Pastor Olson…
Good morning. So good to see you guys. Thank you for joining us this morning.
Believe for words to bring heaven to earth…
God has a specific purpose and intention for us today to pray out. And I heard something… I don’t know where I heard it. I think it was just the phrase “believe for words to bring heaven to earth.” I thought that was good. Believe for words… believe for prayers. How many of you know that God is granting prayer? He’s granting words. He’s granting utterance now more than ever in this time and season because words translate into something. Words release heaven to earth.
Lord, I want you to take me in your elevator of revelation…
I was talking to my daughter on the way into school and work this morning. I was talking with her a little bit about prayer. I try not to be preachy at all, but I just try to… more than anything because I am sold on God. I mean, long before I ever held a title of pastor or had an opportunity in ministry or to lead morning prayer or do what I do, I was still Ken. You were still you probably in the sense of you were wired and you’re the way you are, and I always was just hungry for God and wanting to know Him and continue to take steps through life with Him. I was passionate to impart His knowledge and wisdom. In fact, I find myself more and more recently just asking God, “Lord, I want you to take me in your elevator of revelation. I want to go up higher. I want to go further. I want to understand the greater mysteries and knowledge that you have to impart. I surely want a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of you.”
And I just talk to Him about those things. The more you walk with Him, the more your heart opens up and the more you connect with the real you on the inside and the real heart cry. The real “God cry” begins to arise out of your belly, out of your insides. And you begin to say and pray and you begin to converse with your Heavenly Father from a more authentic place. And it’s that place of authenticity, that place of spiritual hunger and depth and calling where the deep in you, as the Bible says, begins to call out to the deep in God that things can really begin to change and happen.
Prayer is the opportunity to release the genius of Jesus in our lives…
And as I was kind of describing to my daughter this morning, I said, “Katie, I have found that prayer is our opportunity to release the genius of Jesus in our lives.” How many of you know that the Holy Spirit is a genius? He’s also known as the Spirit of Jesus. He’s the Spirit of the future. He’s the Spirit of healing. He is the Spirit of God, and He represents the Godhead on earth. And if you have professed His name and He is yours and you are His, then He lives on the inside of you and He brings His genius to and through your life. And you certainly can come to an altar at one point in time in your life and choose to make Him your Lord. But then you can go on and continue living life from a very natural plane and perspective. Or you can choose to recognize that salvation is just an introductory offer in our spiritual journey. It’s just the first opportunity, the first thing that God offers us. And that beyond that, there are many more offers, including in the realm and arena of prayer. And in every facet of God, there are subsequent additional offers. If you’re hungry, if you desire more of Him, He has more for you. Can I announce that this morning to you? He has more for you.
Prayer is positioning to posture your heart and life to receive what God has for you…
And one of the great offers is the genius of Jesus. He is all knowing. He is all powerful. He knows the way forward for you and for me, for the church, for America and leadership. And it is prayer that presents us a unique and powerful opportunity to release Him. Prayer, contrary to popular Christian opinion, is not about convincing God that He should do something for you or so that you can obtain a blessing or obtain a healing exclusively or obtain an answer or some wisdom or direction or something. Prayer really is positioning and the opportunity to posture your heart, your life, us as a church, as a body of Christ, to receive what God has already decided long before the beginning of time when the Godhead huddled up and met and decided… Jesus, in fact, volunteered to go for you and for me. Long before you were breathed out as a breath in the intentionality of God, Jesus said, “I know what’s going to happen. We know what’s going to happen because of how we’re going to wire them up as free, moral agents. We know what the enemy, who’s going to fall and rebel and try to corrupt humankind. We know what’s going to happen. And Jesus said, “But I will go and I will make a way. I will make it possible for them, My people, to function in a whole other level.”
God is taking us to the next level…
And that was another phrase that I sensed stirring in my heart in this hour. And I sensed it in my heart last night, and it is that God has a “next level.” That’s maybe what I’m saying this morning. A next level. The Spirit is percolating. The Spirit is speaking next level, right? He’s speaking, as we said yesterday, “hashtag turnaround.” It’s turnaround Tuesday. If you didn’t grab ahold of a turnaround yesterday, well guess what? It’s hashtag turnaround Tuesday. God is in the business of turning things around. He’s in the business of promoting and advancing and taking us to next level opportunities, next level purpose and power. And we’re in a time where we’re at the very precipice, the very threshold of next level purposes … of next level power … of the next Great Awakening! We’re right there. We’re stepping into it right now.
