Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Pastor Dustin…
Welcome to prayer on this beautiful Minnesota spring morning! It’s not snow, so we can’t complain. We got to be grateful. Rain is a good thing. My name is Dustin Sherri. I’m the youth pastor here at Living Word Christian Center. And on behalf of our senior pastors, Mac and Lynne Hammond, I welcome you to Friday morning Prayer.
Ephesians 3:13…
I’m going to read Ephesians 3:13. It says, “I ask you not to lose heart, not to faint or become despondent through fear at what I’m suffering in your behalf. Rather, glory in it, for it is an honor to you. For this reason, seeing the greatness of this plan by which you were built together in Christ, I bow my knees before the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, for whom every family in heaven and on earth is named that Father from whom all Fatherhood takes its title and derives its name. May he grant you out of the rich treasury of his glory, to be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in the inner man by the Holy Spirit himself indwelling your innermost being and personality.”
When we feel weak, the Holy Spirit strengthens us on the inside…
This is something that I pray for myself regularly because sometimes I feel weak on the inside. Sometimes I feel tired on the inside. I love that the apostle Paul by the Holy Spirit prays that we can be strengthened and reinforced with mighty power in our inner man by the Holy Spirit living on the inside of us.
Prayed…
I just thank you, Lord, that you strengthen and reinforce us from the inside out. It’s not even something that’s just falling on us because by virtue of you living on the inside of us, you make us strong, secure, and whatever’s happening around us doesn’t have to crush us because of what’s on the inside of us. Regardless of the weight that we may feel on top of us or around us or the pressure that we may feel, we have something stronger on the inside of us that won’t allow us to just be swallowed up and consumed by it.
He goes on in verse 17…
“May Christ through your faith or your belief actually dwells, settle down, abide and make his permanent home in your hearts.” Aren’t you glad that the Lord doesn’t just leave every time He is bugged with you. Every time you make a mistake. He stays! He makes a permanent home in your heart. “May you be rooted deep in love and founded securely on love.”
Verse 18…
“That you may have the power and be strong to apprehend and grasp with all the saints, God’s devoted people, the experience of that love. What is the breadth, the length, the height, and the depth of it practically through experience for yourselves, the love of Christ which far surpasses mere knowledge without experience.”
Don’t settle for just knowledge about God…
I’m the chaplain at Maranatha Christian Academy and I talked to the students about how a lot of us in churches, we sometimes settle for knowledge about God. And I think for a lot of students (and certainly this applies to adults), they have Christianity given to them by their parents, or they grow up in this Christian environment and they have their parents’ faith or belief. Sometimes husbands and wives, they’ll have a spouse that’s really “Christian.” They have a strong relationship with the Lord and so they try to live off of their spouse’s experiences. And so they have knowledge about God. But the apostle Paul says here that it’s God’s desire for us to experience God’s love for ourselves. And that experience far surpasses just knowledge all by itself, knowledge without experience.
No one can take your experiences with God away from you…
And so I told the students, “This is part of the reason why we have services like we do with Dr. James Tan. Because you need to experience God for yourself because those experiences can never be taken from you and you can’t be talked out of them. The example that I used… and I think this’ll help somebody that’s watching online. But I think of growing up when I went on my first missions trip to Ghana. I saw demons getting cast out of people in a way that was like so undeniable, so real. I actually went outside and threw up afterwards because I was just 13. I wasn’t expecting that. And you see eyes rolling in the back of people’s head, they’re vomiting, spinning in circles. But then they’re free and delivered and changed right before your eyes. They’re changed and their families are crying because they’re changed. And you see blind people seeing for the first time and tumors shrinking before your eyes.
And so I went off to college. My freshman year at Bemidji State, my world regional geography professor stood up in front of me and said this is where man invented God. And he begins to attack Christianity and basically every religion. But, of course, the emphasis was on attacking Christianity. And I wasn’t shaken or moved by those things. And he talked about how God wasn’t real. I’m like… this guy’s never been to Ghana on a missions trip. If he had been, he would sing a different tune. And I wasn’t moved.
And then even after that, I went to a Christian school and I had friends that were in seminary. They were trying to convince me that God didn’t heal. And they were trying to convince me that tongues isn’t for today. And they were trying to convince me of all these things. And I’m like, “Yeah, but what about all of these things that I’ve experienced over the course of my life? People who were bound for their entire life, and when the name of Jesus was spoken over them, everything changed. So how do you explain that?” And they’re like, “I can’t explain that.” And my point is, because I tasted and saw that the Lord is good, because I experienced His love… All of those things are manifestations of God’s love because He loves people. He wants them to be free. Because He loves people, He wants them to be healed. Because I experienced it for myself, it changed me. And it couldn’t be taken away from me.
God wants all of us to experience His love…
And that’s my desire, obviously, for the students that are in the youth ministry. But for all of us! That we would experience God’s love and our relationship with God wouldn’t just be knowledge.
“I know that God loves me.”
“Yeah, but have you experienced His love?”
Because that’s His desire. Obviously, we have in the sense that we have received Jesus who died on the cross for us. That’s the greatest expression of His love. But even beyond that, He wants to continue to show His goodness to us on a regular basis. It says, “That you may be filled through all of your being until all the fullness of God may have the richest measure of divine presence and become a body wholly filled and flooded with God Himself.” That sounds pretty good. Filled through our whole being.
Verse 20…
“Now to him by in consequence of the action of his power that is at work within us is able to carry out his purpose.”
Prayed…
Lord, we thank you that you are able to carry out your purpose in us. That we don’t have to do it in our own strength by our own might, with our own wisdom. We thank you that you have deposited your strength on the inside of us, that you strengthen and reinforce us with mighty power and you’re able to carry out your purpose in our lives.
