Internship Testimonies
Anna Payton
Forerunner Internship Alumni, Summer 2011
I came to IHOP having just finished my freshman year at Pacific Lutheran University. Knowing that God was calling me to an internship over the summer, four options were placed in front of me through a campus ministry. After a whole lot of prayer and God-ordained circumstances, the Lord made a way for me to be at IHOP-NW for ten weeks.
Interning at the house of prayer has transformed the way I view God’s love. Coming in, I had a false paradigm of a God who loved me only because He had to. And in my mind, even if God loved me, He most certainly didn’t like me. Learning the bridal paradigm shifted my thinking about the Lord, but it wasn’t until I was truly encountered by Holy Spirit in the prayer room that my heart’s perception of His love changed. The prayer room was the place where God transferred the cliché sayings I have known in my head into truths in my heart. We all know the phrases: “Jesus loves you,” and “He died for you,” the types of statements we make to our friends. Those clichés have become facts in the very core of my being after hours in the prayer room discovering what they really mean. The prayer room was where my simple head knowledge became profound heart realities.
I will begin my sophomore year at PLU this fall. I am discovering that prayer and intercession is vital to the times, and they will play a large role in my life outside of class and studies. It may not be the most glorious job in the eyes of the world, but you cannot find a higher calling than gazing on the face of the One who hung the stars in the heavens. I’ve learned how to step into my calling here at the House of Prayer. I am an intercessor, a daughter of the Most High God, and He calls me His Beloved.
David Breithaupt IV
Forerunner Internship Alumni, Summer 2011
I am a student at Pacific Lutheran University. I first heard about IHOP-NW from some of the other students at PLU and then attended a retreat where IHOP-NW staff were ministering, which is where I first heard about the Forerunner Internship.
During the internship, I learned how much God really wants to work with us as partners from a position of intimacy. It was reinforced in my mind how much He loves us, and how much He did for us that we get to partner with Him. What an honor, what a blessing, what a gift, it is for Him to use us, broken and fallen as we are, to bring Him glory! He is perfect all on His own, but He loves using us imperfect humans to bring forth His will, to bring Him glory! In this revelation, I have been newly awakened to how important, how valuable, it is for me to spend time with God, and to chase after Him with all that I have.
Now that the internship is over, I feel more ready and able to run towards God with my community of students at PLU. I feel more able to intercede and reach out to people in the light of His intercession and reaching out towards me. I am excited to take what I have learned here and bring it into the rest of my life, to share the passion that I have found for and in God with all the people around me.
