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full circle

I’M HERE!

Well here I am, finally in Kansas City! I arrived yesterday and got all of my stuff unloaded! Deep sigh of relief and now this side of things begins! So good to be home!! Now a house must be rented, official IHOP staff status gained, and all that entails, and the settling in. All of this takes time and energy, and guess what? I am sick! Big bummer but totally understandable, I have been pushing super hard and my body is paying for it!


DA PROCESS
Thank you to everyone who has prayed for me and supported me! Today I finally got to go to the prayer room, I cried for the first thirty minutes! Its been a long month without one! I was so glad to be where I am supposed to be! And it has been hard work getting there! Its been a full circle WILD GOOSE CHASE and here I am almost right back where I started! Haha… like I said before its a long story I would love to tell anyone with a few minutes! I am in the process of getting officially on staff and auditioning for the worship teams. I am excited and glad to have it all set in stone so I can take a deep breath!

DA HOUSE
Okay so besides money I need wisdom in order to know which house to rent! It will be at least a six month committment most likely a full year and I am being a little more picky! My friend Genevra and I are renting together and praying for open doors! Thanks for joining us in this knocking business!!

So thats me for now! I will keep you all posted! Email, facebook, call or write!!! Please!

Love,

Michelle

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the word is man

Right now i can not read the bible without this man jumping off the page! He is adamant that he is the word and that the word is not just black and red words on a page, but its him. A relationship,  a friendship, a walk, a sweet kiss on the cheek, my favorite meal, sitting next to each other excited but silent! Thats what it is like with reading the bible for me right now. I have been meditating on Psalm 119, just doing one section at a time. In it the words for “the word” are things like judgments, testimonies, commandments, statutes, and so on. So I decided to give him a chance and I wrote the scripture out in my journal and then over each of these words I wrote Jesus. So where there was the word statutes I wrote over it Jesus. (Does this make sense). Now try reading the bible without seeing Jesus jump off the page every other line!! Ahhhh… its crazy!! 

So it goes something like this:
“Blessed are You, O Lord! Teach me JESUS. With my lips I have declared all the JESUS of your mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of JESUS. As much as in all riches. I will meditate on JESUS. And contemplate JESUS. I will delight myself in JESUS. I will not forget JESUS.” (Ps 119: 12-16)
I totally did not come up with this on my own but I love it. Its exactly how he speaks to me. The word is a man for real! He became flesh and dwelled among us and is STILL alive and STILL available!! He is so close to me. Part of this whole thing came from me simply making a commitment when I got a new bible. I said something like this looking straight at my bible, holding it tightly with both of my hands!  “You and I are going to be really good friends, from cover to cover!” I had no idea that it was going to be much more than reading! 

 
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heman

I got to sing in a different way tonight and it really lit up my heart! We sing prayers on our intercession sets, if you have ever been to a house of prayer this is very unique. Usually I am just one of the singers on the set and get to sing really short lines and join with the chorus that is created by the “chorus leader!” Tonight I was the chorus leader and wow it was so different! It made my heart come alive as we were praying for the ending of abortion! 

In Chronicles it records that King David hired thousands of singers and musicians for his tabernacle where the Ark was housed before Solomon built the temple. One of the singers he hired was the “chief” singer, the main voice in the tent in the midst of the other voices. I have been intrigued by this guy Heman, isn’t that a great name! He was like a trumpet for God proclaiming, decreeing, praising God!!   
So I guess I was Heman tonight, not trying to brag but it was so good to take the spoken prayers, the written word and my own heart to lead others to PRAY/SING! It was so good! I loved it! (deep sigh!) 
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praise

“And WHEN they began to sing and praise, the LORD set an ambush against the men of…” (2Chr. 20:22)!! When they began to praise, sing, give thanks, to declare “Give thanks to the Lord, for his steadfast love endures FOREVER!” When, WHEN, when, WHEN, when, when!!!!! When we begin, when we decide to praise, make a choice, get up, get movin!! When we praise He responds. He reacts, and sets ambush against our enemies!! Its a powerful interaction, I just tried it, thanking him, inviting him to come and make sense of my heart. 

