Barb shared…
This is what I’ve been thinking about all this morning. We pray a lot. But you need to balance out your prayers with praise. We get in there and pray, pray, pray, but sometimes we forget to balance it out with praise. I was reading in the Old Testament in 2nd Chron. It says the trumpeters and musicians joined in unison to give praise and thanks to the Lord. Accompanied by trumpets, cymbals, and other instruments, the singers raised their voices in praise to the Lord and sang, “He is good, His love endures forever. Then the temple of the Lord was filled with the cloud. And the priests could not perform their service because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled with temple.” That’s what I want to see here in this church. Where did it start? With praise. We pray and pray about revival and the glory and I love praying. But prayer is communication with God and that includes everything, not just asking, requesting. It’s also fellowshiping with Him, worshiping Him, giving praise. And a lot of times, what we think is praise isn’t really praise. We’ll sing about God. We don’t really sing to God. So we’re singing songs that aren’t really focusing us on Him and praising His name and who He is. So that’s what I’ve been thinking about. In here sometimes on Fridays, the glory of God gets so strong that it’s hard to minister up here. It’s hard to walk about without wobbling. The anointing gets so strong. A lot of times, I respond in interesting ways. I would like to see that not just in a small way here. But that the presence of God would really come into the church as a whole, that when we have a service that the people come and their expectation is raised to a place where when we begin to worship, that He comes into that place. That corporate anointing. God is with us all the time. But there’s a corporate anointing and that’s what we really need to see an operation in these days. That’s what revival is. Revival is experiencing the presence of God. That’s where I would like to start today, ministering to the Lord. Let’s praise the Lord a little bit and then we’ll see where He goes. But let’s just let Him come in, let that corporate anointing flow and then you guys just yield to the Holy Spirit. I believe that as we do that and that corporate anointing just comes into this place that we will experience revival.
Dave shared…
This is what we’ll do. The best thing to do when we do this is to focus your attention… because you got to deal with the soul, okay? When you’re worshiping God, you have to deal with the soul and you have to get out of the “head” and get into the heart. That’s sometimes not easy because you take the thoughts of the day. So this is an activity we’re going to do right now. We’re going to enter into worship. The hardest thing to keep you from getting into the presence of God is your brain. Because you want to think about, “what’s this going on” and you try for a few minutes but can’t seem to break through. This is what I do and this is what the Bible tells us to do.
First of all, we need to focus our thoughts on the Lord, obviously. The best way to do that is to think about things in your life that God has done already. If you just focus your attention on those things and thank the Lord for those things, that’s a good doorway into entering this place. What you’re doing is actively getting your soul focused on things above. You’re getting your soul oriented on things and by thinking about other things, you’re not thinking about the things you shouldn’t be thinking about. So you have to put your brain in worship gear.
This seems really basic, but there’s a lot of people that have a challenge with this. “I can’t really hit that place of worship where we can actually get into a deep place where I can focus my attention on God.” This is the main reason why. When you’re bringing your prayer request to God, you’re focusing on that need. What that does is occupy your thoughts and draws your soul into that direction. It’s hard for your spirit to separate from that and get into worship.
This seems very mechanical, right? But sometimes you need to have some things mechanical to help you get into a place of worship. Now when you listen to praise and worship, that’s mechanical. When you put on worship music, that is a mechanical function too. It helps because it gets your mind focused on the Lord and that’s okay. You’re doing something to help your soul to get into worship. Let’s do that now, focusing our attention. Think about what the Lord has done for you or just His grace, the amazingness of who He is. Let’s just start thanking Him for that. Lift up your hands.
Barb shared…
And if you have a hard time with your thoughts wandering, speak out loud. You don’t have to be quiet. If you mind is going, “I need to go to the grocery store,” just say out loud, “thank You, Lord.” Just keep bringing it back until your mind obeys you and stays in a place of worship.
Group entered into worship and praise…
Prayed…
Father, we are grateful for what you do… we put our trust in You… we look to You because You are the source where our hope comes from… without You, there is no hope… You sent the comforter to help us… to lead us… thank You that You sent the Helper to help us… we yield to the Holy Spirit to take home together with us… out of the bellies…
Dave shared…
I wanted to give anybody an opportunity to think about something significant the Holy Spirit has done for you in your life. A testimony where you know the Lord did this for you. It revealed His love for you. This testimony is a “thank You” to Him. I’ll give one first. The other day I ran into a situation where I didn’t know the answer to the problem. This happens often. I was in my office and I ran into this problem that seemed unsolvable. It had to do with a computer thing. I couldn’t figure it out. I ran into this problem about 8 months ago. It surfaced again last week. It’s a very technical thing. I’m in front of my computer and I had spent probably about 40 hours in the last two weeks working on this problem. It was important and I had to get it solved. I looked at the screen and the Holy Spirit spoke to me. It was like something on the screen popped out and became more vivid to me than everything else. It was the Holy Spirit telling me “This is where you need to focus. You’re focusing everywhere but here.” So I looked at that and said, “Could that be the problem?” I spent about 15 minutes digging into it and about 20 minutes later, I had the problem solved! I spent countless hours trying to figure it out. I know there are less than 1% of the people out there that know the answer to this problem. Right away, I said “I got to get this on the Internet. I got to tell people about this because people need to know this is a problem.” That’s just one way the Holy Spirit showed me that “I care about everything you do.”
