- “Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist”
Pastor Dustin…
Well, thank you for joining us this morning for morning prayer. Are you excited to be praying this morning?
Before we start singing, I want to remind you that our worship is for Him. And I think that gets lost on some people. I know I’ve been guilty of it in the past. It’s like, “I don’t like this song. This isn’t my style. It’s not my flavor.”
But it’s not for you! It’s for Him!
God isn’t this insecure cosmic force that needs to be reminded of His goodness. The Bible says that if we don’t praise Him, the rocks will cry out. God will get His praise. He’ll get His worship. There are beings in heaven that are currently circling the throne, just crying “Holy, holy, holy, holy, holy.”
The Bible tells us to worship God. And when we worship God, the Bible says we are blessing Him and ministering to Him, which is an incredible thing to think about … that you could bless God. That’s something that I don’t know if I can fully comprehend. How could we bless an eternal God? But the Bible says when we praise and worship Him, we bless Him.
What happens is, as we praise and worship God and minister and bless Him, we receive something. As we minister to Him, He ministers to us. As we bless Him, He blesses us. As we honor Him, He honors us. As we honor Him with our time and our focus, He honors us with His presence. And so as we worship God, there’s just this amazing exchange that takes place.
One other thing that I love about worship is this. When we worship and magnify Him, when we exalt Him in our hearts and minds, it isn’t that He gets bigger. He is who He is. But what happens is He gets bigger in our minds. Remember the old song, “turn your eyes upon Jesus.” And as you turn your eyes upon Jesus, it says the things of this world gets strangely dim. As we worship God, what happens is He becomes bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger in our hearts and in our minds and all of those problems that were making us nervous before, all seem to get smaller and smaller and smaller in our minds and hearts.
Worship changes your perspective. And now all of a sudden, you see things in the proper light. You realize these things that were taking up so much of your time and attention and focus… all of those things actually pale in comparison to how big God is, how powerful He is. The love that He has for you. And so you began to feel free. You began to feel joy. You began to feel hope. You begin to feel encouraged because you remember the truth that He is the alpha and the omega. He’s the beginning and the end. He is the rock of ages. He’s holy. He’s amazing. How can you describe God with English words? He’s everything that you need and so much more.
Noah led group in worship…
Prayed…
Father, you are the Potter and we are the clay. I pray that we would allow you to mold us and to shape us into the vessels that you have created us to be
And I pray, Father, that you would fill us
Pastor Dustin shared…
I just keep thinking of the phrase, “If you will pour out your pride, He will pour in His power.” The thing about pride is that no one who is in pride ever thinks he is in pride. That’s the deception of pride. And so you need to be sensitive to God’s voice on the matter, or you need to be submitted to some form of leadership that you allow to speak into your life that can call you on that stuff.
Pride can come in a number of ways. It can have a number of different faces to it. But just an unwillingness sometimes to allow God to do what He wants to do in your life, an unwillingness to release something that He’s telling you to let go of to embrace something new that He wants to do in your life. Whether that’s a career or that’s just a different way that He wants to work through you.
We all have preferences. We all have things that we’re comfortable with. We all have things that we would choose or prefer. And a lot of times it’s based on our previous experience. But there’ll be the moments and seasons in your life where God wants to do something new. He wants you to step out of the boat onto the water and to trust in His ability to keep you and perfect that which concerns you. That’s why the Bible says that the just shall live by faith.
We should be continually in this place. And none of us have arrived yet. But we should be continually in this place. Sure we have preferences. Sure we have things that we like. But if the Spirit of God is leading us to something new or He wants to work through us in a new way, we have to be willing to surrender control, which can be difficult for some people. But surrender control to and trust Him.
Scary moment while in Thailand…
I remember I was on a missions trip with Pastor Kent. We were in Thailand in the rainy season. We were on this… it feels like a stretch to call it a road, but we were driving on it and we were up in the mountains and there was this river down below us. And the road was all clay and it was really, really heavy rains. And so we were driving in these El Camino type things. I don’t know what they were. And part of the road had been washed out.
First of all, we flew to Bangkok. And then from Bangkok, we took a seven-hour bus ride to this other city. And then from that bus ride, we took a seven-hour drive to another place. And from that place, we drove another four hours to this other place. So we were out there. There was nothing around us.
We were going to this one village that we knew about. So we were very isolated. After all of this, we get to this point where we’re a couple miles from the village and the road is washed out. And so it seems like we have to turn around. And so the people that are driving us get out of the cars and they run into the woods and start cutting down sticks and branches, not even whole trees. And they make this little makeshift bridge. They said, “Okay, everybody, we’re going to drive over this little bridge that we made.” I’m looking down probably 150 feet into a river.
People were a little bit nervous to say the least. Not everybody agrees with the decision, but we decide that’s what we’re going to do. And so we drive over the little stick bridge and you can kind of hear it crack as we go over it. But we make it over.
I was an intern with Pastor Kent at the time. So I’m trying to learn. And I’m like, “Pastor Kent, when do you decide when to turn back? When do you decide enough is enough? When do you make that decision? Because at the end of the day, you’re responsible to a degree for our safety. You’re the leader on this trip. So when do you decide when to turn back?”
