- “Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist”
Pastor Ken…
I’m excited to be with you guys today on this Monday morning, just to soak in God’s presence to let Him use us and flow through us today.
This morning, I wanted to start by reading something I perhaps have read before and it has to do with God’s promises and God’s purposes becoming reality in our lives, in our nations, in the Church through intercession, through prayer.
Before I read that, I want to read a verse in 1st Thessalonians 5:16. The New Living Translation says “Always be joyful. 17 Never stop praying. 18 Be thankful in all circumstances, for this is God’s will for you who belong to Christ Jesus. 19 Do not stifle the Holy Spirit. 20 Do not scoff at prophecies, 21 but test everything that is said. Hold on to what is good. 22 Stay away from every kind of evil.” The same passage found in the Message translation says, “Be cheerful no matter what; pray all the time; thank God no matter what happens. This is the way God wants you who belong to Christ Jesus to live.”
There’s this word that I wanted to read this morning that speaks to prayer and the need to pray always with all kinds of prayer, in particular, intercession. And actually I don’t even know the authorship of this. I’ve had this for some time. But I think it’ll inspire you and it’s grounded in the Word.
It says “The promises of God will be fulfilled if people will pray. As we have already seen, Daniel read the biblical prophecies and saw that the time for his people to be released from captivity was near. He desired to see his people return to their own land. So he committed to prayer and fasting. He interceded for his people that God would bring the promise of freedom to pass.”
I just have to interject this one thing. And I don’t know if this is an encouragement or not, but I believe it is. I think it’s helpful to kind of step back and see the full or a broader perspective of what God is doing and how He operates and how prayer makes a difference.
I was reminded the other day that really in many respects, the things that you’re living out in your life and your family and that we’re seeing in our generation is the fruit, or the result, of those who’ve gone before us. Those who have prayed and interceded and given their lives and continue to believe and continue to stand, even though they didn’t see the promise. I’m not saying we’re believing for that, but you know what? It’s quite possible that you and I are praying for things here in the chapel on a Monday morning or in your place with God, things that you’re interceding for, that you may know about, others you may not know about, that you may not see the results in your lifetime or my lifetime. It might be a generation or two later. God is not moved by time. He lives in a space where there is no such thing as time, right? No such thing as distance. And so He operates through us. He inspires us. He counsels us. He mentors us to pray for certain things that He knows need to come to pass. And so, be encouraged this morning. Continue to stand this morning. Amen? Know that God is operating, that He is working. That He will bring to pass what He said He would accomplish in your life and maybe in the next generation. And by the way, in the next life too.
God is operating from a higher perspective, if you will. I was thinking about that myself thinking, “I wonder in some ways if I’m not the answer or the result of the prayers of my great grandparents who I knew were godly people and were praying people.” I’m sure I am in some ways. I’m sure you are in many ways. And so that’s why the Bible is emphatic. Keep on praying. Don’t grow weary in well-doing.
The Bible says in Luke 18 men or women ought always to pray, not lose heart, faint, or give up. Because we are making a difference. We are going into the future by the Spirit of God, to reroute people’s destinies. We are going into the future to change history through our praying. And this inspired word goes on to say,
“And so he, Daniel, committed to prayer and fasting. He interceded. He desired to see his people return to their old land. So he committed to prayer and fasting. He interceded for his people that God would bring His promise of freedom to pass. And as Daniel prayed, he had a visitation from God in which he was given great prophecies. God’s Word teaches us that we will see the time of the coming of the Lord approaching. And why shouldn’t we? Spiritually alert saints helped to pray the modern state of Israel into existence. Likewise, the saints today can help bring into existence and understanding of end time events. Prayer will help bring Jesus back to set up His kingdom on earth. And we need Jesus to come back because the world will never know real peace until He comes. Just talking about His return is not enough. What we really need is to lay hold of the horns of the altar in prayer. Believing God is to bring forth the fulfillment of His promises. Yes, we have the Word and yes, we have the promises, but it is up to us as the body of Christ to bring God’s prophecies into manifestation through our prayers.
