Morning Prayer Summary for Tuesday, October 18, 2022

Pastor Ken…

Good morning, everyone. Welcome. It’s Tuesday morning and it’s good to be with you guys.

This morning, we’re going to start off with some worship and so let’s turn our hearts toward Him and endeavor to lean into His grace and mercy that’s new every morning for us. I believe God’s got something very specific He wants to pray through us that He has already granted prayer for us to pray and that our heart is to simply sync up with what He wants to say.

God wants us to realize we are His agents representing Him in the earth…

I was reminded recently that God wants to say some things through us. Remember, He operates through His voice and so He wants to use us as individuals and as agents and representatives on the earth to say some things. And the more we say what He’s saying, the more He’s able to do what He wants to do. The more change is accomplished… the more His purposes are propagated and spread… the more life, and light, and liberty, and love are dispersed into this earth realm and into our own atmospheres and homes. And so that’s what we want to do today.

Just see yourself as a mouthpiece for God…

The Bible declares that He wants to utilize us as an oracle of God. One who speaks… not that we are God, but we are His sons and daughters. And as I’ve often reminded us, we are created in His image as speaking spirits to speak forth His intention, to be prophets into our lives and into atmospheres over our churches and businesses and nation. God’s going to accomplish some mighty things here today and I believe this will well be a day for some additional shifts and changes that are going to occur in your life, in your set of circumstances.

Ground yourself in the fact that Jesus is our hope…

I just encourage you, if you’re going through a difficult time to hold onto hope. Continue to ground yourself and root yourself and settle yourself down in the hope that is Jesus. He is ultimately our answer. He is ultimately the hope of humanity and the hope for you and me, no matter how big or how little the situation or the struggle or the difficulty or the problem may seem, Jesus is our hope. He is broadcasting hope. I like to say He’s a dealer of hope. He’s dispensing hope. [Oprah voice] “And you get some hope… and you get some hope… and you over there get some hope!” There’s hope for us today, not just initially when we came to Him to profess His name and to call upon Him as Lord and Savior. But there is hope for us every day. We should be the most hope-filled, hope-overflowing people on the planet! Because the Gospel is a Gospel of hope. So as Brother Copeland often says, we need to jack our hope up. Just jack it up super high. Get it way up there. Get out on the edge of your seat, so to speak. Pray-ers especially. If you have a heart to pray, we should be the most hope-filled people, a people who live perpetually on the edge of our seats with anticipation and expectation of what God’s going to do. Because He’s going to do some good things today. He’s changing that situation.

Long before there was Netflix, God was streaming hope…

Life is streaming. Netflix isn’t the only thing that’s streaming. Life and healing and hope are streaming to us today. Long before there was a Netflix, long before there was any sort of streaming platform, God was streaming hope. Amen. And if we get to it today, the Bible says that we carry around with us the death of Jesus, the dying of Jesus. And, therefore, the life and the victory of Jesus. Everywhere we go, every person you talk with today, everywhere you go today, you are carrying around in you the hope of heaven, the hope of God, the victory that He sent to each of us. And so let’s just celebrate that today. Worship Him for that. We’ve got a lot to be thankful for. Amen. We can push past our feelings. We can choose to not be captivated by the circumstances that we’re facing or the challenge that we’re seeing, maybe in the natural, and we can choose to set our eyes on Jesus.

Stare unto the perfect law of liberty…

Scripture reads in Colossians 3:2, to set your mind or your thoughts and keep them set on things above, not on things on this earth. In other words, our focus should be on Him. That’s what we’re to be captivated with. And really that’s one of the secrets of the New Testament and the Gospel of grace is that you can be changed. You are changed. We are perpetually changed as we stare unto (I believe it’s James 1:25), the Perfect Law of Liberty, the law of love, the law of grace. In other words, what Jesus did for us when we become consumed and captivated and impressed by what He did rather than what we’ve done, then you’re changed. And hope rises in you. That’s all that’s needed. You know that? That’s all that’s needed for hope to rise and for your heart to change and for things to shift in a new direction is simply to change our perspective.

