broken hearts

God never does what you think he should, he works in bigger, more loving circles than we ever expect. This last week of fasting and praying was no exception. God moved, we opened ourselves to him and yet we still wrestled with him as he poured things into us that were unexpected. Over and over the cry of this last week was a corporate cry of:

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me

Break my heart from what breaks yours
Everything I am for your kingdoms cause
As I go from earth to
Eternity

Here is the whole song:

I see the king of glory
Coming on the clouds with fire
The whole earth shakes
The whole earth shakes


I see his love and mercy
Washing over all our sin
The people sing
The people sing

[Chorus]
Hosanna
Hosanna
Hosanna in the highest x2

I see a generation
Rising up to take their place
With selfless faith
With selfless faith

I see a near revival
Stirring as we pray and seek
We're on our knees
We're on our knees

[Chorus]

Heal my heart and make it clean
Open up my eyes to the things unseen
Show me how to love like you have loved me

Break my heart from what breaks yours
Everything I am for your kingdoms cause
As I go from earth to
Eternity

- Hillsong United "Hosanna"



At Calvary Chapel Corvallis we want our hearts to be moved by what moves God, changed by what he is doing, broken over what he weeps for, and that our hands would be ready and able to step in, move and act at the slightest nudge.

God gave the prayer meetings a newness every time. Between worship, praying for humility, revival and the church body we were never at a lack of words. One meeting pastor Rob opened the meeting up to requests for healing and for over an hour an a half we asked God to heal, with prayers of faith by name for family members, friends, and people in the church body. What would God do if His people had the faith to believe that he can move? What would he deposit in us if we cried out for more and more of Him?

At the final prayer meeting on Saturday night one of the pastors prayed thanking God for taking the reigns of the meetings and for doing things that were not on anyone's agenda but His. The pastor confessed that he (being the missions pastor at Calvary Chapel) was thinking many would be called to the mission field, people sent out, leaders called, destinies seen easily. But God's burden was placed on us for the needy, those who in our community have nothing, they can't get to church, they live in tents, the elderly, the homeless,the hungry, the broken. God loves the broken, his heart snuggles them and ours needs to as well.

As much as sending out is a strong ministry already in our church, as there are over 20 missionaries that are supported through Calvary Chapel Corvallis, but He is birthing in our church a place for each of us to serve. For the kids, the parents, those who aren't called (at least right now) to go far away. He is bringing us to the place where we see his heart for those in our proximity. That we would reach out- be his hands, his feet.

Not only a week of prayer and fasting but also one of extreme fellowship as well gathered three times a day at the church and were bonded together with strings that are stronger than friendship or likeness, but bonds that are heavenly.

After the last prayer meeting on Saturday night we had the Sabos and the Kramers over to our home and we had yummy pizza, salad, chips, salsa and brownies....things that we had all been looking forward to all week. The thing we noticed though, was that the food wasn't nearly as good as we had expected, it satisfied, but only a little, and it was not nearly as delicious as we had anticipated. This in no way means we are instituting a perpetual fast, but just that we can finally understand the practical side of that verse saying that, "we do not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord" (Deut. 8:3). While we were weak and hungry this week, God nurtured us and placed his heart in us.

Fire of God

Fire of God
by Ryan Smith (worship leader Calvary Chapel Corvallis)

We who are called by Your name
Humble ourselves to seek Your face
Father we turn from wicked ways
Bring Your healing to this place

Fire of God burn
Let heaven spread to earth
Spirit of God move
The nations to exalt You

We who are called by Your name
Humble ourselves to seek Your face
Father we turn from wicked ways
Bring Your healing to this place

Let revival flow
Like a river through my soul
Let Your kingdom come
As we dream the dreams of God



We have started the fast, already God is bending our hearts to hear His as we humble ourselves to him, bowing down lower than we have in too much time. Saturday night prayer meeting was again powerful, God gave some visions of fire, some of water but both being symbols of the Holy Spirit we know that God wants to rock our dreams and transform them into His.

