- Tammy: there was a prophetic word for us as a congregation from 4 years ago, a lot of what it said we’re stepping into,
and we’ve been stepping into it now, a prophetic word doesn’t mean it happens instantly, sometimes it’s a walking out, it takes some time, 1st part already walked out, we’ve walked through it, the second part of the word we feel like we’re in it now; the Lord was restoring the prophetic flow in our church, there is a big stream coming down a mountain side, this was a stream that had life and healing in it, in this past year we’ve had a lot of healings and miracles; the Lord said, I’m restoring also My presence in My church, and out of My presence I’m going to restore healing and deliverance in the church, the anointing of healing, and I’m going to bring that to the nations, I’m also restoring the song birds back to Metro, that’s the prophetic worship and anointing to go deep into the Lord; going to continue as a church to press on for more of the spiritual things in our life, seeing more of God, and understanding deeper things of Him- Erin Parks: picture when woke up this morning for several people (20-30), group of people in the trenches, you’re in the trenches and you’re fighting hard, you’re weary but you’re focused and you’re fighting, it wasn’t like giving up, it was just like ‘wow this is a fight’, felt like it was in God’s heart to drop in provisions, looked up in the sky and there was packages and people coming in parachutes, felt like this year in 2011 is a year of provision and reinforcements, and specifically the reinforcements came in the form of friendship, it was actual people being dropped in the trenches with you; last week had a dream about this morning, specific word to a couple who are really struggling especially in an area of business and finances, and several people were gathered around this couple praying for them, and all of a sudden someone turned to me and said “can I please tell them how the Lord delivered me in this very same area?” and people began to speak testimony to this couple of the faithfulness of God in their own life and it stirred this couple’s faith, the picture that I got with that was the story of the crippled man being carried by his friends to Jesus, and there are times in our lives where we need to be carried by other people’s faith, and there are times in our lives where we need to carry each other with our faith, and I just felt like this year specifically that God was going to give reinforcements and friendships that build faith, reinforcements by stirring the testimony of faith among each other, second thing was provision, packages of provision, I felt like it was material provision, that there are people who are in the trenches who are fighting for their families and fighting for their businesses and fighting in faith and God is going to meet you supernaturally this year with provision, with multiplication, and with abundance, that this is going to be a year of abundance, the most important provision was joy, that this is a year of abundant joy, that even though the circumstance may not change and you will still be in the trenches, that God is going to infuse the situation with joy, that He’s going to strengthen us with joy, the joy of the Lord is our strength, and that’s when His presence is with us even in the trenches and we’re filled with joy; Pray: that You would drop reinforcements, that you would bring people alongside these ones to carry them, that You would strengthen their faith by the testimony of Your faithfulness, that You would encourage them, by friendships of faith, release of provision, that You would release finances in Jesus’ name, that You would release joy in Jesus’ name, You’re word says that You’ve given us everything we need for life and godliness, surprise them by grace, surprise them by grace in their families, in their workplaces, in their finances, surprise them by grace in 2011 in the name of Jesus. Saw a picture of young man walking down very long road with backpack, all of a sudden he stopped, and he turned around and I heard very clearly “your son is coming home”, like he was on this long road and all of a sudden he hit this wall and it was time to come home, and I believe that this is the promise of God that this year your son is coming home.
- Jesus told me that when I left the church I was in, He would find a place for me, and I feel like He has, my first day here, been stifled a little bit, 1979 prophesied over me that I would be singing for the Lord, couldn’t do it at other churches, let us start – all of us who are songbirds let us start
- Love the fact that this church allows this kind of thing to happen, visitor here. Some things that God has really been teaching me lately and want to share it with you, and leave you with a thought that I feel like God has for us to think about today. It’s kind of a heavier word, but feel like it’s important for this year especially. Important to guard your heart, and sometimes though I think God wants us to open our hearts to even what may be very, very painful. Teaching me the importance of pain and discipleship and doing the hard things that really hurt sometimes, emotions that come up you didn’t think existed or that you protected yourself from, and the Lord is saying so clearly that this is a year about becoming who Christ wants you to be, and it happens through pain and it happens through suffering, and you have to open your heart sometimes to things you don’t want to feel, and God will make you into that person you’re supposed to be, His Son Jesus, you’re going to become more like Him when you do that, (from ‘My Utmost for His Highest’ December 9th) – “they that are Christ have crucified the flesh. It is going to cost the natural in you everything, not something. Jesus said, ‘if any man will be My disciple, let him deny