Today’s Morning Prayer session was an anointed time of inspired testimony and sharing for the purpose of edification and building up one another in the Lord.
Pastor Ray shared…
I thought I would read a little out of John 15 about what Jesus told us to do. What was His command for us? It was that you love one another. Pastor Lynne gave a prophecy on March 9, 1995, and in the middle of the prophecy it said something to this effect: “Are you wondering what to do, what you are called to do?” The Holy Spirit said through her, “Bear fruit! That’s what I have called you to do.” That is John 15.
Dwell in Me, and I will dwell in you. [Live in Me, and I will live in you.] Just as no branch can bear fruit of itself without abiding in (b eing vitally united to) the vine, neither can you bear fruit unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine; you are the branches. Whoever lives in Me and I in him bears much (abundant) fruit. However, apart from Me [cut off from vital union with Me] you can do nothing. If a person does not dwell in Me, he is thrown out like a [broken-off] branch, and withers; such branches are gathered up and thrown into the fire, and they are burned. If you live in Me [abide vitally united to Me] and My words remain in you and continue to live in your hearts…
We could look at that two different ways. If His words remain in us and continue to live in our hearts but then too we could say if we continually live in our hearts, we follow what our heart is telling us, then we can…
…ask whatever you will, and it shall be done for you. When you bear (produce) much fruit, My Father is honored and glorified, and you show and prove yourselves to be true followers of Mine. I have loved you, [just] as the Father has loved Me; abide in My love [continue in His love with Me]. If you keep My commandments [if you continue to obey My instructions], you will abide in My love and live on in it, just as I have obeyed My Father’s commandments and live on in His love. I have told you these things, that My joy and delight may be in you, and that your joy and gladness may be of full measure and complete and overflowing.) This is My commandment: that you love one another [just] as I have loved you. No one has greater love [no one has shown stronger affection] than to lay down (give up) his own life for his friends. You are My friends if you keep on doing the things which I command you to do. I do not call you servants (slaves) any longer, for the servant does not know what his master is doing (working out). But I have called you My friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from My Father. [I have revealed to you everything that I have learned from Him.] (You have not chosen Me, but I have chosen you and I have appointed you [I have planted you], that you might go and bear fruit and keep on bearing, and that your fruit may be lasting [that it may remain, abide], so that whatever you ask the Father in My Name [as [presenting all that I Am], He may give it to you. This is what I command you: that you love one another. John 15:4–17 (AMPC)
To me, to walk in love, to love one another, to answer that command is to bear fruit in the prayers that we pray. It’s an ongoing thing. His plan and purpose for us is that our fruit would be lasting, that it would remain and abide. So the words that we pray, say, sing out of our hearts, those are lasting.
Ms. Sharon, remember when you said that about songs that you would sing, words that continue, that they don’t stop.
Sharon shared…
In the 90s I wrote an unpublished book on worship. One of the things I had been studying up on was the String Theory and sound and so forth. I discovered that scientists have said that as far as they can tell, earth is the only planet that has the atmosphere that we have which means that it holds sound waves together. So once a sound is made, it is never lost in this world but it continues in the atmosphere. That is why Jesus said we will be accountable for every word we speak because it is still operating, it is still working. And if we speak a negative word, we always need to make sure we bind that, that we cancel that.
The words of Jesus spoken are still operative on this earth. They are never lost and that every prayer that is prayed in this room is never lost. Every prophetic word that’s ever been spoken over this church, over you, is never lost but still keeps working because God created this world in that way. It’s amazing to think about it.
Pastor Ray shared…
I like that our words are out there! But the negative words, we hold the blood against. I still remember words that my earthly father spoke to me that were negative. He left the earth when I was a teenager. But I remember when I was 10 or 12 years old things that he would declare. He was not a bad person but it’s just that he didn’t have any revelation of the Word. When you were talking about that, it came up the times when he would say, “You’re never going to amount to nothing.”
