On a Journey

I have begun a new phase of my journey. I am beginning an internship at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City (IHOP-KC). During the internship I will have the opportunity to learn more about God and grow closer to Him in an environment of 24/7 prayer and worship.

I first visited IHOP-KC in December 2008 while visiting friends in Kansas City. I was in a dry season spiritually and was more interested in visiting my friends than the prayer room. But I did go and God greatly ministered to me. I got set free from some of my struggles and shame. And I fell in love with Jesus again.

God has continued to work in me since then. I visited IHOP-KC multiple times and went to a couple events and God continued to minister to me. After praying, I felt led to spend a longer season pursuing God in Kansas City through an internship.

Would you consider partnering with me through a special gift during this journey? Any amount you can give will be appreciated. Thank you!

Note: Gifts are not tax-deductible.

Time for a transition

I'm moving to Kansas City.

For the past six years I've worked at the Every Nation Ministries office in Nashville and Los Angeles. It's been amazing and I will miss my coworkers who made working there a joy. But for the past couple years I have been feeling that it's time for a transition.

And that time is now. Well, next week, actually.

I plan to spend this next season at the International House of Prayer in Kansas City. Over the past couple years I visited a few times and God has used IHOP-KC to breathe new life into my relationship with Him. I am excited to spend this next season there.

I feel like I have already learned and grown so much this year. I'm going to miss Nashville and all my friends there, but I am in love with God and full of faith. My eyes are on Him and I know He's got me in His hands.

I’m heading to Baja (not any more)

Update: I am no longer going to be going to Baja, Mexico this June.

In less than two months, I will be heading south of the border! I’m going to Baja, Mexico June 2-7 to share the love of Jesus with the people there.

I’m excited for the opportunity to help build a couple houses, build a church, host a fiesta and share the Good News of Jesus Christ. I am going with Ten Days Mission Experiences and several young people from my church’s youth group that I’m involved with will be participating.

It has been nine years since my last mission trip. And Ten Days is a part of the ministry I’ve worked for the past several years. I’m excited for this trip and look forward to seeing all that God will do.

I’m currently looking for people who would be willing to partner with me through prayer or giving financially. Would you partner with me to share the love of Jesus with the people of Baja, Mexico?

If you would like to pray, please leave a comment on this blog or e-mail me at mhenry07 on gmail.

If you would like to give you may do so online at giving.everynation.org/tendays.

Tips for giving online: First, select a frequency and click Next. Then, select “the ministry of a particular Ten Days missionary,” select the “Baja, Mexico” trip, select my name, enter an amount then continue to enter your personal info and payment info.

Thank you, and may God bless you!

But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes upon you. And you will be my witnesses, telling people about me everywhere—in Jerusalem, throughout Judea, in Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. – Acts 2:8

Growing up in a superhero family

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to discover you’re a superhero? What if your whole family were superheroes?

On Thursday I watched The Incredibles with friends to finish off a great Thanksgiving. I was intrigued by the way Helen and her kids (Violet and Dash) reacted to danger as a family.

(Helen, Violet  and Dash safely land in the ocean after escaping from their plane.)

Violet: What are we gonna do?

Dash: We're dead! We're dead!

Violet: It blew up!

Dash: We survived but we're dead!

Helen: Stop it! We are not gonna die! Now both of you will get a grip. Or so help me I will ground you for a month! Understand?

…

Dash: You want to go toward the people that tried to kill us?

Helen: If it means land, yes.

Violet: You expect us to swim there?

Helen: I expect you to trust me.

Helen knows who she is. She is Elastigirl and she confronts danger with confidence. Violet and Dash, on the other hand, panic.

Why do they freak out? I think it’s because they don’t know their true identities. They’re aware they have superpowers, but they’ve grown up hearing they should never use them and they should act “normal”.

Helen later tells the kids, “Your identity is your most valuable possession. Protect it.”

I think many who’ve been adopted as God’s children face a similar identity crisis to Violet and Dash. We’ve heard we can do all things through Christ. But we constantly feel pressure to fit in and rely on what we see. And when our faith is tested we tend to get anxious and allow doubt to creep in.

Violet is particularly doubtful and insecure. She’s been told all her life to forget about her powers. Then all of a sudden she is asked to use them in an emergency, but she fails. She must feel frustrated and confused.

Ever feel like that? I have.

