Pastor Ken…
Good morning. Welcome everybody. Welcome to all of you that are logging online, joining us in our Facebook channel, YouTube, and online church. Welcome everybody.
Announcement…
I wanted to let you know that starting next week, we will be off for a brief Christmas break over the holidays. We will be off as far as prayer in the chapel and online is concerned starting next Monday. We’ll reconvene Tuesday, January 4, 2022. But we will be re-streaming online on our online church channel, just to keep you inspired and motivated and to be an encouragement to you.
Pastor Ken teaching on “The Presence of God”
This morning, I was thinking about how I love God’s presence. Truly just enjoy God’s presence. Even since I was young, it’s been His presence that has shaped me and affected me and propelled me and continued to keep me on God’s path and manifest presence in my life. And I was thinking the other day how significant His presence is in our lives.
In fact, when you’re in God’s presence, there’s just something about God that He makes you feel like you’re His favorite when you’re in His presence. And that you’re His only child. And you are in that moment when you’re in His presence, whether you’re in a collective gathering, or at home by yourself, or on a lonely country road just talking with God as you walk. Whatever the case is, God is able to manifest Himself in such a way in your heart that you feel like you’re His favorite and that you are His one and only. And, of course, in that moment, you are! And that’s significant.
As we go through the holiday season, we need to be cultivating presence… practicing the presence of God in our daily lives, not just when we log on for morning prayer or we step into this chapel. Let’s make an intention in our hearts that all through this season and as we cross the line into 2022, that we’re going to be a people who prize the presence of God, who pursue God. Amen? In such a way that we, too, begin to feel like we are God’s favorite … because you are! I am! This is kind of the thought I wanted to convey. It’s in God’s presence where you feel like you are His only child, and you are His favorite and you’re just so beloved and accepted and forgiven. It’s in that place that you’re activated. Ever thought about that? When you feel like you’re God’s favorite, when you experience His presence, there’s something deeper, something more profound and supernatural that’s going on. And one of those things is He is activating you. He’s inspiring you. He is working in you His good pleasure and His delight.
And so many times through the years when I’ve been in God’s presence and had those profound moments, I can tell He’s activating something in me. He’s stirring something in me. He’s fueling me, putting a “want to” in me … to want Him more and to want what He wants, to want what He desires, to pursue His calling and purpose and plan for my life. And so, first and foremost, we need the gift of God’s presence more than ever. Those around us need that gift. And there’s just something about the presence of God when it gets on you, it’ll get on others. You bring it. You tangibly bring it with you into your day-to-day life, into your relationships, into the marketplace, and to the workplace, into church, even. Amen. It’s something about how God has designed us that we were created as vessels, that have been cleansed and made fit and ready to be filled with God Himself. That we would be a carriers of God Himself to this world. What an amazing thought. Right?
And so keep that in your reflections today and as we approach Him in prayer and just know that His presence is doing far more than you can imagine in your natural intellect and understanding. This is important as well because I was thinking this morning a little bit about how… I’m always wanting to kind of “zoom out” in my perspective, in my prayer life and my daily life and just kind of look at things from a broader perspective. And one of the things, kind of holistically, that is probably very true is that much of the Church is probably not where it should be. I’m not necessarily pointing a finger or judging any one particular person. But we do know that Jesus warned us about being lukewarm. But the truth is so much of the church probably is lukewarm. I know myself. I’ll just speak for myself. There’ve been moments where I’m like, “Lord, I just repent for my lukewarmness. I repent for my slowness sometimes in spiritual things. I repent for relegating you to the margins of my day.” Not that I’d want it to, but it just happens in this busy, chaotic, very distracting world. Right?
What I’m saying is not to be condemnation at all to anyone, but from God’s perspective, I’m sure much of the Church world is very lukewarm. And we need His presence more than ever. We need to stir ourselves up to take hold of Him. No condemnation! Even when God speaks truth to us, even when He brings correction to us, He’s always sweetly smiling. His love is flowing. He’s not condemning. He’s passionate about us. He’s determined to lead us and prepare us for what comes next and what He has for us in our future.
And the reason this is important to emphasize for us individually is because lukewarmness, slothfulness, or slowness in a spiritual sense in the Church is because this is a dangerous time to live there.
