Pouring Out Power…and Needing the Protection of Prayer

Last week one of the LAUP interns, Nathaly, stood up and shared how she has been taking risks to pray for people’s physical healing. She shared about a man at Door of Hope who has a job at an auto shop. As he was working last week, he slipped and hit his mouth on a wheel rim, giving him a small gash on his upper lip. When Nathaly offered to pray for him, he gladly accepted. After a few minutes of praying for him, she checked in to see if anything was happening. “Keep praying,” he said with passionate focus, “I feel my lip getting hot and tingling!” Nathaly kept praying. A few minutes later, she checked in again…to find the gash in his lip healed and gone!

This is just one of the twenty physical healings that have happened through students praying for people this summer! Students have also brought the power of God to liberate urban youth from psychological and spiritual oppression—seeing some of the worst-behaved kids change become peaceful and eager to learn—and have recognized the power they can bring for personal and community transformation. Students are living in the reality of God’s power and presence in our world, and they’re loving it!


I believe God is giving these students this experience not just to empower them that they can bring real healing and change to our world, but also to change them and shape their futures. My deepest hope and sense is that God is shaping them to let the purposes of his kingdom permanently transform their lifestyles, relationships, and careers.

But there are hundreds of factors working against that transformation. In less than a week, students will finish LAUP and go home to their families, head back into jobs, and head back to campus. If the experiences and lessons of the summer don’t become rooted in students’ hearts and minds, if they don’t take in the bigger-picture of WHY God has given them this summer, the power of God during LAUP could become nothing more than a fond memory.


These students and their leaders need your prayers this week! If the attack of the enemy is in proportion to the significance of God’s work, by that rationale, these students will have spiritual attack coming at them in force this week and over the next several. Please pray with me and our directors’ team for God’s protection of these students, that they will see the enemy coming and resist him, and that the principles of the summer will take root deep within healthy soil of their hearts. I encourage you to pray, yourself, and welcome you to pass on this prayer request as far and wide as you would like.

These students are a potent force of good in our world right now…but the real goal is who they will become AFTER LAUP. Together we need to call upon God to finish and seal his work in them, and to release them into living as salt and light in our desperate world.

Heartbreak at the Door of Hope

“What are these pictures for?” the 9 year-old boy asked me this morning. An innocent enough question…until I slowly took in the layers of meaning behind it.

I spent Friday morning visiting LAUP students working with urban children in the Northwest Pasadena area. I began at Door of Hope, a ministry that helps homeless families and children get off the streets, gives them a safe and healthy place to live, trains and helps them find jobs, and eases them into stable living over the period of a year. The six LAUP interns spend each day taking care and running programs for a dozen homeless youth in the program.

As I was leaving breakfast with the LAUP team there, I thought, “Hey, I should get some photos of the LAUP interns working with the youth.” As I raised my phone and took my first picture, I was met by the previously mentioned question. “I want these guys’ friends to see what they’re doing this summer.” After snapping a couple more pictures, one of the LAUP interns pulled me aside. “You know you can’t post those anywhere on the web or for public viewing, right? These kids need to be protected.” Embarrassed, I told him I didn’t know that. I thanked the team for letting me visit and walked out the door.

As I walked to my car, I took in the unspoken history that came from this cute 9 year-old. These kids’ lives have been a study of abuse, brokenness, and violence. Most of them have been sexually, physically, and emotionally abused. Some may have been taken from parents who are a threat to them. For this 9 year-old boy, someone pointing a camera at him—as well-meaning as my intentions may have been—represented a threat, a danger, a reminder that life is not safe.

I deleted the photos on the spot.

Sitting in my car, I couldn’t drive, layers of my own emotion rising to the surface. I was startled by my own naiveté and punched in the gut by coming face-to-face with the realities of violence, brokenness, and evil already too familiar to a 9 year-old child.

This is where Jesus would be. This is where six college students are pouring out their energy, time, and hearts for the summer. This is where the power, peace, and purpose of God will become real, both to the youth at Door of Hope and to the college students ministering to them.

