Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Prayer leader D.J…
Good morning, everybody. Welcome to Good Friday morning prayer. This is the good Friday. This is the day the Lord has made. We shall rejoice and be glad in it.
Prayer leader Cindy…
Jesus came in the flesh that we could be grafted in. And His body was broken and His blood was shed. And by His stripes we are healed. We speak to every disease. You come to the footstool of Jesus. You come to the cross, we take you to the cross. And then the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Because we are no longer our own, but we’ve been bought with a price. We were crucified with Christ, and we were raised with Christ. And it is according to our testimony of that blood that we overcome. Because it was the blood that was put on the mercy seat. They gave us free entrance into the presence of our Father, the end game of our Father. He bought us back so that we could be embraced and not perish.
Thank you, Father, that you are embracing us right now, that you’re restoring us and dead things are falling off in the atmosphere of no guilt, no sense of inferiority, but boldness, knowing what Jesus did. Jesus’ sacrifice gives us boldness. Not anything we’ve done, but it’s what He did. He is worthy to receive the reward of His suffering and that is everything that He paid. And He said “it is finished” coming to pass.
Thank you, Father, for soul salvation. That as we prosper in our soul because we know whose we are and we don’t have a problem. We’re not hiding from things that are obviously issues that we need to work out. But Jesus said work out your salvation. Work it out in fear and trembling. Just meaning that, “God, you are so awesome and you are so good, you’re so powerful, but you’re so gentle and you’ve made a way for us to work it out in no fear, no condemnation, but just an embrace of the Father.” And as we do, His perfect love casts out that fear that makes things like that stick to us. But they just slide off because in His presence, there is no fear. Perfect love casts out all fear. Our soundness of the mind involves the knowledge that He knew before even we were what would happen. He made a plan even before we screwed up to buy us back.
Glory to your name, for you are great and you do miracles so great. And all throughout the ages, He will point to us as demonstrations of His goodness. We are object lessons for those to come… so nobody can be swayed by the serpent that said, “Hath God really said, is He holding something back from you?” He said, “Don’t eat from that tree, because apart from him that leads to death.”
But He says come unto Me and I will answer you. You have questions? Come to God. He’s actually probably prompting you with those questions and He wants to answer them and nothing is too… like “I don’t dare ask that.” Ask and you shall receive that your joy would be felt and you would get the understanding from our Father and see how and why and all those things but experientially because you’re walking it out with Him. He’s revealing and disclosing, declaring and transmitting all these things because we are united with Him in Christ Jesus.
Thank you, Lord. When I think about you, yes, it’s through your blood. As somebody said once, who was a great woman of God, “If you make much of the blood, the blood will make much of you. It’s the answer to everything. Just hold up the blood of Jesus.” If something is attacking you, plead the blood of Jesus. I just say, “God, yeah, I’m probably guilty, but God, you paid the price.” So I’m not in that arena where the Devil is trying to get a common ground. I have no common ground with you because I’m in the blood of Jesus. And He’s working things out of me through the blood.
In the Old Testament, it could only cover sins. It couldn’t take the sins away. But Jesus took our sins away. But He said, “Now walk it out with Me.” So you will be healed to the uttermost. You will be never coming back, never to rise again, kind of salvation. And so from glory to glory to glory, from faith to faith, and joy to joy, He says your steps will grow brighter and brighter and brighter. That means that you’ll understand some things more and more and more. And understanding is a wellspring of life to those that have it. It comes through experience. Go get it. In all you’re getting, get understanding. You got to go get it. You got to do some things with the Father; the God of your salvation is beckoning you to go get understanding. Experientially, your feet will light up. It’s a joyful path. Even though all those who live godly will suffer.
But it’s only like Pastor Ken would say, “It’s not a setback but a spring forward.” It only serves to keep you going farther and higher. Because we don’t get prideful. We just say, “Lord, okay, it is what it is and I would like some grace.” Because He gives grace to the humble. It frustrates the proud.
A letter of breakthrough…
I want to read this letter. I hope it blesses you. So it’s a wakeup letter. And this was from a minister who received a letter from somebody who followed him. And it’s a letter of breakthrough.
“As I am now self-employed, I have a great freedom in the way that I spend my time each day, except for days when I’ve made a specific arrangement to meet someone or to work on a specific assignment. I’m not tied down to having to get out of bed at any particular hour in the morning. And if I should so wish, there’s nothing to stop me from spending the day in bed. Of course, there’s always a great deal of work that needs to be done, but there’s not the kind of pressure to get up in the mornings that there is in a regular job.
“So in order to get my work done, a considerable degree of self-discipline would seem essential. However, I recently began to experience great difficulty in getting up in mornings despite the real urgency of a lot of my work. Admittedly, I’m often tired, but so are most people. This is no excuse to just lie in bed. Every morning, my alarm clock would ring which I would promptly switch off and invariably turn over and go back to sleep or else lie there half awake with no energy to move.