Number one: Keep Our Lamps Full of Oil
We live in the hour where, number one, Jesus could return at any moment. So we’re admonished in scripture to have our lamps, so to speak our hearts, trimmed with the fullness of the Spirit, with the fullness of the presence of God. The Bible says to be circumspect and aware and discerning of the time and the season. And it goes on to say in one passage that we would be about the practice of prayer. That is what God is looking for because it’s prayer that keeps us connected, right? It’s prayer that draws upon the presence of God. It’s prayer that causes us to perpetually be filled with Him. And so, it’s a dangerous time to be lukewarm because He could return at any moment.
Number two: The Enemy Seeks to Deceive You
Number two, it’s a dangerous time to be lukewarm because the enemy is crazy. And he is active and endeavoring to deceive and to lead people astray. And that’s the diabolical thing of lukewarmness is you don’t even realize you’re lukewarm, that we’re not where we should be. And so I just want us to reflect on that for a moment and call out to God in our hearts, that He would stir in us again. I want to spend a few moments to pray for the Church at large. That’s really what’s on my heart. And we’re going to start by praying some of the Ephesians prayers, which we should be praying often.
The eyes of our understanding would be flooded and inundated with light and truth and perspective as God sees it. Hallelujah. Let’s not settle where we are. If you’re going through a tough time or facing a battle and nothing seems to change, I just pray that God would pour hope and encouragement and tantalizing experience of His presence into your life and into your circumstances. Because I’m here to remind us, there’s so much ahead for us. This is truly to be our brightest hour. That no matter what has gone, God is beckoning us forward. God is prompting us and inviting us to a bigger, more beautiful, more grace-filled, more full life in the days that we have yet on this earth but also in the time that is to come in the hereafter.
God is shining bright in this hour. He is cheering us on along with the hosts of heaven to continue to not grow weary, to not give up, to not succumb to the enemy’s deceptive ways. He’s cheering us on and encouraging us to shake off that lethargy, to shake off that which is status quo in your life. And it just starts with a prayer. It just starts with acknowledgement, honestly. And just calling out to God. Only He can do what needs to be done in our hearts and in the Church in this hour. But Jesus needs us, firstly, to look to and cooperate with Him … to call out to Him and let our hearts hunger and thirst for Him.
Even if you don’t feel it, you know it because you see it in the Word. The Bible says that those who hunger and thirst shall be satisfied. We’ve got to get hungry. We’ve got to stir our hearts and say, “Lord, I want more of you. I not only want more of what you have for me and your blessing and your purpose and your meaning for my future, but I want more of you.” He paid a high price through the sacrifice of His Son, that we would be made a perfect tabernacle house for the living God, that the same power that raised Jesus from the dead would dwell in you and me, that we would not lack anything, but that we would be filled with the full measure of God Himself. That’s the will of God for you. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t reached that point yet. And so it’s often I find myself, “Lord, I’m sorry for my slowness and my indifference at times and my lukewarmness. Stir in me afresh. Fill me with your power. I want to continue to know you and go deeper and farther into the fullness of all that you’ve prepared through the beautiful and beloved redemptive work of our Lord Jesus.”
So today I just encourage you in that. The truth is the only answer that we need to receive, the only gift that we really need is the gift of Him … to have more of Him in our lives manifest. Like I said yesterday, the key … the main thing is the manifestation of the Spirit of God on the earth. We just got done singing, “Emmanuel God With Us.” God with us. He is with us, Church. He is with you wherever you are in the world. Yield your heart to Him this morning, open your life to Him. Stop stuffing those feelings of hurt and pain and regret and start inviting … Exchange stuffing and ignoring and remaining distracted in your life for invitation, inviting the Holy Spirit, inviting the manifestation of God into the deepest recesses of your soul, into your mind, into your body.
We’re called to be a people who perpetually yield, that not only practice the presence of God, but practice the habit of yieldedness to the Spirit of God, that He would take control of us. It’s not about us making our own way in life. It’s not about us doing our own deal, even though it might be the American way. It’s about surrender. It’s about submission. It’s about bowing our hearts and our lives to the One who was and is and yet is to come, who laid His life down in the timeless past and said to the Father, “I’ll go for them. I know that things are going to get messed up by the enemy and that your people are going to be diverted and distracted and beat up and lulled into sinfulness. But I will go to redeem them. I will go to buy them back. I will go to make a way where there isn’t a way.”
