Begging to Pray ...

Different ministries have different anointing's.  We all have our strengths and weaknesses, and its the same for every church and ministry.  The International House of Prayer in Kansas City seems to have a real grace for fasting and prayer.  We knew we were coming to KC for a specific purpose, and we suspected that purpose was to learn more about prayer and experience how 24/7 worship and prayer works.  What we didn't realize was that God was going to open our hearts to see just how dull and sickly our own prayer lives were, and that He was going to draw us into a time of deeper prayer and worship than we've ever had before.  

Firstly, I'd like to extend my sincere apologies to the ROL House of Prayer and express my deep disappointment in not commiting to more prayer slots.  And secondly I'd like to urge you, all of you reading this, to commit yourselves to living a life richly saturated with prayer.  Our goal has been to spend a minimum of 2 hours a day in focused prayer in the prayer room and it is paying huge dividends.  I understand that not everyone has 2 hours a day to pray, and I also understand that a lot of people don't have much time to pray at all, this will be problematic in developing a healthy prayer life.  I can tell you from my own experience that after calling myself a Christian for the better part of 12 years, I have only just now realized the depth of depravity of my own prayer life and have committed myself to not standing idly by and watching the next 12 slip away without it.  At IHOP there are literally more than 1000 people who have committed themselves to spending at least 25 hours in the prayer room every single week.  Now, thats a dangerous force to be reckoned with.  

When I go there at 5:30 in the morning there are always 100's of people there.  There are 100's of people there all the time and the place is usually so busy at most times of day that it can be difficult getting a chair. It made me so deeply convicted the first time I went in there.  As the hours went by and I was getting bored and restless, it seemed the majority of the people there were just getting more and more fired up.  I couldn't believe it.  I mean you hear and read of such things and of such people that can really pray themselves into the throne room of God and never seem to tire of being in Gods presence, but I had never been one of them and I had never experienced anything like this in my life.  My heart was so stirred that I at once repented for the dismal state of my prayer life.  

If we are to be a glorious church at the return of Christ we must understand our need for prayer and we must learn to pursue God in a way we have yet not known.  I would venture to say that there's more truth in the old hymn than we know "and the things of earth will grow strangely dim in the light of your glory and grace".  I feel I've just begun to understand the grace part of the song, and for that my heart leaps with love for my saviour, but what about the glory part?  I would guess that if you or I were to be, in a moment, swept up into the heavens and thrown before the throne of God, and if we were able to behold his glory, his love, and all the other things too wonderful to even imagine there, and if we were able to look upon the countless ranks of Angelic beings and behold the four living creatures crying out and worshipping the Lord day and night we might just begin to understand His glory.  If we were able to catch for a moment the true glory of our Lord maybe, just maybe, we would realize that He is worthy of so much more of our time and energies than we give Him.  Commit with me to stop making excuses why we can't, and to make whatever radical changes we need to to become a people who really pray.  

We had our 5 children in the prayer room for more than an hour today and it was awesome to watch them engaging with Jesus in prayer and worship.  They have been begging us to bring them along since we got here, and Carsyn went back with Shayne tonight for the 8:00 to 10:00 session.  We're praying that our kids would be 100 times more radical for Christ than we are.

Thanks for Journeying with us (and for letting me rant a little).

The Schafer's

The day the Power died ...

It was last week.  We had arrived in Kansas City on a beautiful Saturday Evening.  The whole house was aflutter with excitement that we had finally reached destination #2 on our Journey of Faith.  But that excitement was soon to be mixed with a feeling of uneasiness as we discovered finding a place to park the MH was going to be more challenging than we had hoped.  Of course we knew large parking lots like wal-mart and costco made great stopping places for a day or two, but they don't take kindly to RV's taking up shop for much longer than that.  We discovered that IHOP has a huge Overflow parking lot that is often little used and we obtained their permission to park there for the duration of our stay in KC.  Awesome.

Or so we thought.