Adopting a different perspective will bring change…

Really, all that’s required initially for real change to happen is to adopt a different perspective. The Bible reveals that we’re to adopt a fresh or new attitude of mind every day. That attitude should be, “I’m captivated, I am impressed. I’m enthralled with what Jesus did.” Not what I’ve done or presently how I’m feeling, but what He’s done for me. Amen. And there’s just something about that supernaturally that produces change. I mean, even under the Old Testament, was it Moses who put the snake up on the pole? God instructed him to do that. And then told him to tell the people to look at that snake on the pole. And that was, of course, an Old Testament foreshadowing of Jesus and all that the snake did to humanity. All of the curse, all sickness, all insufficiency and lack, all trouble…

Jesus was troubled with your trouble…

And even long before He showed up on the scene in Galilee, long before He was birthed through a woman named Mary, God had a plan for your trouble, for your sin, for our hopelessness, for our struggle. And He long ago represented that by telling Moses, “Put that snake up on a pole and hold it up over the people and tell them to stare and to look and be impressed by what they see.” Because that was a foreshadow of all our trouble and all our sin being placed on Jesus. And so, we can’t lose sight of that as pray-ers, that Jesus did all the heavy lifting, as I like to say, “Crossed all the T’s and dotted all the I’s.” And we’re to use our eyes intentionally to see Him, to be impressed by His love, to be captivated by the work in His life, in His death, and resurrection. And that’s why Paul went on inspired by the Holy Spirit to pen the letters to the church, many of them, and describe that when Jesus was raised, we were raised with Him and that were to be captivated by that, enthralled with that, informed by that, impressed by that way more than being impressed by our problems or our weakness or what we went through. I don’t diminish that. I’m empathetic to that. But I want to help you. And what helps us is when we live day by day, turning our attention away from all that distracts unto Jesus as the Bible says, the author, developer, and finisher of our faith. In other words, He’s the one that inspired faith within us. He’s the one that sustains and fuels that faith, and He’s the one that’s going to help us. He’s partnered with us to take us onto the finish line. You’ve not come this far to bail out, to wave the white flag, to give up, whether it’s in your job or your calling, or a relationship or a situation or a strong stand of faith that you’ve taken regarding a promise of God.

You have the ability to choose where you set your attention…

I’m encouraging you today. Jesus is with you. He’s in you. He’s for you. Greater is He that is in us, than anything in this world that may come against you or rise up. You may not be able to dictate certain circumstances, but you always have the ability to choose where you set your attention, where you put your focus. Our focus should be on Him because as we stare at Jesus in relationship and in worship as we’re captivated by His Word… even David wrote under the Old Covenant, he said that he was strengthened and transformed through the receiving of God’s Word. The Bible says we’re nourished up on words of faith. Something about the Word, there’s something about our time and relationship with Him that’s transformative. That stirs something within us, that enables us to link arms with the Holy Spirit, aka the Spirit of Jesus, and take another step and to keep going and to not grow weary in well doing. And, in fact, to grow strong. You can grow strong.

You don’t have to go under…

I’m going to go right here this morning. In the midst of your most difficult season. A dark night of the soul experience perhaps a struggle, an insufficiency, somebody who abandoned you, betrayed you, in the midst of that, you don’t have to go under. You don’t have to in your spirit and in your life succumb to that. God has set things up in such a way that we can take advantage of the grace and the empowerment and the resurrection power of Jesus in the midst of that season simply by choosing what we set our focus on. Choosing what we’re going to say, choosing what report we’re going to believe. That’s so important in the midst of the dark situation or an unknown, to choose every day what report you’re going to believe, what announcement you’re going to believe. Are you going to believe the announcement of the doctor or the announcement of CNN? Are you going to believe the announcement of what your past is trying to distract you with, or are you going to believe the announcement of the Lord? That He is able to cause you to triumph. He’s able even to put in you the will and the “want to” to do His good pleasure and delight.

God is able to make us grow strong…

And so what we put our focus on is able to cause you to grow strong in faith, in the midst of messy, yucky circumstances. In the midst of a chaotic, wonky world, God is able to make us as the church of the Lord Jesus Christ, make you as an individual follower of Jesus grow strong. I believe and I declare that you will grow strong in faith today.

Abraham grew strong in faith…

The Bible says that Abraham grew strong in faith even though he was 90 plus years old and his wife was up there in age as well. And it didn’t look like the promise was going to come to pass to have a child, have a son. Yet the Bible says he chose to set his affection and his attention on the living God. And the Bible says he grew strong in faith by giving honor and glory and praise and adoration to God himself. He grew strong in faith. The Bible goes on to say he became, in fact, fully satisfied and assured that what God had promised he was also able to perform. If you’re not at that place, then that’s your number-one priority today and every day here on out is to become fully satisfied and assured. Faith comes by hearing and hearing and perpetually hearing, and never stop hearing the Word of God… The Word of God is able to nourish you up. The Word of God is able to go down deep into your soul and root out doubts and unbeliefs. It’s able to root out shame. It’s able to root out every contrary image to the plan of God for your future. The Word of God actually flushes out things. Amen.