Ms. Sharon shared…
I experienced the same thing. Can I tell this? I was invited to sing for a ladies conference out in California and the night before I was supposed to sing that evening, I got very sick. Without being too graphic, I spent the night… being sick. So the hotel found a golf cart and they took me over to the auditorium on the golf cart because I couldn’t walk. I was still so sick. And I am sitting there shivering with fever and just miserable and this woman comes up and she says, “Sharon, it’s so good to see you. I would like you to meet my friend, Clarisse.” I look up and this woman doesn’t say anything and she claps her hands on my head and she goes, “Spirit of infirmity I bind you. You are healed in the name of Jesus.” And then she said, “The chains of verbal abuse that have bound you since you were a child are broken and the person that speaks those words over you will never have the power to hurt you again.”
I was instantly healed and a couple of days later I went home. At that time, Gene and I were taking care of my parents. My mother loved me but she had the ability to just shred me with her tongue and she did often. So, I came in the room. She didn’t have real good vision and she was on the phone talking to someone and just excoriating me. I mean it was just awful what she was saying, and normally, I would have gone back home in tears. But I knew then that I was totally set free. Those words didn’t have the power to hurt me anymore.
I went to her room and I said, “Hi. Lunch is ready if you want to come eat.” And she said, “How long have you been there?” I said, “Long enough to hear what you were saying, but I want you to know I have been set free and you don’t have the power to hurt me anymore.” She just looked at me and she was just stunned. It was true. It was like someone had just taken a pair of scissors and cut that connection. The love was there but that power to hurt was gone.
When my mother passed away, the Lord gave us two hours on the phone the day before she died. I was in Ozark at Lucy Mckee’s Church and I felt led to call her. I just said, “I wanted to let you know that I was thinking about you and I love you.” And for the first time in my life (and I was in my mid-fifties) she said, “You know I just want you to know how proud I am of you.” And for two hours we had fellowship like we had never had and God just tied everything up in a little bow and those were my last words to my mother and her last words to me. Sometimes, parents are not aware of the power of words.
I know one time somebody asked my husband, Gene, “It seems like Jewish kids are more successful and smarter than our kids? Why is that?” He said every Friday they have a meal together. They sit down and the father goes around the table and blesses every child. How could those children not be successful? That’s been spoken into them all their lives. It works.
Pastor Ray shared…
The Word works. It sets us free from words that might have been spoken against us, but it also sets us free from words that maybe we spoke. We believe more what we hear ourselves say than what anyone else says. This morning when I was getting ready, Sandy had Joyce Meyer on and her main message was number one: stay in your heart, do what you have been called to do. The Holy Spirit leads us but she said a lot of times people get what He is saying but it’s seems different than what they thought maybe it would be or what they were called to. And then they will start thinking about it and thinking about it and they will think it away. And so she said her one main thing was confess the Word out loud daily. Confess it out loud.
Ms. Sharon shared…
We also have to be careful about who we share our vision with because if you share it with someone and they go “Eeehh, that’s…” That can lodge in your heart and rob you of your vision or what someone prophesied over you. You don’t cast your pearls before swine. I am not calling your friends swine. I am just saying, pick very carefully who you share words that have been spoken over you or even words that God has spoken into you. You protect it and guard it with all your heart.
Ms. Annie shared…
Pastor Ray asked me if I had anything to say. I was listening to Mark Hankins talking about words, talking about faith. I used to be a scientist and I kind of follow some of that stuff. There was this big thing that was a headline for about two weeks. It’s this famous physicist who is very well-known, and he was making these statements about the music of the spheres. He said they have discovered that there are these waves that are coming out from the planets, and he was relating it to string theory. Basically, his final conclusion that everyone was “oohing and aweing” about was even though he is not a believer, he said the entire universe is connected by a structured way, that everything is interrelated and everything is connected in a perfect, orderly, beautiful, musical design. That it is impossible that it could have randomly occurred and there must be what he called an intelligent designer or design, a design behind it all.
