Wednesday, February 1, 2023
Pastor Ken…
Happy Wednesday, everyone. Good morning.
Spending time with the Father draws on heavenly resources…
We’re not called to do life alone, isolated, and disconnected. The Father’s original design is that we would do life together, connected with Him and with one another. We all make an impact on one another whether we realize it or not. Your commitment to spend time with the Father… that draws on heavenly resources. And that account I referred to yesterday, your divine redemptive account, draws on His Spirit and the supply of God that then is made available to you and through you.
The gift of life…
I think I quoted this yesterday, but I came across an interesting statistic or survey that showed that it’s been estimated that the most introverted individuals among us can expect to have opportunities to influence over 10,000 times in their lifetime. That’s a real introverted person. And, again, that just gets me thinking about, “Wow, what are the opportunities that God has before us today… just today alone?” This gift of today. What a gift of life, right? I know it doesn’t feel like it sometimes, but there are moments it doesn’t seem like it’s a gift, but it’s a gift.
The gift of life is a gift of influence…
Jesus came to give the gift of life and part of that gift is the gift of influence and encourage and reroute the course of history and the direction of God’s plan through our prayers and through our engagement with Him, and through our kindness and our obedience. And everything that we engage in when it comes to influence has an effect. It is creating that momentum we referred to yesterday in the plan of God, in the church and in the earth.
This morning I thought I would read a couple of things real quick just to start us off as a way of kind of giving us a springboard. And one of them I read a while back. It’s short but I think it’s really good. And super apropos to the season and the hour that we are living in. And then another one I haven’t read before that I think is again, very appropriate for now.
Billye Brim: These are the days of acceleration…
This one came from Billye Brim just a couple months back. Billye said this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit: “For these are the days of acceleration. You will see acceleration in every realm. You will see it in every social strata. You will see it in nations. You will see it in judgments. You will see it in blessings. You will see it in glory.” Yes, Lord. We need glory. We need your glory. Your outpouring. “Everything accelerated. This is the day of acceleration and for it, your day of preparation. You are preparing this day to accelerate in the way I choose for you. So get ready. God’s preparing to accelerate.
He’s by His Spirit pressing down as I say on that pedal of acceleration. He’s going to push it down in your life in a good way.
She goes on to say, “You are preparing this day to accelerate in a way I choose for you… to go, to do, to shine, to show, to manifest.” Or you could say, “reveal God.” “This next period, you shall see men who walk and women who walk in and out of eternity, and coming back.”
I desire that. I don’t know about you. Like Enoch, right? That we would walk in and walk out of the spirit dimension. That more than anything, I feel like is something God is calling for and summoning now in the church. I think the time is gone when we can just function in a natural sense, when we can do religion according to tradition and experience no effect because Jesus Himself said the traditions of men render the Word of God of no effect.
God wants us to live out of inspiration…
So God wants us to live not out of memory, as I’ve often said, or out of tradition or out of what is known and comfortable and natural, in other words. He wants us to live out of inspiration, to be animated and inspired and compelled and encouraged and sustained in our day-to-day journey and in our place of prayer of and by the Spirit. The prophet of old declared, it shall not be my might or man’s might or power, but by My Spirit says the Lord. Right? So we just call for that today in the most practical concerns of your life.
He’s calling us up…
Lord, I call for the inspiration of the Holy Spirit in my family and my finances and my next steps and my comings and goings and my day-to-day routine. He’s calling us up. He’s wanting to accelerate us spiritually speaking and to be a people who don’t just come and go in our automobiles on the freeway. He’s wanting us to learn to come and go from the secret place to recognize every day there is a call of the Spirit to come boldly, freely, without reservation, without hesitation to His throne of obtaining, where there is nothing but forgiveness and answers and a receiving of what you and I need.
It may seem ethereal to the natural mind…
It may seem ethereal to the natural mind, this spiritual sustenance and supply God wants to give, but make no mistake about it. His empowerment, His grace, His divine download into your life every day will translate into practical where the rubber-meets-the-road answers… will translate into strength and courage and healing power and anointing that flows through your fingers at times, and yet at other times, causes you to speak as one inspired of God. Because you are!
Bottom-line Christianity…
I have learned and perhaps you have too that the things of the Spirit aren’t just an ethereal far-out-there spooky pooky kind of thing. They are bottom-line Christianity. God intended that we would live and move and have our being in Him. That doesn’t mean because we went to church on Sunday, that means because day to day, our commitment, our desire, our determination is to know Him, to engage with Him, to lift our hearts and hands and lives to Him in surrender. Not just in the chapel or online during morning prayer, but as you go about your day, there can be this richness and fullness of connectivity and communication that can just go back and forth between you and Him, you and your Father.