himself’. Beware of refusing to go to the funeral of your own independence.” Luke 14: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters—yes, even their own life—such a person cannot be my disciple.” Jesus talks about counting the cost, if you want to follow Jesus He says you have to give it all up, every bit of it to Him, that’s what He’s calling us to do this year, when He talks about hating your father, mother etc., what He’s talking about is loving less, He says love Me the most, but Me first in everything, the center of your life, that’s hard, violent words from our Lord and Savior who is kind and loving, and at the same time He says if you want to be my disciple you have to give it all, you have to drop it; Dietrich Bonheoffer, stood up against Hitler as a Lutheran pastor and was killed for it, “when Christ bids a man come, He bids him to come and die” and that’s what He’s called us to do, every day of our life get up and die and follow Him. Pray: thank You for everyone here in this room, it is with a specific purpose that we are here on January 2nd, 2011. There’s no one here that is a mistake, You made everyone here with a purpose and destiny, it may not be what we think, and there may be deep desires of our hearts that You are asking us to give up and throw on Your alter, that it would be consumed by Your fire and burned up, so that You may be glorified in each and every one of our lives. Lord, as this church has been learning about how to openly learn how to worship You in our lives, and they’ve been going through the teaching of Daniel, about giving it up to You and being glorified, teach us how to die to our self, that every day we get up that it’s a death march, but Father You promise joy in the midst of it, and in the suffering
- Neil Harger: Watched “Crazy Heart” movie last night about a country singer that’s an alcoholic, and he meets up with a young woman and takes her young son who is 4 years old under his wing, goes into a shopping mall and needs to get a drink, and the young boy runs off; dream said the Christian church in general is lost. Woke up early this morning to read book of Joel. Corporate prophecy. He told me about the locust that are eating through the world, the locusts are eating through our children here at Metro, we have an unusually large number of diabetes among our children here, we have a couple of young men who are being attacked by their employer for reasons unknown to them, and that’s going to be cured. We’re going to have more healings in general. Dream is that we’ll have many, many more Pentecost Sundays; many, many more healings; many, many more conversions; many, many more baptisms. And the healings primarily will come in the young people, the diabetes. The diabetes is nothing but an attack of the enemy, and we claim healing on all of them right now as we speak in Jesus’ name.
- Karen Hastings: Dream –we were as congregation sitting in glass church, we were all sitting in beautiful seats looking out the front, had a driveway. The Lord had delivered this vehicle, it was the most gleaming, gorgeous car I’d ever seen, never seen one like it. We were just sitting there enjoying looking at it, it was on other side of the glass. There were some guys on the other side of car, and it appeared that they were polishing it. They stole everything on the other side of the car, all we could see was the shell on this side, while we’re sitting there watching. John 10:10 “the thief comes no but for to steal, kill, and destroy; I have come that they may have life, and that they might have it more abundantly. I am the good shepherd, and the good shepherd gives His life for His sheep.” And we are those sheep. And we have to grab hold of that abundant life that Jesus gave us, and we have to continue to grab it, not just sit and watch the thief steal from us, and kill us, and destroy us. So get up and grab hold of it. Pray that we would have revelation on that, that we would know in our inner man how to do that, that we would have great wisdom in fighting.
- Jenny Herman: Luke 12 “But seek first His kingdom and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” Matt 5:6 “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they will be filled.” Feel like this is a verse for us as a church, that if we seek Him first above our finances and above our relationships, that He will fill us up, and that He will give us passion. And that if we hunger and thirst that He will fill us. It’s not only for us individually but it’s for us corporately as a church, too. As looking for new church and as we’re looking for a place as a home, that if we seek Him first, if we seek after Him and go hard after Him that He will fulfill us, that He will give us the desire of our heart. Pray: through everything that we do that You would give us passion, and as we seek You first and as we go hard after You that You would give us passion, Lord, passion for Your name. I ask that You would fill us with joy and fill us with Your Holy Spirit, that You would pour out Your spiritual gifts upon us, and You will pour out all Your blessing upon us. As we seek You first that You would give us hope and You would give us joy for the future, even through the darkest times in our life, that You will always walk beside us, and You will give us hope and that we will know that You are always there beside us. I know that You will never leave us and that You will never forsake us, no matter how dark our life may be. I pray that as we seek You first, as we go hard after You, no matter what the cost, that You will always, always turn back and bless us. Ask that You will pour out Your blessing upon this church, that You would open the floodgates upon this church. Ask that You would bless us more abundantly than we could ever ask or think. I pray that You would bless this church as we go hard after You.
