REVIVAL update!
God told me He would bless Passion Church with fruit. With revival rain. I think I’m seeing it. Caution: Pastoral advisory! Holy Spirit work/God’s voice/signs and wonders below!
Here’s just a list of things I’ve seen since school started:
1. At 30-hour 05, Mike Han started speaking in tongues out of nowhere during a worship set for the first time. During that worship time, the tangible presence of God was in that room! I’ve only felt God that tangibly once or twice in my life, and as Jaeson was closing in prayer, my whole arm felt like needles! When Jess and Tiff (Conrad’s tiff) came in during the middle of worship, they said they could feel God’s presence (and they’re not charasmatic ppl - they just felt something noticeably different). Praise God!
2. Jessica D got a prophetic word from Grace at 30-hour! Right on!
3. Banning prophesied over me at 30-hour and said he saw a mushroom pizza God was making that represented my life. I mentioned that the next night we would be having a pizza night for Passion Church. The next night, I ordered 2 pizzas, and for fun i ordered one as mushroom pizza and the other as Hawaiian (cuz jumpeii wanted a chinese pizza and hawaiian is the closest thing to an ethnic pizza). We only had two new ppl come that night cuz we didnt really flier, and they came because on our flier it said there’d be free pizza and they hungry. Jane and Tracy. One’s fav pizza is mushroom, and the other’s is hawaiian. I don’t know where they’ll end up, but Jane has been kickin it with us a lot and Tracy has been hardcore at the Drake prayer meetings.
4. On Fri 9/30, Dave and I were waiting on the Lord for fun and we saw a bunch of things, but one thing Dave felt strongly about was the word “red.” We thought nothing of it and pushed it off. I had been praying about partnering with a church called Kairos LA and we went to visit that same Sunday. God blessed us with a crazy good spot on the side of the street in HOLLYWOOD (parkin dont come easy there) and when I stepped outside the car I saw in front of me a bum dressed head to toe in red clothing. He had red dreadlocks. His bike was red. Right next to him, directly in front of the church was parked an all red car. I looked across the street and all the overhangs to the shops were red, and so was the entire corner store. The steps up to the church were red brick and on the steps were sitting an African couple - the guy was wearing an all-red checkered shirt and the woman was wearing an ALL-RED dress from head to TOE (the long old school dresses). It was a weird weird scene - everything was RED! And then I remembered Dave’s seeing “red.”
We went into the church, and if the red wasn’t enough confirmation that God wanted us to partner with them, the Kairos service is cancelled for the day BUT their partner church who shares the building invites us in. The first person I meet steppin into the service of Hope Intl is their head pastor, Ed Carey. Ed takes us to see the Kairos meeting room (which is CRAZY nice) and then asks me what ministry we’re with. We say we’re plantin simple student-led churches on campus and he goes berserk, sayin, “I’m a baptist pastor but i’m a house church planter at heart! anytime you need resources i’m your man! you can even hold retreats in our facilities!” i’m like…sweet… we go into the service again and the first person i meet is bob. we say hello, worship gets started. After service, Pastor Ed tells me that Bob just so happens to be Bob Logan, one of the premier authors of church planting in America today. The other guy I met Richard (?) said he was also crazy bout church planting and was heavily involved in a movement that group from 4 house churches to 32 in the 70s in LA (over 1000 ppl) and that gave birth to present-day Mosaic (Erwin McManus). It’s not everyday that you walk into a small 50-large baptist church and get offered resources and backing and meet 3 hardcore church planters, one of which is the premier author on the subject in the nation! I asked “God please show me if Kairos is a kairos thing! Should we connect?” God answers prayers baby.
btw, got to eat lunch with a kairos LA staffer named Josh (nice name man) last Friday and found out they’re not a cult, they’re sound biblically (at least just as sound as most evangelical churches i’ve been to), and they’re kinda crusades/IV-ish, southern baptist in theology. and he said that the red bum outside isn’t always dressed in red! only that day! i saw him the next sunday dressed in mostly black. man…what a kairos moment the red day was!
5. Caleb’s finger was messed up from playin too much guitar during 30-hour and we prayed for it and it got healed instantaneously! Then again ppl prayed for my back and it didn’t get healed…But days before Caleb and Dave prayed for my ankle and it got all better by 30-hour.
6. I was prayin for my friend Andrew’s badly sprained ankle Friday of zero week and afterwards Eric said “don’t expect anything. it never works.” God showed him. HAHAHA, God gave Eric crazy rashes al over his body 2 days later, this to a guy who’s never had any allergies and never had rashes, and it was all over his body. He was scared (like usual) and wanted to go to the ER, but Albert and Weili prayed for him, and he woke up Tuesday morning without a trace. btw, andrew told me the next day his ankle was surprisingly a lot better. oh yeah, and this morning eric was tellin me how his new bruincard doesn’t work on the sproul doors for some reason. I asked for it and laid hands on the magnetic strip and prayed for it (haha yea electronic healing baby) and handed it back. Eric gave me a puzzled look and we split ways at Sproul turnaround. i get a call in my dorm room like 5 mintues later from eric: “wtf it worked!”