Instead of praise I will try to figure it out, or I will climb up on my emotional wall and look down and get scared! FREAK OUT!! (wasn’t that a song?) Anyways, the power of praise, telling my soul, L-E-T-S-G-O, let’s go, let’s go.. lets praise God!! Let the worshippers go first, see what happens!! 
What does this change in me, well it shows that what I really need lives on the inside of me! Christ in me, He dwells within me and all I have to do is acknowledge him, and thank him and my peace changes… i can really trust that he’s got me and its gonna be okay! It sounds cheesy but what it looks like in my life is being real and telling God my hurts, my fears, my joys, my challenges, walking hand and hand with him even when i don’t like him or don’t understand whats going on. He takes first place, best friend status for sure!! I feel like he is doing a really deep work in my heart and praise is like a way to speed up the process and not get mad when it hurts. Just to remind my heart who He is and why He is good!! 
Here is a new line to one of my songs I think will become a song! 
“Mystery talker come and speak to me, untold stories and things unseen!” Thats a fun one, anyways have a great day… TBC… 
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hey soul

I was reading in Psalm 42 today and realized some things. I need time to poke around in my heart and see what’s really there. It says “Why are you cast down, O MY soul?…” So its my soul, my job, my responsibility not anyone else’s to look at and deal with.  I am the steward over my own soul, the gatekeeper, I decide what goes in and what comes out. I have too often expected others to find what’s wrong with me and fix it. Or even wanting God to just fix me, but I don’t want to do the leg work of finding out what’s really going on and talk to him about it. And then next week I still feel down cast about the same thing. A new chorus I have been singing..”let’s talk about my heart, let’s talk about the hard things, let’s talk about the fears inside of me.” In other words, hey soul lets get to work so we can get free from the fear. I often talk a lot but not about what is really going on. Then it all builds and builds and builds and whoa… explosion!! Not good! I can’t pour my heart out to the Lord for real if I haven’t given my heart/soul a good thorough looking at? What if I don’t even know what is wrong, I have to be intentional with Michelle, she’s worth the time and talk!! Its a different way to look at quiet times or processing. I have to let the word have its way with me right! But I have to do my part! 

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what’s hard

being real, holidays away from “home”, friendships, schedules, discipline, loving people, boundaries, patience, forgiveness, singing from my heart, honesty, MONEY, trusting God, emotions, getting hurt, being vulnerable, losing my mom and thinking about christmas, being still, believing what he says about me, avoiding this blog because i don’t wanna talk about what is hard…

his love is what is really hard for me to understand, i squirm when I lean into the thought that he really loves me and sees me as pure and blameless. its true. “As the Father has loved me, so He loves you, abide in this love.” or chew on this, camp out in this, believe this is true, trust me its hard but its true. what if i believed he loved me this way, what if I abided in it, stood on it, trusted in his word. how would that change my relationships, my emotions, my attitudes, my belief that i am burden to people, my orphan spirit, my rejection, my grief, my downs and my ups. 
i think of david, he was intensely emotional and he went after the one thing his smooshy heart wanted and that was the Lord. He was called the “man after God’s own heart.” and yet he was not the most stable person in the world. he messed up, but he knew forgiveness, he knew repentance, he knew getting back up and the unchanging nature of God’s heart. he knew how to worship, gut level praise that stirs emotion and love in God’s heart, he took the names of God and made them real to his heart. more than that he was a son. and he knew it. that knowledge of the love of God, of our sonship is what really can change us. until i understand something i am not on board with it, but once i do understand, i am your girl!! 
so i want to stop pretending i get it and admit, man i still don’t understand that he loves me, he has a plan for me, his thoughts for me are more than the sand on the seashore, he is healing my heart, he loves the sound of my voice, and he is on a journey in my heart. fear of the lord is the beginning of wisdom, here we go! intimacy is wisdom, it is the smartest thing we can do, to give him time, to listen to his voice, to believe what he says, to soak in the word and chew on his repetition, even when its hard, and i don’t want to stay and work out the kinks, i have a yes, i have a yes, i had a no for a while, and now i have a yes again, i keep working on that yes, and being real, thats my promise, to just keep saying it like it is, ahhh its hard, i have always been such a people pleaser, being who i thought people wanted me to be, i can’t do it anymore, i am tired, “finally” right!!! so exciting, so scary, anyways here i go, did i tell you about the song i wrote called “for me”… probably… anyways the chorus goes

