Hashem House

It’s usually a good idea to explain the obscure title of your blog somewhere, right?  Well, I’m sure you were all wondering why I’d name my blog Hashem House, so you’ve come to the right place.

It all started with a vision from God.  As the World Race came to an end, all I could think about was buying a house in Cairo and it didn’t quite make sense.  After leaving my life behind for a year and downsizing everything I owned into a backpack, I wasn’t really ready to pick up something so huge as a house when I returned.  With those things in mind, I spent the last months of the race praying and covenanting with God to follow him wherever he would lead as I re-entered the US. 

I traveled down to Cairo to see my spiritual family at Two Rivers soon after I returned home and couldn’t help looking at all the houses up for sale during my short trip there.  Call me crazy, but real estate was just on my heart.  It was the first house I looked at.  I hadn’t even gone inside or looked at any other homes.  I remember laying my hands on the house and asking God for it right then and there on my first day back in Cairo.  Even as I continued to look at other homes, I knew the one God was highlighting was 2044 Martin Luther King Dr.

God had already been downloading into my heart a vision for this house as being a sending place for young missionaries and a place of prayer and dreaming for those who will be sent into the nations.  Hashem House, at its core, is a bridge between Missions and Prayer.  It’s a Luke 10 meets Luke 18 lifestyle; a team of missionaries being sent out two by two like the disciples with a heart to cry out day and night to God in prayer.

It’s a place of apostolic kingdom family and intentional community.  It’s a place to dream and scheme with other likeminded people and hear from God about His heavenly strategies for the redemptive work in the nations.  It’s a network of people with resources to help accomplish these dreams.  It’s learning how to ‘BE’ a missionary, ‘BE’ a servant, ‘BE’ a child of God and not just another program of ‘doing good things.’  This is life.  And this is a household that seeks to bring life, both to the people that live within the walls and to those that live without.  This is community life as God designed it.  (read: Acts 2)

Okay, so that explains the house a bit, but why the name Hashem you ask?  Well, after a day of praying over the property God highlighted the address sign of ‘2044’.

The corresponding number in the concordance told me that ‘hashem’ is a Hebrew word meaning wealthy, fertile, abundant, and enriched. To me these words describe the fertile land of growth and the wealth of inheritance that can be had for those going after the abundant life of Jesus Christ on this earth.  So naturally, the name Hashem House followed quite easily. 

It seems as though God is renaming this plot of land that once held a spiritually rich heritage as well.  While talking with the homeowner I discovered that the house used to be a minister’s training school more than 50 years prior.  I believe God desires to continue the lineage of this place by sending out more ministers of His Kingdom by raising up the young people of this generation to love a dying world.

So there you have it, the beginning story of Hashem House.  Please pray with me as God directs the vision in this place.  As the story unfolds I’ll be posting more, so look under the category ‘Hashem House Happenings’ on the right sidebar for more details.