IHOP – Day 2

Well, Justice slept great during our first night at the hotel, in his new nursery (AKA the bathroom) and after all having breakfast and showers we all had a nap!  lol.  I love vacations!  It was such a nice relaxing morning and then when Justice woke up, we quickly got ready to head over to Forerunner Christian Fellowship (FCF) for the 10:30 am service.  We were pretty stoked when we got a parking spot right at the doors because we have a baby with us – woohoo!  Every now and then there’s some nice benefits to being parents.    Then we sat in the bleachers at the back of the sanctuary and Matt Gilman led a rockin’ time of praise and worship that had the whole place clapping, shouting and dancing – it was a lot of fun!  Both Joe and I really enjoyed it, since we sometimes miss the big, loud & boisterous corporate worship services that we were used to in the Pentecostal church we used to attend.  I can hardly remember the last time I danced, so it was fun to do that again – although I think I’m paying for it now, since I think it caused my muscle strain/pull/tear (not really sure what it is) in my leg to flare up.  Oh well, at least I had fun!  I think Justice was enjoying it too, since this was definitely a new experience for him.  He was totally enthralled by all the noise and activity and was flapping his arms around happily and excitedly during the worship! 

Rick Joyner was there to preach and he spoke on revival, which was really good.  Something that I found sort of funny was that during the message, a young woman sitting in front of us with her husband, turned and was smiling at Justice who was playing with some toys & then she pulled out this really nice camera and motioned to us to see if it was okay if she took a picture.  I nodded & smiled and then she snapped a couple shots of our adorable baby – he’s just that cute that random strangers want to take his picture!!    At the end of the service I wanted to maybe chat with her, but then I noticed her take earphones out & realized that she was having the sermon translated for her, so who knows where she was from or what language she speaks – just another unique thing about the IHOP community!  During the message, I had to step out with Justice to feed him some lunch, and I passed Kelsey Bohlender with one of the twins – wish I could’ve stopped to say “hi” and maybe hold Anna or Mercy, whichever one she was, but it was neither the time nor the place – too bad!  I got to listen to the rest of the message on a T.V. in the Student Lounge and one of the ushers and a random young lady helped me with Justice, which was so nice – I love the body of Christ! 

After the service, we accidentally stumbled upon a restaurant that had been recommended to us – Sonic – which is a modern drive-in restaurant.  It looked very cool, with all the little drive-in stations where each stall had a full menu board and equipment for you to pay for your meal & where you could sit in your car and have your meal brought to you.  But, since Justice was getting grumpy and it was soon time for his nap, we just went through the drive-through.  The food was still good though & now we can say we went there.    Justice and I then headed back to the hotel while Joe went to the prayer room.  I spent some time on the computer and reading a book while Justice napped and then fed him and played with him when he woke up.  When Joe came back, he shared with me some great stuff that God was touching his heart with on David’s vow from Psalm 132 on finding a dwelling place for the Lord.

We then decided to go out and have some family fun time, so we found a little park off of Red Bridge Road that had a play structure and we played on it with Justice.  He had his first experience going down a slide, which he seemed to mostly like, but everything was a little beyond his playing capabilities – I think Joe was having more fun playing with everything! After that we took Justice in the stroller and did some serious off-roading along some bike paths that went up and down steep hills with big tree roots jutting out everywhere – ha!  I was a little nervous, but if you know Joe, you know that he loves adventure, so I didn’t have much say in it!   By this time, it was quite dark & I was using a flashlight to light up the path for us & it was getting a little chilly, so we decided to leave.  Well, just as we were packing up, a police car pulls up behind us & is shining it’s spotlight on our van!  We don’t know what’s going on or what to do, so Joe gets out of the van to find out if there’s a problem – WRONG MOVE!  lol.  The police officer was NOT impressed that Joe started to approach his vehicle and he gave Joe a bit of a rough time, questioning him about why we were at this park, when apparently it was closed and it was dark & where were we from & please sir, take your hands out of your pockets where I can see them!  He took Joe’s driver’s license and we had to sit and wait for several minutes before he came back to the van & he was much more pleasant then & told us that since he didn’t have his red & blue lights flashing, that we could’ve just driven away, but we didn’t know that!  Anyways, it definitely added to the adventure of our little family fun outing!

     

We then wandered around, looking for somewhere to go for supper – it’s a little difficult when we don’t know the city at all or where to go to find restaurants, but we found an Applebee’s and had a nice meal before heading back to the hotel.  After feeding Justice, it was then my turn to go to the prayer room and Joe stayed behind with Justice, who went to bed.  At the prayer room, it was an intercession set being led by Luke Wood’s team and I chose to spend the time reading my Studies in Joel notes, which was really good, because it was all about the importance of our intercession in impacting how things go for us in the end-times.  It just stirred some things up in my heart again on the topic of intercession, which was awesome.  I then stayed for an hour of the next set, which was a Worship with the Word set with Ashley Prior’s team, and just spent some time journaling before heading back to the hotel around 11:00pm.  It’s been a little strange getting these alone times with the Lord, when I’m so used to always having Joe and/or Justice around, but it’s been really enjoyable and I want to take advantage of these opportunities to be in His presence without any distractions (even though Joe & Justice are both wonderful distractions) and just focus completely on Him.