“My life is like a trail of your thoughts..” I think I am just going to jump on that path and start walking!! 
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silly little giggle

Have you ever wondered what Jesus’ laugh sounded like?  There was a freedom on tonight’s intercession that I have not felt since I joined Zadok House of Prayer! We sang “I am free!” and sang prophetically over people!! I don’t even know how to explain what happens when God shows up and I can just sing freely! I sang like I didn’t care what people think! I really got a deeper level of freedom from fear of man!! I started singing “I got the joy, joy, joy, joy; down in my heart” song.  Then I got this line in my head and sang it out “I got His silly little giggle, down in my heart!” Wish you could have been there, it was so much fun!! Maybe I will get the recording and put it on my music myspace?!! 

Do you believe you are beautiful??? I don’t YET, but I am getting closer! Before the intercession set again I began my Friday night doing a devotional set, just singing out my heart to Jesus. I feel like I am finally running out of things to say! Its His turn to talk, and all He is talking about is how beautiful I am. Song of Solomon 4:7 says “YOU ARE ALTOGETHER BEAUTIFUL, MY LOVE; THERE IS NO FLAW IN YOU.” So He won’t stop singing over me how that is true of me. How when He looks at me He sees no flaw, no blemish, no stain, He holds no record of wrongs over my head, no scars! I am completely beautiful to him. This is how he brings the reality of what Jesus did on the cross to my heart! So it has been really good to just spend these times of just singing, it always gets me out of any funk! I used to think and still can think all kinds of not good stuff about myself. Its getting harder and harder to think those negative thoughts! Yahoo!! 
Can you tell I am excited, well if your confused… I am really excited!!! I am on a journey with him.  I see how God has totally set me up!  Thanks for praying for me!!! Keep it up, its working!! 
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I’m hooked

Here I am again!! yay… tonight was awesome, I got to play and sing a devotional set with my guitar. First the good sound guy was there and set my voice like “wow!!” And then I just started worshipping, kept going almost the whole time on and on about the love of God and his thoughts about me. I have this song called “For me” and its out of Psalm 139. Here’s the chorus line.

“My life is like a trail of your thoughts, precious, too many to count for me.”
So this devo is pretty much this incredible set where I just get to love on God and he loves on me!! Totally awesome and it sounded like the shizammm!! Then I started getting more intense and wanting to really understand his love and I broke a string for the first time in a long time. So I got on the piano (YES i played the piano and sang:) for about ten minutes. I have an hour long set tommorrow night and I am planning on playing the piano, I just started playing again last week. For the first time in like six years or really ever in public!!
 Then I turned right around and got on an intercession set where I just get to sing. We started singing some stuff out of revelation for a while. I got stuck on “blessing and honor and glory and power be to Him alone!” I could have sang that for hours!! Then towards the end we decided to sing over people. To wait on God for what he wanted to say over those in the room. One of the girls we sang over really got touched and I was crying with her as I sang over her. “He’s right by your side!!”  I just sang it over and over, and then I went and hugged her, I couldn’t take it!! God really moved mightily through our singing over people, it was awesome!! Personally my voice was stronger, more powerful, and more free than it has been since I started singing at ZHOP! So that an answer to prayer!! Which is funny because I sang for four hours!! So that my story and I am stickin to it!!
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wise guy

Tonight i have been studying the wisest guy in the world to have ever lived, Solomon. I did a character study on him and I am just scratching the surface of understanding this man. I am mostly studying him to understand the Song of Solomon. I really never knew about this book until about five years ago when I felt to read it. God used it in a HUGE way to show his love to me. It worked. During my School of Worship outreach in Australia in 2003 I felt waves of God’s love on a daily basis. He basically wooed my heart with this incredible yet mysterious book! So this past few weeks I have felt the urgency to go back to the book and become a student of it. Rather than just experiencing the initial joy of experiencing God’s love, to go deeper in it and really DIG! 

