Morning Prayer for Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Pastor Ken welcome…

Good morning. Welcome to chapel prayer here at Living Word, both in the chapel and online as well. Great to have you with us.

We should learn from former moves of God…

I’m always just kind of scanning my spiritual radar as to what God wants to say, what He wants to do. And I always like to kind of start with a point of reflection. I was reflecting once again… I think we talked about this on Monday. I did some teaching and sharing about the importance of living filled with God. Amen? Filled with His Spirit. And I was reflecting on that a little bit this morning and kind of thinking back, not to bring up or just refer to something in the past and say, “Oh wasn’t that cool what happened in the past what God did?” But we can learn from the past and we can learn from former moves of God.

Living Word’s revival in mid 90s…

And back in the early to mid-nineties, we had a really extraordinary move of God here at Living Word. And in a lot of places around the US and around the world at the time. And it broke out here around 94, 95. We were still in our old building, across Boone Avenue. And I was here. I was a young person, finishing up college at that time. And I just remember that move of God really imprinted me. And as I kinda reflect on that, one of the things that imprinted me is just what God did in my life, in my soul, in my inner-most being to transform me and change me and set me free in ways that I don’t think I even knew that I needed to be set free in. God’s good that way. He knows what we need. That’s why praying in the Spirit is so essential because often times we’re praying things we don’t even know we need or know that need to be done. But He knows. Because when you pray in the Spirit, we pray according to the perfect will of God (according to Romans 8:26).

Heaven’s library …

And as I said before, I’m convinced that when we pray in the Spirit, we are praying out sentences and verses and paragraphs from our personal books of destiny on the shelves in a place called heaven. That’s capital H heaven. It is a place. It is a capital. And there is a library there that the Holy Spirit, that particularly angels, as I said before, reference your book of destiny to help minister to you and for you. And when you pray in the Spirit, you are sowing into your future. You are making a way for the will, plan, and purpose of God and the intentions of God for your life, your family, your church, your nation, your future. You’re making a way for that to transpire, for that to come into being.

Prayer is co-laboring with God…

Prayer is hugely all about co-laboring with God, once again. Where we are transacting business, if you will, with Him, creating a pathway, creating an opportunity for Him to invade our lives, to go even into our future and to put things in place and to set things up and to take things down and to make a way for you and yours, for you and your ministry, for you and your business, for you and your children and grandchildren, and those that would follow after you.

Prayer knows no limitations…

Because prayer does not know limitations. Prayer is your empowerment by the Spirit to go across generations, even to pray out into the future. Because, once again, I’m convinced that what we’re maybe seeing in the way of what God is doing right now are prayers that were prayed decades and maybe centuries ago. We don’t know. All I know is that God is attentive to the prayers of His people. And that He gathers up every prayer and that they’re precious to Him and that He holds them (in fact, scripture reads) in a vial and that they’re ever before Him and He is ever working. He never sleeps nor slumbers, the Bible declares, because He is intent on fulfilling His purpose, watching over His Word to perform it, to see it come to pass.

Peering into the spirit dimension…

And if we could kind of pull back the curtain, so to speak, and peer into the parallel universe around us, a.k.a. the spirit dimension, we would find the angels. We would find God Himself. We would find those that have gone before us and prayed some of those prayers and those that have gone before us in our families and in our lives and in our churches, cheering us on saying, “Keep going Church, keep praying, keep be being filled. Keep pursuing the plan of God. Don’t relent. Don’t give up. God holds you in His hand.”

The Almighty, everything is in His grip…

Nine times in the book of Revelation, our God is referred as to as the Almighty. And in the original Greek, that refers to the fact that He has everything in His grip. That’s why we serve Him. That’s what we chase after Him. That’s why we come into His presence each and every day. That’s why we keep praying, keep seeking, keep knocking, keep asking because He is ultimately our game changer, our way maker. Hallelujah.

I learned God can do anything…

And so, as I reflected on what happened in the 90s and what I learned as a young person, I learned that God can do anything. Even in my life. He changed me. He transformed me. He prepared me for what I’m walking out today and what I’ll walk out into the field. But in particular, there’s something really practical I learned and that is that when you allow yourself to be filled, because while God was moving and pouring out His Spirit in a unique way in that time, I also learned, cause I’m a perpetual student, I learned that while in services, we were filled and we were transformed and supernatural joy flowed and people laughed. People were set free. People did things outside their norm because the Holy Spirit moved upon them. And when you get out of the boat and do things prompted by the Spirit, things happen. Things break free. Lives are transformed. Ministry is performed. God’s will is advanced. Signs and miracles show up when we take steps of faith. When we get outside our head and get into our hearts. And while God was filling us in services, sometimes night after night for weeks, I learned that I could do that cause I would go home with my single friends and we’d hang out and we would just kind of sit in a circle and we just would pray. And we’d yield to God. We’d start laughing cause it was somewhat of a laughing move at the time and just a freeing and joy move of God. Wherever we were, we could just get together or even by ourselves and just yield to God. I learned how to yield to God in those services. But then that taught me how to yield to God personally.

