So I drug my tired body to city-wide prayer this morning.  Some weeks I have anticipation and joy about gathering with believers early in the morning, some weeks I just have weariness.  My friend and mentor John tells me this prayer meeting is the thing I do that he most enjoys but that hasn’t always helped me at 6:00 A.M. in the morning.

Anyways, today I was surprised by the Lord.  I ran into two more of my 50,000 coaches at this prayer meeting.  The funny thing about your 50,000 coaches is that you never know who they are.  They could be living with you…you can see them every week…and you may never know they are your coach until the right moment.  Or they might be people you’ve never really talked to.

One of my 50,000 coaches is Duane McLean.  Duane is great.  He has more enthusiam for Jesus at any given moment than anyone I’ve ever met. As soon as Duane heard that I want to begin planting house churches, he started telling everyone.  Today, he introduced me to Todd Kleppe.  Now, I’ve met Todd before, but when I sat down with Todd I found out that he’s been pastoring a house church for the last 7 or 8 months. 

 Todd told me this great story about his house church.  A month or two back a guy came to their house church for some help dealing with spiritual issues.  He was involved in New Age and looking for some help.  In the time this guy spent with Todd, he was baptised in the Holy Spirit, freed up from some stuff that was holding him back, and went back to the state he came from and planted his own house church! 

 I just have to say that this is what I love about house churches.  The fact that someone can randomly connect with a house church, find healing, freedom, and a new experience in God and then leave and plant his or her own house church blows my mind.  Its a little portion of the book of Acts beginning to happen again in our day.  And it will happen more and more as we start to live out the principles we find in the New Testament.

So, I had to go to work, so I cut our meeting short.  But before I left Todd prayed for me and asked God to give me the boldness to step out and do what God is calling me to do.  It was great.  I left knowing that this thing that God is orchestrating around the globe is real and beginning to happen here.  And I have two more names to add to my list of 50,000 coaches.

After River of Life’s Sunday Celebration service, we spent time with two couples we love, Ben and Karen and Kevin and Aroea.  We haven’t sat down with Ben and Karen together in months, so it was great to catch up.  We spent three hours or so just talking about life, babies, house churches…you know…the usual. 

Then we made our way over to Kevin and Aroea’s to watch “Dreamer” with Kurt Russell and Dakota Fanning.  Christy and I both agree that “Dreamer” is probably the most prophetic movie we’ve seen years.  Anyways, we don’t get to just “hang” much with Kevin and Aroea, so this was a night well spent. 

 And now…back to the work week….

We had our Tuesday night prayer meeting the other night.  Things went really well.  I wasn’t sure how many people were going to come–we just recently sent four of our regulars to Kansas City to join the prayer movement going on there.  But we had a good turn out and Jesus met us in some unique ways–I’ll describe a little more about that later.

We started the Tuesday night prayer meeting when we returned from Kansas City.  It used to be just Christy and me, but while I was weighing inviting others to contend for revival in Cedar Rapids with us, a prophetic friend of ours looked at me and asked me when I was going to start my worship night.  Ever since then we’ve met pretty much every Tuesday night.  Some nights are spectacular…others are pretty dry…once in a while gifts of prophecy and healing will emerge.

 Lately I’ve been pretty discouraged with the the time.  We hadn’t seemed to be making  much headway…no one seemed to be growing in their intercession…and while I love Luke 18, I’m not committed to barrenness.  Anyways, Tuesday night was fun.  Everyone entered into prayer and the Lord used everyone to bring us to a place of intercession that we haven’t touched in awhile.  The Lord addressed some significant strongholds and then prompted us to begin to declare freedom in each others’ finances so we can better serve the Lord.  Everyone prophesied that night.  It was great.  All I can say is that there is something precious to the Lord and unique when everyone in a group is flowing in the anointing of the Lord. 

So the Lord is good and the intercession goes on…