Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Good morning. Glad to have you guys in the chapel this morning.
Draw a fresh breath of God…
But it is good to know and be reminded that we can just simply receive Jesus on a Monday morning, that there’s not anything more that He is asking us to do per se, because Jesus finished the work that was needed to be accomplished on the cross. The work of His redemption. And He just invites us to come and sit before Him and receive, to exhale all of our cares and worries and excesses and internal toxicity, possibly. Just exhale and draw in a fresh breath of God the Holy Spirit on this Monday morning. And rest! Grace is the fact that we can rest. We can enter in and just receive Himself.
Receive His presence.
Receive His forgiveness.
Receive His fresh supply.
Receive His “yes” to your need.
It’s a good reminder…
Our first responsibility is to rest. Certainly, it can feel like a press sometimes on your flesh. It’s true. You have to press in and let your flesh scream a little bit and your lower nature be depleted. That’s a good thing so that your inner nature, your inner self, can be refreshed and strengthened and healed and made strong again.
And so just receive from Him today on this Monday morning. Just receive. Just close your eyes and just let an expectation that He is filling you just go through your mind right now and just expect the Holy Spirit is strengthening you and refreshing you, giving you a fresh outlook on this new week, a fresh expectation on that situation that you’ve been praying about. You’ve been looking for answers in. And just let Him do the work of Christ in you. Let Him do the work.
James 5:7…
And as you’re having that expectation and sensing the presence of God, let me just remind you of what the book of James says in 5:7. I’m going to read this from the Passion translation. So it’s a bit more postmodern, but that’s okay. Listen to the spirit of it.
It says, “Meanwhile, brothers and sisters, we must be patient and filled with expectation as we wait for the appearing of the Lord. Filled with expectation, not filled with “oh me, oh my.” It’s like how in a thousand in one ways how it’s not going to work out for you this week, but filled with expectation that God is following through in what He said He would do in our nation, in your particular situation, in your life.
“Be filled with expectation…”
You know why? There’s one reason in particular anyway I want to highlight why we should practice a positive forward looking, faith-filled expectation. And that is because somebody once said that neurons that fire together, wire together. Meaning the more you fill your heart and your consciousness with the expectation that God is coming through for you, the more you envision the answer, the breakthrough, the fulfillment of the dream or the promise God has spoken to you, the more you let your neurons fire together in positive faith-filled expectation. The more your mind wires that way. And it becomes easier to expect the goodness of God.
So as you fill your mind with expectation and the Word of God, your mind begins to wire itself for a continued and greater expectation that God will be faithful for you and your situation. Because He will! But it says we must be patient and filled with expectation as we wait for the appearing of the Lord.
Think like a farmer…
Think about the farmer who has to patiently wait for the earth’s harvest as it ripens because of the early and the latter rains. “So you also keep your hopes high.” Amen! I mean you have to do something to get your hopes up high. It’s like you have to get on the edge of your seat actually on this Monday morning and on every morning. And at every given moment during your day, get on the edge of your seat and have a forward-leaning hope-filled expectation that God is coming through for you right now.
That He is working behind the scenes…
To fulfill His promise
That healing is flowing into your body
That peace is saturating your soul
That behind the scenes where you can’t see, angels are conspiring along with the Holy Spirit and other willing agents in the earth realm to bring salvation to your loved ones
To turn around what is going in a wrong direction.
It goes on to say…
“Think above the farmer who has to patiently wait for the year’s harvest as it ripens because of the early and latter rains. So you also keep your hopes up high and be patient for the presence of the Lord is drawing closer.”
Let me jump down to James 5:13…
It says, “Are there any believers in your fellowship…” or in your church or in your home, “that is suffering great hardship and distress? Encourage them to pray! Are there happy, cheerful ones among you? Encourage them to sing out their praises. Are there any sick among you? Then ask for the elders of the church to come and pray over the sick and anoint them with oil in the name of our Lord. And the prayer of faith will heal the sick and the Lord will raise them up. And if they have committed sins, they will be forgiven.”
What a good promise right there!
Verse 16 says…
“Confess and acknowledge how you have offended one another and then pray for one another to be instantly healed. For tremendous power is released through the passionate, heartfelt prayer of a godly believer.”
What a promise!
Verse 17 gives an example of it…
“Elijah was a man with human frailties, just like all of us, but he prayed and received supernatural answers.” Aren’t you glad that the fact that you can receive answers, that you can receive His presence has nothing to do with you or me and how we feel, what we did, or what we didn’t do. But our position and our qualification to receive answers in prayer, to receive breakthroughs in our lives for God to work in us and for God to work through us is all based on the finished work… and I stress “finished work”… of Jesus. Amen.
Let Jesus do the heavy lifting…
I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again. Jesus came to do all the heavy lifting for us. Really. He came to dot the I’s and cross the T’s where redemption was concerned so that we could simply receive His forgiveness and receive His mercy and grace and receive His rightness. a.k.a. righteousness, right? “For he who knew no sin became sin that we might be made the righteous” or the rightness “of God in Him.” Regardless of how we feel. Regardless of what happened yesterday. Or your past in some way.
We stand before Him right if we have put our trust and we believe and claim the blood of Jesus as our own. And we claim relationship with Jesus as our own. As a result, we’ve entered into Christ. You’re not encrusted, as I say, you’re in Christ. In Him we live and move and have our being. In Him we enter into rightness.
We enter into holiness.
We enter into forgiveness.
We enter into sonship.
We enter into the favor of God.
We enter into an anointing that comes in us and on us.
You have received an unction…
Anointing means smeared upon. Guess what? Whether you feel like it or not, whether yesterday was a success or not, the Bible says that you have received an unction, an anointing, a smearing on of the presence of God on you and in you. So that in every way you are entirely pleasing to the Father. That’s a good word as a pray-er. That’s a good word as a son or a daughter of the most high God. You are entirely pleasing to Him. Completely forgiven. Lovely, in fact. A very target of His favor and His goodness and His presence.
James 5:17 says…
“Elijah was a man with human frailties, just like all of us. But he prayed and received supernatural answers. He actually shut the heavens over the land. So there was no rain for three and a half years. Then he prayed again, and the skies opened up over the land so that the rain came again and produced the harvest.”
Where? In the land!
So you may not feel like you’re qualified to make big, audacious prayers or any prayer at all, but I’m here to ask you to reconsider, because Elijah was frail. Elijah was weak at times. He had the same constitution as you and I, but yet he prayed and it shut the very heavens. And then he prayed again, and the heavens were open. And the rains were given forth, and the rain produced a harvest in the land.
Elijah was a template for prayer…
Well, there’s a lot you could say here. But this is a personal example and admonishment for us. But it’s also a collective example and admonishment or template for us as the church in this hour to pray that the last-day rains would fall and continue to fall persistently. So that the land, let’s say America, could produce its harvest of souls and miracles and signs and wonders.
God knows our makeup…
He’s acquainted because Jesus took on human flesh for a time and season in His earthly ministry. So He’s acquainted with how we feel. He’s acquainted with frailty and the human body and all of that, and what we go through down here. But yet here in James, it still promises that like Elijah, who didn’t have the Spirit like we have Him living perpetually within us, was still able to pray and produce supernatural nationwide results at that time under an Old Covenant.
How much more…
How much more can you and I individually, but then collectively as New Testament people with the Spirit in us all the time, produce results of the rains in this last hour and the results of widespread revival and awakening across our land and nation?
