Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Hello everyone. Happy Friday. Good morning. My name is Ken and welcome everybody online.
Announcements…
Just a couple of quick announcements. Firstly, today’s the last day of morning prayer live from the chapel. At least for this year, 2025. We’ll be off for two weeks and then we’ll reconvene. I think it’s the 5th of January. So the next two weeks solid we’ll not be live, but we will be replaying some of the “best of” morning prayer on YouTube.
And then secondly…
We have Pastor Mac back this weekend, fresh from his trip to Israel. So I know he has got some exciting things he wants to share and some things he has in his heart to impart. I have no doubt about that. So you don’t want to miss being a part of our weekend services in person or online as well.
Thirdly…
Next Wednesday, we have our Christmas Eve Candlelight services at 2 and 4 p.m. So if you can be a part of that, it’s truly a special time. We will also be streaming those. There’ll be no chat, but we will be streaming them as well on YouTube and online church. So if you can join, be a part of that, please do so.
Excerpt from Mark Brazee’s book, “Processing the Plan of God Through Prayer”
Today, I think maybe what I’ll do is I’ll start by just sharing something with you. From time to time, you probably notice that I cite a book entitled “Processing the Plan of God Through Prayer” by Pastor Mark Brazee. And I’m going to just read a little excerpt here before we get started. I’ll give you something to process and think about and take in by way of reflection.
But Mark writes in his chapter on the “lifestyle of prayer” …
“I was baptized in the Holy Spirit, but I didn’t know the purpose of praying in other tongues. For some reason, one day I decided I was going to pray in tongues with the whole way to school and the whole way back. The first thing I found was that praying in the spirit sure made time go faster. So five days a week, I prayed in tongues an hour a day. Do you know what I noticed? I was no longer trying to get rid of things. Instead things were falling off of me. The grave clothes were coming off. I didn’t try to quit this habit or that habit. Suddenly I no longer had a desire for things I used to do.”
Spiritual momentum…
There’s just something about spiritual momentum. That’s something that rose up in my spirit this morning. Again, one of the reasons why I want to be at morning prayer on Fridays and more frequently even than I have been, is to build a greater spiritual momentum in my life and also in what God is doing here at Living Word in prayer.
He goes on to say…
“A prayer life will change us. That’s why James said ‘Is any among you afflicted? Let him pray.’ Afflicted does not mean sick. James gave instructions in James 5:14 to those who were sick. Afflicted means to be suffering tests, trials, or tribulations. James didn’t say, ‘Is any among you afflicted, let him go to eight hours of counseling.’ Thank God for counseling. Of course, if it’s according to the Bible. James didn’t say, ‘Is any among you afflicted, let him call the prayer line and have someone else do his praying for him?’ No. James said for you to pray yourself.” How’s that for a start of a Friday morning? For you to pray yourself!
He goes on to say…
“Sometimes people say, ‘I have a hard time praying. I pray a few minutes and then I’m done.’ In developing a prayer life, sometimes it’s good to go back through the New Testament, particularly to Paul’s prayers. They can be found in Ephesians 1:15, Ephesians 3:14, and Colossians 1:9.
Ephesians 1: 15–23 says…
“Wherefore, I also, after I heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus Christ and the love unto all the saints, cease not to give thanks for you, making mention of you in my prayers. That the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give unto you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened that you may know what is the hope of His calling. And what the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints is.”
I pray that you’ll experience that today, that God will further unlock an understanding of the riches of what He’s provided for you, not just spiritually, but also practically. And in regards to health and your future and His divine destiny for you… That’s what this is partly about, this life of faith. Day by day unlocking what God has purchased, paid for, and fully provided for His sons and His daughters in Him.
Verse 19 says…
“And what is the exceeding greatness of His power to usward who believe, according to the working of His mighty power, which He brought about in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and set Him at His own right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this world, but also in that which is to come. And have put in the past in other words. “He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be the head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him that filleth all in all.”
Ephesians 3:14 says…
“For this cause I bow my knees unto the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. That he would grant you according to the riches of His glory, to be strengthened with might by His Spirit in the inner man. That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith, that you would be rooted and grounded in love, able to comprehend with all saints what is the breath and the length and the depth and the height, and to know the love of Christ, which surpasses all human understanding that you might be filled with all the fullness of God. Now unto him that is able to do exceedingly abundantly above all that we can ask or think according to the power that worketh in us, unto Him be glory in the church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, world without end.”
