I believe the Lord is calling me to rally the worshippers and prayer leaders who will help serve and facilitate consistent prayer and worship in the Fort Smith River Valley, and that the first three to six months of 2008 are critical;  He has promised to “make a way” for those who will make specific time commitments… are you heeding the call?

My biggest concern in this season is NOT the facility, it’s the facilitators.  There are plenty of gatherings and opportunities for worshippers and pray-ers to serve, but it’s time for a step-up in the quality and diversity of the musicians, singers, and prayer leaders.  We may never know WHY the Lord wired we humans to respond the way that we do to musical worship, and why it makes prayer and devotional focus so much easier at times, but He did it, He likes it, He wants it, and He is eager to honor the sacrifices you will make in committing to serving in this capacity.

So, for you musicians and singers, and you pray-ers who feel called to help lead others in prayer from a place of leadership during a gathering (you know who you are), it’s time.  Please contact me so we can work out your monthly/weekly commitments.

For you devout pray-ers and lovers of God who aren’t musically or microphonally (yes, I made that up) inclined, we need your support.  Please pray for the Lord to release these watchmen, and for Him to make a way for them: schedule-wise, money-wise, and desire-wise to be able to commit to this calling on their lives.

On a somewhat related note, the Lord has asked Robin and I to serve in a more full-time capacity at Heritage Church while the pastor is deployed to Iraq with his National Guard unit.  I came on as the interim Worship Arts Coordinator, as they searched for a full-time Worship Arts Pastor (in a very divinely orchestrated way, I might add), but we immediately felt the Lord stepping it up from “very short term interim” to “put some other things on pause and help provide stability here while Pastor Wes is gone - interim”.  The great thing is they know my heart and calling to the region, and give me full freedom in pursuing those things (time and energy wise).

With this increase in time commitment comes an increase in pay.  So, in remaining consistent with our open-book financial policy, I wanted you guys to know that we will be receiving full-time pay from Heritage for our service there.  My initial flesh reaction was to contact our supporters and encourage them to start sending their money somewhere else, but, with prayer and thought, I feel the Lord is asking us to press towards the goal of having our budget fully funded with supporters, even though we will be receiving a full-time paycheck from Heritage.  “Blasphemy!” you say?  We believe this window of opportunity to get fully-funded is the Lord’s grace on us, and we believe we have divine strategy for how to use any moneys in excessive of the standard of living the Lord had us establish.  Any support received will prayerfully be applied to either (a) clearing our last remaining debts, or (b) given to other missionaries.  I believe some of those “other missionaries” will be the worshippers the Lord is having us rally.  We need to be in a place where we can help them make the transitions into this more consistent place of service.

We appreciate your continued prayer and support as we join together to accept the prophetic invitations of the Lord to establish a zone of glory, an epicenter of revival, a valley of regue, and a fruitful vally in the River Valley.

Last November I was asked by the company which employed me as a Systems Analyst/Developer (computer programmer) to go and work in a tire factory for an indefinite period of time.  Robin and I had just gotten serious about getting completely out of debt and were praying and discussing strategies and business ideas to see how we would be able to do that as quickly and efficiently as possible - and this opportunity was, well, opportune.

I moved about 6 hours north of my bride and beautiful children for about 7 weeks - my first extended time away from them - ever.  Until that trip, I had only experienced the emotion of “missing someone” one other time in my life, and couldn’t honestly say that I knew what it even WAS to “miss someone”.  Well, working 12 hour days and being stuck in a hotel was enough to allow me to come to first-hand knowledge of what “missing” was.

During that time, I was able to spend a lot of time in prayer and private worship (though it was very hard not to just “veg” to the TV every night, alone).  The Lord gave me a clear vision of what He wanted me to be doing with my life.  No time-frame, but a very strong impression with some very clear tasks and purposes.  When I told Robin about it, she responded with a resounding, “Yes - that is the Lord.”  The “title” the Lord summed it up with was “itinerate worshiper” - but not necessarily in a nation-wide sense, but in the sense of serving the Body of Christ in a particular region.

