IHOP-International House Of Prayer

Lover of My Soul (Amado de mi alma)

"Lord of my life"
     by Cristilyn

I was a lost sheep,
Until you found me,
My heart was broken,
But you made me whole,
And now I'm yours.

Took the shame from my eyes,
Dressed me in glorious robes,
And this glow that surrounds me,
Is your very own Love,
And now I'm yours.

Lord of my life,
Yours is my heart,
There's no name above Your name,
Your love for me,
Can't be compared,
You're the lover of my soul,
I am your bride,
You are my groom,
I live for You.

As we walk hand in hand,
you remind me again,
That your love never ceases,
Til the end, You'll be there.

Copyright Cristilyn Expósito, 1998.

      So yeah, no one can spend much time at International House of Prayer, IHOP-Miami, and not realize soon enough that it's all about Love. Oh, how He loves us! The central theme of the IHOP-Miami studies is the Love relationship between God and man. This fuels us into prayer. Acknowledging His love for us and growing in ours for Him is a Love festival! Among my required readings and study materials, (the Core Values), is a study of the book Song of Songs. Wow!! I love this stuff. As you can see I didn't write much all this time 'cos my time has been wrapped up in this. Honestly, I find myself short of words so I'll just post the link and you can check it out yourself if you want. There are videos, I think, and study notes, all free!!

           Mike Bickle's teaching on "Song of Songs":
           http://mikebickle.org/resources/category/biblical-studies/song-of-songs/
           It's 24 Sessions total. I'm currently by 16, I think. 

      The Lord has been encountering me in very special ways. There's been some tearing and pulling but always in love. Welcome to the life of pruning, John 15! It's all good. I must be a fruitful one ; ) I'm learning that this is a season of growing roots for me, not so much about the foliage and flowers... the outworkings of stuff. (Wow, I should seriously consider writing another day...) 

     Anyway, so yeah, most of my weekdays consist of waking up around 7:30 AM (not oversleeping), be on my way to IHOP-Miami Prayer Room by 8:30AM. If I'm the first one there, set up the projector and computer to stream live-worship from IHOP-KC. I begin to worship and encounter Jesus and that goes on for 2 or 4 hours, it goes by fast... unless He's pruning and then I'm either avoiding being in the room altogether, or walking around, talking to other people or giving up and then crying unceasingly. If it's a "normal" day then by 12PM latest I'm either interceding or reading and studying which can lead to more worship or more crying ; ) By 2PM I have lunch with the girls, unless I'm fasting which is usually Mondays. Then I come back, read some more and before you know it it's 4PM and that's when I go home or do whatever else I planned, unless it's Monday and then we have a live intercession session (..session, 3x the charm) which ends at 8:00PM. Wednesdays, we leave at 6PM. So yeah, that's life for me in the IHOP-Miami Prayer Room. It's short to say but hard to live. The Lord is confronting me lately about my spiritual walk and being influenced by the western modern culture. That doesn't mean I'm embracing an amish lifestyle anytime soon, No Way! But I am allowing the Holy Spirit to take me by the hand and challenge all that can be challenged in me. It's only one life and I'm gonna live it for Him wholeheartedly. That's what this is all about.

      I love my conversations with the IHOP-Miami crew. They're always so insightful. Lunch times are goldmines. And then everything takes on a heavenly perspective. I love sharing with people that I come away with feeling encouraged or challenged to grow deeper in the ways of love.. I just love these people!! They are priceless to me!! The girls, especially, have walked with me through what I think could easily be categorized as the most difficult time in my life... just too many changes and challenges in a brief span of time. So I'm thankful to have godly counsel and powerful praying sisters on my side ; ) Love these girls!

     My music and singing ministry/career has been sitting on the bench. The Lord closes and opens doors and right now it's time to sit at His feet and He has made that clear in many ways. I even had a vision of Jesus holding His heart out to me and telling me, "This is what I want you to care for now, this! Work on this. This is your portion right now." And what do you say to that? Sure, Jesus, I'll just be over here doing this thing and I'll spend some time with you when I get back... Good luck. I can't do that. So I'm walking this thing out and seeing where it leads me. It's bound to be good!