Jesus is still the Waymaker today in this postmodern 21st century world. He is the Waymaker for your finances. He is the Waymaker for the one that will go ahead and make the way in your nation, in your city, in the chaos, in the uncertainty, in the unprecedented circumstances you might be in. He’s the One that is making a way now! Period! So let’s yield to Him. Let’s call out to Him. Let’s perpetually be going after Him, opening our hearts to Him and inviting Him into the messiness. He wants to come into the messiness of our lives, the messiness of our situations and circumstances. He wants to enter in with us. He wants to be there with us. He wants to make a way. He wants to bring resolution. He wants to bring wholeness and healing. Hallelujah! He fought for us. Do you realize that? He fought for us. In His life and ministry, He fought for us. In the garden of Gethsemane with His thoughts and feelings, He fought those off that He would go all the way to the cross. He fought loneliness. He fought all kinds of thoughts I’m sure that bombarded His soul as He hung between heaven and earth, He fought for you. He fought for me.
You’re like, “Well great, Ken, what are you saying?” I’m saying that we should fight for Him, that we should fight to give our lives to Him. That we should fight to be a people that are about our Father’s business in prayer. That we should be a people that refuse to relent or to give up, to quit, but to keep going on.
You can… I can shrug off the beggarly elements of our flesh in this world each day and reach out to God and have more of Him. Hallelujah! We can resist and fight the temptation to live by our feelings and live by the lens of what we see through our five physical senses and choose faith. He fought to give us the measure of the God kind of faith. The Bible says all of us have been given a measure of the faith of God, that God kind and quality of God’s faith has been given to us.
Scripture goes on to impart to us that we’re to fight the good fight of faith and lay hold on therefore eternal life. The God kind of life. The furtherance, the promotion, the healing, the whatever that He has for you that you desire. We must fight now.
Not fight the Devil, because the Devil has been put under foot. Clearly the Bible says, especially in the writings of the great apostle Paul, that Jesus made a show openly among all the hosts of heaven, among all the kingdoms that the Devil was cast down into the earth and he was made a show openly through the death, burial, and resurrection of Jesus, that he was defeated, that he was stripped naked of all his ability to hurt or harm us and brought to nothingness, even embarrassed one translation says. Embarrassed openly before all the worlds. That is the fullness of God’s power.
We talked about that last week. Annie mentioned how grace and the redemptive work is an overpayment. It is so much an overpayment. Oh, the power and the glory and the awesomeness and the display of God is so far reaching that I’m convinced that’s why God is still creating the cosmos in the universe because there will be no end to the fullness and the power and the glory and the love and the goodness of God of God. The universe cannot contain it all. So God is still expanding it to this day, according to scientists. Hallelujah.
So why wouldn’t we want to fight the good fight of faith? Why wouldn’t we wanna fight to take hold of God every day? Why wouldn’t we want to fight to take hold of His Word and let it be our meditation? Let it be what we program our hearts and our souls with, that we would live by it. Why wouldn’t we want to fight for the rightness of God in our lives. I don’t care if nothing has changed. I don’t care if I don’t feel any differently. I don’t care if I’ve been believing for the same thing for 10 years or two decades. I don’t care. I’m going to continue. I’m going to keep going after God, because we’ve been called for such a time as this. You are where you are because God has placed you there. Maybe not in a particular set of circumstances, but physically where you are, in the family where you are, in the nation where you are, in this city where you are, in the church community where you are. He has you there for a specific purpose.
He’s called us to fight. Once again, not to fight the enemy, but to fight to lay hold of more of Him, to contend for what He’s passionate about. The Spirit of God… if you’ll just drop down from here into here, you’ll sense that He is contending for certain things in this time. He’s contending for the world to come to the knowledge of Jesus. He’s contending for the Church to be aroused and to wake up. He’s contending for the pray-ers to step into their place of assignment. He’s contending, believing, passionate, and inviting us to stand with Him and yield to Him and let the very command of God rise up in us through our words.
Brother Hagin said this. It’s a short little prophetic word that he gave a number of years ago. He said, “Speaking by the Spirit, not just speaking words out of your own mind or thinking but speaking by the Spirit words that are inspired by the Spirit of God.” See the more you just yield … sometimes I put my hand on my belly, because the Bible says your spirit is in your belly in here. And that helps me just locate where I’m at. Okay. This is the real me. My real me is not up here. Real me is not this that you see, you know, real me is down in here. So I just put my hand there often. “Lord, I just yield to you in there.” Sometimes you can just sense when you yield to Him. I’ve done that in seasons where I’ve battled fear. I can sense fear. I can sense it tangibly dissolving. And I can feel just He’s coming and filling in. And I can sense wholeness. I can sense joy and love … kind of just like a lock and dam system on a river where you open up one lock and the water surges in to fill that lock. When you yield, God just surges into your soul and into your circumstances. It comes through your spirit. But then it doesn’t stop there. It’ll go into your body and into your emotions and your mind and your circumstances. But God enters through the spirit person, the spirit man. That’s where we connect with God, because He’s a spirit and you’re a spirit, right?
