Faith and Psalm 84

We are very excited as we prepare to come back to the east coast to visit and share with our friends and family about the exciting things that God has had us doing while here in Kansas City. We are anticipating good fellowship and some folks to grab the vision and partner with us. Trusting God to provide on this level is a completely new concept for us but He is teaching us!! He really cares about us and really meets our needs. We may have “lean times” in the refrigerator from time to time but our inner man is being strengthened day by day. God has led us on a pilgrimage and we will make this valley a spring! Psalm 84 speaks of the Valley of Baca (or Weeping). This is not the place of hopelessness and defeat but rather a place of encounter with the Lord. Every trouble, hard place or Valley of Weeping we come to is in essence, a wilderness. The wilderness experience is where real faith is born. This psalm also speaks of moving “from strength to strength”. The “kneejerk” reaction that we usually say after this is “from glory to glory” but we have to go through the valley to reach the mountaintop. Between mountains is always a valley. Kind of like that great book “Hind’s feet for High Places”. We can’t live on the mountains. As a matter of fact, 90% of life is made up of the mundane, day to day stuff that we all have to do with a few glorious experiences that come our way and spice it up. God is so glorious!!! Even in the mundane, He gives us reason to rejoice and we press on without looking back. I love Him today more than I ever have.
Blessings,
Brian Jones

The True Identity of the Church

What is this “bride”, the church destined to look like? It seems it is so easy to forget sometimes as we get caught up in everything but prayer. It’s easy for me to lead worship, and it’s relatively easy to read and study the bible with all the resources we have today. It can even be easy to do outreach and various types of ministry. We can be very good at rallying people together to “get the job done” and totally bypass the thing that requires waiting and stillness......prayer. God is raising up a church that is going to be getting all of their battle plans and strategies during prayer meetings instead of board meetings. It is work to pray as I am realizing more and more every day. Yes there are days where it feels like the Lord is so near to me, and there are other days where I honestly felt better before I went into the prayer room. No matter how I feel, I know that when I am partnering with the Lord by praying for His purposes to be fulfilled on the earth that I am doing exactly what I am supposed to be doing. He really meant it when He said His house will be a house of prayer! This is not just something that we are doing now, we will be forever praying and interceding. This is the way God has always carried out His government on the earth and it will continue on into eternity. His ways are higher than ours.

In Christ,
Brian Jones

Glad thats Over

I am really excited that despite nervousness during the auditions, I was approved as an IHOP prophetic singer and acoustic guitar player. I had to laugh out loud when I read the emails from auditions. There was a separate one from each audition. The singing and guitar messages read “congratulations, you have been approved as an IHOP singer”. The same email was sent for guitar audition however, the funny one was my drum audition email. Unlike the others, it read “You have NOT been approved to play drums on an IHOP team at this time”, and then there was a list of local drum instructors!! Ha! Hint-Hint! Had to laugh. I played really well but the guys that went in before me had a lot more in the “trick bag” than I did. They were definitely drummers by trade. The next step that you are supposed to take after approval is to approach worship leaders and section leaders in the prayer room to tell them that you have been approved and would like to be on their team or “a” team. Then you wait until chosen. I am certain that it is much more difficult to get on a team in the Global Prayer Room which is televised and webcasted. I was very encouraged because the same day I was approved, a worship leader in the Justice Prayer Room (not televised or webcasted) asked me to “fill-in” for her acoustic guitar player who is gone for a week. They have a great team and it was so refreshing to come and worship on my instrument and meditate while the singers took a passage of scripture and expounded upon it in song. It was awesome!

Nervous

I can honestly say that I cannot remember the last time I felt as vulnerable and nervous as I did today when I auditioned for the IHOP worship teams. I tried out for vocals, acoustic guitar and drums. They called you in two at a time and as soon as you walked in the door, there were two of the best worship leaders in the house (Justin Rizzo and Cory Asbury) as well as the phenomenal bass player and worship leader that plays on Misty Edward’s team, her name is Cassie. Those three are on their instruments and in the crowd were other worship leaders, musicians and section leaders. Now you would think after singing and playing in front of as many people as I have over the years that this wouldn’t bother me. WRONG. Man I was feelin’ the pressure. I mean, it’s not like I am playing with them on a team.....they are judging me. They played and I sang or played my instrument along. For the singing part I had to sing the chorus to How great is our God and then go immediately into singing a passage of scripture that I had picked out. For the guitar portion, I had to play a song I had never heard, then I played “Blessed be the Name” in a key that they picked and had to modulate a whole step in the middle of the song, after the modulation I had to change chords spontaneously as he called them out on the mic. For drums, I just stayed in the pocket and played it safe. After all was said and done I think I did well in all three categories but man was I glad it was over!! Anyway, I thought some of you would get a good laugh out of me “shakin’ in my boots”, I know my wife did!!!
Blessings,
Brian Jones