Justin Rizzo's team blog

Discovering the Grace of God

Posted on March 26, 2013 - 11:35am
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Aaron Leatherdale - Rapper
Follow Aaron on Twitter: aleatherdale
Website & personal blog: aaronleatherdale.org
Aaron grew up in Prince George, BC, Canada and moved to IHOP in May 2007. His passion and desire is to serve the Lord through prayer and fasting and to preach the love of Christ to the nations of the earth.


I committed my life to the Lord when I was 19 years old.  From the beginning of my Christian race I had a burning desire to be radical for God.  I fasted, I prayed long hours, I made intense vows, and I tried as hard as I could to be a super-Saint.

I had a great dream of being the perfect Christian.  When I was 20 years old I lived with a family from my church.  I was working a part-time job, 3 evenings a week — just enough to pay my bills. When I moved in with them I told them my vision for the year.  I was planning to pray in their basement from 9am-5pm, Monday-Friday.  I think they were kind of bewildered when I told them that.  I don’t think they had ever met someone who wanted to pray 8 hours a day!

A joyful man in prison

Posted on March 11, 2013 - 7:16pm
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Justin Rizzo - Worship Leader
Follow Justin on Twitter - justinrizzoihop
Justin grew up in Lockport, New York and moved to IHOP in January 2004 where he completed the onething internship. His desire is to minister in the house of the Lord by singing and proclaiming the Word of God and to see thousands impacted with the gospel.


The book of Philippians talks a lot about joy. It’s mentioned over thirty times, which seems strange because Paul is writing while sitting in a Roman prison. Clearly his joy was not based on his circumstances.

I don't know about you, but I am very affected by my circumstances. Whether due to internal or external things, I find that I can be joyful or sorrowful, happy or sad from one moment to the next. But thank God that He has given us a glorious invitation to find the superior joy and pleasure of knowing Him, which can carry us through any storm or trial we may face. This is what Paul tapped into.

So how can we find this joy and live in it continually?

Loving others

Posted on March 8, 2013 - 3:40pm
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Roland - Percussion
Roland is from Stuttgart, Germany and has also lived 5 years in South America, as well as traveling all around the world. Since Spring 2009 he has been on full-time staff at IHOP-KC. He is an educated drum instructor and teaches at the Forerunner Music Academy. Roland is committed to stand in prayer as a "watchman on the wall" and to see the church fully awakened to the knowledge of God. 


Recently I met an old friend at a party. We had not met in a couple of years. He is a manager of a very big non-Christian humanitarian organization that does a lot of very good work.

We had a very long and good conversation. After that evening, I was ashamed about myself and my heart attitude. For years I have - in a certain way- judged his work, mainly because he does it out of humanism and he does not know the Lord.

The Best Reason to Donate a Kidney

Posted on March 4, 2013 - 12:57pm
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Nate Hunt - Bass
Follow Nate on Twitter - N8rHunt
Nate Hunt grew up in Muscatine, Iowa and came to IHOP in July 2008. His passion is to know Christ and make Him known through prayer, singing, playing, and preaching His beauty until every tribe, tongue, people, and nation have heard the true gospel.


Without a doubt, the best reason to donate an important internal organ is to save a loved one's life.  But if you've never visited Israel and after trying every other means to raise the funds, you're still coming up short, then it's well worth it to donate a kidney to get over there.  I heard once you can get up to $50,000 for donating one, so that should be more than enough to cover a trip for you and perhaps a small youth group.

Grossness aside, if you haven't been to Israel, you're missing out on one of life's top three experiences.  The other two are coming to your first onething conference (a.k.a. feeling God's tremendous love for you for the first time) and getting married (a.k.a. the height of human love).  Since two of these top three life experiences happened for me in 2012, I guess 2013 will be a little boring in comparison, unless God really has something up His sleeve, perhaps in the major signs and wonders category.

