Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Well, Happy Monday everyone. We’re still in October, right? We crossed over the line last Wednesday and we’re in October for a while anyway, so I hope you’re doing well. If you don’t already know, my name is Ken Olson and I’m one of the pastors on staff here at Living Word. And it is my blessing to be able to lead prayer today.
Nancy Dufresne’s book, “The Supernatural Prayer Life”
I want to read a couple of things to you. One comes from Nancy Dufresne’s book, “The Supernatural Prayer Life,” which I highly recommend. Honestly, it’s becoming a perennial favorite for me in my prayer life and devotions. She writes in one particular chapter where she’s talking about the spirit of prayer, and I thought we would just start with this, this morning. I like to kind of lay a foundation or impart some things, even if I do read from others teaching on prayer.
But she writes…
“The more you give yourself to prayer, the more the Holy Spirit will be able to use you. And the more experiences you will have with the Holy Spirit in prayer, the more you cooperate with the spirit of prayer, the more sensitive you’ll be to the Spirit. And you’ll be quick to recognize His dealings or His movements in your life. For the Holy Spirit to use you in prayer, you must make yourself available to Him. If you are available to Him, you’ll respond to Him when He moves within you or upon you. However, you don’t have to wait for Him to move on you to pray. You can set yourself to pray anytime you choose. In fact, the more you set yourself to pray, the more He will move on you with the Spirit of prayer.”
The Holy Spirit is a prayer coach…
The spirit of prayer is the Holy Spirit. And He is a coach. He’s a teacher. He’s a guide. He’s a mentor in many things, including prayer. He’s able to, I’ve found, prompt you with the right questions to ask the Lord. It seems really simple, and I think in our religious indoctrination, we might think that, “Well, if God wants to tell me something, He’ll just tell me.” But remember, God works according to spiritual law, according to His Word. And the Bible says you have not because you ask not. So the answer to a very simple question in your life might be the fact that you’ve never asked Him. So know that. There are questions to ask and the Holy Spirit’s prompting us to ask questions.
The Holy Spirit will show you things to come…
In John 16:13, Jesus Himself prophesied before He went through His death, burial, and resurrection. He said, “Howbeit, when He the spirit of truth comes, He will guide you into all the truth. For He shall not speak or guide on His own authority or His own initiative, but whatever He hears the Father say or sees the Father do, He’ll convey it or communicate it to you.” And as I always point out, it goes on to say, “and He will show you things to come.”
My personal experience…
So I was reminded of that recently, just driving to Target to run an errand. And I was just prompted to ask a question. And within a moment, I had an answer. And within a couple days, the answer was confirmed that that was the right question to ask. The Lord showed me, and He showed forth His Word in my life in a very practical way because I asked.
So never be afraid to ask. Whether it’s a strategy regarding a situation you’re dealing with in your life, how to pray for a loved one, what your prayer assignment might be this week. Because, yes, if you are set on giving your heart and your life to the Lord, then He has some things He wants to not only do in you and for you, but through you. Because we’re here to bring forth the plan of God in the earth through our lives. And oftentimes that happens when we ask.
When you ask, believe that you receive…
The Bible promises us that when we ask in Jesus’ name, we will receive. It says in the Gospel of Mark, when you ask, believe you receive and you will have. So it can be that simple. Honestly. Never be afraid, no matter how big or how small the request might be, to ask. It sets in motion a spiritual principle or law that when you ask, you will receive. Now, sometimes you have to put your faith in His timing. But I guarantee more often than not, you’ll get an answer sooner than you realize or were expecting.
Nancy goes on to say…
“However, you don’t have to wait for Him to move on you to pray. You can set yourself to pray anytime you choose. In fact, the more you set yourself to pray, the more He will move on you with the spirit of prayer. You must keep yourself stirred in the direction of prayer.”
Oh, come on now, somebody say “amen” to that on this Monday morning.
“Jesus hasn’t returned. So that means we continue at our station of prayer at our station in life to believe and to stand and to expect that God is in the process of following through on what He said He would do in our personal affairs, but also in our nation.”
God is at work in our nation…
Don’t get it mixed up. Don’t be deceived by legacy media or your favorite social media channel. Let the Word inform you. Let the Word of God make it clear to you what God’s intentions are. And His intentions are to have His way in America, in your family, in your finances.
Oh yeah, that’s right. It’s Monday morning. I’m going to take a strong stand on the grounds of His Word and we’re going to continue to stand this week on His promise…
Regarding your healing,
Regarding your finances,
Regarding all of your household being saved,
Regarding increase for you and your children more and more as you navigate through this life.
The Word is God’s revealed will…
The Word of God is not just some nice story that gives us momentary hope. The Word of God is the revealed will of God, by and large. Yeah, there are some stories about what not to do, demonstrated by the lives and even the nation of Israel at times. But much of what we see in the scriptures are what God desires. And I don’t know about you, but I’ve been praying much about “Lord, less of me, and more of what you desire. I want what you desire.”
I want to be an instrument of establishing what God desires in the earth in not only in my family in my life, but also in my nation and in my city, and in the situations that I encounter on any given day.
Nancy says…
“Feed on sound teaching on prayer. It will keep your prayer life stirred up. Make time to spend in prayer every day and participate in prayer meetings in your local church.”
Well, you guys are already doing that. So “gold star” to you on a Monday morning. Whether you’re online or in the chapel. I’m praying that you will encounter God’s presence in a fresh and new way for yourself and your journey today.
