It's been a while since I've posted anything that's been going on here.

The 40 day fast that Lou Engle has called leading up to the Call on 7/7/07 in Nashville has become the main thing going on at IHOP right now. Mike Bickle presented a few messages over a couple of Sundays indicating that he believes that this fast is opening up both the next chapter in America's spiritual history as well as the next chapter in IHOP's prophetic history.

Mike told a pretty incredible story about the 21 day solemn assembly that they did in 1983 (it was Metro Christian Fellowship at that point – IHOP wasn't started until 1999). They had a prophetic word that God was going to answer on 28-May, the last day of the fast, but on 27-May, they got a prophetic word that the fast was going to end that night (i.e. one day early). The Holy Spirit made it clear that the fast was supposed to end early, and so they stopped. The next day everybody turned out to hear how God was going to answer, and the answer (through a prophetic word from Bob Jones) was that the spiritual drought in America was going to continue for a time because the prayer movement wasn't ready for revival yet. That was, of course, 24 years ago.

On May 28, 2007, the first day of the this fast, IHOP went live 24 hours a day on GodTV – from midnight to 6 am in every time zone. That was a fulfillment of one of the prophecies that Kansas City would have a ministry of intercession that would touch the whole world. So, it appears that God did answer on 28-May – He just didn't specify 28-May of which year…

The prophetic promises that people are praying into here are pretty amazing. For those who are interested, the Encountering Jesus CD series by Mike Bickle tells a lot of the stories.

So anyway, there's quite a bit of excitement in the air about this fast. To make things more interesting, the director of Fire in the Night felt the Lord leading him to do a speech fast (a vow of silence) for the 40 days of the fast as well. He stepped down from almost all of his teaching and delegated a lot of leadership responsibilities for that time. (he still does a fair amount of "talking" through pen and paper though…)

By way of explanation of what a speech fast is about, a lot of the interns were given a copy of Henri Nouwen's The Way of the Heart as well. A number of interns have decided to do partial speech fasts too (we're not allowed to speech fast in our classes).

I haven't committed to a speech fast for the whole duration, but the idea of a shorter speech fast is quite attractive. I really want to learn how to "guard the inner fire" in the way that Nouwen describes.

So anyway, that's what's been going on and why I've been relatively quiet on the blog and email recently. I may not post here again until after the Call on 7/7/07.

For those who are not participating in the fast, I'd strongly encourage you to check it out. It's not too late to get involved. For more information, you can check out these sites:

www.fastandpray.com

www.thecall.com