But when you were talking about that whole thing about the sound and the words, sound had a huge part of that. He was relating these unknown waves that they are observing in these distant planets, stars or different distant galaxies, that there is a musicality to them. Well, then I thought of the old hymn of the music of the spheres. And then this morning Mark Hankins was talking about the particle collider. They dug this huge thing underground and what they are trying to do is find the God particle, the smallest of the smallest of the smallest particle by colliding atoms at the speed of light and hoping that what they will find is the smallest particle which I don’t know if they ever will because God is the biggest thing and if you find the biggest thing He will be bigger and if you find the smallest thing He will be smaller, you know. But anyway he was saying that the smallest thing that they found was this quark and that it is a sound wave and they call it the God particle.
Those things were kind of going off in me as you were talking about this. God who created the world with words and He holds it together with words, and we are in His image. We have His DNA in our reborn human spirits. So our words in our mouths, as Reinhard said, have the same power as His words in His mouth. So we have creative power in the universe through the words that proceed out of our mouths. So that ties into the prayers we pray. As we are praying words, we are bearing fruit as we abide in Him and speaking His words, we are cooperating with His creative work and bearing fruit. And so it’s important what you said Sharon, when we speak something that doesn’t agree with His purpose, that we have to cancel it, right away. We have to bind it. We have to say, “No, I bind that.” That is not what God says about ourselves, about others, about anything. Words have so much creative power. It’s what He made the whole world with.
Ms. Sharon shared…
In Genesis where it says “And God created man out of the dust of the earth and breathed into him and he became a living soul.” There is a translation Dr. Roy Blizzard gives, one of the leading experts in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, and it should say “The Lord God Elohim created Adam, which means the life of God or the blood of God, from the minute particles of the totality of all that He is.”
The first time I heard that I thought, “Oh, the top of my head is going to come off.” (ha, ha, ha) I mean that He created us from the minute particles of the totality of everything that He is. That is what He made us out of. So why can’t we create our own universe, our own world with the words of our mouth? Why can’t we bring down walls? Why can’t we destroy the yoke of bondage that we see on other people or that tries to attach itself to us?
Ms. Annie shared…
The totality of who He is, is Love so we… the totality of what our words express is Love. I confess that over myself.
Pastor Paul Shared…
Can I chime in on this? I am getting excited already, glory to God. I was reading this yesterday and I think it is appropriate to reverberate it here what God’s intention was and what He continues to think about His creation. It says, “What is man that art mindful of him.” That word mindful is to recall, to call to mind, to remember, to cause to be remembered, to keep in remembrance, to record, to mention, to make a memorial of, to recount and also to think on. So God is in the process of always being mindful of man that He has created. And it says “the Son of Man, Thou visiteth him.” God visits man. You know in the dispensation of the Cross, He lives in man. It says “For Thou has made him a little lower than Elohim, a little lower than God.” The translation that says “Made a little lower than the angels.” The Hebrew word translated as angels is Elohim, the Divine One. And then it says this in Psalm 8:5 that He has “crowned him with glory and honor.” We are crowned with glory.
If you want to understand what that glory means, let me just share some things about glory. There are about 21 scriptures of glory. Let me just mention some here. It means glory, honor, glorious, abundance, riches, spender, dignity, reputation, reverence, extraordinary privileges, vitality, valor, numbers, commerce. That’s all in that word glory. So it says here He has crowned us with glory and with honor. Thou madest Him to have dominion, dominion, dominion. It’s to reign, to cause to rule, to exercise dominion, to have power. And it says over the works of His hands and has put all things under His feet. God has done that. He has put all things under His feet. So God is telling us something here. If we fail to walk in what He has provided, it is not His fault. It is ours. So if we are not cognizant of what He has done and what He has provided, we could be with all the keys of the kingdom and still live under the bridge. All the keys that are necessary to unlock every door has been provided. “Fear not, little flock, it’s your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom.” But if we do not take hold of what He has provided, we can remain paupers, we can remain deprived, we can remain impoverished. So we have to take His Word as it is, Him speaking to us. His Word is alive and incorruptible seed.
