Tonight I will start my first day of school, “real” school I suppose. When I am finished some years from now I will have a degree of some sort. Most likely in Theology or Literature or both. Over the last few years I have had a number of friends go to college, many of them are returning to finish degrees. I am starting from the ground up. Katrina and I are both starting today. She is sitting in her first class, math I believe, at this moment. As we told people we were going to college everyone was excited for us. Unfortunately the excitement was not the loudest word. The sharpest words sounded something like, “It’s about time!”
As I approach my thirties I have more and more friends from IHOP going to school and starting careers. The mantra of the exodus is one of contempt and disappointment. “Why did I wait so long?” “Why did I waste so many years of my life here?” Mind you, most of my friends are younger than I and arrived at IHOP later than I did.
I moved to Kansas City to be a part of the International House of Prayer when I was 21. It was an exciting time for me and for the ministry. There had been a sudden surge in numbers and it seemed God was doing something special. We were called, as 18 to 25 year olds, to “waste your lives on Jesus.” The messages were inspiring, we were stirred and pledged our twenties to serve Jesus in the place of prayer and worship. We fasted, I tried fasting, we sang, we prayed, we evangelized. Anything we could do for the glory of God, that the Lamb might receive the reward of his suffering, we did. Eight years went by, more for a handful, less for most, and we realized something. We had wasted our lives. We at least wasted our twenties.
Who knew there would be so much regret at the end of that time?
Someone brought to Katrina’s and my attention that Kansas City has a high percentage of successful thirty-somethings. They started working hard in their early twenties and now have high paying careers and businesses. While they were busy starting businesses and families we were sitting in an ugly room doing nothing.
As I thought about this something dawned on me. They told us from the very beginning we were wasting our lives. None of this was hidden from us. They told us we were laying aside our twenties and careers and comforts to pursue something bigger and eternal while the world would continue to build its fame and fortunes and comforts. We were called explicitly to a life of simplicity. Why should we be offended when we find ourselves at thirty exactly where our leaders said we would be? It’s been said that we were taken advantage of, that we were to impressionable in our post-graduate stage to know what we were getting into. There may be a measure of truth to that. Maybe if I had known I would be trying to go back to school and start a career from the very bottom at age twenty-nine I would have chosen to start college then.
Yet, there is so much of who I am now that I would not be if I had not “wasted” my years at IHOP. There is so much I have learned about God and about myself and about the world while at IHOP that I love and would not change. I learned the value of prayer, the preeminence of the Scripture, I was shown that God is truly is love and that he wants to show me that, to let me feel it. Among the most important things I gained, as if these things can be quantified, was the high value for the Sermon on the Mount. While so many people my age are running from the commands of God, the words of Jesus in the Sermon remind me again and again that this is the only sure way of building a sturdy life. He reminds me when I feel lazy that the way of destruction is broad and easy and many travel there.
I have spent countless hours in prayer and worship. My time in the presence of the Lord has formed me like nothing else. I know, because I know myself, that if I were not involved in this ministry I would not have spent anywhere near this much time with God, either in a corporate or private setting. How can I regret spending so much time, sometimes hours a day, worshiping Jesus and praying for the world? The only way this can be a waste is if I believe Jesus doesn’t exist or doesn’t answer prayer. (I can’t help but wonder if that is the real reason for the offense in people’s hearts and not the fact that they are approaching thirty and they have no career.)
Don’t mistake this for a life free of disappointment. My God has there been disappointment. Things haven’t gone according to plan. I thought things would happen, great things and small things, that have not happened. In my first year I was expecting a great revival to sweep Kansas City. I was expecting some sort of persecution to happen in the United States. Neither of these happened. Then again in 2009 it looked like something huge was going to happen. Thing is, something did happen, but we were so busy looking into the future we couldn’t appreciate what God was doing then. That is not God’s fault or IHOP’s fault. It’s not as if the leadership was not disappointed that things didn’t escalate from there either. We helpless, hapless twenty year olds are not alone in this.
Welcome to life.
There was a year of my life, 2007-2008, where I was pretty sure Jesus was not real. It was the most depressing time of my life. Nothing made sense. I didn’t make sense. But it was the perseverance I was taught at IHOP that lead me through the time of wilderness, a term used so often here, that kept me pushing through to the other side. When I came out I was loving Jesus more, leaning on my Beloved, as it is said, and not offended at his leadership. Whereas I have seen far too many leave the faith because of disappointment.
There are so many worse ways to waste your life.
All in all, I am grateful for my time at IHOP. It’s certainly not over, just different. I have no regrets spending my twenties here. There is nothing in me that wishes I could go back and try another path. I feel so much more prepared for school now than I did at eighteen. I am certain that I would be a different person if I did not waste my life here, and not for the better. Of course this life isn’t for everyone. Jesus has different places for people to spend their twenties and sometimes that is in school so they can have careers when they’re thirty. But that wasn’t the path he had for me. I would encourage you, if you are one of those who wasted their twenties here, to think about this differently, especially if you feel disappointed in your decision. I moved here because I heard the voice of the Lord, whatever that means. It was a nudge, a desire, a leading.
I am glad I followed that leading.
Echoes of Silence 