September was a month of building projects as I designed my room and space. In choosing to live closer to my church, September was a month of increasing collisions and connections. As I built furniture, put hardware into walls, and formed new routines to carry with me into the new academic year of doctoral study, God worked with me to build relationally too. In passing at work, in the park, and out getting coffee, there were unexpected conversations, continuous expansion in meeting new people, and moments of deepening friendships.
As I built physically and relationally this month, it became clear that I am living the second stage of the “House Reformation…” word that I published last spring.
In crossing into September and into the new house, God has given me a deeper sense of where we are going. Through signs woven into the moving process, he’s clarified both what he’s doing locally, but also how it relates to larger trends in him releasing a new wineskin of the prophetic movement. At the same time as God is knitting me closer to my church, he’s also revealing the obstacles that keep Seattle’s heart from him, through conversations with nonChristian coworkers and roommates. It’s a time of paying attention to the desires of people’s hearts and asking God how he wants to meet them there. By the end of this process, I believe that God will have made me a bridge to help connect these two parallel cultures and other future contexts.
America the Pure: Holiness, Seattle, and Inner Healing Ministry
This month, it’s been a joy to be a prophet in Seattle. My local church, Mosaic Community Church, is corporately pressing into holiness. The leaders love our congregation and city so much that they want nothing but the best for them, and the Spirit of God is steering in increased ways because the people are making room for dependency. I see this church started to emerge as an Apostolic Center, and working with them feels like having lots of open space. I believe that God is going to use the Pacific Northwest and Seattle in particular to develop a level of purity in prophecy that will cause America to be renamed, “America the Pure.” In spite of our nation’s legacy of impurity abroad and at home, God is making his spirit available to a community who have been unwilling to compromise. In my portion of the process, that has meant being unwilling to partner with ministries who do not have the same values of purity and relational ministry, and holding the standard so that our children and our children’s children will inherit more than what they may have received in the first wineskin of the Prophetic movement. By creating resources that demonstrate that prophesy is about revealing Jesus rather than promoting people, I hope that these young ones will be set free to run with the Lord in abundance and the fullness of God’s life, in wisdom, purity of heart, genuine love, and passion. I believe that God will use our intergenerational church and our youth to make his abundant life available to the nations, starting here.
This month, I have been collecting interviews from adults about stories of encountering God, and in October, I will be walking with a focus group of teens through these stories, to explore their questions about the prophetic and define some characteristics of healthy encounters. I will use this research as both an applied section of my doctoral thesis, and to continue to develop resources that support these teens. As someone who started writing and developing resources to support teens in prophecy in Spring 2022, I am thrilled to *finally* get to tangibly outwork this portion of my calling.
Preparation and Partnership: Maturity and Open Space
In my private time this month, the Lord took me on an arch of revelation with themes of restoration, rest, and the beginnings of inheritance. God emphasized that in my relationships, I have been grouped with special people, and together we are invited to rest and receive before he takes us into an even more extravagant stage of the process.
As human beings, we often tend towards striving or procrastination. Fear causes some of us to act too quickly or in a state of anxiety, and others of us to avoid engagement altogether.
This month, I realized that God has given me more freedom than I realized in this season. I realized that told me the timings for this season as a range instead of as an exact amount because he’s giving me permission to determine the exact times. He is alerting me in advance to opportunities that may be coming, and preparing me to be able to rightly receive them.
God continues to reveal himself to me as a Nurturer, and a mother figure who knows how to get me to where I’m going. He is inviting me to relax into his right timings, both holding me back and simultaneously carrying me into place. Every time I get intimidated or worry that the resources, time, or people support I’ve received in this season won’t be enough, God just keeps consoling me, just keeps showing me more and more details as he invites my soul to be carried. In attending to the needs of my soul and ignoring paying undue attention to my anxious thoughts or feelings, he is allowing the path to be made straight organically, and showing me how to partner with him in the outworking of the process.
Earlier this month, I needed to know how much authority he’s delegated to me for Seattle as a city. Off of just 5 minutes of prayer for my workplace the day before, Heaven backed me with right-timed music, visitors, weather events, and God-conversations. While this episode happened, I couldn’t help but laugh because God wanted me to see how easy it will be to partner with him as he moves in our city, that there will be such joy! These signs and wonders had the effect of ministering to my coworker and simultaneously demonstrated that he has indeed given me the grace to prophesy and build in Seattle, breaking me out of fear.
In seeing the power of God on display through this experience, I’ve been in awe. It is obvious how little God needs me. In spite of that, it’s awesome that he still not just wants to include me, but partner with me to a relatively high level. It’s wild that he needs us so little and yet wants to give so much power and authority away. I’ve been walking with him for months as he teaches me the many ways he is my Provider, yet only recently have known him as the provider of supernatural power. How much power must this Almighty God have to give away so much and have nothing subtracted from him? I am in awe.
As I have followed my church in pressing into increasing holiness lately, I also notice that prophesy is bubbling up increasingly frequently. The glory weight of God often feels like a weight on my head and forehead, causing me to blink and momentarily stagger as I listen and obediently start to pray or prophesy. It feels like pipes that are being cleared out to bubble up with fresh living water with increasing ease.