Within weeks of being back home in Arkansas, the Lord created opportunities for me to do exactly what He showed me as examples of what I would be doing in this new role as a “worship facilitator & equipper”.  Robin and I had discussed this with NO ONE at the time, and the exact examples were coming to pass.

 The Almighty was up to something… [Read "Burn the Bridges, part 2"]

Much to my bride’s surprise, I agreed to go to a conference in Kansas City in early March 2007…

We have a lot of very dear friends in Kansas City serving at the International House of Prayer (IHOP) as intercessory missionaries - some since before the actual IHOP prayer room was even going.  And, the Lord had drawn us into relationship with some of the leadership from (then) Metro Christian Fellowship through their Master’s Commission internship and a beloved brother in the Christ, Zach Drinkwitz.  However, when IHOP first began to explode, I was really turned-off by the folks who were always “running off to Kansas City for their next fix.”  It was like, man, come on guys, the Lord is in Alma, Arkansas, too - let’s press in.  But, honestly, there wasn’t much pressing - and honestly, although I didn’t judge IHOP itself, I allowed reluctance to turn into something way too close to rejection.

So, there I am, standing in the back of the sanctuary (at the Forerunner School of Ministry - FSM) in Kansas City during a worship/ministry time after the Word was given by Mike Bickle.  Honestly, I couldn’t even tell you what he had taught about.  I’m worshiping, singing new song to the Lord - both scripture and my own thoughts, prayers, and praises, when a very third-person thought breaks in and says, “Burn the Bridges.”  Immediately I knew that the Lord was speaking of my vocational investments - four years of college and almost two years as a programmer, coupled with the birth of three children in three years equals six years of deep, painful challenge… “Burn the Bridges, Aaron.”

So I began to sing a new song about burning the bridges - and no sooner had I sang it that it was echoed from the platform by the singers on the worship team.  We’re talking like 1000 people and probably 60 yards away.  “Okay, Lord - you have my attention.”  Then it started to sink in - He really wanted me to burn the bridges; He was asking me to just drop it all.  I began to cry, and my thoughts and my heart turned into a sand-covered, grumbling child of Israel and I cried, “Lord, You didn’t bring me out this far to take me back again….. did you?  Why, Lord!?!  Why?!”

Again, I began to sing my sobs and my thoughts to the Lord.  Again, those sentiments were echo’d from the stage by the prophetic singers.  I turned to Robin, and gently put my hand on her cheek and turned her head towards me and asked, “Will you be poor with me?”

“I’ll be poor, as long as you’re really WITH me,” she replied, which even drove the jagged spike of reality of what I had lived like for the last 6 years - the time I had invested, the long nights, the neglect of family, the place of prosperity we had come in to, and now the Lord was asking me to go back to that place of uncertian finances… well, poverty was the word in my thoughts.

 ”Lord, why would you take me from poverty as a full-time minister, to poverty as a self-employed entrepeneur student, to prosperity as a programmer who is still ‘ministering’ and serving as you allow, and now back to poverty?!  Why, Lord!?”

“I’m not taking you from a place of poverty, to prosperity, to poverty.  I’m taking you from a place of ‘not really trusting me’, to another place of ‘not really trusting me’, to a place where you are going to have to trust me fully.”

Robin and I prayed and talked A LOT that weekend, and on the way home, we made plans for me to quit my job as a programmer, start finding my way out of the business partnership I was in with our computer store, and just to trust the Lord and see what opportunities He would provide for ministry and finance.

Here we are.

When I was about 8 years old I had a dream.  I can still remember the dream - at least what it looked like.  It was just a progression of solid colors: red, blue, black, green, white, repeat - with instrumental (or at least non-lyrical) music playing the entire time.  When I awoke the next morning, I can remember feeling like the dream was significant enough that I needed to tell my mom about it.

I told her, and she grabbed paper and a pencil and made some notes, and affirmed that she, too, felt like it was very significant.  The next Sunday we took her notes to my “Super Church” pastor (Ruby Short) and our senior pastor (Ronnie Moore) and shared.  A time of prayer ensued and a message in tongues came forth (from Bro. Moore, I believe) and then the interpretation came through Sister Short.

 The simple gist of it, as best as my 24-years-ago mind can remember was this: “I (the Lord) am going to use Aaron (me) through music to change the nation.”

