Awakened to Love

How fast this past week has flown by. I can’t believe that I’m back in Kansas City already getting back into the groove of Nightwatch and Fire in the Night mode. What a privilege it was to be able to spend the past week in Atlanta, Georgia with some of my favorite people. I went expecting to spend some good quality time with Mark, April, and her family, and God really just blew my expectations to bits and as always relpaced them with something more than I could have imagined. Upon arrival into the Atlanta airport Mark was not able to pick me up from the airport because he had actually just accepted a job doing some carpentry work, so the first day I was there he had to go into work till about 3 in the afternoon. Which was ok, because this meant I got to meet “Momma” and spend a little time getting to know her. Immediately we connected well and I found my 2nd mother =) It was so encouraging to talk with her, and hear what the Lord had done in her life up to this point. It’s always so awesome to hear what the Lord is doing all around the world and even just here within the states. The whole point of this trip to begin with was to be able to get down there and spend some time with Mark and finally get to meet April and her family. It’s been such a blessing to watch this relationship unfold between Mark and April as their focal point together has been the Lord since I have had the privilege of being apart of the process. What has been so encouraging to me personally is that this is the type of dating relationship that I have always had pictured in my mind, but have never witnessed it actually take place first hand. It’s been an answer to prayer to just know that dating can be done in a Godly manner that in the end both the guy and girl in the relationship are fully focused on what the Lord is doing in their life, but also in life of the person they are dating. So it’s been comforting to know there is hope for me in the years to come. I’ve never dated, but the Lord is starting to reveal to me the beauty of process, and how He feels about the seriousness of it. That ultimately the first girl I ask to start “getting to know” will actually in essences be the daughter of the creator of the universe! So I know that if He says He wants His daughter home by 9, I know He means it. I look forward to the days of creating my own history in the Lord with my future wife and creating memories of the Lords faithfulness in our lives together. I think the Lord has awakened my heart to love, only because He’s awakened my love for Him. I am starting to understand His love for me, I am understand that it’s ok to love myself, and now I am able to start to love others. I can’t give love out of love I don’t know myself. Today I was reminded of one of my favorite verses in the Bible, “I am my Beloved’s, and His desire is for me.” Song of Solomon 7:10 That Jesus truly desires me, everything about me. My weakness, my unfaithfulness, my insecurities, my quirky doings, and my weak weak love. He desires it all! I think we could all use a new revelation of the Lords love for us. I know I could!

Strength & Honor,

Grace & Peace.

Isaac

Yeahp...

It’s been seeming like lately that just when I get to a point when I feel like I might have my emotional make up under control, and think I might have an idea with where I’m headed in this life, I get some new revelation or break through and go broken and tenderly back to the Father and ask Him what He is thinking. It’s a continual process of learning that I’m wrong 100% of the time, and He truly knows what is best for me, and I, am just a little simple minded man that He chose to create and work through. Why God chooses to use me, I never will know. But I guess that is a testimony of Grace in and of itself. The tender, loving, compassionate God that we serve, has blessed us so abundantly to associate with us, but not only talk to us, but actually call us sons and daughters. That after seeing all the yuck, filth, and slime, He says, “Yeah, I desire you, and I know the way that leads to righteousness and holiness!” I’m currently in the school of humility, you might ask, “How’s that going for you?” I would say, “Um, it’s humbling.” Even in the context of letting the Lord use me and being a tool, I still so often stop, stare, and wonder, “Lord, why me?” I’m so stinkn’ messed up!

I think for a long time I have known it in my heart, but just in the last week ish, the Lord has been revealing a path for me to follow. A new concept of relationships, life experiences, and decisions that I will make in the upcoming years. I feel so strongly that the Lord has called me to the wilderness place. To walk down a path that is travelled by few. My first impressions of this place was denial, I truly didn’t desire it at all! But having a couple different occasions of letting the Lord describe it to me, I have come to a decision that I will take the path, but there is much uncertainty as to what this path will hold for me. I think more than anything I’m tired of a journey filled with biographies, books, articles, conversations, and lectures on this God I supposedly love. I’m tired of getting to know about Him, I want to actually meet with the God/Man that I hear all these amazing things about. It’s time we established a long lasting relationship. I want to get to know Him by asking Him questions about His heart. I want to be walking with Him on this path through the woods when suddenly a tree almost falls on me and ask what His opinion will be in that situation to escape.

Ok, there’s a whole bunch of random people in the prayer room tonight and it’s been distracting me all night. I’m gonna go ask the creator of the universe what’s on His heart. =)

Track 2 Continued...

So it’s been almost two weeks now that I’ve been back in the swing of internship life. How do I feel about that, I’m not quite sure. I love the fact that I’m in a community setting again regularly interacting with people my age that are striving for the Lord at the same level of intensity that I am, so that’s been refreshing. Although today I remembered once again the part of internship I’m not such a huge fan of. Which is getting blasted in the face with more than enough information that you and your mother can handle!!! There might be one subject that that the Lord is impressing on your heart, and I’ll spend time on that subject in the prayer room for a while, then after attending a week of your different classes, you get smacked in the face by about 8 different topics and you have to go into the prayer room and decide which one you are going to give all your attention and focus on. Tonight for example we went to the Sunday evening service as usual, and it was about giving extravagantly, which was really good. The only problem was, I really wanted to respond to the message and spend some time in the moment with the Lord talking about it, but I had to run out the doors get on a shuttle and go to my next 2 hour class! Not complaining or anything, but it seems like we have so much in our schedules that you really don’t have enough time in a day to process it all. I absolutely love the program, I just wish they have made more time for us beside the prayer room to search out some of these subjects that have been exposed to us.