But even after her failure her mom doesn’t doubt Violet’s identity. She lovingly forgives her and tells her to be true to herself (finally):

Helen: If anything goes wrong, use your powers… Vi, I’m counting on you. Be strong.

…

Violet: Mom! Mom, what happened on the plane. I'm… I'm sorry. I wanted to help. I mean, when you asked me to… sorry.

Helen: Shhh. It isn't your fault… But things are different now. And doubt is a luxury we can’t afford anymore, sweetie. You have more power than you realize. Don’t think. And don’t worry. If the time comes, you’ll know what to do. It’s in your blood.

I think God believes in us more than we do. And when we fail, He doesn’t love us any less. He lovingly encourages us to get back up and try again. We need to hear and believe what He says about us so we can have the confidence to walk in His will.

Superheroes are a bit like royalty, who… “already know who they are inside, which enables them to become selfless and give out more than they receive” (p. 77, The Supernatural Ways of Royalty by Kris Vallotton and Bill Johnson).

After Violet and Dash understand and experience their true identities as superheroes, they gain confidence, defeat bad guys and help save a city.

Who does God say you are? What can happen once you believe it?

Some things I’ve been learning lately

I’m using ASP.NET MVC in my current project at work and have been learning a lot in the process. I’ve read a lot of articles and watched some videos. I recently went through the NerdDinner Tutorial which was quite helpful and read most of Professional ASP.NET MVC 1.0. But there’s a lot more to writing a production app than can be learned from reading or even working through a tutorial – so it’s been a slow process, but I feel like I’m learning a lot.

The past few years I’ve been working mostly in classic ASP. I’ve done some C# on the side and a couple basic ASP.NET projects. There are a few reasons I chose to do this project on a new platform. I want to stop developing new features in an outdated platform. I want to make use of some functionality built-in to the .NET Framework. And I want to learn and use some better development practices.

Actually developing a real project in ASP.NET MVC has been a bit of a leap though. I feel like I’m biting off a big chunk. Here are some of the things I’ve been learning:

• I’m trying to be test-driven (well, except for database access, file access and HTML output – but at least they’re isolated so the other parts are easier to test). It seems to be going better than my previous attempts.
• I’ve been learning Rhino Mocks for mocking and stubbing.
• I’m using an object-relational mapper (Fluent NHibernate) for the first time to hopefully reduce redundant database-access code. There’s still a fair amount of raw SQL, but the surrounding code is simpler. (I didn’t use LINQ to SQL because Visual Web Developer Express doesn’t support connecting to an external SQL server.)
• I just added StructureMap for dependency injection (DI) so that my classes can be more loosely coupled. I started out with poor man’s DI, but just switched to rich man’s… er, using a container.
• I’m trying to minimize the use of “magic strings” by making use of the strongly-typed HTML helpers in the MVC futures library. I also found the TestControllerBuilder from MVC Contrib helpful for testing HttpContext.
• I feel like I’m learning OO better. Living in VBScript for so long didn’t help much. I’m also learning the MVC pattern and framework, ASP.NET, C# 3 and LINQ better. I’m currently working on a custom role provider to take advantage of roles from the existing app.
• On that note, I’ve been realizing how much infrastructure is in the existing app that I took for granted that I will have to port, convert to a web service or use COM interop for.
• I can sort of deploy it to IIS6 but it’s not one step. Still trying to figure out the best solution.

I was a little scared about all the different things I might have to learn for this project, and looking at this list I can see why. I didn’t absolutely have to learn all of this, but I like to do things “right” and I want to grow as a developer. I believe I’m past the hardest new challenges. I’ve got basic usable functionality. There’s still work to do, but hopefully that will progress more quickly.

There are still several things I would like to learn and do in the future, including:

• Finish this project
• Test-driven JavaScript
• Acceptance/integration testing
• Continuous integration
• Scripting database setup and changes
• Switch from Subversion to Git at work
• Do all new development in a more modern platform than classic ASP and eventually convert most or all of the older code

That’s it for now. If you found any of it interesting then cool beans ;-). Feel free to comment if you’d like.