So the connection is in the spirit… from your spirit, who you really are. But once you make that connection, God spills over and deluge begins to flow into the rest of you and affect you and bring power and healing and wholeness and all that you need gets delivered in that way.
That’s what the enemy fights so much of Christianity. So many believers through distraction where people can’t even stop and just exhale. Just be. Because that’s where God is. He’s in the stillness. He’s in the quietness. He says be still and know that I am God. I am God of the heavens. I’m God of your situation. Being still permits Him to be God in your situation and in your soul. And in your life. One translation says cease you’re striving. Stop! Cease your striving. Be still and know that I am God.
Brother Hagin went on to say, “Speaking by the Spirit. Not just speaking words out of your own mind or thinking, but speaking by the spirit words that are inspired by the Spirit of God, words that well up from within you.”
One of the reasons why you’ll feel like God’s favorite when you’re in His presence is because of how He speaks to you and what He speaks to you. I can remember in the earliest days when I walked with God, just how it just affected me when I would be into God’s presence. Or He’d speak to me. Oh, just excited me. As I said earlier, it activated me. And it gave me a hunger to know Him more. It gave me a deep desire to follow Him, to yield my life to Him. And say, “Lord, wherever you go, I will go; whatever you want me to do, I will do.”
“Well, Ken, I’ve never heard that taught before.” Well, gosh, last time I checked in my Bible that’s actually bottom line Christianity that we would lay down our lives. Since when was it all about just what we want? Okay, I’m getting a little strong there. But it’s true! And you know what? It’s so true because this is where favor really begins to flow. This is where God really begins to take control. This is where His purpose for your life begins to manifest and miracles begin to happen. Where all that He has begins to flow into your life when you lay down what you want and yourself and your thoughts and your ways and your preconceived ideas, and say, “Lord, less of me, what I think and what I want and more of you.”
We must surrender to authority, to the authority of His lordship in our lives if you want to know true power and you want to know true presence and true favor. If you want to walk in the power of God, then you must walk under authority. We must move from a place of being in charge of our lives to submitting to the Lordship and authority of God, excited to obey God.
Pride, rebellion, resistance, disobedience must be burned out of us. There are greater things that God wants to do in you and through you. Those are just some of my thoughts from the other night.
Brother Hagin went on to say, “Those words spoken boldly bring forth great happenings. Speaking by the spirit and so the glory of God shall come into manifestation and some will see it like a cloud that hangs over the heads of the people. Others may not see anything, but they sense the mighty move of His Spirit. Speaking by His Spirit, yielding your tongue under the Holy Ghost. But you see, taking time to pray in the Spirit, taking time to pray in other tongues will get you tuned up. Will edify you and get your tongue hooked up to your spirit so that He who dwells in your spirit can give you utterance. Then He takes over.”
That’s what we want. We want God to take over. He can’t take over the world until He takes over us individually. He can’t take over the Church at large until He takes over us individually. This is where it begins. And he says, “And you speak out what He says, not what you think.” Oh my! If we only knew the true happenings in the Spirit dimension, based on what we speak, based on what we pray. It’s far greater than we’ve ever imagined.
“And you speak out what He says, not what you think. Speak out what He wants. And so the spirit of seeing and knowing, into greater manifestation shall come. But all of these, all nine of the manifestations, all of these worketh that one in the selfsame spirit. And at the same time, the inspirational gifts, men, women speaking by the Spirit prophecy, inspired utterance by tongues and interpretations shall bring forth marvelous statements and bring to pass and bring into being in this sense realm where men can see and know the operation of the Spirit of God and the manifestations of the Spirit of God and the demonstrations of the Spirit of God. So rejoice you and be glad.”
So there seems to be a collaboration with us and heaven as far as what God wants to do in our lives and wants to do in this world. As we yield to Him, He inspires us to speak, to pray, to command, to orchestrate what is going on in this earth realm. So, let’s pray out of Ephesians one and three. So I’m just going to pray this. You guys just agree with me on this. And these are verses you can highlight in your YouVersion app or in your Bible, or you can type them up and print them out. But the Pauline prayers would be a good place to start as far as making sure that we are hooked up with God, tuned up in the spirit, moving away from lukewarmness to fullness and being on fire for Him.