     So I'm an intercessor! I've been embracing the call to a consecrated life, the fasted life. As we speak, I'm embarking on a 40 day fruit/veggie fast on behalf of America's moral decadence. It begins with us, the Church. So I'm praying real hard that we consider our ways and rise up and out of gray areas and press into living out our full inheritance in Jesus. Check out this verse: "For the scepter of wickedness shall not rest upon the land of the [uncompromisingly] righteous, lest the righteous (God's people) stretch forth their hands to iniquity and apostasy." Psalm 125:3. It is a war cry so I'm taking my place in the ranks.

"Pray & Act" 40 day Fast: http://www.prayandact.org/?page_id=4) 

Also, I've been studying on the Nazarite vow, "God wants long hairs of the heart"! Here's a few links on that:

         Rick Pino on Nazarite: http://vimeo.com/10037067

         Jesse Engle, a 13 year old Nazarite: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pjbtvGn625M

         Lou Engle's mp3s: http://www.ihop.org/Publisher/Search.aspx?searchString=nazarite

     Its been a wonderful and terrible journey, terrible because of its difficulty, yet wonderful because of its lasting reward. I'm certain I'll never be the same again. I feel I've grown deeper and matured in my faith more so the last couple of months than I have all my life. So that's a good thing. I'm excited for what God is doing and will do though I have no clue what that will look like 'cos what used to matter, doesn't and what use to be my aim, is no more ; )

    And with that, I encourage you to take on the Christian lifestyle with fervor. Not living to get away with as much crap as you can without getting in "trouble" but to really enjoy this walk we were created for, to have the fullness of God indwelling... I don't even know what that would look like!! Can't wait to find out ; )

    

"Some loss of Sequins..."

(En español mañana... porque se me borró todo...)


So I find this tag attached to a shirt I bought recently and I thought "mmmmh, has a message", so why not share it. Here it goes.   








Right? Isn't it peculiar? Like it should have had a Bible verse reference at the end of it. So this is how my little study goes:

"finished by hand" 

"You hem me in—behind and before; you have laid your hand upon me...For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb." Ps 139:5, 13

God is up to something beautiful in our lives and He takes it upon Himself to complete it.

"being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus. Phil. 1:6

"No two are alike"

Can you believe that's on there? There's no comparison, there's no imitation that needs to take place as we are all different on purpose! I love that! If God personalizes snowflakes which melt away in a day, how much more a being made in His image and likeness? Look at your fingerprints, for goodness sake! There is a unique expression of the heart and mind of God that is being manifested through you and I! No one else on the face of the planet will say even the same words the same way...ever!. And this is why we have soooo many races, colors, even fragrances - all different and wonderful! We even have a thousand different species for dogs, cats, birds, to go along with all the different tastes for pets. I like it. Makes me happy, especially when I think of a thousand different ice-cream flavors. I like cotton-candy flavor ice-cream, which goes great with gummy bears. I hardly ever find it but it's ok. I don't really like ice-cream that much anyway.... yeah it's getting late, side tracked...

"Some loss of sequins or glitter is to be expected"

Here it starts getting good. I think I almost cried at this point, "like, really? On my clothes too?" "Loss" shouldn't be in the same sentence with "glitter", definitely not "sequins"?! Such happy words! Yet, "Loss"... There's this one story of a potter and his clay:

"So I went down to the potter's house, and I saw him working at the wheel. But the pot he was shaping from the clay was marred in his hands; so the potter formed it into another pot, shaping it as seemed best to him." Jeremiah 18:3-4 

See, it was in His hand! Didn't He watch what He was doing? While He was making it it broke. It  broke but it was in His hand. And He reshaped it as it best seemed to Him. Lets face it, God has good taste, e.j. nature, waterfalls, birds.. strange taste too but that's ok. He's the ultimate Creative guy, has every right to be weird... side tracked agian, sorry. Anyway, He knows what He's doing. It'll work out at the end. More verses on loss, aka trials, aka pain, aka fire...