I said not long ago that prayer is prophetic. It’s prophetic of your future. In fact, attached to or what comes with attends the spirit of prayer is a spirit of prophecy. The same spirit that inspires you to pray knows all things. John 16:13, right? How be it when he the spirit of truth comes, a spirit of prayer comes. You could say the spirit of prophecy comes. He will guide you into all truth for he shall not speak on his own initiative or own accord, but whatsoever, he shall hear that’s the spirit on the inside of you, He shall speak. And it goes on to say, and He will show you things to come.
And so I believe the Holy Spirit wants to leverage us and use us and inspire us and pray through us prophetically. That we would see more and more the spirit of seeing and knowing come into reality and come into this present time and hour into your life, into my life, into our churches, into our worship, into our teaching, into our relationships, into every aspect of our lives. Because it’s true: favor isn’t just a matter of you just saying, “the favor of God rests on my life. I’m going to experience that today.” It is true, you are favored of God. But favor and the experience of that favor has a lot to do with our cooperation with God, with us submitting ourselves and yielding ourselves to Him, with us sensing that the Spirit of prophecy on us and what the Spirit of God is saying and revealing to us, and then making adjustments in our hearts, in our attitudes and our actions, in our lives so that more and more, we synchronize with what God has already planned out. What He’s already prepared. What He’s already promised. What He’s already speaking over you prophetically.
We want to align with the prophetic of God for our lives, for our churches. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Our job isn’t to figure things out or to make a way forward for us. No, the Bible proclaims that He is the waymaker. He has already made a way. He has already dotted every I and crossed every T. I like to say that Jesus has already done all the heavy lifting on our behalf. Now it’s up to us to discover more and more progressively as we journey with Him, who we are in Him and who He is in us, to align ourselves, to synchronize ourselves. That’s a big importance of the prophetic and inspired prayer.
Whether we realize that at times or don’t realize that God is aligning us, synchronizing us with His cadence, with His purposes, with His intentions for us individually and collectively. So that more and more, we would begin to see His favor become reality and unfold before us. Amen? Hallelujah!
I wrote this down last night. I want to interject this. “Every person is God’s favorite. But not everyone experiences His favor in their life because they haven’t submitted to His disciplines.” Ohhh! Okay, that’s a little heavy on Monday morning. Well, isn’t that what disciple means? A disciple is defined as one who has submitted or orders their lives, their thoughts, their actions, all that they are according to the teachings or the disciplines of their teacher, their master, a.k.a. Jesus for us. Right? And I know that God is gracious, and He is forgiving and He gives us new mercy and grace and a fresh start every morning. But that grace is not so that we can continue to just live any way we want and mess around with sinful behaviors and patterns. That grace and His love that He douses us with each day is to inspire us and motivate us and activate us and propel us, to order our lives according to His leadership and His inspiration and His prophetic words to our life. Amen.
It’s about submission. It’s about surrender. It’s about obedience to Him. And it’s not about, “Oh, I have to obey God, because if I don’t, He’ll be mad at me.” No, no, no, no, no. That’s religion. I want to obey Him because He first loved me and gave His Son for me. I want to obey Him and follow Him and submit to His authority because of what He’s already done for me before I was even born. Amen.
And if you really grow and receive a greater understanding of His grace, of course, you want to follow Him. Of course, you want to yield your life and surrender yourself to Him. And even doing so, it’s not a matter of us trying to please God, so that He can feel like He’s on a cosmic, divine power trip or something. No. Even in Him asking us to obey Him and submit to His authority and follow Him and order our lives according to His teachings is all about us, selfishly. Because as you order your life to Him and His teachings, the more His favor begins to explode under the scene of your life, and the more His goodness shows up and answers flow and power manifests effortlessly and automatically, because it’s truly not about what you or I do per se. Yes, we have a part in this. But it is about what He’s already done and wants to simply flow to us and through us, as we align our hearts and our lives with what He’s already determined, with what He’s already promised.
