IHOP REVISITED, The Passive Miss Out

By David Hobbs

I had a few extra days in my book tour itinerary so I spent them visiting IHOP (International House of Prayer) in Kansas City. [It features 24/7 prayer and worship for probably the last 10 years.] My first night was in a nice hotel, but the price was high. So I moved to one at literally half the price—no breakfast, no internet, a dive; but cheap.
It’s been 5 years since I‘ve been to IHOP, and oh what a difference! The parking lot is packed. The auditorium is comfortably full instead of sparsely populated. The musicians are so good it is like a continuous high quality concert. Thousands visit every week.
But the format is basically the same: a worship leader with other musicians and singers on backup. They get started on a song and then see where the Holy Spirit takes it. And He does take it! Incredible throne-room experiences!
My first afternoon I put in a three hour stint. During that time I saw many come and go. A whole family or group of people would file into a pew in front of me and sit. Then a half hour later I would open my eyes again and they would be gone. I felt in the spirit that many went away unchanged, perhaps disappointed, after hoping they would meet God there, only to find it didn’t happen.
God is cagey. He won’t let us take short-cuts, or the easy way.
I found it to be a time of giving rather than receiving. We were giving God worship and ministering to Him (at least those who entered into the flow). Those who came hoping to sit and receive but with nothing to give went away disappointed. They were violating God’s principle: “No one is to appear before me empty-handed” [Ex. 23:15]. I had some high times in worship in those three hours, but I didn’t meet God there either.
I came back to my dingy hotel room, ate and took a nap during a thunderstorm, woke up all alone, began meditating on Him and singing to Him and that’s when I met God—not in the loudly worshipping throng, but all alone in a squalid hotel room. Why was that?
The Holy Spirit sent me to Romans 10 where I found the answer. Please excuse me for taking some liberties with the Scriptures:
6 But the righteousness that is by faith says: “Do not say in your heart, ‘Who will ascend into heaven [for me]?’… 7 or ‘Who will descend into the deep [for me]?’” … 8 But what does it say? “The word is near you; it is in your mouth and in your heart…”
In other words, “Don’t look for someone else to do it for you!” I realize I’m lifting this passage out of context, but the principle I’m looking for is there, though it’s not what Paul is emphasizing.
The worship team was establishing the presence of God through their worship, but most of the audience was not engaged. They were passive. To meet with God in the way they were longing to, they had to use their own God-given tools: their mouth and their heart. It was not something anybody else could do for them. What they wanted was truly near them, but it would not come through a feeling generated by the band; it would take action on their part. We have been conditioned to be passive in our culture and it leaves us feeling empty and dissatisfied.
With the Lord, it’s those “words from our mouth” that He uses to search our hearts and show us what’s in there. “The spirit of man is the Lord’s lamp; it searches out his inmost being” (Prov. 20:27 [NIV] alternate rendering). We hear ourselves say something (“Lord, give me a Hawaiian vacation”) and we think, “Wow, that sounded selfish and oriented toward ‘me and me alone’. Lord let me re-phrase that: Have Your way first in my life, and then let me go where You want me to go.”
We see this happening in James 4:13:
Now listen, you who say, “Today or tomorrow we will go into this city or that city, spend a year there, carry on business and make money.” 14 Why, you do not even know what will happen tomorrow. What is your life? You are a mist that appears for awhile and then vanishes. 15 Instead, you ought to say, “If it is the Lord’s will, we will live and do this and that.”
This person’s thinking was corrected by the Spirit, but only after he spoke what was in his heart, after he brought it out in the open where it could be dealt with. When we’re passive, such things stay locked up inside where we’re unaware of them and they remain unchanged.
We need to come before God and speak, not only to expose wrong things, but good things also: dreams and hopes and godly desires. God puts these in our hearts so he can give them to us as part of His promise to give us the desires of our hearts. But we have to speak them out so we can identify/discover them, and start a process of praying and believing for them. It’s all part of how God works bringing things to pass. But it doesn’t happen in passive mode. In passive mode we are waiting for God to do something, while all the time He is waiting for us to act.
In the case I first mentioned--the people who were going away secretly disappointed because God didn’t meet them there--I felt the disappointment of the Holy Spirit too, and His love longing for them. He so much wanted to engage them, more than they realized and more than they wanted Him. But they weren’t coming the right way: with the words of their mouths and the faith of their hearts. So they were in effect tying His hands from what He wanted to do.