7. Last Thursday night we were meetin up in Rieber study lounge for Passion Church. 10 people. Brought in $143 in tithe. That’s more cash in tithe than many churches ten times our size! And i didn’t even put any in (what…i didn’t have any cash on me!). that’s ridiculous! i seriously don’t understand how these poor college students are putting so much money into offering! half our money goes to blood water by the way. so if you wanna donate to blood water we can send a check together. but that’s not the crazy thing. While we were waiting on the Lord in church, dave got the number “143″ but decided not to share it because it sounded dumb and he wasn’t sure if it was from God. I went upstairs afterward to count the money and i was blown away by $143! i was expecting like $30. I went downstairs and told Dave immediately and he was like “…wth….i got that number while we were waiting..see, i even wrote it down on this paper.” i’m like wtf (freak, not f-ck u hater haha). thanks God!
8. Okay so this is crazy. Me and Caleb have probably open-air preached on campus 15 times this year. We’ve been out 5 times this quarter already, and nothin happens. no crowd, no salvations (at least for us to see). I thank God that our being out there encourages other believers and also perhaps sows seeds in ppl’s hearts as they walk away, or it opens up conversations for christians walkin with non-christians. it also gets us into pointless debates haha. So the other day I felt strongly that Isaiah 55:6,7 was a God-strategy for our open-air. i flip to it and lo and behold - “Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the evil man his thoughts. Let him turn to the Lord, and he will have mercy on him, and to our God, for he will freely pardon.” Yeah - it’s not a performance guys! Come out to bruinwalk, seek God’s face, and watch Him release mercy and pardon.
so we tried it today. we worshipped outdoor, looked like fools, and prayed like fools while all of postmodern ucla walked by and smirked and laughed at us. omg it was harder for me to worship in public than it usually is to preach - not a good sign for my pride. anyway, we worshipped for 2 hours, even to the point where i’m thinkin, “ok guys…maybe we should actually DO something now…like PREACH!” but we waited till we felt really released to, and Jaeson stood up and started goin. OH MAN. I have not seen this happen in my life. Jaeson’s voice is loud in general, but we did pray that God supernaturally amplify his voice and his voice was seriously booming. from bruniwalk, 2 tours stopped outside KERKOFF and the 50 or so ppl just stood there listening to Jaeson preach! ppl later told us you could hear him from beyond kerkoff, like near ackerman i think, and it was perfectly clear even from kerkoff. Man Bruinwalk got deathly silent like i’ve never seen in the middle of the day. People stopped everywhere and we got around 30 ppl closeup to stop, as well as Lambdas on the steps to listen. Totally there could’ve been up to 150 ppl all around. Jaeson shared his testimony, said God loves you, and asked who wanted Jesus. a few shyly put their hands up (like 2 or 3) then as Jaeson led us in “repeat after me” salvation prayer, we could hear and see at LEAST 5-10 ppl in our vicinity prayin it with Jaeson. There were probably more from different directions. Could’ve been 15-20 ppl! But they all left and didn’t approach us for discipleship and to get plugged into church!!!! God bless their souls and grow them!
then Jaeson and I started talkin with individual ppl (mostly jaeson though haha). first guy neil said he always envied how ppl like us could have a passion for Jesus. Just didn’t work for him. We’ll be meetin’ up with him over dinner soon. Second guy Robert is an old black guy that came and cussed us out and started goin off on how Christians have killed more ppl in history than any other ppl group, how much he hates Christians and God. I’ve talked to robert before and i KNOW - this guy is ANGRY. He is ANGRYYY, he believes in a God wholeheartedly, but he gave his life to Satan instead. Jaeson simply apologized to Robert on behalf of Christian hypocrisy, did a weird feet-blessing thing, and Robert stood there speechless like I’ve never seen him. u wanna talk about hard hearts melting - u should’ve seen this. it took my breath away. he said, “thanks for takin my hostility, cuz it’s all i’ve had for so long.” he said he wasn’t makin any promises, but he wanted to come to Passion Church now. booyah God! Finally, Jaeson talked with a lambda. turns out he’s a PK who ran from God and wants to know now if God’s forreal. Jaeson and I will be doing bible study soon with the president of the Lambdas.
uhhh recap: so you’re sayin that a bunch of crazy asian kids sat in the middle of Bruinwalk and sang cheesy church songs like “i love you, lord” for 2 hours and looked like retards and God’s power broke through and saved perhaps 10-15 people and now these crazy asian kids are doin bible study with the president of the lambdas and 2 others? yes.
Is God good? Say it with me now folks, YES HE IS! To Him be the glory! Not to us! YAYUHHHH man i’m so crazy right now, stoked! when i was prayin this morning i felt like TODAY IS THE DAY! then again i feel like that everyday haha. I’ve tried not to hype these God-things up with words, so take it for what it’s worth. Don’t like the charasmatic stuff? ehh. it’s God stuff. not charasmatic stuff. be happy! God is with us! He’s showin’ us just a glimpse of revival baby. He’s showin’ us just a glimpse, a tease of what He can do. Why not pray big prayers? Our God is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine (Eph 3:20), and He wants to do it (1 Tim. 2:4) so let’s pray and ASK him to do it! Save UCLA Lord! If there’s one mistake I’ve made my whole life, it’s prayin’ too small. If i had to make a mistake for the rest of my life it’d be to pray BIG. night folks.
PS. Any more God-stories? Comment it!