The Bible proclaims that He watches over His Word. He watches over it. He neither sleeps nor slumbers, another passage says. But watches over His Word to perform it in our lives. He’s performing His Word right now as we participate in morning prayer. He’s watching over that situation.
I’ve quoted this gentleman before, who had this experience of dying and going to heaven a number of years ago. He died and went to heaven and had an experience in heaven and then he came back. And he actually said he was only operating at 35% of his potential in Christ. He said he was only operating at that level because he didn’t take the time to go into the secret place to be mentored or to be counseled by the Spirit of God.
Isn’t that good? Favor comes when you submit to God’s authority, when you make adjustments in your heart and life to align with Him. God wants to mentor and counsel you in the secret place. And I jotted this down last night as I was reflecting. And it starts by praying the plan of God out, the purpose of God out. The answer for a situation, whether it’s on a national scale or your individual life, it starts by praying it out first in the spirit. And then praying that you might interpret those hidden things or divine counsels. That’s the spirit of seeing and knowing that God is calling us to, that He’s wanting the Church to become active in at this time. You and I, and the whole church.
First Corinthians 14:13 says, “So then if you speak in a tongue, pray for the interpretation to be able to unfold the meaning of what you are saying.” Sometimes, you know, it’s a very conscious thing where you pray, “Lord, show me what I just prayed about.” And He will reveal to you in your intellect. Other times you maybe don’t realize it, but it does unfold in your life what you’ve been praying about. And maybe you don’t realize that quite is as consciously. But it does come to pass.
In John 14:2, it says, when you pray in tongues, you are uttering secret things, hidden things and mysteries. And so, God is perpetually praying through us His purposes, His plans. And let me get back to what I was reading here.
And so this author goes on to say, “Yes, we have the Word and yes, we have the promises, but it is up to us as the body of Christ to bring God’s prophecies into manifestation through our prayers. It may take work. It may take intercession like the travail of a woman undergoes during the birth of a child. But we must not give up until it is fulfilled. Micah 4:10. Praying like this does have a cost. I won’t lie to you. The Bible speaks about offering your body up to God’s service as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God. Romans 12:1. If you aren’t willing to make such a sacrifice, you are an unprofitable servant. Luke 17:10. As a member of the church of the living God, you cannot just sit back and watch the war from the sidelines.
I’ve read this many times, but this is what stood out to me this morning.
The mark of a real Christian is the mark of an intercessor.
That’s something we should be announcing from the hilltops and the bell towers and Instagram.
The mark of a real Christian is the mark of an intercessor. It’s true from cover to cover. Prayer is an integral, vital discipline that Jesus taught us. Not only taught, but He clearly demonstrated in His daily routine, in the rhythm of His life. And I said before, and I’ll say again, it was the secret, it was the key. The manifestation of the Spirit of God was the key to the life and the effectiveness and the power and the miracles and the fulfillment in and through the life of Jesus on the earth. And that manifestation of the Spirit was made possible because Jesus first and foremost was a pray-er. He yielded His heart and life to His Father. He operated out of the spirit of seeing and knowing. He said, I don’t do anything unless I first see my Father do it. I don’t say anything unless I first hear Him by His Spirit say it.
And one of the prayers I prayed last night as I was getting ready for bed was “Lord, I pray that you would help me more and more hear and sense what you’re doing and what you’re saying. And that I would simply become more proficient in my life and in my ministry and in my relationships, in my decision-making to simply repeat what I hear you say and act out what I see in my heart that you’re doing.” Because in that lies true favor. In that lies true effectiveness and power and demonstration of the power of God in and through our lives that we would align ourselves once again with Him, with His power. There’s no limitations for us in Christ. There is no limitation of power. God is willing. He is ready. He is able to pour forth Himself to our generation.
In fact, I jotted this down last night as I was just reflecting and studying. I said, God wants to bring a deluge of the power and glory of God to this generation. And it’s our prayers that will release that and go into the future to change history. Glory to God.