 So, here I am, about one-hundred “He’s Still Working On Me” sunday-morning-specials-prior-to-age-twelve later and, wow, twelve years of worshiping the Lord with my guitar and voice (in public and in private).

 It probably doesn’t get much more “Beginnings” than that, for me.  Well, unless you count me walking around at age two with my Bugs Bunny Carrot microphone with built-in amplifier singing “Uhl fly ‘way - Oh! Glory!”.

Robin and I felt like the Lord was asking us to go to an internship in Kansas City at the International House of Prayer (IHOP), but we weren’t positive (read this post about “Hearing God”).  We were positive He’d asked us to do the unthinkable and humiliating thing of “Burning the Bridges” of our full-time, secular, vocational support, but we didn’t know if moving to Kansas City for some training was a definite part of His plan for our family or not.

We had a choice: do the internship in August, do the internship in May, or don’t do it at all.  We had told people that we were trying to decide whether to go or not, but we didn’t mention August vs. May to anyone at this point.

It was a Sunday night - THE Sunday night - the night before my last day as a computer programmer for Wingfoot Commercial Tire, and Robin and I were having some “couch-time” in the living room and decided, “We have to get a clear ‘Yes’ or a clear ‘No’ from the Lord about this.”  So, we asked the Lord for that very thing.  “Lord, either open the door or close it.  If You want us to go, You’re going to have to provide a way for us to go - financially, logistically, emotionally, everything.  We know that we can ‘plan our way’ but You will have to ‘order our steps’.  Let Your will be done and Your kingdom come in the lives of the Jacksons, Lord.”

Ok… so… no audible voice or anything.  But, we went to bed in unity, knowing that it was really in His hands (…ahem… feeling pretty good about our prayer, as if it made us completely confident it was in His hands - is more like it).

The next day, there was a pretty constant flow of co-workers coming by my cubicle.  A consistently asked question was, “So, how are you going to support your family again?”  To which I could only say, “we’re just going to trust the Lord and do the things He wants us to do, and trust He’ll provide through a combination of the people’s generosity and/or obedience to the Lord, or through ‘tent-making’ as He leads me… blah blah blah.”  Which I’m sure translated to many of them as, “I have no idea.  I am a slacker who is going to let my family starve.”

My programming peers took me to lunch, at which the same question got asked a couple of more times, followed by the same awkward, “..oh.. okay.”  (Don’t get me wrong, they were great and gracious, and maybe it was my self-consciousness reading into it some.)  Then, when we got back to the cube farm there was an e-mail waiting for me.  It was from someone who had gotten our ”Vision Casting letter” and felt like the Lord asked them to give a gift to us.

Read “May Day” part 2.

[continued from "May Day" part 1] 

They wanted to pay for the entire trip to Kansas City.  The tuition for the internship, the travel, our monthly living budget while we were there - everything.

The Lord had asked me to create three budgets for the internship, if we were to go: an “abase”, a “normal”, and an “abound”.  I told the donor this, and they asked me to send all three budgets to them, and they felt like the “abase” was a little “too abased”, and they agreed to write the check for the “normal” version, plus the Kansas City related expenses.

Of course, there’s always something - and Robin and I had been very torn over what to do with our house in Van Buren.  Do we fix it up and try to sell it? rent it? It was hard to imagine being able to pay two sets of house payments for four months, but, we also didn’t have the cash to spare to try and do the repairs and things we felt necessary before renting or selling it.  Well, the donor said, “I also felt like you were worrying about what to do with your house in Van Buren, and the Lord doesn’t want that to be a distraction - so, I’m going to pay that mortgage for the four months, too.”

Wow - that looked like a great big, “Yes!” from the Lord to us.  But, to top it all off…

The donor had a vision from the Lord that prompted them to do all of this, and in that vision the Lord was saying, “May Day! May Day!”  Of course the immediate assumption when you hear that is, “Help! Help!” but they asked the Lord what that meant and He told them two things: ”Urgency!” and “The day in May.”  When they relayed that to us, it immediately bore witness in our spirit as all of the above, “We need to go as soon as possible, which is the internship that starts in May, and we were glad to have the help.”