thop day

so we've been going to this conference in tauranga... put on by the tauranga house of prayer (THOP, i'm fairly sure affiliated with IHOP because they mention KC a lot (a lot a lot... they are most assuredly affiliated/in cahoots with one another)) called 'unrelenting 09' (it is the first one evah!) it was some pretty good warmup worship hype, a really sweet song (i think it was called unrelenting or something) that easily gets caught up in the brain and replayed over and over again, but then a long time of worship then this speaker named bob sorge... who is very very interesting because 17 years ago he had a vocal chord injury caused by surgery that destroyed his voice, only allowing him to speak at a whisper and only for about an hour a day. the first night he talked about us seeking God for our justice against the adversary, gaining restoration and beyond that, restitution. it was pretty sweet, i had never heard anything like that (whether prosperity gospel or not... us seeking God like the woman bugging the judge for justice seemed like a good idea to follow up on.) but... yeah it was cool. that was thursday night. thursDAY mighta been cool too.. minus i don't remember. or i may have written about it already... probs...

friday we continued in prayer with jono.. except it wasn't much confession at all but rather him just coming around to each of us individually and praying/prophesying over us. it was really cool! he told me i need to stop analyzing God with little check boxes to tick off, that i can explain to people later. he said that deep down i knew that i knew that i KNEW God was real and true and absolute, and that trying to suppress that wouldn't be doing me any good. it was very accurate... then he said something about the joy of the spirit and then i'm fairly sure i fell asleep. whenever i get the spirit near me i fall asleep.. so much peace.

friday night we headed back to tauranga, for another night... i was far less pleased with this night, because i only knew one worship song, and it was very long and very repetitive. which drives me crazy... i usually get a lot of something being said once, and then hitting it over and over again seems to cheapen the meaning of it and pushes it down into nullification. bleh.. and it was really .. overly gentle. i guess... i was analyzing it way to hard but i decided that i like worship to be like a baseball hitting me in the face, and this worship was like a softball wrapped in cotton balls and underhanded at me. it was 'good' but it wasn't at all impacting... but thats ok. bob's talk was about sprinkling of the blood of Christ, but i didn't get much out of it because it was mainly his own conviction and method to launch himself into the presence of God. good to share verbally, not that special to spread to people who hear God in different ways. so kind of a bust night.

then saturday lucky saturday we woke up an headed right back to THOP, and listened (pfft lies, there was no ounce of real listening) to john dawson, a really cool guy really high up in YWAM, buuuut what he was talking about nobody in our group knew... there was something about not letting your national identity becoming an idol and stealing the thunder of what really decides your identity.. which i agreed with fully but had come to terms with that in my own realizations earlier in life. he spoke for 2 hours straight... our lovely leadership decided it was time to ditch the afternoon session so we went city walking in tauranga for the afternoon. i had a kebab. it was like angels peeing on my tongue. (apparently the most common phrase used by the dutch people, says rims. angel pee yo.) then i ditched the girls and john-mark who went to see confessions of a shopaholic. there wasn't anything else playing... nothing. until 8:30 when watchmen was playing, or until 6:30 when slumdog millionaire was playing at another theatre, but we would've been gone by then. sigh no movies.. but it was a nice chill day in the city. then we grudgingly went back to THOP for one last session.. sigh. but i had an attitude check during worship that kiiinda brought me back into it.. i mainly just prayed hard at God but it felt like a 2 way conversation so i appreciated it. bob talked about worship and the role of the worship leader and how they need to be cautious in how they grab the attention of Christ's bride, so they don't start seeking after him/her rather than the king of kings. which was again just a heady reminder of things known.. but hey. it was still a less bad evening than before... my favorite part was when i passed out, slept for 10 minutes and then when everyone stood for one last song my body followed and my mind woke up half way up confused and .. confused. then we went home!! yay home. i told ji-won she could sleep on my shoulder, and she said ok! and i knew she passed out cuz her body went limp in 2 minutes.. that korean sleeps so easily..

then i came home and had amazing dreams about me flying/floating/being batman and getting shot at and kicking butt and flying s'more. today i'm going to the falls for a solid hike. yay weekend!