"In this you greatly rejoice, though now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief in all kinds of trials. These have come so that your faith—of greater worth than gold, which perishes even though refined by fire—may be proved genuine and may result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed." 1Pt 1:6-7

And the ever resented...

"Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance. Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything." James 1:2-4

Notice the trend? You know what goes great with trials? Joy! Yeah, I don't get it either but it makes sense in the Spirit realm I suppose, since everything's pretty much backwards over there compared to how we do things here on earth. I like imageries, if you haven't noticed. Helps when you see a picture, clears it up a bit...the very infamous "a picture says a thousand words!" So my imagery for Joy in the midst of trials is, picture this: Michelangelo chiseling away a piece of rock. He's seeing something that's not there yet... but he can see it inside himself. He knows exactly what He's aiming for, what He wants to see, so He chisels and chisels and hammers away. He keeps at it and it brings Him great Joy as He works because He knows what the end result will be, pleasing to the Eye and to the hearts of many. So that kind of Joy is really us tapping into His joy in the midst of loss/trial/pain... Oooh! Oooh! Jesus did it! See here,

"Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God." Hebrews 12:2

You know... we were that joy set before Him. Sweet.

 

Michelangelo's "Pieta"

(It's made out of marble. It took him less than two years to make. It's dimensions

 are 68.5 in × 76.8 in. It resides in St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, Italy).

God's got this plan of remaking us and reshaping us into the image and likeness of the only perfect one, the only one that pleases Him - Jesus. As it says, 

"And we, who with unveiled faces all reflect the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his likeness with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit." 2 Cor.3:18. 

          "To them God has chosen to make known among the Gentiles the glorious 
          riches of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory." Colossians 1:27

"For what was glorious has no glory now in comparison with the surpassing glory. And if what was fading away came with glory, how much greater is the glory of that which lasts!" 2 Cor. 3:10-11 

And the "how", my friends, is interesting. The goal is not to aim higher but lower, by humility and surrender.

"...in the wash process"

I like the "wash process". It sounds so soothing and almost enjoyable. 

"He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit," Titus 3:5 

"... you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God." 1 Cor. 6:11 

"they have washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb...Blessed are those who wash their robes, that they may have the right to the tree of life and may go through the gates into the city." Rev.7:15, 22:14.  

A lot of washing going on, so brace yourself and enjoy, en-joy, in Joy the process!

So I propose we make a bunch of these tags for ourselves and give them out to other people to wear around their necks too to be reminded  of the "process" and thus provide an explanation of why there's sequins all over the place from time to time. .........must resist smileys................awhh...............can't ; )

IHOP-Miami...so far

(En español debajo)

OK, so I decided I would communicate with you my spiritual/emotional journey in IHOP. So far, been like what? two weeks? Well...

Cristilyn in IHOP-Miami

(En español debajo)

I'm submerged into this! It has become my life! I'm dedicating myself to a lifestyle of worship and intercessory prayer. In IHOP-Miami I have found that place, that ministry, where I can take refuge while growing, maturing and fulfilling that for which I was born to do - to know God, to worship and abide in Him (Jn.17:3, 4:22-25, 15:5-8).

Devotion (Devoción)

Devoción...

Dedicación. Entrega.
Adoración, Submision,
Consagración sin reservación ni separación.

Invitaciones y Conciertos

Gracias a nuestras iglesias hermanas por sus invitaciones recién. Me a sido de tanta bendición compartir con ustedes y bendecir sus vidas igualmente, Dios les continúe prosperando y engrandeciendo su gloria en sus vidas!

"Alégrense" Songs' lyrics (Letras de las canciones)

By track (por el track)

1. CANTAD:

Cantad al Altísimo,
Cantad al que Vive.