Now listen to this other Pauline prayer found in Colossians 1:9…
“For this cause, we also since the day we heard it do not cease to pray for you and to desire that you might be filled with the knowledge of His will in all wisdom and spiritual understanding.”
Anybody needs some wisdom this morning?
Wisdom for your business decision.
Wisdom for your church
Wisdom for your family
Wisdom to know what to do next in a situation.
Do faith and do life smarter…
Sometimes it’s not a matter of just continuing to pray ad infinitum. Sometimes it’s a matter of, “Lord, grant me a spirit of wisdom regarding what to do in this situation, which direction to go.” Or how to pray for that matter. God has not called us to just keep working harder, but to do faith and do life smarter. And so He has a whole treasure trove, a whole storehouse of wisdom and inspiration.
Our best days are out ahead of us…
You feel like you’re kind of going along and you’re just kind of going through the motions of life maybe a little bit because you’ve been doing it for some time. Your faith, your job, your family, and it’s a little dry, dusty, and uninspired. I’m here to say the Lord intends to inspire you this Christmas season, to breathe on each of us with a fresh breath of wisdom and strategy and outlook and perspective that just causes our hearts to be thrilled, causes our hearts to be renewed and replenished. Because our best days are out ahead of us. The best is yet to come as the saying goes.
I believe that! Do you believe that? God has in mind that He would fully deploy all that He has for you and me in every way.
Verse 10 says…
“That you may walk worthy of the Lord unto all pleasing, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God strengthened with all might according to His glorious power unto all patience and long suffering and joyfulness. Giving thanks unto the Father, which has made us meet to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in light.”
One of the ways that we become partakers or in reality become participants in what God has purchased for us through Jesus is by saying what God has said about us. Amen?
Saying today greater is He that is in us than he that is in the world.
Saying today that I am, you are, strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.
Saying today that I may not in the natural have sufficiency in everything, but the Bible says, “Let the poor say that I am rich.”
Saying in Jesus’ name, I can and I will overcome this adversity that’s before me.
Verse 13 says…
“Who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and has translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son in whom we have redemption through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.”
Ephesians 2:6 says…
Now, let me read one other passage to you. Ephesians 2:6 says, “Even when we were dead in trespasses, He made us alive together with Christ. By grace, you have been saved and raised us up and made us sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.”
In other words, in the mind of God, when Jesus was raised up, we were raised up with Him. When He arose, we arose. When He was seated at the right hand of the throne of God from a spiritual standpoint, you and I were seated with Him.
Now, if anybody’s struggling this morning with symptoms in your body, pain in some part of you, your back, your arm, your fingers, your knees, let me remind you that healing is part of what I’m talking about this morning. It’s part of the atonement. It’s part and parcel of the atonement.
Isaiah 53:4 –5 says in the Passion translation…
“Yet He was the one who carried our sickness and endured the torment of our sufferings. We viewed Him as one who was being punished for something He Himself had done, as one who was struck down by God and brought low. But it was because of our rebellious deeds that He was pierced and because of our sins that He was crushed. For He endured the punishment that made us completely whole. And in His wounding we found our healing.”
Praise God. Hallelujah. Isn’t that good?
Matthew 9:35 …
We see the embodiment of what was prophesied in Isaiah here. In the Old Testament when the children of Israel were in the wilderness, there was a point where they needed healing and scripture records that God sent His Word and He healed them. That was a prototype of what was to come because a few hundred or a thousand or more years later, He sent His Word, the embodiment of His Word—Jesus, the healer.
So get comfortable with the supernatural…
Let your mind go there. Where it comes to the miraculous, where it comes to things that to your natural perspective seem impossible. For all things are possible to Him who will believe. And belief starts with a decision. Belief starts with an agreement that God’s Word is true, and that it always trumps what is seen and felt and tasted and touched. Or in other words, this temporal realm. This realm’s subject to change. The eternal realm is available to us that we might bring change to the temporal realm, bring change to circumstances, bring change to symptoms.