Back to finishing up. He goes on to say, “The mark once again of a real Christian is the mark of an intercessor. We Christians in America live in the greatest land on the earth. If only the church knew how to intercede on behalf of our nation, we have such a great opportunity to bless others, but we also have an awesome responsibility. If only we Christians in America would give ourselves to intercession for this country, God would turn the tide of our nation and judgment would be held back by that intercession.
And so just let that sink in this morning. Let me add one other thing to that too, before we go on to pray about something specific I want to start out with today. If you’re going through a tough time, if you’re facing some challenges, remember that the Devil cannot defeat a person who lives in the spirit and is empowered by the Holy Spirit. So it all is wrapped up in endeavoring to live in the secret place, right? Endeavoring to stay connected, to never disconnecting from the Spirit of God, cultivating habitation, cultivating presence in our lives. The presence of God, that’s an actual discipline and habit. Where you direct your thoughts daily to love Him. Where you intentionally use your thoughts to love Him and reflect on Him and turn your heart and your mind and your thoughts toward Him.
You cultivate His presence by praying in the spirit. It’s one of the most profound ways that we activate His presence and the supernatural and His power in our lives. In fact, one translation of the Bible says that we make progress when we pray in the spirit. We make spiritual progress. We grow, we rise like an edifice higher and higher in the things of God. In fact, I’m a believer that when you pray in your heavenly prayer language, when you pray under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, you’re entering into God’s elevator of understanding and revelation, an elevator of seeing and knowing as God’s sees and knows. And how high you go and how far you go out into the things of God is really just up to you. But know this, as you pray, as you yield, as you surrender to Him, as you let Him be Lord of every aspect of your life. And I know that’s a journey. As you do so, God is taking you somewhere. God will be manifesting Himself in you and through you. And you’ll become more and more filled with Him, energized by Him. His spirit will begin to activate. His spirit will begin to thrive and swell and grow in you and through you so that the very devils of hell run screaming like little girls. When you show up on the scene, when you go into the marketplace, this is how you treat the Devil roughly. This is how you deal with the Devil roughly. That’s how we’re to treat him by the way. Not with kid gloves, not with fear, not with all, “I don’t know…” No! We’re to have a command about us in this time, especially in this hour. We’re to have a command about us. And that command is the result of living a life filled with and in the spirit. Being those who meditate on the Word, who pray much in the Holy Ghost, who use our thoughts and our words to magnify the one who was and is to come. Amen!
Word that came forth…
For I just sense the Spirit of God would remind us lovingly, gently, kindly, sweetly as your doting, heavenly Father can only say, “Know and understand that as you pray in the spirit, not only are you energized within, not only are you encouraged and uplifted and charged with power from on high, but you are also writing your story, character by character, verse by verse, chapter by chapter, sentence by sentence… you are writing your story. And as you come together and pray, you’re writing My story for the Church as a whole, for My body as a whole. So pray out… pray always… pray with passion… pray with perseverance… pray unceasingly as My Word says, and you will see progression. You will see a furtherance. You will see promotion even for your own soul. You will see granted blessings, open doors, opportunities that you will see no other way until you pray. So don’t be discouraged. Lift up your eyes to Me. Your heavenly Father would say, come to me. Be with me. Wait before Me in prayer in silent meditation, in remembrance of My Word and know that as you do so, I’m going to progress you. I’m going to take you from where you are to where I’ve destined you to be, one step at a time, one verse at a time, one chapter at a time, one day at a time. Because with Me, nothing is impossible. You’ll be unstoppable and you will delight and celebrate My goodness with each passing day. in Jesus’ name.
Thank you, Father. We just love you. We thank you for this time this morning, Lord. I bless this amazing community, both online and in-person. I speak for your favor and your goodness. I declare that your face shines on us, that you’re good to us. And that today everything we set our hands to will prosper and be blessed because you’re with us, for us, and flowing through us. We pray this now in Jesus’ name. Amen.
God bless you guys have a really great Monday. Love y’all. Thank you everyone who joined us online. We’ll see you tomorrow. God bless.