Notes from God Is Not Silent by Misty Edwards

IHOP Encountering God Service on June 12, 2009

Purchase the MP3

Psalm 19

God speaks through creation

• it makes us ask questions

when God spoke to people they wrote it down

the Bible is God's heart revealed

Misty learned how to meditate on the word of God by fellowshipping with the Holy Spirit.
Book: Experiencing the Depths of Jesus by Madame Guyon
(Note: the original version was called A Short and Very Easy Method of Prayer and can be found for free)

Misty would sit down with her Bible and just read, talk to the Holy Spirit

• she imagined the Holy Spirit was there as her teacher and ask Him questions
• turned it into a dialogue
• took each phrase, meditate on it, speak it to God, let God speak it to her

the Bible is the primary way to transformation

• it is the only way our heart will be transformed

talk to Jesus through the language of the Word (Bible)

• am I dialoging with the Lord through the Word (year after year)?

even when the Word is boring, it's still more exciting than the alternatives (how exciting is watching TV, really?)

she started to be transformed and changed
time with the Word of God with Jesus works

• it takes time (years)

Psalm 19:7-11
the law of the Lord converts (restores) the soul

• you come most alive because of the word
• it makes us wise
• it brings joy to the heart
• it brings clarity
• it's our lifeline
• it sets us free

God expresses Himself:

• in creation
• in the Word
• through us

One of the primary ways we will express God is through our tongue and lips

• if David didn't have the meditation of the word he wouldn't have had the word on his lips

the word is like a chisel on our heart fashioning
His word is a light

• it reveals stuff inside us (our heart is deceitful)
• we have seeds of sin in our heart

our heart is the arena

• God's word is His love letter
• He's waiting for us to respond
• like someone in love sharing their feelings and waiting for a response

all of life comes down to our heart response
all of life comes down to love
God is love

• we were made in that image
• we were made to give love, to receive love, to give love, to receive love
• that exchange happens behind the face, at our heart level

God's asking are you going to respond? are you going to come into agreement?
you will become most fully alive when you express love

• humility, meekness
• love gives everything
• you're gonna take up cross, deny yourself, deny your flesh, run after Me, forget your father's house, come away with Me
• it's the voice of the Bridegroom

love is totally abandoned

David
v. 10 your word is to be desired more than gold
I want your word more than anything in life

v. 12 cleanse me from secret faults

• that we don't even know about
• healthy evaluation of our hearts

the arena, the war on the inside, this arena is where the word of God is most effectively worked out in our lives

• we become the very embodiment, the very expression of God as we are transformed into his image by the power of His word
• as we are transformed we become a testimony of who He is, become fully alive, fully who we are

v. 13 cleanse me from presumptuous sins

God values the words of our mouth

• he is the Word
• it's the greatest form of expression
• complaining is a big issue in the body of Christ
• it's one of the worst sins that shuts down our heart and the flow of the word
• gossip is hurtful, coarse jesting is a waste
• when we can learn to tame our tongue we can tame every part of us

v. 14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing to You

• what do we think about most?
• desire to think about God all the time
• it happens through the word of God

our brain is always thinking

• when we fill our mind with the word of God we'll be transformed

“if you want to enter into the depths of My heart”

• “I am not silent”
• get worthless things away from your eyes
• remove wax from ears
• come to God through the power of God
• "I am not silent. You are not listening, but I am not silent."
• "I want to speak to you, to interact with you, to transform you, to make you fully fully alive, I want to excite you, to exhilarate you, to give you something to live for, something to die for, to give you faith, to help your unbelief, to show you that I'm real, I exist, ..."

"will you press your ear to My heart called the Word?"

• the Word, the very transcript of My soul
• actually read it, talk to Me, come to Me, talk to Me
• you don't understand it? it's boring? ask Me to help you and keep on asking Me to help you
• cry out for the knowledge of God and you will get the knowledge of God
• ask Him, "I want to know You"

the Bible was boring for Misty

• but God asked her to give her time
• get the Word of God
• put it on the schedule

"If you really want to know Me: it's the glory of God to hide a matter, the hungry (those with a kingly, noble heart) search it out."

• the word is for you (it’s for everyone, not just preachers - it was written for peasants)

the Word is God's heart laid open ready for you if you want it

• it's simple but so few do it
• it's the first thing to be cut from the schedule
• but it's the number one thing that sustains our life

from Madam Guyon's book:
take the word

• don't just read a verse and move on
• pray-read the word
• turn it into dialog
• if we don't come to Him, our heart's not gonna come as alive
• focus on the Holy Spirit inside of us (He's the teacher, He knows Jesus, He knows the Word) or focus on the throne
• personalize it, ask God for help
• pray or sing in the Spirit
• say it or sing it
• journal it
• put it in my own words
• digest it
• it will transform our life

Jesus talked about the word all the time
John 14:21 He who has My commandments and keeps them is he who loves Me, and he who loves Me will be loved by My Father and I will love him and manifest Myself to him.