- Visitor: Exhortation. Growing concern in heart about nature of things in the church worldwide. I saw storm coming, and when the storm comes you see all the birds flying together in great masses, they’re all panicking. I had a dream: there were these rough men, great big bearded men, great big mountain men, they were rough me, and they had these dogs, a great pack of dogs all around them. Found myself in this place surrounded by these big dogs, and all the dogs were blinded- they all had hoods on and couldn’t see. I was carried out of the place by two muscular blind dogs. Jesus said, “By this shall all men know that you are My disciples by your love, one for one another.” So often in the church we’ve looked to reach out and salve our consciousness by reaching out to the third world, to every other place where we can get some kind of reward for what we’ve given, so we can think we’ve done something great. But we forget about one another. This is my exhortation to us all: is that we not forget the church right at home. How will anyone know that you have need of something unless you ask? Ask, seek, knock Jesus says. Ask, seek, knock; don’t stop knocking. If you have a need, let one another know what your needs are, and let your love be known by reaching out to one another at home. There’s an old saying: charity begins at home – I really believe that God wants us to recognize, I think we’ve forgotten that in the church worldwide. Maybe in third world they haven’t forgotten that, but in the first world we’ve seemed to forgotten that largely, so we have rough men with blind dogs leading. I’m not saying that’s happening here, I’m not saying that at all. I’m saying when you see this happen, when the storm comes, and the chaff is blown away from the wheat and the wheat is left behind, that is not a time to be afraid, not if your fear is in the Lord, ‘cause the first sign of wisdom is the fear of God. I would council that we watch and pray, and as we see the systems of man failing, I’m not talking about the systems of the world, I’m talking about the systems of man in what is called church, when we see that fail, let us not be afraid, let us trust in the Lord. Watch and pray, and remember “by this shall all men know that you are My disciples that you love one another.”
- Norm Hess: I have been healed in right foot and neck in the past year, and have had several healings and seen healings this year. I have had miraculous healings several times in my life, but I’m still left with more questions than answers about healing. Why is it that some are healed and some are not? Just had a good friend who died a few weeks ago of pancreatic cancer, and who deserved healing more than her. But as I thought about this a lot this year, a lot of things have come to my mind. One is that healing, and really any miracle, in God’s eyes is really never only about the miracle. It is always about our hearts and where our hearts are, and Him revealing more of Himself to us. And so if you are struggling with sickness and you are not seeing that, I don’t want your faith to be bruised or broken, open yourself up. You should believe for healing, we should always believe and take hold of that. But we should also look at what else God might be wanting to do through that. Worn boot on broken left foot through many airports in the last three months, strangers come up to me and they feel like they can ask me any question about my health. So they’re asking me about my foot. So I’ve been able several time to tell people “but I might not have to have surgery because this other foot was healed miraculously last year.” There are many things that we do not see completely, that’s what faith is about. The day that my friend died, I was struck with the fact that the most tragic day of her life was also the day that all of her dreams came true. God is more concerned about where we are in our heart. He’s concerned about our bodies, but He wants us to know Him and He will go to all kinds of lengths to make sure we do. So if you have something that’s going on, whether it’s physical or emotional, that you are hating, give it to Him, trust Him with it and say ‘do with me what you will’. And He will work amazing things in your heart.
- Lynn Striezel: This is for everyone: the Lord wants to release hope this year to each of us. People are challenged with relational//financial/health things. First thing is focusing on the lunch. The story of the feeding of 5,000, the disciples looked at lack, we don’t have enough. That’s all they ever had was not enough. Jesus looked at one lunch, and He thanks the Father for this one little lunch, and He gets leftovers. When you thinking about different people, here at Metro, or leaders, or other churches here in town, when you’re thinking about praying for the sick or interceding, or whatever it is, what’s the best thing, even if it’s the tiniest little thing, what is the best thing in this situation? Focus on that and thank Abba Father for that, so that you get leftovers. Second: Family is really on God’s heart. God is breathing on deep covenant relationships. That’s families in the natural, that’s marriages, that’s relationships with children, that’s unsaved relatives, that’s singles, that’s the body of Christ having relationships with people who are different and not necessarily the same age or the same culture or the same anything. God’s breathing on deep, covenant relationships where we run the race together. The scriptures says one will put to 1,000 to flight and two will put 10,000 to flight, and we so need each other to run that. The third is about an inheritance of billion soul harvest, really believe that this billion soul harvest has begun. It’s going to be so much greater than Jesus movement, and anything else. Every individual that’s a believer and every body like Metro has an inheritance. The longing of my heart is that the inheritance in the lost that each of you and all of us have been destined by God and appointed...let’s lay hold of it this year. We receive our inheritance as we know Abba Father, because our inheritance comes from our Father, that’s where inheritance comes from, our Father. And as we get to know Him better, we won’t be trying to jockey for a better position, or trying to gain His love, we’ll live from “Oh, we’re just so loved! Yeah, this is part of my inheritance: we’re so loved. Yeah, this is part of our inheritance!” Pray: Abba Father, we say yes to our inheritance, and we declare the Kingdom of God, Heaven on earth over each person that’s family here at Metro. I ask that Spirit of God would You go right now and touch each person’s heart and release hope, hope in the area that each one needs it most. You are so incredibly good! Thank You for choosing an inheritance for us, thank You for choosing covenant relationships. Thank You God that as we focus on Your goodness in the little bit of lunch in any situation or in any person that You multiply it. Take Your glory.
