The Rest of the Story - Part I

This picture was taken on the way home from Wasilla in April '05. This is the Nenana River looking south just north of Cantwell if memory serves.

In early 2005, my wife and I attended a conference in Wasilla, Alaska with Jason Upton, Randy Clark and Shawn Bolz, hosted by Northwind Ministries. I was attending the conference not to draw closer to God, but to get a break from work and my kids. It had been a long time since my wife and I had any type of date and out 12 year anniversary was only a couple weeks away. We figured this would be a great pre-celebration.

As it turned out, the conference was awesome. Jason Upton and his band were amazing, and the messages by the speakers were profound. Looking back, there were two key parts of the weekend. First, my wife and I talked more about God than perhaps we ever had, and second, I was reminded and touched again by something that was said over me many years ago, "When you bow, you'll see wow."

Those words came to mind again during one of the sessions of the conference. That phrase had been given to me many years ago and kept rolling through my mind over the weeks, months and years as I put God in my back pocket as I like to call it.

As I was standing there watching and listening to the conference this past April those words kept coming to mind. Finally, I got on my knees, bowed and prayed. When I got up, I felt like I had been hooked up to an electrical circuit. God was there, no doubt.

Two weeks later, our home church, Door of Hope, held the "Worship, Prophetic, and Intersession" conference with 7 Thunders from the International House of Prayer. This was the first time that I had ever heard of "IHOP" as it is affectionately reffered to. Kirk Bennet was the leader of the group and they also brought up Tim Reimherr of Merchant Band. Tim went to IHOP from our church. My mom used to be his teacher at our local Christian school and I even taught him P.E. back in the day. It was incredible to see what God was doing in Tim's life.

This conference was also incredible. The passion and love for God these people showed was exhilarating. Rachel and I were deeply touched by what was being said particularly when it comes to abortion. The group Bound4Life was a part of there message. The statisics of abortion are shocking. We were blown away with some people that go to our church had to say on this issue. This particular movement/group would begin to point us in a direction later in the summer of '05.

I had been working for a year as the 'Director of Finance' at a local fast food chain. I was working long hours and often wondered where my job was headed. I thoroughly enjoyed the job, the owner, and all of the people that I worked with, but was it the will of God? How do we know what is His will anyhow? The good part of this job is that the Admin team were all Christians, and we were all experiencing fresh encounters with God via different directions.

In May of '05 something unsettling occurred. I had a dream. Twice. I dream a lot, but rarely do I have a repetative dream, especially only days apart. The dream was that I was waling in the door of Love INC for their morning devotions everyone was happy to see me, shaking my hand and asking me to stay awhile. I was stunned by having a dream twice in a week. I wanted to talk to my pastor.....