Morning Prayer Notes for Wednesday, December 8, 2021

Peg led group in worship…

Pastor Ken…

Welcome everyone. I’m glad to be with you guys this morning to pray.

Opening prayer…

Lord, we stand before you and honor and reverence you today. Lord, thank you for your faithfulness. We thank you that you’re so near … you’re right here with us. So we just yield over our hearts. We surrender any care or worry or fear to you. And we shift over into what you want to say and do … into how you want to pray and orchestrate this time with each of us connected. Lord, we just thank you that you have a purpose, and you have an intentionality today to accomplish some things in us and through us in Jesus’ name.

Sharing the Word…

Well, this morning I thought we’d maybe start here. I was reflecting on not only the supernaturalness and the power of prayer, but the practicality and the everydayness of prayer. Maybe this seems a little basic for some of you. Or maybe this is just for one person tuning in online for the first time. I don’t know. But I know for myself, I’m continually stirring myself up on those things which I’ve already learned. And I was reflecting last night on my own journey a little bit. I was reflecting on a particular verse in James chapter five. Maybe I’ll just start there as a point of beginning. I’m going to read it from the Passion translation.

It says, “Are there any believers in your fellowship suffering great hardship and distress? Encourage them to pray! Are there happy, cheerful ones among you? Encourage them to sing out their praises! 14 Are there any sick among you? Then ask the elders of the church to come and pray over the sick and anoint them with oil in the name of our Lord. 15 And the prayer of faith will heal the sick and the Lord will raise them up, and if they have committed sins they will be forgiven. 16 Confess and acknowledge how you have offended one another and then pray for one another to be instantly healed.”

Evidently there’s a connection with forgiveness and not holding onto offense and carrying baggage toward other people. In other words, processing that, praying about that, releasing that to the Lord and going to that person and making that right. There’s a connection from that to being healed. In this case, it says “instantly healed.”

The verse goes on to say, “…for tremendous power is released through the passionate, heartfelt prayer of a godly believer!” Isn’t that good? Verse 17 says, “Elijah was a man with human frailties, just like all of us, but he prayed and received supernatural answers.[aa] He actually shut the heavens over the land so there would be no rain for three and a half years! 18 Then he prayed again and the skies opened up over the land so that the rain came again and produced the harvest.”

I love that. And I feel like the Lord is just kind of stirring that in our consciousness this morning. If not you, then at least me. So you’re going to get what He’s stirring in me. And that is the practicality and the everydayness and the necessity and the urgency of prayer.

I’ve shared this thought before, that it has always been simple prayer from ordinary people that brings God into our everyday world producing extraordinary results. And as I said yesterday, the Holy Spirit is our divine coach and mentor. And He’s just right there coaching us today saying, “Hey! Here I am on the sidelines. I want to coach you today. I want to mentor you today. I have some things I want to do in you and through you today.”

We can’t overlook the fact that it said here in James 5:17, that Elijah prayed and it stopped the heavens. This was a simple man who lived long ago. He had human weaknesses and frailties, just like you and I do. Yet he was willing and bold enough to step into the fray of whatever was going on in his culture to simply pray, to leverage his God-given privilege as a child of God. And how much more we children of God, right? Because of the blood of Jesus and because of our covenant of grace to be able to step in, not only into the messiness and the challenges and the unknowns and the issues of our lives, but as well our world and our churches and communities and pray like Elijah prayed from a heartfelt, passionate place, a simple prayer from us ordinary people to produce. Notice what it says about Elijah. “Then he prayed again in the skies, the very skies, in other words, the heavens opened up over the land.” Don’t miss this. “So that the rain came again and produced the harvest.”

Say “harvest!” God desires that we would be people who produced harvest that reaps precious fruit, that bring forth the rain, that precipitate revival, awakening, and change. That reroute the trajectory of people’s lives and situations. We are the answer! I mean, don’t get me wrong. Jesus is the answer, but He’s in us, right? And we’re part of His body. He’s the head who orchestrates all things. He’s our mentor. He’s our coach. He’s our helper. He’s the one standing there trying daily to get our attention, to say, “Hey, this is what I want you to do. This is what I want you to pray.”

