Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Worship leader Annie…
Good morning, Pray-ers, friends of God. Disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. Fellow laborers in His kingdom, in His vineyard. Hallelujah. What a blessing it is that we can gather today in His name, work with His Holy Spirit toward bringing His plans and purposes to pass.
Pastor Heather…
We are to be led by the Holy Spirit…
I felt led to share this. As I was praying, I felt the Lord impressing in my heart how to be led of the Holy Spirit. We are led by the Holy Spirit. Just close your eyes and just picture that. How does somebody lead? They go out in front of you, right? We are led by the Holy Spirit. And that means that we’re following. We’re following Him because He’s leading the way. And I think sometimes in our rush of life when we’re in a hurry, we forget, and we’re rushing out ahead of the Holy Spirit. Because we have an agenda and we know the way to go. But coming back to that being led by the Holy Spirit.
I want to read Romans 8:25–28 out of the Passion Translation.
“So because our hope is set on what is yet to be seen, we patiently keep on waiting for its fulfillment. And in a similar way, the Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our human frailty to empower us in our weakness.”
Picture that, Him taking hold of you in your weakness.
“For example, at times, we don’t even know how to pray.”
Has anybody ever not known how to pray or what to pray in a situation?
“We don’t even know the best things to ask.”
Sometimes we think we know the best things to ask.
“But the Holy Spirit rises up within us to super intercede on our behalf, pleading to God with emotional sighs too deep for words.”
What a beautiful picture. He’s interceding on our behalf through us with emotional sighs too deep for words.
“God, the searcher of the heart knows fully our longings, yet He also understands the desires of the Spirit because the Holy Spirit passionately pleads before God for us.”
Picture that. He’s passionately pleading before God for us, His holy ones, in perfect harmony with God’s plan for our destiny. So we might be praying, but we aren’t always in perfect harmony with His plan for our destiny. But the Holy Spirit is, right? And so that’s the difference of praying in your natural understanding and praying being led by the Spirit.
“So we are convinced that every detail of our lives is continually woven together for good, for we are His lovers who have been called to fulfill the designed purpose.”
So let’s get into that…
The Holy Spirit takes hold of us in our weakness, or He helps us in our infirmities. The Benson Commentary says the word “help” there literally expresses the action of one who assists another to bear a burden by taking hold of it on the opposite side and bearing it with him as persons do who assist one another in carrying heavy loads.
The Greek definition…
The word help in Greek… and I’m going to try to pronounce it correctly; it’s a very long word. It is sunanti labon om ahi [phonetic spelling]. Try to say that five times fast. And that means “to take hold with at the side, to take a share in, generally to help, to give assistance with full initiative because closely identified supplying help that exactly corresponds to the need, but to aggressively lay hold of. The word underlines the high personal self-interest motivating giving the help which is personally shared.”
I love that.
So the Holy Spirit has personal self-interest into helping us and giving us the help that we need. In other words, the Holy Spirit aggressively lays hold of our burden. He has closely identified and takes hold of it to give assistance with full initiative, supplying help that exactly corresponds to our need because of His high personal interest in our need, which motivates Him to help.
That’s so good.
The Holy Spirit makes super-intercession…
So the Holy Spirit rises up within us to super intercede on our behalf, or makes intercession for us. The Barnes notes on the Bible says, “make intercession.” The Greek word used here is huper-entugchano [phonetic spelling]. It occurs nowhere else in the New Testament. It’s just for this “making intercession,” how the Holy Spirit makes intercession. The word, entugchanó is, however, used several times. So that “huper” is the super part of it. So right here, that’s how the Holy Spirit makes intercession, like hyper intercession, super intercession, and that’s the only time that’s used.
Intercession is used many times. Intercession in the Greek, huper, is “hyper, super, over, beyond, on behalf of, for the sake of, concerning, or extend benefit or help that reaches beyond the present situation.” That’s the huper part of it. So it’s hyper, super, over, beyond.
It’s a hyper way of hitting the mark…
And then the intercession part, which is the entugchanó word is “to chance upon, confer with, entreat, meet, encounter, call upon, make a petition, make suit, supplication, to obtain by hitting the mark.” So think of that, like a hyper way of just hitting the mark. The Holy Spirit always knows where that mark is. “Properly to light upon, meet with, obtain, to go and meet a person to converse.” Think of that. We’re just meeting with the person of the Holy Spirit “to converse, to consult, to intervene, to intersect with.”
I like that.
The root means “to strike, to hit the bullseye spot on.” So in other words, in that moment when we need help and we don’t know how to pray, when we pray in the spirit, the Holy Spirit meets us, intersects with us, intersects with that problem that we’re lifting up to Him, right? Converses, consults, and hyper or super intervenes on behalf of us. He goes above and beyond the present situation of what concerns us and hits the bullseye spot on in prayer.