Revival is now…

And it taught me that revival is now. It’s not back in 1995. It’s now! There’s an anointing on that right now. I’m sensing that. For those of you online, don’t just kind of spectate, participate! Receive. Yield to what God is saying. Revival for you is now! Revival for your families is now… for your churches now … for your suburb and city and nation is now…

Learn to yield to Him…

And it is spawned, or it is precipitated by learning to yield to Him. By learning to do what we’re taught in the New Testament… to be being presently and continuously filled. You don’t have to know exactly how God is going to roll, what He’s going to do. You just need to take your time and devote it to Him. And my hands would start to like literally burn when I would yield to Him. And sometimes some of my friends would get in circles even after services till like midnight, the church would be open still. Tons of people would be in the sanctuary, and we’d be in like this rugby scrum. And we’d be like literally sweating because we had been worshiping and yielding for hours.

Worship attracts heaven into your life…

Man, the power of God was so tangible and so much fruit and change and transformation came out of that. But you know, to this day I still practice that. I have mapped in my mind… I’ve created a neural pathway, when the pressure’s turned up or when I need God in some way, or just because … to go and spend time and yield to Him and pray much in the Holy Ghost. Lift up your holy hands. As I said before, just worshiping Him attracts heaven into your life. Attracts angels into your life. Attracts the supernatural.

The pre-qualification is to be being filled…

And it’s the state of us being filled, perpetually staying filled, being filled and staying filled. It’s that state where God’s intentions and plan and the fullness of the beauty that He’s prepared for you comes to pass. It is the pre-qualification you could say, be being filled, filled with His Spirit, yielded to His Spirit. That’s the qualification for the will of God for your future, for your next step. For that which you’re seeking to open, for that relationship that you desire, for that breakthrough that has to come you believe. You may not understand how God’s going to do it or how it’s going to change or how the  breakthrough is going to happen, but we do know that God sends forth an invitation each and every day. It’s not a shout necessarily from the house tops. It’s not a clanging symbol. It’s not a fiery tempest, but there is a still small voice that is even now rising up from the inside of each of us from the inside of the church, an invitation from Jesus, nonetheless… Inviting us to come, to yield, to surrender, to pray, to wait on Him, that we would be filled. And so that profoundly changed me through the years.

Develop this memory muscle…

And I’ve just developed this memory muscle in my spirit, if you will, that when times get tough, I don’t run, I don’t distract myself. I don’t get addicted to something. But I endeavored over the years to attach the meaning that when adversity rises, when I’m facing a struggle, when the pressure’s turned up or tribulation as it says in the New Testament, I learned to run to Him and fill myself as full as I can with Him. Because in that place of fullness and yieldedness, I find answers, I find empowerment. My weakness and inability are diminished. And in that state of fullness, I am empowered and propelled to not go under or even go through but rise up and go over whatever I’m facing or whatever I’m dealing with.

Yes, though I walked through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, the Bible says, for His Word and His Spirit, they comfort, empower, and enable us to come out… to come through. It was the presence and the fullness of the Godhead in the preincarnate visitation of Jesus in the Old Testament who stood with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in that fiery furnace. It was the fullness of Jesus in His presence, pre-incarnate, before He was born, that enabled them to come out of that fiery furnace without even the smell of smoke on them, without even the touch of panic or the touch of the aftereffects of trauma. How many know that could have been a little bit traumatic, right? I mean, tossed in a fiery furnace!

So if God can do these marvelous things that we read about in the scriptures that were life-threatening and horrific really… especially in comparison to what we go through. Yes, we go through difficult things today, but wow. You read about some of the things the saints of old went through… If God could do that, He can get us on the other side of COVID, on the other side of personal loss or whatever we’ve faced to a place where we’re being restored, to a place where our lives are perpetually touched and filled with His presence.