I still say, having Obama in power will be bad for our nation, but good for our church. Opposition to our faith makes us stronger, and snapped out of our blindness so that we may see the need to turn in our complacent hearts and pray for the president, that he would turn from His wicked ways as well.

The song I wrote down, it has been my lifeblood and the cry of our church body. Ryan Smith the worship leader at Calvary Chapel Corvallis just wrote it and it has been our anthem for the beginning of this fast. It is from 2 Chronicles 7, when the Lord appears to Solomon and hears his cry that the Temple he has just built will be God's resting place, where His power and Might will be (6:41). The Lord answers Solomon saying:

I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for myself as a temple for sacrifices. When I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or command locusts to devour the land or send a plague amongst my people, if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now my ears will be open and my eyes attentive to the prayers offered in this place.
2Chronicles 7:12-15

Power is spreading through our veins, God answers when we ask. Why have we not asked in so long? This outpouring is just the beginning. Our bodies are waking up, leaving the cocoons of our baby states and stepping into the threshold of the next step in maturity.

I'm in the upper room

God is moving, doing great things in our church, in our land. I was blessed to be able to go to Saturday night prayer, we met in the prayer chapel with the other 150 or so people from our church. The power of a group of men and women and youth on their knees, standing, sitting and all crying out to God for our nation of America, for nations around the world, and for the next generation was tangible. I am moved, God is stirring hearts here in America. This recent change of power I believe is going to cause us to stand stronger and firmer as we answer the call to separate ourselves as living sacrifices before the Lord.

We don't want to soak in the blessing and hold it for ourselves, the cry of our church is to pour out and to reach those who need it. More than ever before in America I am seeing the fire that was lost through years of corporate complacency is fading. We are done deceiving ourselves, we know this is not a godly nation and that God has called us to change. The best way to change a heart, to change a culture, to change the world is to find yourself crying out to God that he would save, that he would move and that if it be his will that he would use you.


A Call to Prayer and Fasting:
Our church, Calvary Chapel Corvallis is being called to a week long fast. A week of corporate fasting and prayer. We will be meeting every night from 7-8 pm, in the mornings from 6-7am and in the afternoon from 9am-12pm for corporate prayer and worship. Our leadership believes that this is the time to step up, the time to be called into action and move from a church who is comfortable to a church that lives in discomfort for the furthering of the gospel, for the outpouring of the holy spirit all over the world.

Fasting in the Bible is shown in different forms and intensity levels, but always holds power especially when done as a group. There are tons of Old and New Testament references to Corporate or Congregational fasting*, God moves when his children seek and pray. The leadership of Calvary Chapel Corvallis has really emphasized that it is not a hunger strike, but that it is a time to humble yourself before the lord and pray, commune with him, worship and pray with the rest of the church and dive deeper and then dive deeper still. Fasting is depriving your physical self of things in order to humble your personal desires and therefore be more in tune with the leading of the Spirit, of God and to open yourself to hear His voice clearly.

The fast starts on superbowl sunday! Pastor Rob thought superbowl sunday was in January but said that he wasn't going to apologize for the date that the fast week was set for as he and the leadership prayed and that was the week they were lead to. God doesn't care about superbowl sunday. I love being in a church that doesn't schedule God around the events that the culture finds important. They don't worry that no one will show up, God has called them to do something and they do! I have craved for that, a body that hears God and acts and therefore sees Him and move.

In giving us the privilege of fasting as well as praying, God has added a powerful weapon to our armory! In her folly and ignorance the Church has largely looked upon it as obsolete. She has thrown it down in some dark corner to rust and there it has lain forgotten for centuries. An hour of impending crisis for the Church and the world demands its recovery!
-Andrew Murray (from "This Chosen Fast")

* Old Testament:Judges 20:26, 2 Chronicles 20:3, Ezra 8:21-23, Esther 4:3, Esther 4:16, Daniel 9-10, Zechariah 7:5
New Testament: Matthew 4:2 Matthew 6:16-18, Matthew 17:21, Acts 13:2-3, Act 14: 23, 1Corinthians 7:5, 2 Corinthians 11:27