I said this because the dominion of the Lord He is getting me to understand is the finances part. I think this is the last straw for the body of Christ. I think it is. Because the enemy has tried to lock every door that has to do with the propagation of the Gospel through finances and so it has become a distraction to the Church at large. But this door, God says, “I have opened to you. I have given you the power to get wealth.” So for us to be able to walk in what He has provided, we must have His mindset about what He has provided. We must act as if it is already provided. We must celebrate as if it has already been provided. We must speak like those who already possess. We must enter into and conversations with those as if it is already done. We should put on what it is to be an ambassador so we act like those who are representing a kingdom that has all the riches. We have to look and have a countenance that is consistent with the Father that owns all. So we have to go to God and ask Him, “Father, You have provided all things richly for us to enjoy. How do I need to walk with You on a daily basis to advance Your cause in this area? How do I need to respond so that, Lord, I am not on the outside hoping to get in but on the inside hoping to dispense what I already have?”
This area of riches… my goodness, I am calling myself a billionaire. I don’t know who else is doing that? That You have billions of dollars, billions of souls, billions of assets, who is doing that? Every child of God…. God is not limiting His power to anyone. He is not. I want to read Psalms 65. I saw this this morning.
Blessed is the man You choose,
And cause to approach You,
That he may dwell in Your courts.
We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your house,
Of Your holy temple. Psalms 65:4 (KJV)
So God has chosen us and we will be satisfied with the goodness of His house and everything that pertains to His holiness. Brother, I am at a loss for words to describe that we already have it. That is what I am trying to say. We already have it. We are not trying to get it. We already have what it is to be able to exercise dominion on earth. As long as you are in the kingdom of God, God says “I have already put all these things in you and grace and peace is multiplied to you through the knowledge of God and Jesus Christ our Lord according as He has giving you all things that pertain to life and godliness.” You already have it but if you don’t know what you have, the enemy can take it from you.
So my prayer is “Lord, I don’t what to spend one day that You are invested in my life trying to get something I already have.” We are spending time praying for something we already have and then God is looking at Jesus and saying “Jesus, did You not go to the Cross? Why are they asking Me for something that they already have? Jesus, did you not teach them?” “Father, I taught them. I gave them the Keys.” “Why are they asking Me for the keys?”
So our mindset has to change. Do you see what I am saying? The reason why the Church at large is the way it is today is because we have not renewed our mind to what we have.
Ms. Sharon shared…
He has made us to be ambassadors. Paul said that we are ambassadors. And an ambassador to any nation, everywhere he puts his foot because he carries the authority of that nation or that kingdom, every place he puts his foot at that moment is the kingdom. So everywhere you go, every place you put your foot, everything you touch is the kingdom of God. So we live well below our privileges don’t we? But I am changing that. He said this glory we have in earthen vessels. Oh, I want that. I want to be that because every place I put my foot is the kingdom paid for by His precious blood.
Ms. Florence shared…
So everywhere we set our foot on as children of God, we take it for a possession for the kingdom of God. I am just reminded of this scripture in Romans 8:19–20
For [even the whole] creation (all nature) waits expectantly and longs earnestly for God’s sons to be made known [waits for the revealing, the disclosing of their sonship]. For the creation (nature) was subjected to [frailty (to futility, condemned to frustration).
It’s condemned to frustration because of the words that we speak over earth. You know it’s condemned to that position because we have dominion on that earth and if you are not rightfully using your dominion over the place that God has had you set your foot on… you know the earth gets frustrated and it’s not because of some intentional fault on its part but by the will of him of who so subjected it, the will of him who subjected the earth to that.
And so I think we have an obligation to really find out why we are here, why we are placed where we are. We have dominion over the earth. What kind of words are we speaking to that earth? You hear of global warming and all of that, you hear of so many things, floods, we have authority over floods. We have authority over nature so when every child of God will understand the power that is within and the words that we speak, we are going to speak with authority, each person taking his/her place to bless the earth because the Lord is not coming back on earth to do that. We are His hands and feet and His mouth and so we need to make sure we are speaking the right words over our earth so it continues to serve us and our children and our children’s children.