Smith Wigglesworth…

And I’m reminded of Smith Wigglesworth; he had some pretty remarkable miracles. He had numerous people that he had raised from the dead in his ministry, which by the way, didn’t even start until he was 50 years old. And he had a couple remarkable quotes about the fullness of the Spirit, because the fullness of the Spirit is what he attributed to really what God was able to do in him and through him for his years of ministry. And he said this at one point. He said, “Only one thing will meet the needs of people. And that is for you to be immersed in the life of God.” He also said, “If you find me on the street or anywhere else, I am alone. And if I’m alone, I will be talking to God. I make it my business to talk with God, all the time. If I wake in the night, I make it my business to pray. I believe that the reason God keeps me right, always right and always ready…”

He also said, “I have a revival everywhere I go, because I live full of the Spirit.” Remember, revival is now! “Nothing is impossible,” he said, “to a man or woman filled with the Holy Spirit.” I like that. He also said, “Being filled with the Spirit is worthwhile no matter what it costs.” Whether it’s a meal or less time doing your own thing. If we will die to ourselves, just with our time, we will become more alive in God.

Jesus is “the way” …

In fact, that’s one of the profound teachings of the New Testament, in being part of the way. The Church was originally called “the way.”  He, Jesus, is “the way.” And one of those teaching was that we were to lay down our lives, truly die to ourselves. And that’s not a bad thing. Thank God, we don’t have to die on a cross. But we are called to die all kinds of little deaths to ourselves.

When you die, new things are born…

Don’t shout me down when I’m preaching good here on this Wednesday morning. But there is life and death. That’s one of the principles of scripture. When you die, new things are born… when you die in your own selfishness in your flesh, in you setting your agenda for your own deal. And you say, “Lord, I’m going to give you more of my time to seek you, to pray, to study, to be with you, while that’s hard on your flesh maybe initially, it becomes a seed bed for new things that God wants to bring forth in you and through you. And even things that the enemy meant for harm and evil where we’ve experienced death, I believe that if we will set our expectation and our faith in such a way that even out of what the enemy did, God is able to bring new things to life. He’s able to transform us and change us. And I’ll finish with those quotes.

Trials will develop in us patient endurance…

But I’m reminded of Romans 5:3. Paul writes, “Even in times of trouble, we can have a joyful confidence.” This is the Passion translation. “Knowing that our pressures.” In the King James, I think the word tribulation is used. That’s the Greek word thlipsis that our tribulation, our pressures, our adversity will develop in us patient endurance. In other words, Paul is saying that trials, suffering, pressure, difficulty, loss can be, or should be, a pathway to expanded capacity, developed character, maturity, and certainty of hope.” And I will say if we set our expectation, I believe can birth new things, a greater anointing in us. God does not intend for us to be overcome by the enemy, but to overcome him. And to rise above the tide that swells around us. Hallelujah! Glory to God.

Our past does not define our future…

So just let that be your expectation today. Whatever comes your way, start declaring “I’m going to rise above it. Greater is He that is in me than he that is in the world. The greater one is on my side. He always causes me to triumph.” We don’t have to freak out and fret when we feel the pressure, when we sense fear lurking, when we feel dread or we’re reminded of what happened in the past that didn’t work out so well. Our past does not define our future. It’s not prophetic of our future. You are the one who is to prophesy and to speak over and sow into your future… words of life, amen. Words of faith… Words of positive expectation… Prayers in the spirit that’s sow into your future and prepare a way for your life to change, to not go up and down like a roller coaster. But to be on a perpetual incline. That’s not saying you’re not going to face difficulties from time to time.

We are to be like our father in the faith, Abraham, who grew strong in faith…

But our lot in life, our destination, according to the Scriptures is that we as the righteous would grow brighter and brighter, stronger and stronger. Like our Father in the faith, Abraham, as we read in the Old Testament, grew strong in faith. Because he was filled with God. And as I referenced yesterday, he remained at his post, even though it looked impossible, even though the Bible says he was well past years. And so was his wife. How was the promise of God going to happen? If you’re alive and breathing, you’ve got breath in your lungs and stride in your step. I’m here to say this morning, God is about His business to fulfill the promise to accomplish that prayer, to do for you what you can’t do for yourself. He simply needs us to stay at our posts… to as the New Testament says, “be being or perpetually continually be being filled each day with God.” Using our time, using our intentionality, using our words.

The Bible goes on to say that we’re to be being filled, speaking out in psalms and hymns and spiritual sayings, singing and making melody in our hearts to the Lord. I learned that as a young person. I still embrace that and live according to that. What am I saying? Being yielding and being filled with God’s Spirit. Let me finish with these quotes here.

Smith Wigglesworth also said “Nothing is impossible to a man or woman filled with the Holy Spirit. Being filled with the Spirit is worthwhile no matter what it costs.” He also said, “I see anything not done in the spirit as a failure.” And it’s true. We can study it out in scripture. God intends for us as the New Testament Church to do all that we do… to live, to move, to have our being in the Spirit, filled, saturated, inundated baptized perpetually in the Spirit. In that place of supernaturalness. Because that’s the place of perpetual answers, perpetual renewal and strength, perpetual victory, perpetual anointing and power. Amen?

