Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Good morning. It’s Monday. It’s the 15th of June already! We are just cruising through 2026. Well we are here to pray this morning.
The importance of the fundamentals of prayer…
Well this morning as I was reflecting last night and then this morning, I was thinking about how important the basics are and how important it is from time to time to recalibrate to the fundamentals of our faith, the fundamentals of prayer.
The Holy Spirit is the teleprompter of our hearts…
I was reminded of an excerpt in one of the chapters in Pastor Lynne’s book, “The Master Is Calling.” I highly recommend. There is a segment that I go over once in a while where she talks about praying from the heart. It’s chapter two of “The Master Is Calling.” And I thought I would just maybe share an excerpt of this before we lean into prayer.
The Holy Ghost is our teacher and our guide, right? And I just trust that He’s going to give us the right words to pray this morning and just guide and lead us. That’s what I endeavor to do. I endeavor just to follow the “teleprompter” of my heart. Ultimately, the Holy Spirit is our guide. He’s our instructor. He’s our helper. He’s the one who is on the sidelines, so to speak, coaching us, saying, “This is what I want you guys to pray. Here’s where I want you to go. This is what I want you to do on a given day.” And so we endeavor just to follow Him.
Excerpt from Pastor Lynne’s book, “The Master Is Calling”
She starts out by quoting a few verses from 1st Samuel 1:8–18. And she’s quoting this because it’s Hannah who is encountering a season of where nothing much was happening, frankly, regarding the promise of God, regarding her prayers. And so we kind of flash to this particular episode in her life where she prays in 1 Samuel 8, “And she,” Hannah, “was in bitterness of soul and prayed unto the Lord and wept sore.” In other words, she wept intensely. “And she vowed a vow and said, ‘O Lord of hosts, if thou will indeed look on the affliction of thy handmaiden and remember me and not forget thine handmaiden, but will give unto thine handmaiden a man child,” or a son, “then I will give him unto you the Lord all the days of his life. And there shall no razor come upon his head.’ And it came to pass as she continued praying…”
That’s interesting, she continued praying…
“…before the Lord, that Eli, the priest, marked her mouth. Now Hannah spake in her heart only, for her lips did not move, but her voice was not heard. Therefore, Eli thought that she had been drunken. And Eli said unto her, ‘How long have you been drunk? Put away from you wine and strong drink from thee.’ And Hannah answered and said, ‘No, Lord, I am a woman of sorrowful spirit. I have not drunk neither wine nor strong drink, but have poured out my soul before the Lord.’
“Then Eli answered and said, ‘Go in peace, and the God of Israel will grant thee your petition,” or your prayer, “that thou has asked of Him.’ And she said, ‘Let thine hand maiden find grace in thy sight.’ So the woman went her way and did eat, and her countenance was no more sad.” In other words, she had a smile once again on her face.
Pastor Lynne writes…
“If you read the rest of the story, you’ll find God not only gave Hannah the son of her request, He gave her five other children as well.” So maybe be careful about what you ask for, right? Do you really want it? All right. The God we serve does above and beyond what we can ask or think, right? At least that’s what Ephesians 3:20 says. “And how did she get such remarkable results? Did she obtain them by mechanically applying a formula for answered prayer? Did she get them by working up the best, most wonderfully sounding petition she possibly could? No. She did it by pouring out her heart honestly and openly to God.”
And that’s maybe something I’m wanting to punctuate and highlight. Honestly, it comes down to us honestly and openly pouring our hearts out before the Lord.
“And believing He heard and answered her prayer just as the priest said he would. If you’re sensing barrenness in your prayer life, you may need to do the same thing. You may need to do as Lamentations 2:19 says, ‘Arise from your bed, cry out in the night, at the beginning of the watches. Pour out your heart like water before the face of the Lord.”
“You see, your soul is like a container. It has many things inside. Most people just try to relate to God from the surface of that container, so the relationship with Him remains superficial. Those people remind me of a teacher I had once in seventh grade. She was an extremely unique person and one of the most memorable things about her was the closet in her classroom. She packed it so full she couldn’t open the door all the way because if she did, a mountain of stuff would come tumbling out upon her. Whenever she brought a coat to school, she would open the closet just a crack, jam the coat inside, and slam the door. Some people’s souls are just like that. They’re cluttered up with spiritual debris and emotional junk they’ve accumulated over the years. What they need to do is open the door to their hearts and let everything just fall out before the Lord. In other words, they need to get very honest before God.
“Actually, we need to do that. We need to stop trying to present to God our spiritual side, the part of us all brushed up nice and neat. We need to be real and admit to God we have problems with our attitudes and motivations and ask Him to come in and change them.”
Things that cloud our perspective…
You’ve heard me say it before, but all that is required to change is a change in perspective. And often, I believe what clouds, obscures, pollutes our perspective is the stuff that we’re holding onto that God’s saying, “Please give that to me.” The stuff that fills up the closet of our soul, in other words.
And she’s saying…
“Just open up the door and let it all come out. Get it all out.” Get it all out.
There is a spiritual principle that speaks to the importance of pruning and removing and allowing certain things to come to an end, because it cleans a whole lot of other stuff up and gives God an opportunity to do new things.
“Did you know, you can keep God out of certain areas of your life by refusing to expose them to Him? You can close the door on Him by failing to communicate with Him honestly about them and trying to act like something you’re not.”