So, it’s been nice to get to know my roommates a little bit better over the last couple weeks, spending time with them here and there. As one of my roommates blogged what his first impressions of us as roommates were, I felt compelled to do the same. For their sake. =)

So there’s JD, my immediate roommate, whom I met first out of all the roomies. After getting to know him a bit more and more, I’ve found him quite humorous, musical, fashionable, and outdoorsy, being he himself is from Alaska. It’s refreshing to watch as he has dived right into all that could be offered here at IHOP. I can already see the Lord starting to get ahold of his heart and encounter him. So AWESOME! He reminds me of family a little bit because of his taste in humor is similar to that of me families.

Jack is another immediate roommate, he came a few days late in the track, but it’s been a pleasure to have him in my room as well. He is from Detroit, so not very far from my homecoming habitation. Jack recently found the Lord and has been on a radical journey of discovering his identity in the Lord and placing all value and trust in the Lord. It’s been so encouraging to watch his newly converted zeal as he goes for the Lord with everything he’s got!!!! I’m excited to see what the Lord continues to do in him and through him, as I believe he will be a powerful tool for the kingdom!

Caleb Pettus, oh Caleb. Or should we say “Captain Dread Beard!” I knew Caleb from track 1, he is the only other track 2 guy in our apartment. It’s been fun to reminisce about the old days of track 1. It’s been neat as well just to have someone around that I’ve known from the past days. We’ve made trips to Holt’s donut shop already, and I’m sure there will be many more to come as the track continues on. He has already had a few words from a couple different people telling him to be expectant of his healing. Caleb is a Hemophiliac, which makes playing guts extremely difficult. =)

David Vaught is an Arkansas boy. From day 1 I found him to be Mr. Fix-It man. There have been numerous appliances in the apartment that were not functioning properly we when moved in, and he has taken the liberty to fix them. Amazing! Wish my brains worked that way. It’s been neat to watch him find a groove that works for him here at IHOP. I can tell he has a very hungry spirit, and is growing spiritually at a extremely fast rate. I don’t think he realizes how much is going on in him. Or maybe he does and the Lord is doing His magic on him.

David Rich, another native Michigander. He is officially the youngest in the group at 17. It’s nice not being the baby anymore. We pick on him often, but he seems to be able to handle himself fairly well. Out of all the roommates David Rich seems to be the guy that I’ve connected with the best. We have quite a few similarities in upbringings as well as interests. It’s been fun to get to know him little by little. Even though he reminds me in a great deal of them preppy Grand Blanc boys, he has broken a lot of my presumptions that I made of him, based on a first impression. We crack each other up on a regular basis, but also have had a few real good heart to hearts. He’s got a tender heart that really desires to find the Lord during this time here at IHOP. I’m trying to convince him already to stay for track 2 right off the bat so he doesn’t have to do what I did and go through the agony of getting back into the routine. I’m excited to see what Jesus drops in his heart!

That was alot of personal profiling.

Well, I did a photoshoot the other day for some friends of mine, so I’ll have those pics posted soon enough. It’s just hard to get consistent enough internet, and time enough to post pictures around here. I am pleased how they came out, and look forward to doing some more shoots for different people!

Only 8 days till I get down to the dirty south!

Strength and Honor,

Grace and Peace.

Isaac

Peanut Butter Knuckles

How do I explain it? It’s like dipping your apple in Jiff peanut butter, scooping out a nice glob of tasty goodness you come to a realization that you got peanut butter all over your knuckles. Kind of good, kinda stinks that you just got gobs oil all over your hand. My time in the second track so far has been good, but difficult to get through this first week of orientation and those such things. Tonight being my first night back in the Prayer Room for 6 hours it’s been nice to once again sit before the Lord and let Him captivate my heart. Unfortunately the first meeting as a corporate track that we had I left my Bible in the classroom, one of the core leaders later told me she saw it on the floor so she put on a chair for me to grab later that evening when we were back in that room. Well, another group came through in those couple hours and someone picked it up. So most unfortunately I haven’t had my Bible the last couple nights. I mean, I have one of my Bibles, but not the one I’ve been studying out of the last few months, so that has been kind of frustrating. The rooming arrangements have really been quite a pleasant surprise. We have a convenient apartment size of only 5 guys. It’s me and one other guy in my room, and the remaining 3 guys are sharing the bigger room of the apartment. It’s me, JD (from Anchorage Alaska), David Vaught (from Little Rock Arkansas), David Rich (from Traverse City Michigan), and Caleb Pettus (from Flowerance Alabama). Truly we have a great group of guys as it’s been evident even the first couple days that we are all here to encounter the Lord and go deep in the Knowledge of God! So it’s been really exciting as a small group of guys to get excited about the things of the Lord together. Today we took a little time as we were all sitting int the living room together to do some, “Soaking time with Jesus.” It was so refreshing to spend sometime outside of the prayer room inviting the Holy Spirit and just communing with the Lord. IT WAS AWESOME! When we got done I wasn’t sure what kind of reaction I was going to get from the other guys, if they just we gonna think I was weird and really spiritual, or it was going to be something that we as an apartment were going to start enjoying together on a regular basis. And it was refreshing to hear from all of them that they really enjoyed it! I have set my heart to really encounter the Father heart of the Lord this track, and really to become more sensitive to His thoughts and feelings towards His people. I want our friendship to be a normal occurrence and not a draw out awkward silence. I know this next 3 months is going to go by in a flash and I want to really be purposeful with all of my extra time and how I spend it. I know there will be a tendency for me to want to draw back at times because of the rigorous schedule, but when else will I be able to take a consecrated 3 month sabbatical like this? Let’s just push hard for 3 months straight and then when I’m done take time to think about all the tiredness I just experienced! So, it’s my desire to start drinking Living Water and to thirst no more. To serve and love the way Jesus loved! I desire all that the Lord would entrust to me in this next season!