When you give to, pray for, volunteer with, or offer support to LAUP in any way, this is where you are investing: you are stepping outside of yourself, acknowledging that our world is not as it should be, and asking what part you are to play in healing it. Thank you for your partnership...we need each other in this daunting but worthy task.

If you would like more information about how become involved or give to LAUP, please email me at Scott_Hall@ivstaff.org

Oil and Water...and Food Coloring

Last week our focus was on money and the poor. To help students recognize the challenging nature of Jesus' teaching on money--the way it's most likely to just "sit" on our hearts for awhile only to be skimmed off by our materialistic, consumeristic culture--we gave students a visual. "Instead of the teaching resting on us like oil on water, may you permanently transform us," our worship leader, Erna, prayed as she dropped food coloring into a vase of water. We ended the night hearing from Tom Hsieh, one of the founding members of Earthlink, and how his early patterns of giving and generosity prepared him to handle the two million dollars he found himself owning after Earthlink's initial public offering.

Interestingly enough, this week has brought more conflict over team money and how it's spent than any so far. Students are grappling with what it looks like to steward their resources responsibly and creatively, and are going deeper in conversation as they work out those challenges.

On another note, God's Spirit continues to be powerfully at work. Laurie is severely lactose intolerant, but found herself at a crossroads when a Spanish-speaking man offered her a taco covered with goat cheese after church. Sensing the importance of the gesture, Laurie took and ate the taco, only to find that she was physically unaffected, possibly being healed from her condition.

Leah shared about her teammate's prayer for God's Spirit to protect their house, and the way that--for the first time--she physically felt the presence of the Spirit of God in a way she had only heard about.

Students are deep in the trenches of loving children and families at this point in LAUP...which means that the character lessons are abundant, and the challenge of sacrificial love and compassion are becoming more real. Please pray with me for the LAUP interns, that these next couple weeks would open them up to a joy, power, and vision for walking with God that would transform the rest of their lives.

Lastly, there are three more Thursdays for you to visit us, and we'd love to have you. And if you are a LAUP alumni, you're invited to our alumni night on our last Thursday, July 28th. Feel free to email me at Scott_Hall@ivstaff.org for more details. I leave you wiht a short video that captures some of what our weekly worship times involve. Enjoy!

Two Weeks In and Two Vignettes

We're two weeks in and seeing a powerful combination of students being vulnerable with God and each other, and learning to hear from God and be led into ministry. Something special is happening. Here are two vignettes:

Last Monday, the Long Beach team went to a local park, where they spent time listening to and serving the homeless. One man there had a recently broken leg in a soft cast. As the students interacted with him--in response to our conversations and training at LAUP--they felt led to pray for his healing. They prayed once...it was a little better. They prayed again...better still. They prayed a third time...he said the pain was gone. They asked him if he would be willing to stand up to test out his leg...and he stood up to find all the pain gone! He shared he'd love to check out the Fountain of Life Church they're serving in Long Beach. Interestingly enough, this was the same team struggling to believe that God could work miraculously just days before...they took a risk and are seeing God's power working through their very hands!

This past Thursday, all the LAUP interns gathered for our weekly time of teaching, training, and worship, this time about the realities of the spiritual realm and the power and importance of prayer. One team serving homeless children in Northwest Pasadena had been struggling with the ways the children they were serving would responded to them with physical violence, regularly punching them in the face and running away. As the team took time to listen to God in prayer, they sensed God calling them to pray against anger...but not in the way they would have guessed. They felt led to confess their own struggles with anger and the ways they'd been mistreating each other on the team. They confessed their own character flaws, and then took time to pray for kids on their site.

The following day several of the team members were given menial tasks...they kind about which they had been complaining and getting angry just one day before. Instead of giving into anger, the team used each break time to confess their own anger and pray against anger in the kids they were serving. By the end of the day they noticed a tangible difference in the children as well as themselves.

Students are being transformed as we speak, and are being empowered to bring real transformation--even with supernatural power--to the urban communities of Los Angeles.

This week (July 7th) will be focused on God's love for the poor, the power of money, and how we can use our resources for powerful godly purposes. Don't hesitate to come on by this week, Thursday, or any Thursday in July to see us in action!