Pastor Paul shared…
I am just going to chime in a little bit on ambassador. My father was a diplomat in the UN so we grew up with the privileges of somebody in the diplomatic corp. The world has found something that the Church is probably unaware of. As a diplomat, my father had a passport that allowed him to go to any country in the world. It was a United Nation’s passport. It allowed us to go without a Visa anywhere. All we had to do was to present that as a UN entity so to speak. There were diplomatic privileges that allowed us to go to schools under the auspices of the UN, to live under the auspices of the UN, to have privileges where when we go to the airport, while other people are in the line trying to check in, somebody takes our passports and we go to the VIP section, they check all our stuff for us and come and give us everything. My father had ambassadors and an ambassador represents a kingdom. And when an ambassador opens his mouth… what he does is that he is opening his mouth on behalf of the kingdom. An ambassador comes into a foreign kingdom and he is not caring about how to get his house, how to pay for his car or feed his children because that is at the behest and under the auspices of the kingdom he is representing so that he can give his full attention to the duties of the kingdom that sent him. And when he opens his mouth in the foreign kingdom, the king of that kingdom listens to him as if the whole weight of the kingdom that sent him is speaking. So when he opens his mouth and talks deliberately about commerce, about exchange, about trade, entities, about tariffs, about exchange for the reason he is in that kingdom, the king of the kingdom will sign the papers as if his kingdom, the one that he is representing has sent him on behalf of his kingdom. So when he is coming, moving from one place to other, there is an entourage of policemen on motorcycles that sound their sirens for normal people to give way for the ambassador to go through. The flag of the nation he is representing is on the car. The license plate is different. It’s diplomatic corp. So everybody knows that an ambassador is coming through and traffic stops. Think about it. Anytime we enter into a place, the angels of the Lord that encamp around the righteous go before the child of God. And like she said, every place the souls of our feet shall tread has been given unto us and we decree a thing, it’s established unto us. And when the normal citizens of the land come in and see us, they stand at attention. And we don’t expect to have the same disposition or the same kind of exchange like the average citizen who has no covenant.
We have a covenant with God. That’s why when we see someone taunting against the child of God we say, “who is this uncircumcised Philistine?” We need to be able to know who we are in the kingdom of God and if you know who you are, your expectation will change. You will know you are well favored, that they will be making room for you. The verse in Psalm 18 says,
Thou hast delivered me from the strivings of the people; and thou hast made me the head of the heathen: a people whom I have not known shall serve me. As soon as they hear of me, they shall obey me: the strangers shall submit themselves unto me. (vv. 43–44)
That’s scripture. But if we do not have that mindset, we will be living the kind of mundane, weak and beggarly life. We will be going from trial to trial, from paycheck to paycheck. But when we start to live the way God demands that we live as children of God, we will celebrate and we will be asking God every morning, “Father, you prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. I see the enemies looking around and lurking around and they are making noise. Father, there must be a table prepared somewhere?” I want to know the table. I want to concentrate on the table. I am not concentrating on what the enemies are doing. The enemies are an indication that there is a table prepared somewhere! Glory to God. So you look at the day and you suck the air and you say “Father, another investment of heaven, twenty-four hours, what do You want to do today, Father. I am Your workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which You have before ordained that I should walk in it. What do You want to do Father?” So you are excited about the day because you are extending the kingdom of God and you have eaten from the table. Glory to God.
So we all are ambassadors, II Corinthians 5 says that. Have you seen that verse in II Corinthians 5? Let me read it for you just in case some of us don’t know what that is.
Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech you by us: we pray you in Christ’s stead, be ye reconciled to God. 2 Corinthians 5:20 (KJV)
God has resigned Himself irrevocably to human cooperation in the execution of divine purposes. He has man faith the determining factor in the work of salvation (Lillian B. Youngs). God is depending on you and depending on me so these prayer meetings are supposed to stir us up, get salted, marinated, and prepared to enter the day. Glory to God.
So when we get up the Devil says, “Everybody run, they are awake! They are speaking again!”
Ms. Annie prayed…
So follow the thread of the Holy Ghost, the anointing that is in each one of us
Yield in our hearts to do
Preparations have been made, plans have been laid
For us to walk in victory
Over the Devil, sin, sickness, lack, fear, questions
Status quo, that has got to go in Jesus’ name