2012 in review

Posted on February 25, 2013 - 2:11pm
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Erica Jensen - Singer, French horn
Follow Erica on Twitter - jensenerica
I grew up in Wichita Kansas. After completing my degree in Pastoral Ministry at Central Bible College and leading worship in a few churches, I felt the Lord lead me to IHOP-KC in September 2011. My passion is to have great intimacy and revelation of Jesus through his word and music. I want to walk worthy of Jesus, fully pleasing Him (Col. 1:10), and write songs that lead people into healing and deep relationship with God. 


He will shake everything that hinders love… because He knows that His love is what I need, and is the only thing that will last.

Yes, I learned more of his faithfulness to come through when I needed him, and I learned to trust him more with each shaking. But more so I learned that I had my security in some other things, because when they were shaken, I was shaken. Not that things in life won’t ever “rock your world”, because life is unexpected and we have REAL emotions that really affect us. The problem was that to my dismay, in those shakings I didn’t always run to the Lord first, or to the firm foundation and anchor of his Word. At times I let the winds of adversity and uncertainty cause me to seek comfort and help in other things, or people.

Diligence in delay

Posted on February 8, 2013 - 7:01pm
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Naomi Rizzo - Singer
Follow Naomi on Twitter: rizzettenaomi
Naomi grew up in Tallahassee, Florida and moved to the International House of Prayer at the end of 2005. Her desire is to love the Lord with all of her heart, soul, mind, strength and to be a living witness of the goodness of God and to see the Lord exalted in all the earth and receive the glory that is due Him.


This last year one of the things I have thought, pondered on and learned about is diligence and delay. You have to be diligent over and over again, it’s hard labor and to get better at something you have to continue to plunge through, even when you cannot see fruitful evidence. 

The press

Posted on February 4, 2013 - 8:31am
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Anna Blanc - Worship Leader, Singer
Anna's personal website: www.theblancspot.com
Follow Anna on Twitter: @annablancihop
Anna grew up in Houston Texas and then attended college in Boulder, Colorado before moving to IHOP in January 2005. Her desire is to live every moment in constant communion with Christ within. She desires to write songs that will lead hearts in the adoration of Jesus.  


Now that January has come, beautiful as a new beginning and hopeful as a blank slate, I have been looking at my life and imagining its future.

With eleven unscripted months ahead of me, and (Lord willing) years of life yet to be lived, the opportunities and options seem boundless. How close can one heart grow to its Maker, and how alive can it become in the Word of God? These are the questions that ruminate in me these days. I'm not hopelessly optimistic; I know my limitations, and my failures are ever before me. As a wife, mommy, and woman in ministry I know the pinch of a shortage of time. I know the pain at the end of the day, wishing I had made different choices with my time.

Abiding

Posted on January 30, 2013 - 9:53pm
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Lisa Gottshall - Worship Leader, Singer
Lisa's personal blog: www.lisagottshall.com 
Follow Lisa on Twitter: @LisaGottshall
Lisa grew up in Elverson, PA and moved to IHOP in August 1998. Her desire is to be a singing theologian who sings songs that open deep places in people's hearts to Jesus, brings deliverance from lies (Ps. 119:130), and releases judgment on the kingdom of darkness (Ps. 149).


For me, 2012 was about ABIDING. 

In numerous ways, my heart felt stretched like a rubber-band that was about to… well, snap, or cease to be a functional rubber-band.  Not from trauma or tragedy.  Just pressure—bad pressure like perfectionism, and good pressure like purification.

At one point the bad pressure was so bad that I dreaded each day. Who’s excited to live when you feel like a failure? Not me. One day after weeks of this depression, God tenderly reminded me that I had slipped into the Ephesian pitfall: I had lost my First Love.

Stewardship of God’s Grace

Posted on January 28, 2013 - 10:22am
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Luke Beal - Singer
Luke Beal hails from El Dorado, KS. He moved to Kansas City with his wife SaVannah and daughter Avery and began the Intro to IHOP internship in January 2012. Luke loves God's Word and is committed to being a Spirit-led prophetic voice that communicates the Father's heart and proclaims the second coming of Jesus.

Confidence in the midst of accusation

Posted on January 21, 2013 - 8:58am
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Jonathan Rizzo - Worship Leader, Singer
Follow Jon on twitter - @jonathanmrizzo