Angels and Fiery Rain

By David Hobbs

This blog is about a supernatural walk with God through Christ. While the emphasis is on supernatural encounters and experiences, it is also on current ones—what the Lord has done since the last entry or at least the recent past, as opposed to long ago. The manna must be fresh or it breeds worms and stinks.
Two days ago, Monday morning, I went out to the church early to pray, as I try to do once or twice a week. The prayer time was good but unremarkable. As I was leaving the old sanctuary building about 5:45 am, I looked across the parking lot to the new one. The rising sun was still hidden behind the building, but its rays were shining on the clouds above, where a remarkable thing was happening. Though it’s supposed to be our dry season, a misty rain was falling out of the clouds above the church, evaporating before it hit the ground. As the sun shone through this falling mist, it turned it brilliant colors of yellow and red, which made it look like fiery rain falling on the building. I quickly pulled out my iphone and snapped three pictures, trying to catch the glory of the moment which I knew would be quickly past as the sun rose higher.
My only thought at the time was the visual phenomena of falling rain and falling fire, both of which we have prayed for for many years. But to my surprise, when I downloaded the pictures to my laptop and printed them out on full pages of paper, I could see the shapes of angels and horses of fire in the rain.
I took it as a sign from heaven, both for our church, which has had many prophecies and visions concerning such supernatural events, and also for myself—I am about to embark on a 3 month book tour of the U.S. promoting my salvation story, Out of the Fire, A Life Radically Changed, and the work of God in revival and preparing the Bride for His coming. If you want to see the pictures, the link to my Facebook page where they’re posted is:
www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=19966&id=1541887269&l=243cd88aab.

If you want to follow my book tour, the link for that is:
www.amicusbooks.com/index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&Itemid=55.

Click on the Tour/Events tab and you can see my schedule. Come out and see me if I’m close by.
If you’re interested in booking me for a tour event (there is no charge), go to the media tab, click on the first option, the TIP Sheet. It contains my publicist contact info.

May we all stay close to Him and continually see His glory and feel His love this summer!

The Doers, the Helpers, and the Gawkers

By David Hobbs

It was "Seek Week" and we were having special evening prayer meetings at the church. It was Wednesday and I was feeling pretty much out of it, though quite a few seemed to be actively engaged with the Holy Spirit. Toward the end of the meeting we circled up and held hands to pray together. The lady on my right, a very spiritual woman who has graced this blog before, was in the Spirit and began bending double, jerking or convulsing as different people prayed.

Finally, about the time the meeting was over, she went down all together and lay on the floor moaning and crying out. Cheryl was praying over her. She looked like she was birthing something in the Spirit. She got especially animated when someone prayed out evangelistically for souls. Realizing this, I stretched my hands toward her and prayed in tongues, which felt like the most spiritual thing I had done all night. Others standing around gawked at her and the “spectacle” she was making of herself.

The next morning the Holy Spirit instructed me. “There are three groups of people in the world,” He said, “everyone must pick which group they’ll be in.”

The story he reminded me of was when Jesus was going to heal the girl on her deathbed (Luke 8:40). But on the way He was stopped by the woman with the issue of blood. By the time He dealt with that woman, the original girl had died. When Jesus came to the house and saw the outpouring of mourning, He proclaimed the girl was not dead, but sleeping, which raised an instant reaction of scoffing, mocking, doubting and unbelief.

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Jesus did this purposely, to identify the crowd who didn’t believe? Then He put out everybody from this crowd. This was the first class of people: the unbelievers, or the gawkers. He didn’t give them a chance to “exercise their ministry” but put them out before they could sabotage His.

He let stay the parents and His three top disciples. The parents were more concerned about seeing their girl healed than gawking out a miracle. They became part of the second group, the helpers. These are people who can’t do the miracle, but their prayers and presence help create the atmosphere for the miracle to occur. In the prayer meeting I was talking about, I was in the crowd of helpers, as was Cheryl. We were not able to accomplish the work, though Cheryl was midwifing it, a subcategory of helpers. And I was lending my prayers to set the spiritual atmosphere to help it come about.

The third group is the smallest, the doer, often just one person with the faith, the gift, or the power to bring the miracle forth. In the Gospels that person is Jesus; after Pentecost, the apostles; in the Old Testament, a prophet. In my experience it was the woman lying on the floor, travailing in the Spirit to birth something.

The Holy Spirit was saying, “There are three groups. Each person must choose which group they will be in.” Do they want to be a gawker, which is pretty much the same as an unbeliever? Do they want to be a helper, in which case they will be part of the miracle? Or do they want to be a doer, in which case they will spearhead the miracle?

When David Hogan visited our church a number of years ago, we had gawkers come out of the woodwork and from across the country, swarming the church, hoping to see him raise someone from the dead. It was embarrassing.

To be a gawker requires nothing but the natural man. To be a helper requires an openness and obedience to the Holy Spirit. To be a doer requires a high level of yieldedness, and an advanced ability to hear the voice of the Spirit and flow in His anointing.