Praying Pauline Prayers…
Paul writes in Ephesians 1:15… we’re just going to pray this. It says, “Therefore, I also after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus, and your love for all the saints do not cease to give thanks for you making mention of you in my prayers.” And so, Father, we pray that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory may give us a spirit of wisdom in this hour, would give us a spirit of wisdom and knowledge and understanding to the church in this hour, wherever we might be in the world, whatever church we’re a part of, we pray that the God of our Lord Jesus, the Father of glory may give us a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him.
Lord, we pray that the eyes of our understanding would be enlightened, that we would know what is the hope of our calling. And what are the riches of the glory of your inheritance in the saints and what is the exceeding greatness of the power of God toward us who believe according to the working of your mighty power which you worked, or exerted in Christ, when you raised Him from the dead and seated Him at the right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality, far above all power, far above all might, far above all dominion, far above any set of circumstances that we find ourselves in today. And even far above every name that is named not only in this age, but also in that which is to come.
And, Lord, help us to see and come into greater clarity and understanding in our lives daily, in our churches, in our journeys that you put all things under Jesus’s feet and you gave Jesus to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that fills all in all.
Thank you, Father. We also pray out of Ephesians 3:14. We pray, for this reason Lord we bow our knees to you. The Father of our Lord Jesus Christ from whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. Lord, that you would grant us according to the riches of your glory to be strengthened even right now, Lord, as we pray this. There are no those that need strengthening. Each of us needs it. Some in certain or specific ways because of what they’re going through, what they’re facing emotionally, physically, spiritually, in some way. Lord, we pray that they would be strengthened with might through your Spirit. Strengthen us, Lord, in our inner man. We pray that Christ would dwell in our hearts through faith and that we would be rooted and grounded. Even today that our roots of grow down deep, deeper, and deeper rooted and grounded in love. And that we will be able to discern or comprehend with all saints what is the width and the length and the depth and the height, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses all human knowledge… that we would be filled with all the fullness of God.
Lord, we just thank you.
Come on now, Church, just call out for that in your heart, that we would be filled. Lord, fill us, fill our churches, fill our hearts today, fill our lives today with the fullness that you intend to fill us with… we open ourselves to you right now.
Now to Him who is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think according to the power that works in us… we just release that power that works in us today to Him be the glory in the Church by Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever and ever.
Father, we just bow our hearts. We bow our lives to you today. We just are so humbled in the presence of love. And the profoundness of your grace and your goodness and your forgiveness toward us. We’re humbled in the presence of such an overwhelming over payment of love and goodness and grace and mercy and kindness and forgiveness.
Lord, we just thank you so much… Words truly don’t even do it justice. So we just humble our hearts before you today. And we just say, Lord, we can’t do anything apart from you.
Repentance…
We repent for our nation today … as a representative, we just repent for our nation in our waywardness and our absence from the things of God and how far away we’ve gone. We humble ourselves and say, Lord, forgive us. We repent before you as an individual, as a representative of a family of a church of a nation, perhaps. We receive your forgiveness right now, as we just acknowledge our lukewarmness…
Blindfolds to be stripped off…
We pray for blindfolds to be stripped off of our hearts, Lord, blind spots being exposed in Jesus’ name. We pray for discernment to penetrate… light truth, understanding to penetrate our souls today in particular, in those areas that trip up Christians, that trip us up in our journey …
Prayer for discernment…
We pray for discerning light and truth and revelation today to enter in, to stream down into this nation, into our hearts, into our lives, into those who are far from you, into those who have gone away from the things that.
Prayer for illumination…
We pray today, Lord, for a holy streaming of light and illumination and a gripping of people’s souls and arresting by the spirit of God to wake us up and help us to see that our eyes would be opened and fully illuminated
We pray over the atmosphere of homes and believers. And maybe some of us here in this nation. We pray for a clearing out and a cleaning up and an opening up today of the spiritual environment and atmosphere in the name of Jesus. We push out of the way every obstacle and form of opposition that has been getting in the way and preventing certain things coming through the spirit dimension and into this realm …
We command every holdup to stop … every holdup, every obstacle, everything that’s detouring the plan of God, we break your assignment. We push you out of the way, and we clear a path for our God to come into those situations, into this nation, into our lives, into our circumstances, into the heart of that loved one or that friend who has gone way out into the world somewhere.
