Waiting in Worship
While at IHOP, the Ben and Vesper will be hijacking Esther’s URL and turning it into the play-by-play of God’s work in Kansas City. It’s midnight here and I (Ben) will be relating our first day’s adventures to you. For those of you who don’t know where or why we are, here’s the scoop: www.ihop.org
Today was orientation day so there was very little teaching, though I feel like I’ve already learned a great deal. In fact, if we were to catch the next plane back to Newark, I’d come back satisfied. But more on that later. The image you see is part of a drawing I did earlier today in the Prayer Room (the main gathering space where you want to be 24/7). If you can’t make out the details, it is an egg constructed of feathers. When I began this drawing, all I knew was that this is the image that came into my head when I sat down and began taking in my surroundings. As I was well into the drawing, the worship team began singing about waiting for the Lord. I felt a chill go through my body as God brought revelation to the picture He was creating through me. What does an egg symbolize but waiting and potential and stages and seasons and fragility and health and hope and expectation and mystery? Then I began to understand why the feathers were showing up on my paper. Besides the obvious connection with the contents of the egg (a bird), the Lord was hinting at the idea that the wonder of new life and new dreams could be a reality in old trappings. This has deep personal meaning for me, but I also see it’s application cooperately. God is not attracted to or put off by our forms or styles of worship. One thing alone draws the Lord of Hosts towards us: humble, broken hearts that are as meek and soft as a feather, yet when together they promote the miracle of flight. God can take frail feathers like us and build into us a new sense of hope that will be the fuel for future generations who will carry on the work after us.
Waiting was a concept that was turning around in my head all day. The first thing you’ll discover as you enter the Prayer room is that you are faced with the luxury and the crisis of what I call Waiting in Worship. That is to say that when the age-old problem of “ending” church isn’t in the equation, new problems and new opportunities arise. This evening I spent five hours in the prayer room singing, praying, reading, drawing and observing. The first hour I felt like a junkie going through withdrawal from a little pill called “Jersey.” I was figity, nervous and disoriented. I didn’t know what to do with myself. Gradually, I got acclamated to the environment and fell comfortably into the shift in my time/space continium. After returning to the hotel, I told Vesper I hadn’t worshipped like that in 20 years, and that’s the truth. The closest thing I can relate to today’s experience is when I was 10 years old worshipping beside my parents in a Vineyard church in Colorado. The presence of the Lord was so tangeable, I remember it visually, like a pea-soup fog. When you’re little, time means nothing and everything all at the same time. When you’re older, time means everything and nothing less. At IHOP, the Prayer Room remains in the present tense, and maybe that’s a little bit what eternity feels like. At any rate, in this context, one has the opportunity to wait for the Lord, and to not rush His speaking to your heart, but to drink slow and full every precious drop of His presence.
Tomorrow, Vesper and I will be attending a 3-day conference called “Passion For Jesus,” which coincides with the “Harp & Bowl” conference that we are attending. We both plan to take advantage of extended periods of time in the prayer room. Vesper ran into Noah P. but I didn’t catch him. Our overwhelming emotion as a family is gratitude. We are humbled and honored to be here among these people doing nothing but learning, worshipping and interceeding. Thank you every one for your prayers and making it possible for us to be here. The kids are all to excited to be here as well. Pray that they will encounter the Lord in a never-forgetting-pea-soup-fog way. So far Alban hasn’t done any stage diving, though it would probably look pretty great on the web-cam.
In Christ, Ben (and Vesper, etc.)
March 6th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I see the magic of that place is already at work on you. There is nothing quite like it at least as far as I am concerned. Slowing down your mind, listening to the glorious music, waiting and unwinding in the presence of Jesus is hard to put into words.
I am so glad you are there. Drink in everything that God has for you and be re-charged in your souls. Life is still going on here in “The Jersey.” Today I will try to make some sense out of the mixer situation (boy are you missing some relaxing fun).
Anyway… We are praying for you everyday. May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that by the power of the Holy Spirit you may abound in hope. (Romans 15:13)
March 7th, 2008 at 10:20 am
mm. I remember an experience very like this at a Women’s Aglow conference I attended with my mother (who was a speaker there) when I was probably 9 or 10.
They also had a prayer room set up, loosely fashioned after the Temple Courts, and also open at all hours during the conference weekend.
I remember encountering God so tangibly there. Crossing the threshold from the hallway into the room, I could feel a shift – it was like a sudden temperature change, or that broad sense of expansion that happens in a naturally-lit room when the sun emerges from a cloud.
Part of that was (somehow?) physiological, but part of it was an instant “loosening” of all the clinging spiritual things… Whatever vices or foibles, fears or human roughnesses that normally keep me from fully seeing God’s glory were made thin in that space, which had been prayerfully consecrated to God for just that purpose.
More than anything, I remember feeling LOVED, a mixture of very solemn thankfulness and that absolute ease-in-your-own-skin that you know when laughing aloud with your bestbest friend. No reservations. No guardedness.
The experience was a memorable one and I’m grateful for it – but I recognize that this is not always how God moves… Lord knows that’s not what my daily life as a Christian feels like. That experience was a special grace shown to me during those few days in my life as a boy – but it left me with a lingering sense of God’s desire to meet me and be with me in an intimate way.
In that space, as you are experiencing at IHOP, I was given completely to Jesus – all distractions were stripped away. The normal pressure I feel to “get on with my life” was removed. More than I usually allow, Christ was at the very center of my thoughts, emotions, hopes. Thoughts pf Him were my priority. This is something of what *consecration* means: setting apart a place and time just-and-only for Him, holy unto Him alone.
My understanding of God’s love for me (which has been a personal struggle lately) does not rest in experiences like this – which is good, because I can’t generate them. But – what I *can* do is take seriously the need to give him an unfettered heart as I approach him. He responds (as any of us do) joyfully to that kind of focused “you are my highest thought right now” intimacy. He longs for us to show our adoration for Him – the glory and majesty He is due – and He longs to bless us with the riches of His presence.