I was radically saved during the Jesus Movement in 1970. From the very beginning of my conversion there was always a great grace on me to spend time with God in prayer. I believe this was the result of the encounter of love I had when my heart was overcome by the healing, cleansing, grace that was revealed to me in Christ. After so many years in darkness and sin, I was awakened to the purity and sweetness of life in God’s presence, and I simply couldn’t get enough.
Shortly after my conversion I was called into the ministry and time in prayer and intercession just seemed to me to be a non-negotiable part of that package. In Acts 6, the Apostle Peter told the elders to separate deacons out to organize the serving of food, but for his part, he said he had to give himself to the word and prayer. This became my model. Whatever my role was, Youth Pastor, Associate Pastor, Senior Pastor, or labor in the secular market place, communion and intercession were always key characteristics in how and where I served.
I never imagined that Intercession would become one of my main life callings. For one thing, there were no models for it. The main ministry models I saw around me were limited to that of Pastor, Worship Leader, or Evangelist, and I spent most of my ministry in some type of Pastoral role. Though I always made a place for intimacy and intercession, I had no grid for how they could become one of the prime aspects and expressions of my ministry calling.
In 1999, a house church I had planted decided to merge with a local church that was a part of a network of ‘River Churches’, (Churches connected with the outpourings of Toronto, Canada, and Brownsville, Florida). A year or so later, we had a guest speaker, (whose name escapes me), whose primary ministry involved travelling to different places in the earth and developing prayer strategies for those places. Though he was a teacher, his primary calling was prayer in and for the nations. During the service he called me out and prophesied over me, essentially saying that God was inviting me into the prayer ministry, (my understanding was a call to a ministry similar to his). This word hit me very hard, to the extent that I went down under the power of the Holy Spirit, though no one laid hands on me. Yet even as I was going down, I questioned the nature of this ministry and how it could be. The next day, in the quiet of my office, I decided to listen once again to this recorded word. I thought that in a quieter setting I could be more objective in analyzing this word. As I turned on the recorder and listened to the word, I experienced the same power of the Holy Spirit, and again found myself on the floor in His presence. All I could do was say “Yes Lord, I don’t know what it looks like or how it will come about, but I say Yes!”.
In 2001 my oldest daughter moved to Kansas City, MO, to join the International House of Prayer. This led to several visits out to spend time with her, and I was intrigued by what I saw at IHOP. In 2004 my family moved to Kansas City to join the IHOP. I was finally in a place where there was a community and a model of intercession and worship that made sense to me. I thought this was the fulfillment of this calling to intercede for nations. Though I wasn’t travelling to nations to pray, I was praying for cities and nations. Many times God would prophetically speak to me about certain nations and cities in those nations, often through dreams, sometimes by the Spirit while I was praying, and sometime through the prophetic words of others. These would be added to my intercession list. In the course of my time there I also received invitations to different nations, (Zimbabwe, South Korea, Poland, Ukraine), and I became more connected to these nations in intercession.
Fast Forward to 2012 –
In 2012 I was doing a conference for a Korean Church in Pasadena, Ca. As the plane was approaching LAX, I had a very strong word from the Lord that He was about to do something new in Ca. He later gave me a vision of an increase in the prayer movement in CA, with the result of a shaking in the church and the release of something similar to the Jesus Movement of the 60’s but with some different twists and emphasis. I sensed this so strongly throughout the weekend that I told the Lord I would move back to CA if He wanted me to. In 2014 we moved to Anaheim to help a church build a house of prayer. A year and half later we joined my daughter and son-in-law a few hours up the CA coast in Santa Maria and began working with another couple to build a HOP in Shell Beach, a work we are still engaged in. I was in Poland in October 2015 and had an incredible time of ministry working with and encouraging several different houses of prayer. On the flight home, as I was reflecting on the amazing Divine appointments and prayer engagements I had, the Lord began to remind me again of this prophetic call to pray over the nations in the nations. IHOP was a portion of the fulfillment of that call, but there was yet to be a literal fulfillment of this call. In a matter of moments I received what I like to call a ‘flash of revelation’. When this happens to me it usually comes as a ‘moment of clarity’ that contains revelation on different levels. The Lord reminded me again of the prophetic word regarding praying in the nations and also reminded me of a dream I had several years ago in which I was boarding a jet plane with a team with the main purpose of going into cities and nations to pray. He also reminded me of several dreams in which people were joining me to pray and in which financial provision was released in connection to carrying out prayer assignments. The end result was a simple framework through which to establish the International Association of Intercessors, an organization that would join intercessors on the ground in different cities and nations to ‘hear’ what God was saying and to develop prayer strategies. The goal would also be to connect these intercessors as partners with intercessors in other nations and cites. God is raising up an International concert of worship and intercession of which IAI will be a small part. It begins with local communities becoming global communities, thus the by-line ‘From the local community to the global community’.