Effective prayers are those prayed openly and honestly…
Wow, we can do that to God? Yeah, we can. Especially if we’ve been Christians for any length of time. We get really good at being a “Christian” and presenting our spiritual side. When the most effective prayer is the prayer where we are just fully open and honest and bare before God. Even willing to process where our perspective has gone askew. Even willing to process where we hurt, where we’re frustrated, where we have a negative attitude, or maybe our motive is off-center.
He wants to remove and prune…
God wants to address the issues of our hearts. He wants to remove and prune and reorganize in some ways. Simplify. This is the simplicity of what it means to be a follower of Jesus. It’s about a two-way conversation with Him, not just us perpetually putting up our requests and saying, “God, do this, God bless that, show me this, show me that.” No, it’s a conversation with Him. Where we can offload certain things and He can download other things to us.
I think there’s a great key in being able to live sustainably and live in such a way where we’re rising and thriving and enjoying the journey of life down here. Because …
We’re not trying to do it all on our own.
We’re not trying to put on airs.
We’re not trying to pretend.
He just wants your heart…
We’re learning to be real and authentic and genuine with our hearts open to the Lord. He ultimately just wants your heart. And we ultimately want His heart. That can only begin when we kind of come to our senses and say, “Lord, yeah, there’s a lot I’ve been carrying around. There’s a lot of pain. There’s a lot of frustration. There’s a lot of unmet, whatever, expectations.”
Heart-felt prayers avail much…
He wants to hear from you. It’s a good place to start. It’s not just about what we can do in our performance of prayer. It’s not just about how much we can pray or how well we can articulate a request. I’ve found some of the most powerful pray-ers are some of the most simple and simply heartfelt. And I’m always reminded of James which says, “The earnest, heartfelt, continued prayer,” in the Amplified Classic, “prayer of a righteous man or a righteous woman produces much power.” So the prayer that emanates from the heart, not necessarily the head.
He wants us and we need Him…
I’m not saying we don’t pray at times out of our head, or we don’t maybe pray a scripture. But God wants you. He wants you. He sent His Son, Jesus, who laid down His life because He wants us, not just what we can do for Him. He wants us. And whether we realize it or not, we need Him.
So I just encourage you today, if you’ve been carrying some things around, if you feel like you’ve got this rope and you’re pulling this wagon and nobody’s helping you and you’re frustrated, maybe it’s time to just stop and say, “Lord, what’s up here? What’s happening?” Yes, Jesus said His burden was light, His yoke was easy. “Learn how I do it,” He said.
Jesus’ way was communion with the Father…
What was His way? His way was communion with His Father, oneness with His Heavenly Father. And I’m preaching to myself if I’m preaching to anybody. This is something we never outgrow. Being reminded that…
It’s not about what we can do.
It’s not about church attendance.
It’s not about us preaching and teaching.
Everything begins with Him…
I’m not saying those are bad things. I’m just saying everything begins with Him. This week begins with Him. The beginning of the rest of the best part of your life begins today with Him. Being real with Him in your language, how you talk day to day, not in the King’s English. How you say it. That’s what He wants to hear from you. He knows. He’s bright enough to know what you’re saying and to pick up on your postmodern vernacular. He probably knows the vernacular that’s yet to come.
So Pastor Lynne goes on to say this…
“Did you know you can keep God out of certain areas of your life by refusing to expose them to Him? You can close the door on Him by failing to communicate with Him honestly about them and trying to act like something you’re not. By the same token, you can throw open the door with a simple honesty and prayer by saying, “God, did you know what I thought this morning? It was the most ghastly thing. I need you to forgive me. Help me in that area.”
We need to clear out our souls of its clutter…
Pouring out your soul is like cleaning out the cluttered closet. Some things just need to be confessed, put under the blood of Jesus, and thrown away forever. Other things, cares and worries, need to be given to God in faith. Still other issues may need to be discussed with the Lord, then put back in your heart in a more orderly fashion. You may even discover some things within you that are too big to articulate in words. You can sense them in there, but you don’t know exactly what they are, much less how to communicate them.”
I have to say, I’ve experienced that many times in my life at different seasons where like, “Okay, what’s going on, Lord?” Or you just feel like crying. That’s okay. That’s an expression of prayer to Him. And some of it may relate to you. Some of it may relate to another situation that God’s heart is broken about, a situation, a person. You’re identifying with them. And you don’t have words. And you don’t know exactly what’s going on in your soul. But you give place to it. And you say, “Lord, have your way in this.” I mean, some of the most profound moments of prayer in my life were times when I didn’t even realize I needed the closet of my soul cleaned out. And I went to my place of prayer, and I just didn’t have anything to articulate. I didn’t even want to. But then the Spirit of God showed up, and I just began to weep, or I began to express myself maybe in some unknown tongue or just some emotion. And I’ve come out of that place completely rearranged and changed.
She says…
“In those instances, you can pour them out to the Lord in other tongues. You may even find yourself weeping as you do that. If so, just yield to that weeping because it is the Holy Spirit moving upon you. Keep praying until you feel the peace of God and sense that you have finished pouring out your heart.”
There have been many times over the years where I’ve done just that and didn’t even pray anything in my understanding or even in other tongues, and just wept before the Lord, just waited on the Lord. And I felt His presence coursing across me, across my soul, across my body. And after a period of time, sometimes less, sometimes more, I’ve come out of those places and felt completely reinvented, completely transformed. And I don’t even know exactly what happened. But He did what He wanted to do. And I needed it, and I was glad He did.