The next day we had a visit from the guy who owns the lot, and who apparently leases it to IHOP, and he informed us that we couldn't park there and that we would be towed if we didn't move immediately.  "Can he do that?" I thought to myself.  I mean we had obtained permission from the lessee of the property, so I again contacted IHOP, explained the situation, and they assured me that I was perfectly safe parked where I was and that I didn't need to move.  But, I had a funny feeling it wasn't going to end there.  So, I temped fate and remained parked where we were in IHOP's leased lot.  Three days later I'm visited once again by the owner of the lot, except this time he brought re-inforcement to help persuade me that we should move on and he reiterated his threat to have me towed if we weren't gone by nightfall.  Great.

I knew we were going to have to move, but where?  The batteries were getting really low in the MH and we knew we had to plug in soon, but where, and how?  Our budget this month doesn't include any extra for campgrounds and no other doors had opened up for us so we moved to another large parking lot, bought some candles and lamp oil for our kerosene lamp and enjoyed a beautiful weekend Conference at IHOP.  Amazing worship, teaching and times of prayer and healing, but always in the back of our minds we had the nagging problem of knowing we were quickly running out of power in our MH batteries.  We continued to put it before the Lord, trusting Him and then on Saturday morning we received a call from You Know Who ...

Daniel and Marlies.

Turns out they have friends who live in KC, who just happen to be away from their home right now and that if we wanted to we could park the MH in their driveway and be plugged in all this next week.  Praise God.  He is so faithful to look after us.  We thank the Lord that He will never let us down.  Sunday morning when we woke up we discovered that we were completely out of power and that neither the water pump nor the fridge would come on.  Sunday afternoon we were able to move onto this beautiful driveway and it has been such a blessing to be here the last 2 days.

Please continue to pray for us for the Lords provision and that we wouldn't buckle under the testing of our faith.  Thanks for Journeying with us.
The Schafers

The Wonders of the C.E.C

Some of you may know, but most of you probably don’t know what C.E.C stands for.  Well in Kansas City, at the International House of Prayer, C.E.C stands for ‘Children’s Equipping Center’ and the name of their sunday school building is a perfect description of the mission that IHOP has for raising up kids in the Lord, and they do it well.   We arrived here in KC last Saturday night and attended the Sunday morning service at IHOP with anticipation.  What we didn’t expect was that while we were doing church in the sanctuary, our kids would be experiencing Christ in sunday school in ways that we had only ever dreamed and hoped for.  

Before I say anymore I want to commend and honor the saints of God who pour themselves out tirelessly and faithfully on the battleground that is Sunday School.  Those men and women who see Jesus in the faces of our children.  Those men and women who believe in the coming generation of believers, who believe that children are important and integral in the coming of the Kingdom of God, who believe that the Holy Spirit can and will touch, fill and move children in the church today in apostolic power and anointing.  Thank You to the Jep Banda’s, the Dave Stroeve’s, the many who serve tirelessly and thanklessly raising up our children to be who God has called them to be.  Thank You.  

This last Thursday night we dropped our kids off for what we presumed was going to be childcare for the ‘Prayer and Prophetic Conference’ we were attending at IHOP.  What we discovered later, however, was that we had dropped them off for a divine appointment with Jesus Christ.  We had a great time at the Thursday evening session.  Awesome worship, great teaching, but that was all eclipsed by what the Lord was doing in our kids in the C.E.C. right next door.  When I went to pick up our older 3 children I found them deep in prayer seeking Jesus and interceding for each other in groups.  As we walked to the van to go home our children could not contain the glorious wonders of the evening and all the excited testimony burst forth.  “God told me ‘that He would take my old heart away, and give me a new heart’ Isaac told us ‘and that I would be in His heart forever and ever”.  Our children had been experiencing the Love and Grace of God for themselves.  The next session when we picked up the kids it was the same thing.  Eiryn told us “I was praying for a girl, and as I was laying hands on her and praying for her I just started crying and I couldn’t stop”  The Holy Spirit had fallen on her as she was praying.  Isaac told us that as he was raising his hands and worshipping that he felt God touch him and that His power went into him.  And Carsyn told us she wasn’t afraid to raise her hands in worship anymore.  Incredible.  As the sessions have continued our kids have continued to grow in their experience of Jesus.  Not just learning about Him, but experiencing Him and learning to know Him.

