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Showing posts from February, 2015

Glory and the Longing To Do Great Things

Some men long to do great things.  Nay all men, worth their salt, long to do great things.  They long for heroism, for the epic and adventurous.  Some may deny they feel this way and others will defend their apathy, that they are just different and that’s okay.  But I don’t believe God made men to be average, to coast along in the ordinary.  There is no ordinary person made in the image of God.  No, that is quite extraordinary.  In the Bible, God calls it Glory.  There was infinite Glory for God before the world began.  He created the heavens and the earth to declare the Glory.  And He created us to share in His glory, that we may be little glowing containers of it.  It is all around.  In the mountains and the sunsets. In the eyes of a beautiful woman whom you love. In symphonies and snowfalls.  It inspires. It builds. It melts.  How is it possible that the human heart, the self, that space right above your gut we ca...

IHOP, APEST, and The Danger of Playing Para-Church

(Note: this post was written several months ago after the release of the Rolling Stone article "Love and Death in the House of Prayer." I hesitated to publish it then but am publishing it now that time is passed and I feel good about it. Understand it is coming from a place of love for both IHOP and the Church, desiring "to build up the body of Christ, until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of God's Son.") I have spent a lot of time at the House of Prayer lately.  Not the International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Kansas City, which has been doing 24/7 prayer and worship since 1999, but the local off shoot here in Des Moines.  IHOP Iowa (IHOPIA, which is almost just as long as far as abbreviations go) is open 4 hours a day during the week and features live musicians occasionally, but mostly plays a live feed of the IHOPKC worship room.  Lately, I have been spending 1-2 hours there a day and playing guitar once a week.  There a lot of thing...