The sidewalk was black with cicada shells as I walked home from class that day.  At some point during my junior year of college, I had become disillusioned and disappointed with school, and longing for a purpose and passion, I started reading my Bible for the first time in a long time. I remember my steps crunching the cicada shells, an ominous scene, as I reflected on my reading of the book of Revelation, which I had never read before that time.

“I have been lied to my whole life,” I remember thinking, “Is this the same book everyone else is reading?  If the end goal of all of this is worship, if creatures see Him and cry Holy, Holy, Holy, what am I missing?  Shouldn’t I be figuring this out?  Shouldn’t that be what we’re doing now on the earth?”

It was a couple years later when I discovered IHOP-KC where these questions were addressed.  Now I work as the Senior Administrator for FMA.  FMA is a company of worshippers who share the truth that praise and prayer is worth our time on this earth now because He is worthy of it. When I recognize all that He has done for me, the ways that he has delivered me and brought me near, I am overwhelmed with thanksgiving, and I can only begin to understand the creatures and the elders from Revelation 4.  This is powerful and our students recognize it.  Whether they desire to run sound or play an instrument, FMA students get many hours of practical experience in prayer and worship, doing what they were made to do, learning how to do it better, and learning how to call and lead others to it.

Our student body contributes 288 hours of prayer, worship, and intercession in our three prayer labs per week!  Our music training is differentiated to meet many skill levels and desires; we have classes for the novice musician as well as advanced courses.  Students grow in technique, study the Word, practice the Harp & Bowl model, learn how to prophesy and flow on a worship team, as well as experience the power of the Holy Spirit in their own personal hearts and while ministering to others.  They participate in discipleship and expect signs and wonders, all the while falling in love more and more with Jesus.  Supporting and running our prayer rooms along with their other classes and requirements help prepare our students to serve with alive hearts in other houses of prayer and places of worship after they graduate with a 1, 2, 3, or 4 year certificate from FMA.

Being overwhelmed by His goodness and singing love songs to Jesus is part of our destiny.  Being obedient to learn an instrument or develop a skill whether it be unto leading others in corporate worship or a vehicle for personal devotion, is a significant way to spend a season of your life.  FMA students recognize that whether they’re working at a retail store, homeschooling their children, or leading worship to millions from a platform, prayer and praise is valuable and part of who they are as believers.  The Lord will use their grateful hearts that have experienced His loving kindness to impact many.  Our students know that loving Him well with their skills and talents among other ways, is part of their purpose.

I expect a great harvest from each and every one of our students.  I know that they will be sent out and will ignite the world.  I look at them and see knees bowed across nations, hands in different shades raised to the Father, many tongues confessing, “Jesus is Lord.”  I see us united in adoration, singing “Holy, Holy, Holy.”