For whatever reason… we leak!

That’s where God can do in you and through you what you don’t even know you need, or don’t even realize what He wants to do through you. That’s where we become receptacles and reservoirs of God’s power. I don’t know why it is, but the Bible teaches us that every day we’ve got to gather up Manna. The Old Testament stories that manna only lasted for a day, unless it went into the Sabbath. But every day they had to go out and gather fresh manna. And for whatever reason, we leak… spiritually speaking in different ways. And so each and every day, this has to be our spiritual habit and practice. And it’s not a drudgery. It’s not a “half to.” It’s a delight. And it’s a joy because you start to experience the momentum that it brings to your life. You start to experience the answers that flow in and the perpetual renewal and that Christianity isn’t a dogmatic religion. No! It’s to be life and it’s to be spirit. And it’s to be God coming to earth each and every day, never leaving us in fact, in us and through us, the God of heaven.

Ephesians 3:19, that you may be filled…

Ephesians 3:19 in the Amplified says, “that you may be filled [through all your being] unto all the fullness of God [may have the richest measure of the divine Presence, and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself]!”

We, the collective body of Christ a body. This is God’s intent. According to the revelation of the Holy Spirit, the divine teacher through the apostle Paul, that we would be a body. And that we would have all the fullness of God, may have the richest measure of the divine presence and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God himself.”

Come on now! That is God’s plan. It’s always been His plan. That’s why Jesus paid such a high price. And while He was drained of His blood and very water, why He gave His last breath to this work of redemption. That there might be an all-consuming always an eternal flow of grace that we might perpetually once we’ve received Him live cleansed and holy and justified and sanctified in right in His sight as His very sons and daughters, a temple prepared for the very use and purpose of being a body filled with God Himself.

God, uppercase “G,” God of the universe…

I don’t mean some lower case “g” god. I mean, uppercase “G” God of the universe who flung the cosmos into existence in the dateless past. The upper case “G” God, the God of heaven, the Almighty, the good and glorious and beautiful Lord of heaven. The one who is still expanding in His creation at a rate reaching and approaching the speed of light. Why, of course, He can snap His fingers and everything can change in your circumstances, in your church, and in your life in a day. Why, of course, power should flow when we open our mouths in adoration, in worship, in the spirit and in prayer.

We’re not playing church. We’re not going through some religious motion. We’re not carrying on some family tradition here. We’re called for such a time as this. We’ve been redeemed for this. The supernaturalness of God, the power of God, the fullness, as it says here in Ephesians, of God.

Jesus got up well before dawn to pray…

And if you want to bring Jesus’s narrative and His life on the earth experience into this in Luke 4:1, it says, “and Jesus being full of the Holy Spirit returned from Jordan because He had a habit.” If you mark your scriptures and you do due diligence and you study out the gospels, you’ll find that Jesus got up well before dawn. I’m sure it was hard on His flesh. Because He came to earth and took on the form of a human being. So He knows what it’s like to die little deaths every day… to refuse to push snooze on the alarm clock… instead, get up. They had far less creature comforts like we do in the 21st century back then and walk out in darkness to a desolate place, a mountain place behind a rock somewhere. It’s cold. There’s frost on the ground and pray and wait on His heavenly Father. He is our forerunner. He showed us the way. And it says here “and Jesus being full of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan, from that place of prayer, from that place of communion with His Father.

First Jesus was filled with the Holy Ghost and then He was led by the Holy Ghost…

There are other accounts where we see Him returning again from probably praying for a long period of time. Some Bible scholars say He got up at three, four in the morning, perhaps. And then suddenly He’s in the midst of His disciples at whatever 7, 8, 9. I don’t know. He said “Disciples, we’re going to go here.” He knew what to do because He was filled.

Or then we see Him performing a miracle or walking on the Sea of Galilee because He was filled. And the fact that He was filled is a reference or can be connected to the fact that He took some of His time. He died to Himself and devoted and scheduled a set time to be with His Father. He heard the invitation of His Father saying, “come to me.” That’s all we really need to know. Let’s not make Christianity too complex here. We’re called, we’re created to be with Him, to be filled with Him, to be receptacles of Him. And the outflow of that is ministry and answers and solutions and power and breakthrough and abundance and the fullness of life that He purchased and gave to us individually and collectively.