Praying in other tongues is a way you can level up…
And so just know that as you embark on a new day, the Spirit of God is there and He’s with you in prayer and in particular praying in other tongues… And if you’re not baptized in the Holy Spirit with the evidence of speaking in another language, in other tongues in other words, I encourage you to call out to God today for that. Because that alone will transform and represent a game-changing opportunity in whatever you’re facing and whatever you’re going through. Praying in other tongues is truly a way you can level up.
I’m so convinced and sold on prayer and in particular praying in other tongues that I oftentimes will sacrifice sleep to pray. I’m not saying that’s a good habit, I’m just saying that I’ve found that the Holy Spirit is the great energizer. And He will energize you. We all know the Bible says when you pray in the Spirit, in another language, in other tongues, you energize, you build yourself up. You charge yourself up, right? In fact, it goes on to say you will see your life and your emotions and your mentality and your creativity and your comprehension of things… your life will begin to rise like an edifice or a tower higher and higher. Because you take advantage of, you prioritize your opportunity to pray. You’re releasing the genius of Jesus.
God will make you look like a genius because He is inside you…
Somebody once said that if you’ll give the Holy Spirit place and room to operate and if you make Him priority and give Him precedence in all your life’s doings, He will make you look like a genius because He is the genius on the inside of you. I don’t mean to go on into that, but I’m just telling you, things will come through you. God has some things He’s saying. And He wants to get to you and through you to take you to the next level. It’s not always just a matter of just, “I need to work harder. I need to be a better Christian.” No, no, no. It’s a matter of learning to rest and trust and lean into the genius of Jesus, a.k.a. the Holy Spirit. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus. So we have that opportunity this morning.
When you’re down to nothing, God is up to something…
There’s something else I wanted to read to you today and I guess maybe it’s a continuation about what we talked about yesterday, about turnarounds. It’s Romans chapter eight. I’m going to read it from the Passion translation. Last night, I was just reflecting on how faithful God is to take us through transition, how faithful He is to turn things around in our lives. How when you’re kind of out of it and where there’s nothing going on… Or as somebody once said, when you’re down to nothing, God is up to something. And how, you know, God can turn your situation around today. In a moment of time, He can initiate change. And so I just want to speak to those of you who are facing some difficult circumstances, those of you in the place of prayer who feel like you’ve been giving yourself to prayer and nothing seems to be working or changing, just know that God is up to something. He is in the process of turning things around, right? We’re in a boomerang season as Pastor Lynne announced to us a number of weeks ago. And I just declare that over you personally, no matter where you find yourself or what you’re in or what you’re facing or how difficult it looks, it’s changing.
God is in the business of turning things around…
He’s in the business of redeeming and repurposing and relaunching lives, situations, dreams, relationships, bodies, businesses, ministries, churches, finances. He loves to turn things around. I’ve witnessed it. I’ve experienced in my life more than once. I believe He’s doing that in America.
We live by believing and not by seeing…
Don’t let the enemy deceive you. Things aren’t going exclusively the enemy’s way. We live by believing and not by seeing. Isn’t that what Jesus said? The just shall live by believing in His Word, in His promises and the influence of His Spirit and not by seeing.
God is looking for a vessel yielded…
And so today even before we pray, we believe God is turning things around in our nation. It may be interesting hours and we may experience chaos and craziness in the world, but make no mistake about it, God is turning things around in the spirit dimension. He is positioning and posturing the church. He is positioning and posturing America for an awakening. It’s happening even now. And in Romans 8:26, it says, “And in a similar way, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty.” Anybody here ever felt weak or frail? Come on now. Don’t make me come out there and point you out. But that’s good because, once again, God loves when there’s a deficit. He loves when we’re unable. He loves it when we’re weak because when you’re going through it, when there’s no way around it, when you don’t understand the way forward, you’re weak in a sense. But when we’re weak, the Bible proclaims He is able to be strong and to reveal Himself and show forth what He can do through weak vessels. That’s all He’s looking for, is a vessel to pray through. That’s all He’s looking for is a vessel yielded and willing to be put on display with the glory of God.