“Now to him who in consequence of the action of his power that is at work within us is able to carry out his purpose and do super abundantly far over and above all that we dare ask or think, infinitely beyond our highest prayers, desires, thoughts, hopes, or dreams, to him be the glory in the church and in Jesus Christ throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”
Father, we thank you for your love… your grace… for everything that you have made available to us.
There’s a timing to things…
But you don’t have to wait around for something new from God. He’s given you what you need. So find out what He’s given to you and then step out in faith and do something with what He gave you. There’s one translation in the Bible that says faith without works is dead. One translation says faith that does nothing is worth nothing. It goes on to say, “Can faith like that even save you,” with the implied answer being no. In other words, the demons believe in Jesus. And so believing in Jesus is the first part of it. But then you’ve got to take a step of faith and you’ve got to put words to your belief and you have to declare, “He is my Lord, He is my Savior, and I’m submitting my life to Him, and I’m going to do what He told me to do by the grace of God.”
We’re in the season where you put action to our belief..
You’ve got to put action to your belief. I think that we’re in a season where we need to put action to our belief. There’s a corresponding action. Forget about your feelings for a minute. Your feelings matter. They shouldn’t just be ignored, but your feelings can’t be the Lord of your life. You have to be Lord over your feelings. And so you don’t have to wait for your feelings to agree or line up with the words that God has spoken over you. Just step out in faith and then do what He told you to do.
And then if you’re scared, do it anyways…
If your hands are shaking, do it. Just do what He told you to do. Whatever condition you find yourself in, do what He told you to do and the grace will be there and it will carry you. You can stir yourself up in the Word and gain confidence from His Word. And you can deal with the feelings, but don’t let the feelings stop you or get in the way of you obeying God and doing what He told you to do. Just do it anyway. That’s faith. Faith is obeying. Faith is not just feeling good about it. Faith is obeying. We thank you, Lord, for the grace to obey.
Sister Barb…
I’m reminded of when I was in high school I ran track. I ran shorter races. So in short races, you run fast all the time. From beginning to end, you’re running quickly. And the Holy Spirit just reminded me that in every race, even though you think from the beginning, “Man, I’m at the fastest pace I can go.” Literally, you’re as fast as you can run from the very beginning. But then somehow on the inside, when you get to… Let’s say you’re doing a 400 meters. When you get to that last 100 meters, there’s something on the inside… It’s like the afterburners. It’s like you didn’t think you had it in you, but as you hit that curve and you come around to that last 100 meters, you dig down deep and something on the inside of you just says, “Okay, this is it. This is the last hundred meters. Let’s go!” I don’t know… I think it’s supernatural, but it’s like, you know, I was tired when I was at the curve there. And you’re coming around. It’s like the anointing comes and you cross the finish line. It’s like, “Wow, how did I even do that? How did that even happen?”
And it’s interesting because the same way in the spirit…
I know a lot of people have been following the Lord for a long time. And you pray a lot. You read the Word. And sometimes you get weary. It’s like, “Okay, Lord, I’ve turned that corner and I’ve got this a hundred-meters left. I think I already spent it all on the last three hundreds.” And He says, “No. You reach down deep on the inside where My Spirit is, and I’m going to do a wonderful, amazing, supernatural thing. That spirit of faith is going to come out from the inside of you and those afterburners are going to come on, and you’re going to finish that a hundred faster than you ran the other three. And you’re going to cross that finish line.”
And you know what? It’s so funny because when you’re running, you know they say you never look at the finish line. You look past the finish line. So it’s like you’re running and you run right through it. So it’s like, “Oh, I finished and I didn’t even… the finish line was back there 10 meters.” And you’ve crossed and it’s like, oh wow, that was amazing. And that’s how God wants us to finish. It’s like, “Oh, we finished! Wow! Whatever you did from there to here… Wow! It was amazing what you did.”
But the ability is by Him…
It’s that supernatural ability. Not us trying to beat ourselves every day and say, “Get up and read the Bible.” No. It’s like we get up and we say, “Holy Spirit, thank you for your grace today. It’s only because of you that I even get up out of bed in the morning that I can get here to prayer. Glory to God, that I can take a breath, that I can breathe, that I can enjoy everything you created. It’s by your Spirit and grace.” And we reach down on the inside of us, not our own human strength, but the strength of the Holy Spirit and we draw upon that that. And He carries us. He carries us through the day… through the week. And we turn around at the end of the week and we say, “Wow, that week went by really fast.” Well, that’s because of the grace of God. It’s not like, “Oh, time’s speeding up.” No, it’s the Holy Spirit helping you to get through that week, helping you to get your things done that you need to get done. So reach down deep on the inside of you.
And if you notice in a race, you have competitors in the race…
A lot of other people running next to you. And when you’re racing, you can kind of see them, but you block them out. You focus your mind on your course. And that’s the same way with the body. You have your body of believers and they’re all running beside you and you’re all heading toward the same goal. But you have to stay focused on your purpose and your plan as you’re running together. And you’re all going to cross the line. In the kingdom, there’s no one person greater than the other. Everybody crosses the line and gets a reward. Praise the Lord!
But rely on the Holy Spirit…
It’s just in these times when you can become weary, remember, it’s not in your own strength, but it’s in the strength of the Spirit that we are able to overcome, that we are able to receive. It’s by the faith that He put on the inside of us. And we just reach out and we trust every single day to hear His voice. He leads us even when we don’t know we’re being led, because that’s what the Word says. He leads us because we’re the children of God. Hallelujah. Thank you, Father.
