The Beginning of CausingEffect

Last Fall, the Lord laid on Chris’s heart that he, as the singles’ leader, should start getting a group together for worship. We all figured we would be a worship band, if we ever had a singles’ service. Chris said from the beginning that he didn’t know why God had us together. He didn’t know if it was to be a worship band, to travel or if it was just to get together and worship, but God would simply do with us what he wanted.

From the start, we would come to the church on Thursday night, spend some time in prayer, then practice. It was pretty cool. Before long, the prayer times got longer and longer. Some people that were coming decided it wasn’t for them.

The first significant night, we were praying, and we just kept praying. As Chris changed the songs, I couldn’t sit still anymore. The Spirit was churning so powerfully within me. Finally, I got up and went up to the balcony, back behind the pew wall, and started pacing and warfully praying. I went and ‘hid’ so that I could pray without feeling hindered, without thinking about anyone else. So I am pacing, and praying with abandonment, while jumping and about to fall all over the floor. Chris comes around the corner, as I happen to turn and see him. (I still don’t know it he was also pacing around, or if he heard my commotion, or if he was actually looking for me.) I guess he saw what the Spirit was doing in me and it confirmed what He felt, and (I remember it clearly) He said, “Yeah. Let’s go down and war this thing out.” I followed him down the stairs, and all of joined hands in a circle and prayed our hearts out in the Spirit. We separated again, and just paced and prayed and paced and prayed. It is significant to mention that we were listening to what I would call prophetic worship, before I knew it was really a specific thing. All I can recall is “Holy Visitation”.

The next week, we get there and pray, and then the guys get on the instruments. They begin playing such powerful, anointed music, that I am practically beside myself. The Spirit was churning so hard inside me that I didn’t know what to do with myself. At first, I went and got a mic, and stood there praying. Then I put it down, walked outside the sanctuary, and paced in the foyer. Then I went back on stage, and stood there. Then I went into the balcony, then I came back down and laid behind the last pew. I’m telling you I was a mess. I knew God was doing so much. And I couldn’t figure out what to do about it.

That night, we went to Whataburger, and I was itching to ask Chris what understanding he had about what had just happened. We really didn’t understand what God was doing, but Chris said that whatever we were fighting with prayer the week before, we just defeated it through our music. Chris and his brother Chase both admitted that the Spirit was playing through them, because they had never played like that. Zeke said while he was playing the drums, he couldn’t feel his arms. We knew that the music we had listened to the week before, we had played that night. We knew that, although we didn’t understand what God was doing, we knew it was huge. After Thanksgiving, our practices died down in all the craziness of the holidays.

Then God took us to Onething. Chris, Jesse, and I, from the ‘band’, and Pam from the singles, met up with Jennifer, Chris’s best friend from World Harvest Bible College. There, we learned what God was doing. The funny thing is that we didn’t even know what it was. We just knew we were supposed to go. We had recently been to a Shane and Shane concert, and knew it was really amazing, and we’d heard of Jason Upton. Personally, I was greatly impacted by the promo video. The abandoned running truly represented my heart for God. That was the first we had listened to Misty Edwards and we loved her immediately. So much so that Chris bought her songs off itunes and we used her music on Thursday nights. It still amazes me that God took us to teach us what He had already been doing in us.