I probably won’t blog this frequently later on, but especially right now I know y’all want to know how I’m settling in and what this thing is going to look like. So I’ll give you a peek into what my schedule and prayer room time are going to be like.

We were given a master schedule to give us an idea of how our weeks will be organised, but of course it will vary a tad week to week. In general, though, a week will look like this:

Meals daily: Breakfast 7:00-9:30, lunch 12:30-1:30, dinner 5:00-6:00. These meals are not mandatory attendance.

Monday

10:00-12:30: Forerunner Curriculum class. This will be taught by one of three main teachers, with the occasional guest thrown in, and covers topics such as the Sermon on the Mount, the life of David, etc. We’ll stay on each topic a few weeks before moving on.

2:30-4:00: Announcements and teaching on tools for interacting with God in the prayer room.

6:00-7:00: Briefing. This is a meeting with our core group in which we get to share what God’s doing in us and hear our core leader teach and encourage us.

7:00-midnight: Prayer room. I’ll talk in a minute about what that time looks like.

Tuesday – FASTING DAY

10:00-12:30: Forerunner Curriculum class.

1:30-2:30: Herrnhut Work Day. We want to serve the staff of our apartment complex, so every Tuesday we’ll take an hour or so to help out around the complex.

3:00-4:30: Burn class with Corey Russell. This is often the interns’ favourite class. Corey Russell is a massively anointed teacher.

6:00-7:00: Briefing.

7:00-midnight: Prayer room.

Wednesday

10:00-12:30: Forerunner Curriculum class.

1:30-3:00: End times teaching. End times are a huge, huge deal around here. IHOP is called as forerunners to prepare the earth for Jesus’ return. And it’s sooner than most people think.

3:00-5:00: Prayer room.

6:00-7:00: Briefing.

7:00-midnight: Prayer room.

Thursday

Day off – no schedule – meals still available.

Friday

11:00-12:15: e12 groups. This is a small group (guys and girls, not core group) exclusively for processing and discussing what we’re learning about the end times.

2:00-5:00: Apostolic Prayer teaching and prayer room. This is a prayer time basically like a prayer/intercession set in the main prayer room, but led by interns, for interns.

6:00-midnight: Encountering God Service (EGS) at Forerunner Christian Fellowship (FCF). This is a little more structured like a church service—except not, because this is IHOP, so it’s a lot more like a conference session with lots and lots of worship and power praying. There is about an hour and a half of worship with probably some prayer for healing mixed in, then about an hour of teaching, then another hour or so of worship before the form transitions and the auditorium becomes the prayer room until midnight while the main prayer room is closed and being cleaned.

Saturday

1:30-4:00: Prayer room.

6:00-midnight: Service at FCF. Similar to Friday night, but is ordinarily a teaching series. Prayer room format 10:00 to midnight.

Sunday

No schedule in the morning; people are free to go to a local church or to the FCF service or to just sleep in. I’ll probably go to the KC Boiler Room as often as possible, unless there’s something special at FCF.

2:00-4:00: Life groups. This is the core group meeting with the ACL for teaching, sharing, fun stuff, or whatever.

6:00-7:00: Briefing.

7:00-midnight: Prayer room.

So there you have it. This is my second day on a normal week kind of schedule, and I’ve already spent around 12 hours in the main prayer room plus three or four in the FCF prayer room. It’s supposed to be around 24 scheduled hours a week in the prayer room, although you may of course spent every free minute there if you like.

On Sunday we spent some time in a teaching on consecration, which essentially means setting yourself apart in an uncommon way to the Lord. That was our first big day in the prayer room, and they gave us a packet of things to fill out—testimony, journey to IHOP, dreams for your life, plus meditations on various passages, etc. We won’t have nearly as many papers to fill out on a weekly basis, but they do give us some tools and goals of things to be doing in the prayer room when we’re in there every day. This week, we’re supposed to read Matthew 1 through Luke 16 (that’s ten chapters a day), read the first three chapters of a book about fasting, and memorise and meditate on Matthew 5:11-12. Their goal is to schedule your entire time in the prayer room so you’re never just sitting there unengaged. I very much enjoyed going through the consecration packet and doing the readings and meditations. Of course, there’s also plenty of flexibility to spend time reading whatever portion of Scripture you want, praying however you want, dancing in the designated area behind the sound booth, and/or engaging with the prayer and worship being led on stage. The prayer room never has to be boring, because God is always doing something!

God’s been doing a lot with me so far. I’ve been filling up pages of my journal like mad. A lot of it is the kind of thing I don’t necessarily want to put on my blog, but here’s something a little more public that happened yesterday that was very impactful to me: When Misty Edwards was leading worship and Benjamin Nolot (The Nefarious guy) was prayer leading, I participated on the rapid fire prayer line for the first time. I got to pray on the mic and for about 15 seconds was leading the room and the entire webstream in prayer. I really didn’t want to go up, but God gave me a prayer and was urging me to do it, so I forced myself to get in line and pray. I’m so glad I did, because as I was sitting back down, God was showing me what had just really happened. Not only was it a significant moment of just obeying and thereby conquering the fear of man in me, but I got to be a crucial part of God’s assault on sex trafficking in the world. I think the worship team even picked up on something I said and was singing around it for a while. None of that would have happened if I had decided to blow off the moment and stay in my seat. Never underestimate the power of one little “yes.”

Here are a few awesome tidbits and notes from the last few days:

The wilderness is the place where God encounters us because he starves us out of every other thing until we have nothing else but him.

The substance of intimacy is knowledge. You cannot love a Man that you don’t know.

Submission to the call of abandonment from the attachments of the world. It is the journey where the old man is continually put to death within us. This is consecration.

“ONE man, ONE crown, ONE found worthy. (3x) His name is JESUS!” –a really powerful chorus (spontaneous and prophetic, as many choruses are on that stage) that got released during the last half hour of Ryan Kondo’s worship set last night.