Prayer is not a one-way declaration of what we need…
Prayer was not meant to be just a one-way declaration of what we need, a one-way effort to influence our Heavenly Father that He would do something for us. I think we’ve settled that in here, right? And maybe that needs to be stirred every day. It does for me anyway, that He’s already said yes to His promises. His promises are yes and amen. Instead, He intends for prayer to be a two-way superhighway of conversation and worship and receiving and receptivity of what He has to say and what He wants to download to you each and every day.
Heaven is open for business…
Heaven is open for business. The neon sign is on: “Open for Business.” And I can preach this with some degree of confidence because I’ve lived enough to see what is possible. Even just tasting, I believe, just some hors d’oeuvres of His faithfulness and goodness in my life. I’ve been there where I didn’t feel like I could take the next step in His purpose and His call, but He led me to a place of prayer… just praying out of my heart in the Spirit over a period of time. And then when I actually got to the doorstep of the new opportunity or the thing He had for me to do that I didn’t want to do or made me sick to my stomach or made me think in my natural intellect I wasn’t qualified or competent, but as I yielded myself over and took advantage of His divine download each and every day through prayer, I didn’t realize it in the moment oftentimes, but I was rising in my spirit.
Praying in tongues charges you like a battery…
The Bible says that when you pray in an unknown tongue, you edify yourself. You build yourself up. You charge yourself up like a battery. One translation says you rise like an edifice. In other words, you add another floor each day when you engage with Him and host His presence. He comes and builds you up. He comes and works in your soul to do divine surgery, to remove what needs to be removed, and add what needs to be added to charge you, to download to you, to fully resource and supply you. So in numerous cases in my life, I can look back, and when I got to that step, it was like it was almost the easiest thing I’d ever done. I’ve had the experience at times where it was like He put a coat on me. And that coat was just… I could feel it. It was weighty. It was anointed. It was dripping with heaven. So whatever I had to do weather I had to speak, make a decision, confront a situation, do something hard and difficult that maybe was practical in nature, whatever the case was, it ended up being really quite easy.
The reason why many Christians fail in battle…
There’s a great quote by great pray-er who said one time, “The reason why many Christians fail in battle,” or you could say in life, “is because they wait until the hour of battle. The reason why others succeed is because they have gained their victory on their knees long before the battle came. Anticipate your battles. Anticipate your next steps. Anticipate the next move that God has for you.” Participate just that life happens, right? And challenges will come. And he goes on to say, “Fight them on your knees before temptation comes, and you will always have victory,” R.A. Tori. Always have victory. Again, it’s not a matter of earning the victory or the promise. It’s a matter of posturing and positioning yourself to receive what’s already been set to the credit of your account. What God has already said, “yes and amen” or “yes and so be it” over you. He’s saying that over you today. Do you know that? The Spirit of God, the Bible says He hovers, He broods over His loved ones and over God’s people and He’s speaking and preaching and emanating encouragement and faith. Only faith.
In Heaven, there is no doubters…
In heaven, there is no doubting or doubters. There is no second thought or hesitation or fear or anxiety or dread or suicide ideation. No. There’s only faith. The Bible says there’s no shadow of turning in the mind of God. In other words, He doesn’t have a second thought. There’s nothing but bold forward-looking certainty in His heart and in His declaration and in His spirit of prayer, a.k.a., the Holy Spirit.
Hear what God has to say on the two-way superhighway of prayer…
So just let that kind of percolate up from your spirit this morning. God’s going to have His way in your circumstances. He is going to have His way in your finances. Just begin to hear what He has to say in that two-way superhighway of prayer. Hear what He has to say and say the same thing. That’s a great definition of prayer right there. Just saying the same thing that the Spirit of God is saying.
Billye goes on to say…
So, Billye goes on to say, “Everything shall accelerate, both good and bad. The line of demarcation will not be gray. In this hour, it will be so plain as you enter this week of years. Acceleration! Sometimes when you cut your arm, it heals and the healing will be accelerated.” That was one thing brother Hagin taught through the years was oftentimes for many people, you know when you locate them as to where their position of faith is, where their maturation development of faith is, oftentimes it’s for people to go to the doctor to go through a procedure to receive whatever medication, but then pray, Brother Hagin would teach, that the healing process would be sped up by that step of faith of going to the doctor. Whatever you need to do practically. You feel God’s leading you to do. Do that, but then release your faith and pray. “Lord, I pray that the healing process would be supernaturally sped up in my body in the restoration of my lungs, my joints, my bones,” whatever the case is.