It’s beautiful when you go through scripture and you read about all the different kinds of prayer. There’s the prayer of faith. There’s the prayer of consecration, the prayer of worship and thanksgiving, the prayer of intercession, the prayer of salvation, the prayer of casting your cares over onto the Lord. The prayer of supplication.

I’m going to read this verse too because it kind of speaks to that. It says in Ephesians 6:16, “In every battle, take faith as your wrap-around shield, for it is able to extinguish the blazing arrows coming at you from the evil one! 17–18 Embrace the power of salvation’s full deliverance, like a helmet to protect your thoughts from lies. And take the mighty razor-sharp Spirit-sword of the spoken word of God.”

In other words, he’s talking about our armaments. And then he says, “pray passionately.” Many Bible commentaries will say if you look at the analogy of a Roman soldier and the armaments that they clothe themselves with, which is what Paul is reflecting on when he wrote this passage. When he talked about the sword of the spirit, the helmet of salvation, having your feet shod with the preparation of the gospel of peace, the shield of faith which can extinguish all the fiery darts of the wicked. He also had to be thinking about when he penned this next verse something called the “Lance of Prayer.” Which is a long javelin sort of instrument that was used by the Roman soldiers as a device to hurdle toward the enemy and deal with, take out, or dispatch the enemy before they even got close to them.

And Paul really is referring in this next passage to the Lance of Prayer. Because he says, “Pray passionately in the Spirit, as you constantly intercede with every form of prayer at all times. Pray the blessings of God upon all his believers.” Isn’t that good? And so I was reflecting on that last night of the practicality and the need for us to not just leave our prayer life to chance… to leave situations that we’re familiar with that we see and recognize and hear about to chance. But to be ever more intentional in this day an hour … I’m thinking of the passage in the New Testament that says to not be slothful, that we’re not to be slothful in spiritual things. Slothful doesn’t mean lazy necessarily. It means slow to respond, slow in our prayer life, slow to deal with situations, slow to react and get serious and passionate about injustices that we see.

So I feel like God is endeavoring to press down on some things in our hearts, put His finger on some things. And one of those things is for us to become a people that are highly agile, a community of people that are quick and responsive that really cultivate God’s heart within us through His Word and through prayer and through times of worship and waiting on Him so that we more and more begin to hate what He hates and love what He loves.

Where we’re quick to dispatch the enemy, to hurdle the lance of prayer when we see problems arising, when we see situations that aren’t right. That’s one thing I’ve always loved about Pastor Mac and Pastor Lynne. They have this fierceness in their spirit about them in regard to God and what should be and could be in our world. When they see an injustice or something that doesn’t line up with God’s Word or what they know to be true in their heart that God wants, they mobilize, they influence, they pray. They call us together as an army in our company, online and in-person to make a difference. To not sit back and just relegate prayer and situations, even personally or even globally or nationally to the margins of our thought life.

One of the things I’m sensing this morning is God saying, we need to pull prayer into the center, the core of who we are and what we do and think and act on and are each and every day. Because like Elijah, God has called us to this generation, called you and called me to this time and hour, to this gathering of pray-ers online, in-person around the world so that we too can stop the enemy. So that we too can open the heavens so that it would rain once again. That a harvest would come forth.

That’s just a great spiritual truth there in James 5:17. He prayed. A simple man. An ordinary person brought God into an ordinary world to produce extraordinary results through prayer. Through words. Through his supplication, his earnestness, his passion. That God would have what He wants in his lifetime, in his generation on earth at that time. I want to read another verse… a hallmark verse for prayer. Matthew 7:7 says, “Ask, and the gift is yours. Seek, and you’ll discover. Knock, and the door will be opened for you. 8 For every persistent one will get what he asks for. Every persistent seeker will discover what he longs for. And everyone who knocks persistently will one day find an open door.”