There is a stream of God’s power coming for you…
But in Romans it says, “In a similar way, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us.” That’s what’s happening right now, this morning. Wherever you are, you’re streaming this morning online, just know that God is empowering you. There’s a stream, not only a stream of bandwidth into your device, but I declare there’s a stream of God’s power that is to and toward you as the Word says, empowering you, energizing you, lifting you up, imparting hope and light. You know, that’s going on in the spirit dimension, right? I can never finish a verse right before I have to inject some things. But there’s life filtering and streaming. There’s power, there’s wisdom. There is the voice of God streaming through the spiritual dimension. Just like through the airways, there are television and radio waves streaming and going to wherever there’s somebody with a device to receive it, translate it, take advantage of it. So too God is streaming to you and to me and to the church this morning, prayers that we’re going to pray in a little bit here. He’s streaming light and understanding for your consciousness to see the way forward. Heaven is sending and transmitting, in fact, that describes the Holy Spirit in one of His primary functions as God the Holy Spirit on the earth doing what He does and that He is here to reveal, transmit, and disclose to you the heart of God, the ways of God, even the sense of God.
You know when you let yourself get over in prayer and into worship and into meditation on His Word, you begin to get in a position to receive what He’s sending. And sometimes it’s just His perspective. And the more you yield to Him in prayer, the more you pray in your heavenly prayer language, the more you begin to get a sense of what the atmosphere might be like or must be like in the heart of God and in the heavenly realm. And that atmosphere is charged with faith and faith alone of what could be and should be. That atmosphere, that perspective is charged with light and love and power and possibility. And that, what am I thinking? What am I entertaining fear and worry for this morning. There’s not even a name for fear, for a lot of things that we have names for in this world don’t even register in the heavenly arena and in heaven’s population because there is no such thing. And so prayer is our opportunity to as well just experience God’s perspective in our hearts and how hopeful He is for us. How hope filled, love filled, power filled possibility filled the atmosphere of God’s Spirit is and brings to us.
The enemy is a liar and deceiver…
So I just encourage you in that this morning, the enemy is a liar. Do I need to remind us of that? He’s a deceiver. Scripture describes that he uses trickery, subtlety. He wages a war of attrition to weigh us down and wear us down and get us to be discouraged or disconnected from our courage. But the Holy Spirit comes as a real bona fide, empowered agent of heaven to reconnect you to that courage sent from heaven, to that empowerment, that grace, that possibility to a place where we see with a whole new set of eyes that all things are possible to those who believe. And pray-ers ought to be the most possibility minded, hope filled, “We’ve got this…” “Let’s go get this” minded people in the world. Amen.
Prayer is the ability to speak from the other realm to your future…
To change ourselves and to bring change to the earth. As I said the other day, prayer is your ability to speak from the other realm to your future. I think that’s one of the reasons why God is transmitting so much right now and why He’s granting so many words and so many prayers is because He’s wanting to bring to pass so much change right now. And He’s wanting to align the church and bring deliverance and awakening and transformation to His people like no other time. He’s wanting to, flat out, turn things around. He’s turning that thing around for you today. He’s turning your finances.
Can I just prophesy for a moment?
He is turning your finances around today. Will you believe? Jesus asks that of more than one person. Do you believe? Do you love Me? Do you believe Me, He would ask. That’s all He is asking for us. And belief means to simply lean in and trust Him. You don’t have to feel like you believe. Everything doesn’t have to be lined up and just perfect on a given day to believe. You can just simply say, “Lord, I raise up holy hands and I say I trust you. I love you. I believe you. You are faithful.” And the more chaotic and crazy and uncertain and difficult your day, your circumstances, your deal is, the more important and necessary and powerful it is to raise up your hand and to open your voice and begin to speak from a place of faith over that deal.
Same word spoken to you through the Word of God to you through the God the Holy Spirit was designed to be spoken through you. And as powerful as the words was spoken through the mouth of Jesus, it’s as powerful spoken through your mouth. Amen.