Not a Word, but a Mantle: Prophetic Words that the Nations Can Wear
Since about October 2022, I have gathered and supported a cohort of 6-10 prophets who regularly meet together once a month to prophesy over the youth of the nations, called Youth and Young Prophets Network (YYPN). In September, we met to prophesy over the Philippines. This month, I connected with future missionaries in my local church who will be headed to the Philippines and start growing relationally with them. I have been receiving dreams about the Philippines for about 2 years and regularly think about this nation more than the others. I’m so looking forward to helping declare and build what is on God’s heart for this region!
In September, YYPN members practiced summarizing our revelation in 3 minutes or less and asking each other clarifying questions. The structure of our calls lasts 90 minutes, with the first third dedicated to team building and the remaining time devoted to two rounds of prophesying and discussion-based sharpening.
As we look to finish polishing prophetic words for France and Denmark, and start scribed words for Seattle and the Philippines, we will be turning our attention next month to China. As I juggle responsibilities for research, coursework, volunteering in my church’s youth ministry, working 34 hours a week, and doing my own processing, I have been immeasurably blessed by the support of my YYPN, who have taken turns volunteering to help scribe prophesies. At this point, I turn over the reigns each month to a different leader, coaching them in scribing, supporting them with the writing process to the point where they need to resubmit the word back for final polishing.
As YYPN prepares to send the words to our internal ministry partners and network, the Lord most often has me focus on the tone and timings. As a mothering leader who is protective over the nations and as a prophet who often gets multi-part words about timings and processes, this final stage is precious to me. I often feel like Hannah tailoring clothes for Samuel, careful to only give the part of the revelation that will be the right mantle to fit the ministers who serve in these regions, conscious that my team and I will need to prophesy periodically over them again when God says that the nation is ready for something new. As a mothering leader, I recognize that the words are actually mantles that invite the people into the embodiment of a particular kind of grace. It is essential to make sure that the mantle fits well: not so heavy that it will stop them from receiving Jesus’ light yoke, not too long to slow them down when they need to move, or too rough to be received by tender skin.
As I consider the needs of the nations, I have to apply the same mindset to the needs of my team. As we continue to grow into a relational network that can authentically share the grace that is on our regions, I am careful to not put more pressure on my people than they can handle. As they press in, God is causing them to become bridges and solutionaries for their regional contexts. God highlights how their nations’ sins and shortcomings may be affecting how they prophesy, and I keep encouraging them to overcome, affirming their strengths so that they can be a light to the nations. As we keep growing up together as a cohort, I’m so excited and proud of all that God is doing in them, for them, and through them.
In November, I hope to spend some time putting together a website for Youth and Young Prophets Network, and will be able to share more about these brilliant people then. At that time, I will also have an option to subscribe and have the words and declarations delivered to your inbox so that you can join us in prayer.
Worship
Here is a summary of ways I met with God this month.
Celebration and Joy
- Having time to walk by the lake most days, the crispness of fall air and changing leaves
- Getting IRB board permission for research with minors, ease
- In him backing me with right-timed music, visitors, weather events, and God-conversations at work to demonstrate that he has indeed given me the grace to prophesy and build in Seattle
- Realizing that God is giving me authority to determine times and seasons for what he’s building locally
- Resting in my new space/room, setting up a station for dates and research, my hammock to rest, my desk to write, a makeup station, outdoor weather gear station, bookshelf, and more
- Finding the right rhythms, not rules for this season
Questions
- What did Moses feel like as he rested in Jethro’s house? What did that period of restoration look like for him?
- What did Elijah do when he was with the Widow in Zarepath? What was the Lord forming in him or showing him?
Names of God
- God, my Sustainer
- In this season, there isn’t abundance, but there is enough. As God removes fear of lack, he is demonstrating how much he’s given me in people, time, and peace. He keeps saying that he will provide enough as I need it.
Worship Music
Verses
- Psalm 23 and walking by the Lake, being carried
- Luke 1:46-55 The Magnificat, my soul tangibly rejoicing in all that God is beginning to do. God who makes is so so easy.
Media
Books
- Compelled by Love by Heidi Baker
- Rereading this classic in order to develop more love for my roommates and Seattle as a city
- Revisiting Relational Youth Ministry: From a Strategy of Influence to a Theology of Incarnation by Andrew Root
- I haven’t managed to read as much of this book as I’d like to yet, but his chapter on the history of youth ministry on the United States is dynamite. I will be reading more of it for my thesis and another assignment.
Movies
- Grace of Monaco (2014)
- Watching this fictional movie about Grace Kelly’s decision to pivot in order to receive authority and role change. Reflecting on the transformation and changes God calls us all to make in order to receive more of God.
Prayer Requests
- For the wellbeing of my Youth and Young Prophets Network team, the teens at our church, our city, and the outworking of God’s goodness for the nations
- Continued depth and breadth in relational movement, both within my church and with Nonchristians in my city
- To have even less fear as I begin to flourish
- To have peace and fully grow into the authority God has assigned me for our region. Good conversations with God as I explore the options he’s making available.
- Rest and deep joy
Age of the Unexpected 