Brother Copeland said the perfect love of God flushes out fear…

I remember brother Copeland used to say that the perfect love of God flushes out fear. I don’t know about you, but there are some days, mostly every day when there’s some things that need to be flushed out of my soul, flushed out of my thinking, flushed out of my consciousness. Well, the Word of God and the Spirit of God through prayer and worship flushes out. Scripture reads that we are clean through the Word. In other words, Jesus is described as the great husbandman, the Lord. A husbandman is a farmer. And He desires to come into our lives each and every day like one who oversees a vineyard or a farm or a ranch. And he wants to tend to His crop.  We’re His crop. He wants to clean our leaves, if you will. That’s what vineyard owners do. They’ll clean the leaves so that photosynthesis can happen on a higher level and you get a bigger crop and a more desirable crop of grapes.

He’s able to flush out debris…

The Bible says you are clean, you are pruned. It actually can also be translated through the Word through time with Him. He’s able to flush out all the debris. He’s able to clean us up from the chaos and the confusion and the difficult places that we’ve been through. Just each and every day living in a world that we live in that’s fallen. So I just encourage you in that today. There is an unended resource available for us, not only to pray, but to live and move and have our being and it’s in Him. To not just get through or get by or cope with whatever we’re dealing with.

God has called us to be a people who triumph…

That’s your high calling. Not just to barely make it through and hopefully get a small cabin in the back 40 of heaven somewhere one day. But He has called us to triumph, not just to get through. So lift up your eyes for our salvation is nearer than we when we first believed. Your salvation, not only heaven, but also your salvation in regards to your answer and the promise that God is bringing to pass right now in your life. Sometimes I think oftentimes we get so caught up in the timing of things and the “how” of things. We don’t necessarily need to be concerned about. God has the perfect timing and He’s already worked out the how, the when, the where. What He’s called us to do is to simply just continue to put down roots in Him, to just slow down and become stable and fixed and rooted… The Bible uses that language, in faith and in love, and in the pronouncement of His words. The Word of Christ! To ground ourselves in relationship.

It’s gold when you go through adversity…

I think oftentimes people, you know, as things get more difficult maybe, or they’re going through a struggle, we shift into Christian works out of nervousness and fear. “I’ve got to do something. Nothing’s happening.” And more often than not, God is wooing us and inviting us to just slow down, settle down, and simply be with Him to the place where He’s able to restore our soul. To respond to Him and let Him work as the good husbandman that He is. Because He not only intends to bring fulfillment to that prayer and answers to that situation and direction for your future, but He’s really more interested in what you’re becoming and not just where you’re going. He’s able to get you where you need to go… in prayer, in your calling, in your life, in your job, your business, et cetera. It may not seem like it, but it’s gold when you go through adversity, when you face persecution, when you have to learn to just be patient. Because it’s in that place where you’re refined and you’re transformed, and you’re strengthened, and you learn to settle down and rest and trust and just lean into Him.

God wants us to put down roots in Him…

It’s in those places where you really ground yourself in intimacy and relationship with Him. You have the opportunity to do so anyway. And really discover what He’s like, not what you’ve heard about Jesus or the Lord, not what your pastor taught. But God wants us as individuals, as believers, as pray-ers, as followers of Jesus to really put down roots and really get to know for ourselves who He is and who He is in your life. Not just some ethereal idea of who we think He is, but He wants to reveal to you the Spirit of God is brooding and moving and hovering in your home and over your life. He sees, He knows, He cares more profoundly than you’ll ever know in this lifetime. And He’s wanting to make a connection. I’m speaking to Christians this morning, by the way. Because we’re as guilty as anybody of just kind of going through religious motions or living off the past experience or a previous season of our faith.

We are to continue…

The Bible says over and over, especially in the early church to continue… it talks about how you’ve got to continue in His Word. Continue in your journey with Him. Continue and press on to know Him. So I just challenge you, if any prayer that you pray today, pray that God would help you get to know Him in a deeper, more intimate, personal and profound way. And especially if you’re in the midst of a fiery furnace sort of season.

God is with you in the fiery furnace…

How many of you know the story about Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego, right? They were tossed into that furnace that was heated seven times hotter than it had been heated before. And in the midst of that furnace, there was a fourth person they noticed that was in there. And He had the visage in the image of the Son of God. He’s with you today in the fiery furnace. He’s with you today in the everyday monotonous routine that you go through, whether it’s going to school or taking care of the kids or paying the mortgage or dealing with stuff at work or at the office. He is with us! And more than anything else, yes, He cares. And He’s going to see you through and He’s going to answer and He’s going to promote and He has granted the breakthrough and on and on. But more importantly, at the top of our Lord’s mind is He wants to simply be with you and me. He wants us to know Him on a whole other level in this hour.

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