- Rita Kendagor: women in 40’s and 50’s who are raising tweens or teens, something that’s hidden in the church is shame of being depressed, called to pray for and be supportive of. Addictions, we put it off to the side, so feel like we can’t talk about it; God has not turned His back on you no matter how many times you fall off the wagon or that you’re not feeling better. God does not give up. Keep hope alive, keep that part of hope and prayer going. When someone starts to feel better that doesn’t mean you stop praying. Pray: thank You for body of people, I lift up the women who are struggling with depression. You think of us as people who are full of worth. Shower us with Your joy and Your sense of recovery. I pray for Your sense of direction as a church as to how we can surround them and bless them and pray for them, how we can help them. Pray for people who are willing to reach out to help those that struggle with recovery issues. Thank You for the joy that will settle on this church in the next year
- Brad Roberts: pray for those who have family who have walked away from the Lord. Saw a young man (a friend of ours son) who is not walking with the Lord right now. The Lord told me how much He loves that young man and how much He wants him back. Began to see other young men, go after these young people with prayer. Pray: lift up this congregation, these families, these parents, lift up loved ones that are hurt, angry, confused. Call them back to yourself soon, Lord. I pray for the family members/parents, put a fight in them that refuses to give up refuses to let go, like woman hanging onto edges of Your garment, we’re going to hang on
- Don Mann: people were stepping out in God, the enemy was coming out against them, enemy was told no, you can’t come against My people
- Maxine Nelson: the night hour is often the hour where our worries are heaviest and darkest, when you wake up and you feel like you can be 6 feet under the floor, simple principle of bringing our “prayers and petitions to God and letting the peace of God which transcends all understandings guard our hearts and our minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4). The Lord is changing those heavy weights into hope. Instead of going down that familiar road of worry, turn it into a prayer of promise. I speak to women on my heart: the Lord wants to meet you there. Worry is often an invitation to intercession. You’ve been crying out for family, extended family, job situations. If timidity and fear is weighing heavily on you, it comes from the Lord as an invitation to pray. Pray: that You would bring to our minds the verses that will lift our souls, that the night hour would become a time of victory, that as they meet You in the night hour that it would be a time of great victory, that in the midst of our cold places You want to bring the warmth of You. Thank You for the great victories that You are going to wrought in the night hours.
- Randy Catlett: This morning while driving to church, heard God say, “Catlett, where are you going? Look around.” Saw people going to tailgate at Chiefs game, “Are you having a blast? If someone saw you right now, would they want to go with you?” We’re going to a great place each Sunday, we’re playing on a winning team, we’ve already won; exhort us in 2011 to have more anticipation when we come, to be more of a family, to not just be hearers only but to be doers
- Visitor: picture of the stairs, angels ascending and descending, “that’s here” [at Metro], doorway to heaven here in this place; Joshua 21:43-45 “not one word of all the good promises that the Lord had made to the promises of Israel had failed, all had come to pass”
- Jenee Siems: anything is possible, this church has always been a place where if I felt discouraged outside of church I could come here and remember that anything is possible, Isaiah 61:2-3 “The Spirit of the Sovereign Lord is upon me…to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor, and the day of vengeance of our God; to comfort all who mourn; to grant to those who mourn in Zion—to give them a beautiful headdress instead of ashes, the oil of gladness instead of mourning, the garment of praise instead of a faint spirit; that they may be called oaks of righteousness, the planting of the LORD, that he may be glorified.” Lord is declaring that anything is possible, new springs, become indignant, I don’t care about financial difficulties etc. I’m going to be indignant and say anything is possible
- Yutaka Kawase: From God – thank you for embracing the children, for embracing the work I’ve given you, thank you for loving the things I love, for choosing to learn stewardship and management, the Father is saying thank you to each of you for the hidden faithfulness, for the choices that are not seen, for caring for those individuals that I love, I love this, I love what you’ve done, I’m grateful to partner with you
- Tammy McDonald: Psalm 46 – God is our ever present strength….place where the Holy One dwells; continue to press into Him, pursue Him at all costs, learn to live a life that is pleasing to Him, we want to be a people that is different than the world
- From an Elder: I felt like God said He was changing or perhaps has already changed Metro from a "Come look at what God is doing here" type of church --- in other words the old days of conferences that gathered people to us -- into a "Let us partner with you and show you what God is doing in your body" type of church that will be used by God in ways that point to other bodies, and not just our own. It just was one of those 'flash' insights that you get and I felt like the offering for New Day, the turkeys for the United Believers Christian church, and other things are all part of how He wants to use us going forward.
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