Nancy goes on to say…
“When the Holy Spirit needs to give a prayer assignment to someone, He’s going to use someone who prays.” Okay, it doesn’t get any more complex than that right there, right? You want to receive some prayer assignments, choose to pray. You’ve heard me point out that it’s mentioned of the early church that they “gave themselves” to prayer. You don’t have to wait for God to thump you over the head with a supernatural mallet or something. No, you’ve been journeying with Him long enough, even if it’s been a day or two, to know that He’s good and to know that His Word instructs us to pray and to yield ourselves to that spirit of prayer.
And as we do so, supernatural things are going to occur. As we take initiative, God is going to notice. And He’s going to trust you and me with more because there is more. If there is life in our being on this Monday morning, then there’s more that God wants to do, not only in us and for us but through us today. And it’s our ability to pray, to open up our mouths in the spirit, in our known language and in our unknown language. It’s that opportunity that makes us an avenue for God to get His way.
So she goes on to say…
“When the Holy Spirit needs to give a prayer assignment to someone, He’s going to use someone who prays. It’s your job to develop your prayer life, not God’s. Those who are used mightily in prayer are those who give themselves to prayer. They just keep at it and become proficient at it. Daniel was used mightily by God in prayer. But it tells us in Daniel 9:3, ‘and I set myself unto the Lord to seek by prayer and supplications…’”
Supplications is an old English word for “earnest entreaty, earnest requesting.”
“That’s not something God did. That’s something Daniel did. He gave himself to prayer. The apostles in the early days of the church were used mightily in prayer, but they declared in Acts 6:4, ‘But we will give ourselves continually to prayer.’ No one is called to prayer in the same way that someone is called to stand in the fivefold office. We are all to give ourselves to prayer. The more we give ourselves to prayer, the more God will be able to use us in this great work.”
What work? The work of the kingdom, the work of Jesus.
“Every believer is instructed to pray. It’s something we must all give ourselves to. It’s not something that just a few are called to. It is a privilege with which we all must be responsible.”
Excerpt from book, “This River Must Flow”
Now let me read something else to you. But in a little book entitled, “This River Must Flow,” a man by the name of W. I. Evans wrote this back in the fifties. It’s not a book in print from what I understand, but I did find it online under the Pentecostal Archives, I think it’s called. You can download it for free. And it’s called “This River Must Flow.”
Ezekiel’s vision of the river …
And this minister, W.I. Evans, says, “Our hearts must be awakened and quickened. That’s true. In this passage we may see…” The passage he’s referring to is the passage actually in Ezekiel 47:1–9, where Ezekiel experiences a river and an angelic entity comes to him as a guide and leads him into this river that flows out of the courtroom of heaven, out of God’s throne. And the angel leads him first into where his toes are wet, and then his ankles, and then his knees, and then his waist. And then the angel ultimately leads him into a river that’s over his head that you can only swim in. There’s no way to cross but to swim across.
The river is a type of the Holy Spirit…
He’s using this to prophetically convey an image or a type of the river of the Holy Spirit that was yet to come upon Jesus’ resurrection and sending the promise of the Holy Spirit. In fact, before we read any further, let me just quote the passage that Jesus said in His earthly ministry about what was yet to come even after Him.
In John 7:37, it says, “On the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried out saying, If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me as the scripture has said out of his heart will flow rivers.” Rivers of living water. “But this He spake concerning the Spirit whom those believing in Him would receive.”
That would be you and me. For the Holy Spirit, at least at this point in time, was not yet given because Jesus was not yet glorified. But we all know that Jesus sent the promised Holy Spirit and with Him released a torrent, a river of living water that supplies us and resources us and leads and guides us through this life in what God has planned for us.
So let’s jump back to what W.I. Evans writes about this river. He’s referencing Ezekiel in particular, but also what we just read there in the Gospel of John.
He says…
“God was pleased to visit the earth in marvelous ways down through the ages. And we stand somewhere along the line where the volume of the river described in Ezekiel is being increased.”
Isn’t that what we’ve been praying about? The former and the latter rain? And the outflow of heaven into the earth? And I’m reading this, you might be asking, “Well, why is Ken reading this on a Monday morning?” Because the truth of the matter is God desires this river of the Holy Spirit, this river of the miraculous, this river of prayer, this river of God’s mercy outflowing from His throne that it would flow! In this generation! We’re not to stand around and just spectate right now and say, “Oh wow, that’s crazy. I never thought that was going to happen in our government or in America or on the world stage.” No! We are to engage. We are to lean in and pray and be a part of this river that is taking us somewhere.
Don’t stand on the banks and watch the river flow by…
It’s taking us to the place where God is wrapping up the end of the age. So I don’t know about you, but I refuse to stand on the bank and spectate and watch the river go by. I want to get into this river. One way we do that is by giving ourselves to prayer. By giving ourselves to His Word. Jesus Himself said, “My words are spirit and they are life.” They’re not just dusty ink on a page. They are spirit and they are life. And when you yield to prayer in the spirit, in your heavenly language, you’re allowing this river to flow.
When you take time to be aware and recognize His presence in your life, to sit before Him and say, “Lord, what is up?” Or to ask Him a question, you’re allowing this river to flow. When you choose to be obedient to a prompting in your heart to pray for someone, to lay hands on another, to be generous, to step out and address or confront something that you feel the Lord leading you to address and confront no matter how practical or simple it may seem, you’re letting this river flow.
He’s waiting for us to get in the river…
Because we also see in the Word of God that faith allows God to operate and get His way. Amen. He’s waiting for us to get in the river, to stop sitting on the river bank and watching, and to step in. Because it will take you somewhere, that river. It will take you into the miraculous. It will take you into the fullness of His plan and that dream that He dropped into your heart maybe decades before.