“I found that day after day I just could not find the energy or enthusiasm to get up and ended up staying in bed late, which is always a bad start to the day. I began to feel very upset about my complete lack of willpower and self-discipline since the situation got worse and no amount of self-effort made any real change. Added to this, I felt very guilty since certain passages in the Bible kept coming to mind. Such as those in Proverbs 12 about fools idling away their time, and chapter 20 about those who sleep go hungry. And, of course, the warning from Paul to the Thessalonians to stay away from lazy Christians.
“All these thoughts continued to simply remind me of how lazy I was but were no help at all in getting me up. I was beginning to feel thoroughly fed up with myself and dreaded the thought of having a morning quiet time, confessing my laziness to the Lord, asking His forgiveness and praying for strength, which never seemed to come.”
The minister says, “Now notice what happens…”
“After a while, I began to get really angry about this and told the Lord in no uncertain terms that I did not think much of all His promises to keep us from our sinful nature and make new hearts in us if He ignored my prayers for help in this area of my life and could think of nothing better to do than accuse me of being lazy, which I knew enough anyway. Feeling thoroughly defiant about the whole issue, I stopped setting my alarm clock and resolved that I would make no further efforts at all, telling the Lord that He would just have to get me up if He took any interest at all.
“For the first few mornings, I woke up late and got up even later. But I stuck to my defiant attitude, and thanked the Lord instead for a pleasant sleep, which struck me as being about the most arrogant thing I could say, as it was entirely due to my laziness. However, as I calmed down and accepted the situation, I began to find myself waking up much earlier and instead of being rudely awakened by an alarm clock, I woke with a hymn running through my mind.
“Furthermore, since I had made no promises about trying to get up, I found that I had the most remarkable freedom to do so, only a few minutes after waking. I have since found this to be by far the best way of starting the day, simply to rely on Jesus to get me up. Furthermore, it works just as well on the days when I have to go out early because He knows when I need to get up and wakes me in plenty of time to do so.
“So recently I gave my alarm clock away as I have no intention of going back to the old way of doing things. There are at least four things I’ve learned from this.
One…
In the most peculiar way, I have begun to realize the true meaning of trusting the Lord in every situation. And that there is literally no self-effort involved at all. We can live our lives totally led by the Spirit of God, even in the smallest things. So I’m not listening to any more worthy-sounding advice from my brethren about proving our love for the Lord or being more committed to Him. We do not have to be more committed to Him. We only have to realize our own total weakness, face up to the wickedness of our own hearts, and then depend like children on His commitment to us. I’m obviously standing here where most Christians already know. I’m not sure they do, but it has taken me all this time to really understand it.
Two…
“Quite by accident, I learned that by being more bold in claiming God’s promises, even though unfortunately I began by being extremely rude to the King of Kings, I could call Satan’s bluff, for it was surely Satan and not Jesus that kept reminding me of this laziness. Even though he was quoting the Bible accurately. I have found the principle to be true in other occasions.
Three…
“It has occurred to me that, as Christians, we claim that Jesus has the power to wake us up from death. Our testimony would sound rather improbable if in practical experience we cannot trust Him to wake us up from sleep. This testimony proves that Jesus came to save sinners, not the righteous. And that He truly is glorified because He literally does the work and all we have to do is completely abandon our lives to Him.”
So in the morning we need to wake up at certain times, but there’s things that we need to wake up to that we’re kind of asleep to. We wake up to the fact that we are redeemed. Wake up to the fact that Jesus’ blood paid the price. We put ourselves in remembrance. And I would say this, like sometimes I would see some things in hindsight, I’m like, “Wow, why didn’t I do that?” I mean, I didn’t take authority. I didn’t even help this person. I didn’t realize that they were going through something I might find out later. I’m like, “Lord, was I sleeping?” And then I’d say this prayer. “Lord, if I can have perfect presence of mind now, would you grant me perfect presence of mind when you are beckoning me to do things?” God said that He’s redeemed us for good works. Not that we should boast, but He planned good works for us.
Holy Moments…
Let us never fail to recognize when God is like… I would say, I don’t want to pass by and fail to recognize that you are wanting me to do something with you. It’s called Holy Moments. And it’s not overwhelming. He plans the things we’re talking, kind of like DJ, what he does every day. I hang out with him sometimes and he gets this look in his eye. He’ll go… And then all of a sudden, he’ll be going off in the corner to somebody. He heard the Lord say, “I want you to do something.” He was awake to it. He was alert to it. He had a presence of mind to do it. There’s so many things that God has for us.
Prayed…
So Father, we thank you for the presence of mind that we’re asking for right now.
We thank you, Lord, that you can wake us up.
We can rely on you and not alarm clocks or not what everybody else in the world says your schedule has to be.
But at any moment you can say, it’s time to get up and do the things that I’ve called you to do.
The holy moments.