But once again, Luke 4:1 says, “and Jesus being filled of the Holy Ghost returned from Jordan and was led by the Spirit.” Notice that connection. He returned full of the Holy Ghost. And then He was led. I can’t tell you how many times in my life, where I just endeavored to spend time praying in the spirit and then oftentimes subconsciously without even me realizing it, in other words, my own understanding, I was led. I was in the right place at the right time, received the right opportunity, had people come to me and say, “We want to give you this. We want you to do this. We want you to step into that.” And I said that’s the favor of God. I gave all the credit to Him because I realized that wasn’t me. That was Him. Now I cooperated. And I did my part and I endeavored to be filled. And the outflow of that was organic and almost effortless favor and goodness. And really God.

Acts 2:4, they were all filled…

A couple more scriptures. Acts 2:4 says, “and they were all filled with the Holy Ghost and began to speak with other tongues as the Spirit gave them utterance.” You want to live full of the Spirit? You need to develop the spiritual habit and practice of praying much in the Holy Spirit, in other tongues.

Ephesians 5:15, live purposely…

Ephesians 5:15 says, “look carefully then how you walk. Live purposely and worthily and accurately, not as witless, but as wise.” If you jump down to verse 17, it says, “Therefore do not be vague and thoughtless and foolish, but understanding and firmly grasping what the will of the Lord is.” What’s the will of the Lord? Verse 18 says, “and do not be drunk.” In other words, don’t just leave your life to chance. Don’t just live haphazardly. The kingdom of God is not haphazard. It’s ordered by God. He has a plan for you today. He has a plan for us to pray in here in a couple moments. “And do not be drunk with wine.” Or just given over to just random living, uncontrolled living, you could say. “wherein is excess, but be filled with the Spirit.”

Ephesians 4:17…

There’s one more verse here. Ephesians 4:17 says, “So this I say and solemnly testify in the name of the Lord, as in his presence that you must no longer live as heathen Gentiles do in their perverseness in the folly, vanity and emptiness of their souls and the futility of their minds.” In other words, when we live empty, when we don’t take time to be filled, to yield to the river of God, to pray out in the Spirit, to nourish ourselves up on the Word, to spend time in His presence, then by default, we leak, like I said. And then we end up going back to the ways of the world, living out of the futility of our minds, out of the emptiness of our souls.

The fullness of God flushes out the enemy

I believe it was Jesus taught how it’s important when you’re set free from a demonic entity or from a stronghold, from anything in your life that while your soul is swept clean, so to speak, by the power of God, now it’s up to us to furnish and fill our inner life with some right things, with truth, with Him. Just something about it that will flush out… the fullness of God flushes out fear, flushes out whatever it is the enemy is trying to root in your life. And keeps it out and keeps him at bay.

So let me read this last quote: “living full of the spirit is the condition for God’s perfect and unhindered working in us and through us. The benefits of being full reach into our future and bless it.”

Again, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve experienced when I wanted to see promotion in my life, wanting to step into a new season, wanting to get to what I knew God had for me next. And the more I processed it, the more I couldn’t make it happen. But then I would just give myself to God a little bit more. I would maybe double up on my prayer time or spend a little bit more time with Him in certain ways. And miracle of miracles. Almost like effortlessly the breakthrough would come at just the right time. Because I did my part by living perpetually filled.

Prayed…

Father, we thank you that we can just reflect Lord on your journey on the words of scripture.

We pray together, Lord, that whatever is clinging to us today, whatever pressures are acting on our souls, whatever worries are trying to creep in, whatever things might happen later today that might come up in our journey. We thank you, Lord, that you’re already out ahead of that, that you already have made a way. And it’s our responsibility and intent to just open up and just receive preparation to receive and infilling.

I pray right now, Lord, that you would just douse us and just wash over each and every one of us… that you would fill our hearts, that you would fill our souls, that you would just wash over us right now.

I pray for a divine washing of the Spirit to wash out and wash away fears and dread and perpetual melancholy

Lord, I just speak deliverance. I speak life. I speak wholeness and declare healing and freedom and breakthrough in that area in people’s souls and in their minds and in their emotions and in their circumstances today

I declare that it cannot stay.

I say today that that burden is broken off of you, broken off the back of your soul.

I command wholeness and healing to enter in. I command light and truth and the ministry of the Holy Spirit and the flow of heaven to freely pour into you right now in the name of Jesus

Lord, we just surrender to you and say we need you. We need what you want to give and what you want to pour forth in this place today in our churches …

Father, we pray for renewal. We pray for an awakening. We pray for revival.

We pray for the whole church to open up …

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If you would like to watch the video of today’s morning prayer session, click on “Playlist” below.

  1. “Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist

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