We have not, James four says, because we ask not. You might be thinking, “Well, Ken, I don’t need anything.” Well, that’s awesome. But the world needs something. The world needs us. It needs you. It needs me to pray. Maybe you need you to pray today. Is anybody going through a tough time? Let him or her pray. But if you’re good, then great. We celebrate that. Now it’s time to take up our armament and march into battle. March into our daily lives, asking, seeking, knocking, requesting that the heavens be opened up over our marketplace, over our communities, over our families, over our situations.

Make no mistake about it. It is the simplicity and the almost, I don’t know… just like the ordinariness of just simple prayer, a simple prayer of faith, for example, that will produce miracles still to this day. But He’s looking for some Elijahs right now. He’s looking for Joshuas right now. He’s looking for some Annas right now that we read about it in the New Testament to pray, to step out into a place of audacity and boldness, understanding that God answers 100% of the prayers for things we don’t ask for. Right? That He’s cheering us on to return to a childlike faith, where we talk to the Father about every aspect of our lives in our world. Where we ask Him and release our faith for every need, every desire, every situation. Where we call things out specifically.

In reflecting on my own journey when I was a Freshman in college, I got a hold of a book show called “The Fourth Dimension,” which is where I cut my teeth on how to pray. I learned spiritual principles of the prayer of faith, about how we’re to ask specifically for things, that the Holy Spirit is there coaching you not only what to ask for, but how to ask for it. And I can recall as a college kid hungry for God, hungry for what He wanted in my life, praying for things like a car by color, praying for certain things I wanted on that car like a sunroof and a good stereo. And I would journal those things. I prayed for a chair. I prayed for a job. I prayed to find a church before I found Living Word. I prayed for direction for my future. I prayed for finances. I prayed when I had a cold and said, “how dare you, devil?”

I just got so full of God reading brother Kenneth Hagin’s books, meditating on scriptures like Mark 11:23 and 24 and many others. I just took God at His Word as an 18-year-old kid and began to pray, began to journal, began to march into God every day. And you know what? Miracles began to happen. So much so that sometimes I was kind of slow to recognize, “Oh my gosh, there in my driveway is the very thing I prayed for down to the very color.” Because there’s something about specificity in prayer. When you pray with specificity, it releases the hand of God to go to work, to manifest that in your life.

When the new agers in the world talk about manifesting things; let’s don’t let them steal that from us. God has called us to be a people that bring about the reality of God on the earth … to manifest heaven on earth through our praying, through our stand of faith, through us employing the promises of God in every situation, through us being bold to lay hands on the sick to cast out demonic entities that are sponsoring things and affecting people negatively.

He’s calling us back to a childlike faith to recognize that He is the God of “yes.” He’s waiting to say yes to your prayer. He’s waiting to say yes to your dream. He’s waiting to say yes to the person you will lay hands on today… to the person you share your faith with today. Come on now! He’s waiting to say yes to our prayers for revival for America, for Europe, for all corners of the world… He’s waiting to say yes if we’ll even speak to the elements. I can say that. I’ve been in a storm, winds blowing 80 to 100 miles an hour and spoke to the elements and spoke to my own soul in the midst of that crazy chaotic situation with trees blowing down all around me. And it responded. My soul responded. The environment responded.

