Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Worship leader Kathy…
Good morning, everybody. We are back together in the presence of the Lord. Not that the presence ever left, but it is good to be corporately here together in the presence of the Lord. Because you all have something I need, and I have something you all need. That’s how God made it to be, right? We’re supposed to be here together.
Quote from “The Path to Your Presence”
I’m going to read something from “Prayers on Fire.” It’s a devotional by Brian Simmons who translated the Passion and a friend of his, Gretchen Rodriguez. This is called “The Path to Your Presence.” I’m going to read a couple verses.
Psalm 11:7 says…
“Remember this: the righteous Lord loves what is right and just and every godly one will come into His presence and gaze upon His face.” I love that, right?
Psalm 34:5 says something very similar…
“Gaze upon Him. Join your life with His and joy will come. Your faces will glisten with glory. You’ll never wear that shame face again.” The devotional says it’s a prayer.
“I want to see your face, to gaze into the eyes that have inflamed my heart with holy passion. You are the object of my desire. Draw me closer. Lord, I’ve consecrated myself to you and seek to walk the narrow way of righteousness. The veil has been torn, and you call me your own, but I long to know you more. I yearn for unclouded vision. I earnestly desire to touch you, to reach out and hold the hand that so often holds mine. Impart to me the gift of compassion that I may love the way you love and forgive the way you forgive. I want my words to mirror your heart and reveal motives that are pure. Restrain my mind from wandering thought. I want to live a life that pleases you, so nothing I do will hinder me on the path that leads to your presence.”
I’m going to quote Pastor Ken from last week. I just thought this was too good for you to only hear once. I think he said this on Friday.
Pastor Ken said…
“Allow the Holy Spirit to replenish you.” We could just stop there. Right? We all need replenishing. I know I need replenishing.
And then he says…
“And the beautiful thing is that it’s in the secret place, in fellowship with Him and His Word, but also in His presence through prayer and silence and meditation that allows the Holy Spirit to replenish us. Some of us maybe today. It’s not that we need a new heavy revelation about something. We just need to be replenished.
Prayed…
So, Holy Spirit, as we are here this morning, we know that you’re going to replenish us as we worship you.
Prayer leader Kay…
I feel like one of those people that you see in the movies that they’re in a big, either heavy convention center or whatever, and then they go out into a balcony. And it’s quiet. And they overlook gardens or whatever it is that you picture a beautiful estate somewhere. And then you go out of the noise, out into the balcony. I felt the Holy Spirit say, “Come out here with me. Get away from the noise.”
And I feel like He’s got us out on the balcony by ourselves in Him. He’s got us out there looking over His gardens, over all His beautiful, beautiful, beautiful things that He’s made and creation and people. And He’s got us. We’re there. His presence is so strong here. He is heavy with us. It’s just each of us and Him out on the balcony.
While we’re out there, we can look over His gardens, and we can view what He sees. And what was on my mind this morning was His church. Not just the Ecclesia. The people. The people that gather on a regular basis. They get up and they come to church, to this church, to other churches, if that’s large churches or small churches, there are His people all over gathering.
The church needs prayer…
And while we’re out on this balcony, I was looking over at His church. I feel like it needs a little bit of prayer. It just needs a little bit of prayer. Now we pray in the Holy Spirit here; we pray in other tongues. And when we do, we enter into His plan. We get away from, I believe there are probably two principalities that work heavy in this day and age. And one of them is division and one of them is distraction. So now that we’re out in the balcony with Him, they can’t speak to us. When you’re in that secret place with your Father, those demonic presences can’t get out there with you. So we’re out there now, and we’re going to pray for His church.
Prayed…
Holy Spirit, we look out over that scene.
We see that the garden plot called church needs a little more life, needs a little more of you.
So we pray in the spirit. You pray over your church.
You pray over your gathering, whether it’s a house church, wherever it is you pray, pray for those people.
Pray for those pastors. Pray for the life of God to flourish the garden of God, to flourish in those places.
Father, we speak life. We speak strength.
Father, we pray for a spirit of prayer to descend on these churches, a spirit of prayer.
Oh yes, today, when they walk in their doors, that your presence is so strong, they are refreshed, they are strengthened, they are nourished.
Division and distraction are not in those places.
Prayer leader Cindy…
I want to share what she was saying and what the Lord was showing me this morning. It just popped into my heart. And I saw what He was saying was that there’s two stadiums. Like a sports event like you were saying. You were saying a stadium. And there was one stadium where all the focus is on what you know is happening in the world. And the Devil wants us to be playing on that field with him.
We’re talking about how God has called us to be holy as He is holy. And we do that by what we were singing this morning, “gazing on Him in the beauty of His holiness.” It is His will that we be holy. And that is by us abiding in Him and looking at Him.
And you were talking about how the faces are glistening. It’s just life. And He says in one place in scripture that He comes like the dew to refresh. So like if we’re wilted flowers, we pop up and then our faces are up towards the sun and we’re getting our instructions from Him who is holy, who calls us to be holy.
And there are things that we do every day. He has appointed holy moments for us, little tiny stages, or stadiums if you will, where we can impart and minister what we see and hear from our Father in that character of our Father, which is gentle and loving and tender and merciful and patient and kind. All those things that are the fruit of His character that He is saying that we are to develop in by just being in His presence. And what happens then is we are an intriguing enigma to those that are in the other stadium.
Take the platform that He’s given us…
So I just saw that we don’t need to fight the Devil on his playing field. We just need to take our platform, the platform that He’s given us. And then I saw all the people from that other stadium start to trickle out and move out of that stadium and into the stadium of God.
So the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty, mighty, displaying who He is on the earth. He desires that people would know Him. He desires that they would be arrested by His grace, by His goodness that leads to a turning from that arena onto the arena of God. That the knowledge of His glory, that the knowledge of His goodness put into action, put into an arena where it’s displayed through the church.
So we are praying for the churches. We’re praying for the gardens of God. We’re praying for the replenishment of that garden on the earth. We’re praying for His presence to sprout, to shoot up, to take root and develop in the knowledge of who we have been called to be.
We’ve been called to know our God. We’ve been called to gaze in His face. We are called to become holy, set apart from the frenzy, from the stress and the tumults. But we take our place. God has given us each a place as it has pleased Him. And He says, “Occupy that place. Grow in the graces.” Know that little holy moments lead to a great stage for displaying what could be.
Prayed…
Thank you, Father, for the intrigue.
Thank you for arresting people from that sway into an intriguing display of grace where your goodness takes center stage.
We don’t have to force it. We just do the little things with the love of God, knowing that you are coming out.
Like she said, “Less of me and more of you, Father.”
But I know you’ve created us all to display your glory in unique ways.
Like a garden filled with all types of flowers—a garden of peace, a garden of refreshing, a garden of fresh air and sunshine and gentle rain where everything is conducive to life and the thing that is within you comes out.
Wonderful, wonderful ways. Ways we wouldn’t know and ways that like Kathy was singing.
It’s like things we don’t know, it’s just all unfolding.
And today is a new day, and that’s our paradigm. You are doing a new thing. And in our hearts, we perceive it. We know it.
He is doing new things…
So we lean not to our own understanding, because we know you’re doing new things in different ways than what we would expect. We trust you. You’re the God who has gone ahead and arranged it all in order. And you’re calling us to walk it out. You are God; you know the future. You’re the only one who knows the future. And you said it was good.
So the little things that we do to please you from the compassion that you fill in our hearts, we will do those things and they will bear much fruit to your glory and honor.
God and only God… author and finisher… holder of my future days to come.