Does anybody have a testimony to say “This is what I’m thankful for…”
Woman…
What the Lord has done for me this last year, I cannot stop thanking Him. If it wasn’t for the Lord, I would not be here, my daughter would not be here. It was July and we were preparing to go to Washington for the CUFI summit. I wanted my daughter to go with me this time, to be a part of what Israel is. But it wasn’t to be because my daughter tried to commit suicide for the second time. I was coming from prayer and my daughter called me on the way and she said, “Mom, where are you? J—– just took pills and a whole bottle of vodka. I don’t know if she’s going to make it.” I rushed home and took my daughter to the car. I couldn’t get her out of the car cuz she already collapsed. We took her into the ER and they did what they do best. All this time, I was thanking the Lord. I didn’t know how to pray or what scripture to stand on. God was so gracious. She did take a while but she came out of it and she is completely healed. We had to deal with other issues also. She was trying to commit suicide because of a boyfriend. I said to the Lord, “Just give me a scripture to stand on to know that You are involved in this.” My husband was overseas at the time so I had to totally rely on the Holy Spirit. The Lord gave me Psalms 11:4. The Lord is in His holy temple. And the Lord beholds with his eyelids he beholds the sons of men. To me that says the Lord is sitting on His throne and with His eyes, He is looking on the situation. That’s all I needed. To know the Lord was looking. I do rejoice in the Lord and I do thank Him. I have known three friends whose children committed suicide. The Lord was gracious and merciful to me. Now she is praising the Lord with me. We’re having Bible studies and she’s beginning to know and believe the love of God is greater than the love of any human being. Once you know the love of God, then you will be able to know how to love your fellow man.
Woman shared…
You know family members that you’ve probably prayed for forever, I hadn’t seen my cousin since the early 90s. They left the state and a lot of them died. But you know the answers and you want to give it to them. So you pray. Well, on Tuesday I was talking to the Lord and I got a call and it was from my cousin. She said, “I want to move back. I want to know the will of the Lord for my life.” My heart was so full. I was thinking, these precious people that I’ve been praying for and you think, “Is anything ever going to happen?” Then all of a sudden, you get a call. I’m so thankful. She’s making plans to move back.
Man shared…
I like to take risks and be stretched because I’ve been through a hard life. I wasn’t loved and so I spent 30-40 years running around, okay? Trying to find love and acceptance, trying to be worth something that maybe somebody would recognize me. I had no esteem. I couldn’t get it anywhere. So when you strive, you lose yourself. You’re living to serve anything of any value and you place your value on things and doing things and you lose everything. It’s a vicious circle. You can’t play king of the mountain. You can’t try to prove yourself. People don’t like people like that. It’s the orphan spirit. I was at a meeting 3 or 4 years ago. It was a prophetic group, talking about … there was a prophetic word for a gal and the Holy Spirit was saying to her, “You can have Me, the Holy Spirit, you can check in once a month or you can check in once a week, or you can have Me every minute.” My spirit just leaped! I’m like, “Yes!” Because I was just so desperate. I was so tired of the fear and torment and stress and just… day and night, 24/7, just trying to get through a minute of life. I don’t want to get into the details. Some real ugly stuff about the reality of your life had been. When you’re living in the flesh. My spirit leaped and I said, “Yes!” The word was to her but I said, “I want that. I want the Holy Ghost every minute.” It’s been a few years. Maybe I’m the only one but I tend to go back and try to do stuff. Anything, everything. Because that’s what I was. I was a work machine. A living, doing thing. Not a person. I went to treatment to get out of this and you get into this. Guess what I found in there? Found a little Jeff. He was born again, but we found Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. Because that’s at the core of our being. But I slipped out of that back into the world, money, business. The toys, the cars, the material world. So last years, it’s finally getting to the place where it’s easier to believe that the Holy Ghost will help me get or do something. He’s told me, “Leave it to Me. If you stand on scripture, I’m on this.” He’s shown me that. There is a grace for that.
Dave shared…
The other day my son came upstairs. He had this problem, a big thing blew up amongst his friends, division and strife. When I heard him talk about the problem, the Holy Spirit said something to me. “You don’t know the outcome of that situation. All you know is what you’ve been told. You know what’s happened but you don’t know the outcome. And because you don’t know the outcome, you should not be using your words in a negative way.” Because what you’re doing when you use your words in a negative way, you’re on the Devil’s side, creating that reality that you fear. You don’t know what’s going to happen. If you heard bad news, you don’t know what’s going to happen with that. I’ve heard it put this way: 85% of negative news you hear never happens. That’s a big number. If you’re hearing things that are not positive, it’s a good idea to just allow the Holy Spirit to absorb that and let Him tell you. The further you get in what you do, the more involved, the more influential you become. The more things you are in charge of and responsible for, the more of that stuff happens.
