 hours a day, 7 days a week since September 19th, 1999. We'll get back to that.

I have been both excited and a bit scared about what I might encounter here at the IHOP. You see I grew up in a very conservative faith. I'm not complaining about that either. My parents raised me to love God and they demonstrated their faith in Christ all the time. They are amazing. Back to IHOP... IHOP is what you would probably think of as a Charismatic church, I hate to label it, but that is the best explanation I can give you right now.

God has been challenging me over this past year on learning to just go with Him no matter how uncomfortable it might be. No matter who might be disappointed. No matter who might not understand. He is the only one that matters... no offense.

So we came to IHOP today around 2:30 p.m. I took a seat and just listened for a while then I joined in on the worship and began to pray. Each team does 2 hour blocks during the day and they a "nightwatch" that does a six hour marathon. The people here are amazing. Everyone seems so full of joy - you know, that Joy of the Lord I talked about. The music was great and it's kind of free form stuff. There are worship songs thrown in there too, but there is also scripture readings and prayer that prompts those singing to create new songs all the time. It's awesome!

During the 4:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. block they prayed for specific requests and broke into smaller groups for prayer. Toward the end of the block, they asked for those who needed prayer for healing to raise their hands. Remember, conservative faith growing up. Feeling a little uncomfortable. But God kept prompting me to raise my hand. Well, my knees are killing me today, so I thought, "Why not?" Well, my knees were not healed, but God touched my heart so deeply I cannot even begin to explain it. Perfect strangers stood around me and laid hands on me and followed God's lead eventhough I told them I needed prayer for my knees. God revealed my heart to these strangers. The deepest darkest parts of me. My hopes and dreams. It was so powerful. I wept. There is no way to explain it away. It was an amazing encounter with my Heavenly Father.

I am forever changed... again. He never stops healing. He just keeps waiting for me to let Him.

I am not ready to share all of it here on this public forum, but to all those that I know and love, you will soon here about it I'm sure.

Until then, God Bless you all.