Aren’t you glad that we have that helper inside of us?
So that’s the Holy Spirit, and He’s interceding through us, for us, as we pray in the Spirit. So obviously the Bible says I’ll pray in the natural and I’ll pray in the Spirit. We have to have both.
Book, “Unseen Forces Beyond This Word” by Phil and Fern Halverson…
I was reading this morning the book, “Unseen Forces Beyond This World.” It’s by Philip and Fern Halverson. And for those of you that don’t know, Phillip Halverson taught Pastor Lynne how to pray way, way, way, way back in the day. I think I got this on Amazon. I don’t know that we have it in the bookstore here, but you could look and see. But it’s such an amazing book. And all through the book, you hear stories about how he was learning, and this was… There wasn’t a lot of, I guess, what you would call intercessors that day, people that knew how to pray in the Spirit and then also get words in the natural while they were praying in the Spirit.
He’s learning how to pray in the Spirit…
And so he walks out and kind of learns through this book, you can see how he’s learning how as he’s praying in the Spirit, God would bring up natural words, and then he would press into that and continue to pray in the Spirit. And there’s all these great stories and miracles of how he walked those words out. So if he would get a word, it could be somebody’s name, somebody he has never met, and then later he would realize he was praying for somebody in another country, or later he would realize he was praying for a doctor he was about to meet, and then he would know he was to pray for that person or to lead them for salvation, or there was going to be a connection somehow. And so it’s a great book.
Phil Halverson passed to heaven in a service…
And it shares the story, for those of you that might not know, of how he and Fern came to church here at Living Word. And at one of the services, Phil Halverson actually went to heaven. Like, he passed on while he was praying, went out under the power and went to heaven during a service. And so you can read about that, and that was here. And she talks about how Pastor Mac was praying. They were doing a stewardship campaign. And he came up and he prayed. And I think Brother Hagin was there. There’s just lots of great stories in here. So if you want to read it.
This is our legacy as a church—prayer…
But the reason I’m talking about this is because this is our legacy as a church at Living Word. It’s a legacy of prayer. We have the Holy Spirit. But I love when you can look down through the ages and you can see how God brought Phil Halverson to teach Pastor Lynne how to pray. Pastor Lynne was praying. They mentioned Billye Brim in here, Kenneth Hagin, Kenneth Copeland, and just the legacy, the lineage that we have of praying in the Spirit.
“This shall be called a house of prayer…”
And when they founded Living Word, Pastor Mac and Pastor Lynne… Pastor Lynne heard in her spirit, “This shall be called a house of prayer.” And so here we are, however many years later. That was 1980… I think ‘80 on the dot. Here we are, however many years later, still carrying on that legacy of prayer and having this morning prayer. I say all that just to encourage you.
We don’t worship people. That’s not what this is about. But there is a legacy of prayer here. There’s a spirit of prayer here. And we get the honor of continuing to carry that spirit of prayer out, to continue to teach the next generations how to pray in the Spirit, how to allow the Holy Spirit to intercede through you.
And I would say many churches, just even in here, there’s great churches all over the State of Minnesota, but I don’t know that all of them are teaching how to intercede, how to allow the Holy Spirit to pray through you. So I do think that’s something that I’m thankful for, God bringing me to this church, because that’s how I learned how to pray.
Be intentional about praying…
And so as we continue today, but I want to go back into praying if we could. And then I really just want to fully allow the Holy Spirit… I mean, we do this all the time, but I want you to be real intentional about praying, and let’s just listen. Let’s listen. He’s super interceding on our behalf today.
That could be something for you personally.
That could be for Living Word as a whole.
That could be for the State of Minnesota.
That could be for the city of Brooklyn Park.
Prepare your heart to pray…
It could be for so many things. And whenever I’m driving here and I’m praying, I’m preparing my heart, I just always say, “I just bow myself low, low, low at Your feet.” I say, “I yield myself to You, Holy Spirit. I yield myself to Your unction. Let my words be Your words. Let my thoughts be Your thoughts. Pray what You want to pray today. Say what You want to say today.”
And that’s how I just prepare my heart to get ready. So let’s just do that. Let’s yield ourselves to the unction of the Holy Spirit, because you know that there are many, many, many things He wants to pray out. And we get the honor of connecting with Him today to find out what is that thing that He wants to pray out today? What direction does He want to go today? And as we listen, He’ll tell us. He’ll show us. He super intercedes on our behalf. He takes hold of us.
So just allow Him to take hold… We’ll start by singing a little bit in the Spirit. And then we’ll just see where He wants to go this morning. It’s His service. It’s His prayer time.
My name’s Heather Sibinski. I’m one of the pastors here at Living Word. Thanks for joining us for prayer today. Have a blessed day.