“Oh, Ken, I can’t take that. That’s just too far out.” Well, keep walking with God. He’s far out. Hallelujah. So don’t loosen your grip on what you’re praying about. Don’t let go or loosen your grip on the promise of God for you, whether that’s something small or something great. If you haven’t been praying about anything… If you’re not believing for anything, then let this be kind of an agitation, a moment of stirring your faith of this morning, because make no mistake about it. The Lord did not endow us with such spiritual armament and authority and privilege to have an equal possession and position with Jesus for us to do nothing. For us even just to get our own needs met. I may have cut my teeth on faith and prayer as a college kid, believing for finances to pay my tuition bill or a car to drive or whatever. But that was just kindergarten. That was just the beginning step for me to learn, to move, and have my being in the spirit… to pray and to supplicate and to intercede and to pray prayers of faith. That was just me learning. Now down to this day, of course, I’m praying for many more things like you probably are. But my point is God has called us to engage every day to put our life, our faith, our prayers, our words, our mouths into gear, and to go. That’s what God’s saying. Put it into gear. Put your faith into gear and let’s go! Like Tom Brady’s commercial for Avis. “Let’s go!”

That’s what God’s saying every day. He’s the God of yes. And He’s the God of saying, “Let’s go.” We’re well able. Let’s go up at once as Joshua and Caleb once said long ago. We’re well able. Let’s go up at once for we are well able. The defenses of our enemies have departed them, left them, and God is with us. His favor rests on us.

The truth be told, the enemy is crazy and nuts in this hour. And it seems like he’s trying to perpetrate darkness at every turn and attack the Church and attack people’s lives because the truth is, he’s scared spitless that you’re going to step into the full reality of who you are. Because he knows and every demonic entity that followed him in the fall knows that they’re out and you’re in. Jesus made it clear in the Gospel that Lucifer was cast like lightning out of heaven and into this earth realm, for a season. He was cast down from his place of authority and privilege. And guess what? Jesus came to redeem. He came to buy us back. He came to win and to call a family to the name of Jesus that we would now be privileged ones. That we would become kings and priests. That we would be the ones who would be speaking spirits on the earth, putting our faith in gear and bringing about change and manifesting the plan of God. So don’t loosen your grip.

I know I’m preaching, but we’re going to pray soon. I’m just stirring you up this morning. I’m imparting some things to you, hopefully at the center of what I’m saying is, “arouse yourself.” If something’s not working, if there needs to be a change, whether it’s you personally in your extended family, in your culture, in your city, in your nation. We are not hopeless. We are called of God. We among all people have hope. We among all people are endowed with the supernaturalness and the supernatural DNA of God of heaven itself to have hope and to put ourselves in gear and to bring change.

And it might just be that you’re one prayer away from a completely different life. That you’re one prayer away from a shift in that situation, in your relationship, in your city. I don’t know! But I do know that prayer changes us and prayer is to change the world. Hallelujah.

So catch this. This I feel like is for some of us here. Some of us probably started out really strong. Like Paul at the church at Galatia that started out in the spirit. He admonished him. He said, you started out well. You started out in the spirit. You started out living by faith, trusting in grace. But somewhere along the way, you got into works. You started to go through the motions. You got religious. And you started doing things out of your own effort.

And then He said, “stir yourselves up and come back to letting the Holy Spirit mentor you and coach you and lead you. Come back to a place where you put yourself, your faith in gear each and every day. About small circumstances and, of course, big situations. Because that situation and the transformation that God desires to bring to that situation globally, nationally, individually, the transformation of that could just be waiting for you to pray… for somebody to take up arms to use and hurdle their Lance of Prayer. Amen.

This is good preaching this morning! Come on now! So some of us may have started out strong and maybe we started out believing in praying and using our faith in all kinds of ways. But along the way, we got familiar with God. We got familiar maybe with prayer. And we kind of like started leaving it to chance. Or maybe we didn’t see an answer or the dream hasn’t come yet. Well, the Spirit of God is saying “don’t loosen your grip on the promise or on your dream. Don’t grow weary in your believing or in well-doing, or your stand of faith.” The answer has been given. Give thanks to God in advance. And grow stronger in faith because it’s just a matter of time before you see the reality of your prayer, of your dream, of the promise of God. Amen.

So go back and pick up those things that you were believing for and continue to give God thanks, expecting answers and change in that situation. Thank you, Father.