Children are the future.  What kind of future church are we raising up?

Lets commit ourselves to raising up children who aren’t content with seeking God one hour a week, one day a week.  Lets commit ourselves to raising up kids who hear His voice, who walk in the place of intimacy with Him, who understand their authority in Him, and who will obey Him no matter what the cost.  Lets commit to giving our children a vision of God that is worthy of God.  The speaker tonight said something that blew my mind, he said “It would be absolutely impossible to ever exaggerate His infinite greatness and glory”.  Wow.  That is the vision of God I want to catch ahold of myself, and cast for the upcoming generation.

Shayne and I have a heart for children and youth, we have a deep desire to see kids raised up and released and we are so thankful that churches like ROL, IHOP and many more are pursuing this goal passionately.  I will leave you with a testimony we heard from Daniel Hooteigling the other day.  He told us about a 5 year old girl who was in the prayer room here at IHOP and she told Daniel “As I was praying, God gave me a prayer language”.  Don’t ever underestimate your child or Gods ability to use them, and serve your church’s sunday school program passionately believing God for greater things in these kids than you’ve ever seen before.

Thanks for Journeying with us

The Schafers

Going a Mile a Minute ..

Hello Ya’ll 

Well we left Lethbridge on Wednesday morning glad to be back on the road and yet a little nervous.  We knew we were heading for the border and the idea of getting turned back had us all a tad anxious.  When we pulled up to the border crossing we hoped that we wouldn’t get searched, we hoped that we wouldn’t have to explain why we had a litter of puppies on board, and most of all we hoped that the crossing guard wouldn’t ask us any questions that would raise any red flags.  Of course we don’t have anything to hide and we’re not doing anything illegal.  But a Motorhome with 2 dogs resembling pit-bulls (not to mention a litter of puppies) headed for no-where in particular with 5 children and no set date as to when we are going to be returning and with just enough money to get by isn’t necessarily your typical traveler.  But Jesus was beckoning to us from the other side and he gave us favor with the border crossing guard.  He didn’t ask us when we were coming back, nor did he inquire about the kids school (of course were road-schooling them), after boarding us he stooped to pet Ava and commented on a nice litter of pups she had.  That was it.  And with a wave we were there, finally.  Our long awaited Journey across the US was begun.  

Today, we visited Mt. Rushmore.  It is amazing what one person will do for the love of his country.  The world largest stone sculpture was sculpted by one guy and it took him 14 years.  That’s dedication.  One of the prominent things we’ve noticed as we have journeyed these last 3 days is the patriotic spirit here.  American flags fly high and proud everywhere.  Seeing the pride that Americans take in their country makes me prouder to be Canadian.  I am inspired by their patriotic Spirit.  And prouder still to be a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven.  Let your banner be lifted high, and raise Jesus up as a saviour for all. 

1707 km’s in 3 days.  Not bad.  Today we trusted the GPS and learned a grave lesson.  DONT TRUST THE GPS.

Our GPS decided that the best route through South Dakota was to take us through Badlands National Park, a couple reserves, and a handful of gravel roads in 50 mph winds on crappy secondary highways with no shoulder.  Praise the Lord that we had a really awesome Truckers Atlas that helped us get back on the beaten path.

So far so good.  We are all having a blast and Jesus has been blessing us with favor everywhere we go.  Now I finally understand where the saying "Were going a mile a minute" came from.  If we're travelling 60 mph, were going "a mile a minute" Hahaha 

Thanks for Journeying with us.

The Schafer