Whatever you’ve got going on this morning, there is no shortage of healing virtue and healing power. It’s free. It’s available. Heaven’s open for business today. Aren’t you glad? And we get to go, as Billy was prophesying, as Enoch of old knew, we get to come and go. We get to enter in and we get to come back and do what we do on a daily basis. In one sense, we never disconnect. But there are times when we can enter into a deep and focused place with Him and receive that inspiration, that power, that creativity, answers, God-granted prayers. And then simply carry them out.
And once again, I would point you to the narrative of the gospels. And in particular what we see and know and understand about Jesus and how He functioned and how His life rolled. He seemed to operate in that way, right? He would go in with His Father and He would come out and He would just seem to carry out what He saw and what He had received and what He had prayed out and heard from His Father.
Billye continued…
Billye goes on to say, “Sometimes when you cut your arm, it heals and the healing will be accelerated. Doctors will be amazed. Yes, it will be the best of times. But it will be the worst of times. Which side will you be on? You are on the Lord’s side. You are on the bride’s side. You are on the wide side and not the narrow place. You are on the wide broad highway for your race. Look unto Me. Be not afraid. Walk in My plans and stay. Stay on your path. Stay on your way. Oh My children, it’s good for you. Not good for everyone, but good for you. Good. Wonderfully good.”
Vision of Jesus as the lion of the tribe of Judah…
Then one more thing I wanted to read that I thought was quite interesting. Half of it is something this minister’s sharing. The other half is a prayer and I’m going to read both. But it starts out like this. “The Lord several months ago showed me a vision of Jesus as the lion of the tribe of Judah standing off the eastern seaboard of the United States.” Now we’re going to get real focused on the US here for a moment. “As he began to release His roar, that is the roar of the lion of the tribe of Judah, over the nation, over America. It was a roar of ownership and dominion as if to say, “This land belongs to Me.” Can’t you hear that certainty I was referring to earlier in His voice? That’s something I’m always wanting to align and synchronize myself with. There is a certainty in the voice of God. There’s a certainty and a confidence and a boldness in the Word of God. And God is building that into the church right now so that we can just go with Him. That’s how we’re going to be able to accelerate. Not operating in our limitations and in our religiosity and in our past, but operating in the thoughts and ways of our Heavenly Father. And one of His ways and one of the atmospheric characteristics of heaven is certainty and a boldness and a clarity and a confidence.
Psalm 139…
I would reference you again to Psalm 139 as a case in point. All the days of your life were written down in a book before you had lived one of them. In other words, God had already planned good and nothing but good, increase and nothing but increase, intentionality, purpose, and meaning for your life even before you were sparkle in your parent’s eye. God had an intention. He had a plan. He had a determination.
Quote continues…
This goes on to say, “Standing on the eastern seaboard as He began to release His roar over the nation, it was a roar of ownership and dominion as to say ‘this land belongs to Me.’ As He roared, first, the land began to shake from New York City all the way down to Washington, DC. Then the reverberations of His roar began to shake to the north up into the New England states. To the south, all the way to Key West at the tip of Florida. Then throughout the nation, all the way out to the west coast, shaking California, Washington, and Oregon, even Alaska and Hawaii were being shaken by the roar of the lion of the tribe of Judah. The shaking was the prelude to a great awakening. You then showed me the shaking was being used to strip a dark cloud or covering off the nation.” Hmm. Interesting. “Exposing corruption at the very root. Eyes were being opened all across the land.” That’s something we’ve been praying about often here. “Suddenly I saw politicians and media figures unable to continue telling their lies.”
Second Great Awakening…
Do you recall reading regarding the great awakening of the 19th century? We read some of the stories regarding let’s say Charles Finney’s ministry and others. There was an atmosphere of heaven released on America at the time to such an intensity and effect that I know there are many stories that are recorded in history and in newspapers for that matter that you can go back and reference. But in one account, a ship was approaching New York City when it got to about 10 or 12 miles off the coast of New York City at the time in the 19th century. Even the most hardened, salty mouth sailors, sin hardened people, many of them began to groan and fall to their knees and agonize on the floor of the ships as they approached New York Harbor. They sent people to New York City on a small dinghy to search for a pastor or chaplain that could help them with the people that were under this holy conviction. They were being convicted without a minister, without a Billy Graham at a US Bank stadium, but simply by the atmosphere of conviction and holiness and the presence of God that had stripped away the enemy’s tactics and attempts and caused the hearts of men and women to be exposed to a holy God. And to His cry of really love and grace that was being extended to our nation at that time.