Prayed…

Lord this morning, we thank you that we can pull you into the center of our lives. We thank you, Father, for this great privilege to pray, to seek, to knock, to ask, to stand on your promises and on your Word to bring change to our world, to bring change to our own lives and situations. And so we just lift our hearts to you this morning.

Prayer of repentance for prayerlessness…

And we repent where we have missed it. We repent where we have been lethargic, where we have been slow to go… where we’ve dragged our feet… where we’ve been indifferent. As representatives of this church and in of our nations here and around the world, wherever people are joining us from, we just repent and pray the prayer of repentance. We say, Lord, forgive us for our slowness, for our dullness, for our mediocrity. We repent for our lukewarmness and for leaving our first love.

Prayer for a stirring…

We just invite you to stir in our hearts today, stir in our churches, stir in our families, a fresh oil and fresh wine and a fresh wind of the Spirit. That just causes us to be set in motion in this hour like never before.

Prayer for broken hearts…

We lift up people with broken hearts today. I just hear that: “broken hearts, broken hearts.” Emotions, emotions that are broken … souls that are wounded. We pray for a healing flow, Lord …

Peg led group in worship…

Prayer for a waterfall of grace… of healing…

We pray, Father, for a waterfall of grace… just for a flow. It’s just a divine flow of healing, a cascade of healing, cascade of wholeness and peace, a cascade of God ministering to hearts and lives, setting captives free … breaking the bonds of the enemy and of every stronghold. We pray for that today… but in the days ahead in and through the Church, Lord, not only here at Living Word, but across America and around the world, we pray for a healing wave… where the breezes of the Spirit blow, once again, in the form of miracles, in the form of cancers going and being dissolved in a moment… that there would come a wave of healing to mend the broken hearted, to put back brokenness in people’s souls … to bring wholeness to hearts and lives and families and churches and communities and nations…

Prayer for the Lord to have His way…

We’re just going out there today, Lord. And we’re just saying, Lord, we want you to have your way. We want you to do what you want to do in our nations, in our communities, in our lives, Lord… not what we can perceive and conceive within our intellect, but help us to stand for and pray for even right now, those things that no man or woman could conjure up. Those things that you plan beforehand long ago, that we would experience and that we would see in this day, in this time.

Lord, help us… to sync up with heaven… help us to align with your heart…

Prayer for removal of crust from hearts…

We pray for a removal of all that encrusts hearts. All that burdens …all that weighs us down…  all that blocks up and stops up and hinders the plan of God in the Church and in America and in whatever nation we find ourselves today… We prepare a way even as the prophet proclaimed, we prepare a way for the Lord in Jesus’ name … We are determined, Lord. We are passionate that you would have what you want … that we will see what you want to manifest … that we would experience you in a greater way… in a fuller reality…

Prayer for visitation…

That there would come even a visitation of God in this time… to every home and every hamlet, every village in every county, every nation, in every home… every heart … we make a way for God to come in Jesus’ name …

Prayer for a rooting out of every weapon…

We pray for a rooting out of every weapon that’s been deployed of the enemy. We pray for a breaking and a crumbling and a dissolving of every stronghold, every tactic of the enemy, every deceitful, deceptive, instrument of the enemy. We plead the blood of Jesus over it today. We declare it broken. We declare it dissolved in Jesus’ name. We pray for exposure, an exposing in fact and exposing of darkness today. We just bring forth light through our praying today right now as we pray in the spirit… we amplify the light of God. We amplify truth across our lives and into our hearts and homes and families and communities and nations… Lord, shine a spotlight … shine brightly now to expose every divisive thing of the enemy… shine the light, Lord, that we would see… show us the way forward… for individuals, Lord, for particular churches within nations today… We pray for you to show us, show them the way …

Prayer for the Lord to come bursting through…

We pray for the Lord to come bursting through bursting through… right through the darkness, right through the chaos, right through that big unknown … There comes God. There comes the light. The light… the light is shining, penetrating, piercing coming right through that in Jesus’ name… breaking up the darkness… the light, the light, the angelic light, the supernatural light, the Holy Ghost light, the words light …