• it's not by casually or occasionally seeking God
• to keep His commandments is to hold them in our heart and walk them out
• then He will manifest Himself to us

it's so easy to get out of the habit of being in God's word

• we need to do it every day
• it's not a one-time badge

"I want you to come after Me"
"Will you sign up again?"

• repent (once) for failing to be a man of the word
• talk to the Lord
• ask God to forgive us for accusing Him of being far away, for being hard to find, for being silent
• ask Him to forgive us for our lack in the word
• set our heart to be a man or woman of the word, not to take it for granted

His mercies are new every morning

• you will come alive in His word
• it's not a chain around your neck
• you were made for a deep intimacy with the uncreated God
• it's not too mysterious, it's not too far away, it's not too hard

the Lord says "My mercies are new every morning"

• you can know Me, you can love Me
• I knew what I was getting into when I called you
• I am not shocked by your lack or your failure

Introducing ASPUnitRunner

Have code in classic ASP? Want to write unit tests for it? Want to make it easy to run those tests?

Here’s my solution: ASPUnitRunner. It’s a .NET library that enables running ASPUnit tests via NUnit.

The Story

(If you don’t care about the “why”, skip this section.) I’ve been trying to get more into automated testing and TDD. But most of our code is written in classic ASP. I started writing some tests using the ASPUnit unit-testing framework for classic ASP. It does it’s job, but I found there was a little friction running the tests. You have to open a web browser, navigate to the right location and click Run Tests. And, continuous integration frameworks don’t exactly have out-of-the-box support for ASPUnit.

There are multiple options available: create an application shortcut for Google Chrome, write a script that uses cURL or wget, or setup Selenium or Watir tests like @calvinb. Any of these may work for you, but none of them were quite what I wanted.

I also found a refreshingly new series of posts on unit-testing classic ASP by Justin Davies. (You should really check them out if you’re interested in unit-testing classic ASP.) I had had the idea in my head to automate ASPUnit tests with NUnit, but he had already done it (albeit with his own unit testing framework). His articles inspired me and gave me some ideas, but it wasn’t until now that I actually wrote my own.

So I wrote my own library to allow running tests for the existing ASPUnit framework from the popular and easy-to-use NUnit test runner.

An Overview

ASPUnitRunner consists of two main classes: Runner and Results.

Runner’s constructor takes a URI to your ASPUnit test runner and an optional credentials parameter. You then call the Run method with the name of the ASPUnit test container to execute, which returns a Results object.

The Results object has the following properties: Tests, Errors, Failures and Details. You can use NUnit assertions to verify that there are zero errors and zero failures and display details if there were any errors or failures.

The source is available at github. If you come up with any improvements, let me know and I may integrate them.

How to Use

Note: the following instructions assume you have existing, runnable ASPUnit tests and are familiar with Visual Studio and NUnit.

1. Verify that you are able to run your existing ASPUnit tests from a web browser.
2. Create a new NUnit test project in Visual Studio.
3. Download the latest ASPUnitRunner binaries and extract them.
4. Add a new reference from your Visual Studio project to point to the DLL you just extracted in the last step.
5. Create an NUnit test fixture similar to this example (note that it makes use of the Values attribute new to NUnit 2.5).
   • Add a using AspUnitFramework statement
   • Initialize a new Runner object with the URI for your ASPUnit test runner and optional credentials
   • Run the tests for each desired ASPUnit test container
   • Assert that the results has no Errors and no Failures.
6. Compile
7. Run the new tests using your favorite NUnit test runner (or integrate them into your NUnit-compatible continuous integration server).

Limitations

Unfortunately the NUnit GUI does not format the HTML result details well. I would like to improve this in the future.

I make no guarantees that this library won’t open a black hole and suck up your computer and the rest of the universe, nor that it won’t cause any other type of damage or loss.

Unlimitations

ASPUnitRunner is not actually dependent on NUnit. It should be usable from any .NET test framework.

In Conclusion

Other than some scripts and snippets, this is my first publicly released project of my own. Sure, it’s really small and simple—but it’s something.

Thanks to the creators of ASPUnit and NUnit for creating helpful tools and Justin Davies for the inspiring example.

I would love to hear any suggestions or feedback you have. Let me know if you find this useful. If you have questions getting it to work I’ll try to help as I can, but no guarantees.