Its hard, I know there is so much in my heart that resists really believing that I AM LOVED. That I am “altogether beautiful and there is no spot in me.” These past few weeks I have spent time singing through some of the verses but almost reluctantly, I have been through a lot since that initial time on that outreach. But He set a foundation for me to stand on and now I feel its time to start again. But its not starting over, its just different. I spend most of my time in the house of prayer singing, but tonight studying added to it makes my heart alive!! I love the WORD OF GOD!!! It truely is a light unto my path and a lamp unto my feet!! 
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WAITING, Repeating

The older you get the longer you are waiting for things promised that haven’t happened yet. So I think waiting for a couple of years is agony. I can’t imagine how Abraham felt. Waiting has a lot to do with hope and trust. I am not so sure I understand any of these words but I really want to. As I have been sitting in the house of prayer I have realized a few things. I have no idea how to sit and just “be still and know that I am God” and the other thing is that is exactly what I needed to realize. We think we know it all, we really think we know everything! Its amazing, you graduate junior high and your like, “check, i got it,” then high school, then college, then you do missions and you become the EXPERT at whatever. I am a teacher (bossy) by sheer personality so i just unload information on whoever will listen. but its not true!! We don’t know everything and its takes so much pressure off yourself to just admit it right off the bat! Humble yourself… not like “duh i don’t know nothin” but just being willing to admit in even an area of your own expertize that you really aren’t the expert. It sets you up to be teachable. Everyone will admit that someone who is teachable is so much nicer to be around than someone who is blind to their need to be teachable (look up Jeremiah 9:23-24). This verse has been haunting me for years.  In the end of it, it says ” let he who boasts boast in this, that he knows and understands me that i am the Lord…” YAY permission to know stuff and brag about it! I love it! the only thing in life i have permission to brag about it HIM!! 

Another thing: the voice of God. Not everyone I talk to agrees with me that we can hear the voice of God. But I believe and I do hear it. But I realized something about his voice this week through a teaching I heard on meditation. Some people have heard that meditating is like a cow regurgitating its grass from one stomach to the next. (nice picture) And it is from our part of it, we just keep repeating the word and it gets in us. The teaching I heard says “read it, sing it, say it, pray it” and thats how you get the word in you! Well the reason is not only for you but for God! He loves repetition, thats his language, thats how he talks. Just like if you were my friend trying to make sense of this blog, you would want to know my language and how I communicate or you might be offended or confused. I want to know God’s language and understanding that he repeats things not to make me feel stupid or rebellious, but thats just how he communicates makes more sense. this is a new revelation for me. When people have prayed for me to be healed from grief often they used the same verses over and over. It wasn’t encouraging after a while. But God was just talking to me. He has thoughts for us, to many to count, precious thoughts. So I have set my heart to listen. And now I want to listen, just like I would want to listen to a friend tell me what they think about me… ahhh…i hope this makes sense. Oh well. Its my blog right! hee hee!! I am still in process of this one! 
ANyways…I am enjoying my time in the Zadok House of Prayer! Its a good hard feeling, pressing for my heart to be alive in God again. I can remember what it feels like! Comin back to the Heart of Worship. Oh and I am singing!!! yesterday I got to sing for four hours!! It was awesome!! Its a massive part of me getting healing!! Singing through the Storm! I even wrote a song about it. I wonder if you can put songs on this blog? anyways!! blessings