Prayer against COVID…

We make a way today in hopeless situations for those that are in the hospitals, across the world here in America, right here in the Twin Cities today… many of which are believers, Lord, struggling, fighting for their lives… Today, we lift them up and we come against that darkness called COVID. We come against every variant … we say in the name of Jesus, “No you don’t. You’ll not go any further.” We stand against COVID. We stand right into the messiness of COVID and we say “Not anymore, not any further, not another day.” We break that today. We shine light to expose that darkness. And we just send the anointing of God to break up, to dissolve, to supernaturally stop and bring COVID to nothing. Yes, it ends here. It stops here. We put a stop to it. It goes no further. It’s done. We say it’s done in Jesus’ name.

Prayer for those in fight for lives…

And in particular, we lift up those saints that are in hospitals or at home feeling isolated and alone, maybe even grasping for breath right now… we just speak life to them. We say live and not die in Jesus’ name. We declare life and we just send the Holy Spirit to supernaturally resuscitate them… to give them oxygen, to give them life, to breathe life into their lungs and respiratory systems. We declare a responsiveness in people’s bodies, in people’s lungs, in their cells and in their systems and in their hearts even … their courage that there would come a restoration today… we declare restoration… Today we declare wholeness… Today we declare healing… Today we send angels and ministering spirits to those that we know and those that we don’t know… “GO ministering spirits! Go on assignment and assist and raise up and minister to and for those who are in hospital, at home, in elderly care facilities!” Wherever they might be…

Prayer against pneumonia…

We command walking pneumonia to break in Jesus’ name in people’s bodies … for it to clear up … for fluid to dry up … for the respiratory systems to return to normal…  we command speedy recoveries in people’s bodies. And particularly we lift up a man by the name of John and we just speak wholeness. We speak healing, we speak strength. We pray for a return of courage to his spirit man, to his heart, that he would rise up even today, sit up … that he would begin to breathe on his own… that he would begin to regain strength rapidly coming out of the hospital to live out the full length of his days and raise his children in Jesus’ name…

More prayer about COVID and every other form of sickness…

We send the command of God to COVID to bow its knee in the name of Jesus … in every life and every situation… we pray for a supernatural release, a cascade of physical healing, restoration to people’s lives from COVID and every other form of sickness and disease. And in the same wake, we declare emotional, relational, spiritual, mental restoration recovery. We declare peace over the Church today. We declare peace over families. We declare peace and wholeness and recovery and restoration. Yes even restitution over people’s lives within the Church and those in our families and circle of friends …

Prayer to declare “It cannot stay…”

It cannot stay. It cannot stay. You just need to say that. For some of you who are ministering to others or in your own situation, you need to start adopting the language. When it comes to darkness, sickness, fear, when it comes to negative thoughts and negativity in general, you need to start taking it to task and say, “It cannot stay. It will not stay.” Stop cursing your situation. Stop cursing your body. Stop cursing your relationships and finances and start blessing. That’s a form of prayer … The prayer of blessing starts with your own life. It starts with those that you’re speaking to … speak blessing, speak life today, speak wholeness… speak to the enemy that he cannot stay. He must go.

A word of encouragement…

Don’t get nervous if it doesn’t change in a day. Just keep saying it. Just keep standing on the promise. Just keep enduring and growing strong in the meantime… through waiting on God, through meditation on His Word, through praying in the spirit and getting up each day and putting your faith into gear… and keep going, keep going, keep going. The answer has been sent. God is working. He is faithful. He will not be a liar. The Bible says, let His Word be true, let every man be a liar.

And so, Father, we just thank you that that is so today. Yes today. Let your Word be true in our lives, in our nations, in this world. Let God and your Word be true and let everything and everyone else be a lie…

Thank you, Father.

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