He told me, “Dustin, I was in Uganda once. We were driving and we came to this bridge that was totally gone. We were in these trucks driving down this little jungle road. We came to this bridge. There was a village on the other side of the bridge where we needed to preach the Gospel. We cut down two trees and placed the trees over the ravine and we were going to drive our vehicles over the ravine on the tree bridge that we just created.”
There was a guy that was very upset about it and felt like he was unsafe. And so he went up to Pastor Kent and he said, “When are you going to say enough is enough? When are you going to quit? This is ridiculous.”
And Pastor Kent said to him, “It’s easy when you’re sitting in your comfy seat at Living Word to hear about Peter stepping out of the boat and be critical of him and say, ‘How could he take his eyes off Jesus? If Jesus had called him to step out of the water, how could he dare question Him?’”
He said, “You know, Jesus has called us to preach the Gospel in this village. Are you going to stay back in fear? Or are you going to step out of the boat and trust God and do what He told you to do?” And it must’ve convinced the guy because he got into the truck and they drove over the bridge. They were safe. They preached the Gospel, and the village people were saved. They drove back over the bridge.
I’m sharing that story because it’s kind of a dramatic example, but it can feel so intimidating sometimes when you feel like the Spirit of God is directing you to do something you’ve never done before. And we hear the verses, we hear the stories, we say “Amen” and we sing the songs. We’ll run around the sanctuary. But will you really trust Him with your life? Will you really trust Him with decisions when He’s leading you to do something new? Will you really jump in the El Camino and drive over the stick bridge?
What’s funny is when we ended up getting to the village, we preached the Gospel and everybody in the village received Jesus. We were told that they hadn’t heard the Gospel before. We had an interpreter with us, and he said that that village had never heard the Gospel before. They were refugees from Myanmar or Burma. And so it was amazing.
Tire marks…
We ended up leaving the next morning. And even when we were on a part of the road where it hadn’t washed out, it felt like we were super close to the edge of this road as we were driving. And so I just stopped looking out the window. I was just praying in tongues, sitting in my little seat. So we walked back the next day. The trucks drove in front of us, and they were kind of figuring things out and rain had stopped.
And when we were walking back, we saw on the road that we were driving on, there would be two tire marks and then one tire mark. And the other tire mark was like over the cliff where it would have been. And then two tire marks, one tire mark. And so we were literally driving over the cliff over and over and over again. And God kept us.
And so it might look uncertain. It might look like you’re driving over a cliff. And maybe the reality is… And I’m not saying be stupid and make rash decisions. But at the end of the day, when the Spirit of God is leading you to do something, it might look like you’re driving over a cliff and you might actually be driving over a cliff, but if He’s called you to do it, come on. What other choice do you have? What other option is there that’s better than following God’s plan for your life?
Uganda Ministry
Years ago, I had a dream where I was in Africa, and I was praying for people. I was with a team of people who were praying for people. I didn’t recognize the people on the team; it was just a dream that I had. Then I was in another country and we’re doing the same thing. It was very different than any other dream that I’ve had. And so, whatever. I woke up and went on with my life.
And I went to Uganda like three years later. We were going to this village that we were told is like 97% Muslim. And we were praying with people. There was witchdoctors and all kinds of stuff like that. And we were told these are people who are unreached. A lot of them have never heard the Gospel before. And so it’s a little bit dangerous going here. And so we’re there and walking around.
As we’re walking down the road, two women come running up to us. I’m talking to them with our translator and I’m just sharing with them some different things about the Gospel. They kept interrupting me. And the translator said, “You already prayed with them.” And I said, “No, I’ve definitely never prayed with them. We just got here like 10 minutes ago.”
They were really insistent, and he said, “No, you’ve prayed with them already.” I said, “Well, it could have been somebody else who looks like me. I kind of have a generic face.” And the woman said, “No, I was sick in my bed. This was years ago. You came into my room, and you laid your hands on me and prayed for me. And I was healed.” And she said, “Whatever you have to say to us today, we will receive it because I know that God is working through you. And I know that you know who God is.” We prayed with them both to be saved. And we kept walking.
As I walked away, I thought she was confused because I’ve never been here before. And then it dawned on me. What if… what if … what if that night when I thought I was dreaming, what if I was actually there! Like Paul said, “Whether in the body, out of the body, I don’t know.”
I tried to talk her out of it. I was like, “No, it was not me.” And she’s like, “I know it was you. I know you came into my room, and you prayed for me that night.”
What can God do when we cooperate with Him? What can God do? I love that God did it while I was sleeping, because I couldn’t take any credit for it. It wasn’t like after three hours of prayer and fasting and I was in the second heaven. I was just snoring … So I can’t even like try to recreate the formula. I go to bed every night and it hasn’t happened since. What can God do through us? Let’s not put these limitations on Him. Let’s not confine Him to our own personal experience and what we’ve done in the past. No, let’s let Jesus be the center of it all. Let’s put our focus and our attention on Him. Let’s pray in the spirit being led by the Spirit, stepping out in faith when He asks us to do things. And I believe that when the body of Christ is led and guided by the Spirit of God and steps out in faith, He will accomplish everything that He needs to in this earth.
And I believe that as we’re faithful in the little things, things that seem insignificant, He is going to promote us. He’s going to bring increase. So we just thank you, Father.
