Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Brother John…
I just want to welcome everyone here today.
I was thinking about this last weekend when Pastor Jim taught about the Holy Spirit, and he gave the example of how He walks so close with us. And he was doing the thing about walking arm in arm. And I love that example because it really stuck with me. But the thing is, it’s true that He will never leave us and He’s right there. Like everywhere we turn, He’s turning with us. And at the same time, everywhere He turns, hopefully we’re going with Him as well. It is not just He’s following me around, but we’re doing it together.
The New Testament saints lived it out in real time…
I’m sure at the time when you were thinking about reading the scriptures and things like that… we are so fortunate to be able to have all this written down for us. But it can be very easy to forget that they were living it out in real time. So when I’m reading things in the Word, especially when you’re reading the Gospels, that the Holy Spirit came back to remind everybody and to write all this down. But in the moment, they were just living it out day by day, just as we are living everything out day by day now.
And you can look back and go like, “How come they didn’t see that this is Jesus?” As I said, they were figuring it out step by step, day by day, brand new things that they had never known in their minds. A lot of them probably knew the scriptures really well. And when I say the “scriptures,” I’m talking about the law. They knew that. Some of them very, very well. Some of them probably just like us. We know what it says, and we know what God said to do and some are like, “I kind of know this or that.” But it was such a part of their culture that when Jesus was saying these things, they kind of had to wrap their minds around a new way of thinking, a new way of doing, a new way of speaking.
Prayed…
And so Father, I thank you that as we walk through today, we can forget about what happened yesterday and we don’t have to worry about tomorrow. We have today.
So Holy Spirit, I thank you that as we are walking through today, that we are reminded that you are always right there. So as we’re going this way, you’re coming with us. And when you say to go that way, that our hearts and our minds will follow you even if it doesn’t make sense or it seems like it’s something new.
We are doing this together…
And I was thinking about what we might want to pray about today. I’m always reminded that even though I’m standing here with a microphone and leading, we are doing this together. Just like with the Holy Spirit.
Prayed…
And so, Father, I thank you that you sent the Holy Spirit when Jesus went away, and the fact that Jesus says it’s even better that I go from you. Which at the time all they’ve been seeing and all they’ve been doing probably sounded ridiculous. It’s like, “What do you mean? You’re doing all these things.” And He says, it’s actually better.
So, Father, I thank you that you sent your Holy Spirit to bring this comfort, to remind us of what you said and to give instruction to show us what we can do.
So, Father, as we purpose right now to as best we can throw away and disregard anything that maybe happened yesterday or something that you may have coming up today or even later this week. That we can just truly spend time with you to hear your voice, to hear your promptings, to be always looking to hear you speak. Because God is always speaking.
Jim Baker of Andrew Wommack Ministries…
I was listening to a sermon this last weekend. There was a conference that Andrew Wommack Ministries put on, and there was a speaker there that I’d never heard before. But some of the things he was sharing were really powerful. His name was Jim Baker. And not the Jim Baker that everybody thinks about. He kind of jokes how it’s Baker with one K and no Tammy Faye. I laughed out loud at that.
Anyway, one of the things he was talking about that’s just coming to my mind is good news. And he said when you think about the news, the news is reporting what’s already happened. It’s not going to be saying what’s coming or anything like that necessarily. But when it talks about the Gospel being good news, it’s talking about what good has already taken place.
And I’m so thankful despite of everything that’s going on that we live in this time because God has already revealed what He’s already done. Our only decision… and it is a decision… is, are we going to live in that and trust this and believe this?
Everybody’s at a different place…
But that doesn’t intimidate the Holy Spirit. Everybody’s in a different place in regard to what they’re believing and experiencing. But thank God, this is a rock that’s never going to move. It can’t be moved. And all He’s doing is inviting us. Because we still have to choose whether we’re going to believe in what He says or not.
In a lot of ways, it’s black and white. There’s a lot of things obviously in the Word that we wrestle with, and we don’t always understand it. It even seems like it contradicts itself. But when God talks about having a relationship with Him or knowing Him, there’s many areas in my life and probably everyone’s life that we know about God, but we don’t really know God.
We know “about” God, but do we really know Him…
It’s kind of like as I’m thinking here, Holy Spirit’s reminding me of like you watch all these different things on TV. I’m just going to use like… I don’t know… celebrities that we see, or television, movies, those things. We can see them doing these things, and we feel like we may even know that person. But we really don’t. We just see a few aspects of them. And even that isn’t even true. But we feel like we know that person who’s the actor. But we don’t really know them. We might know some things about them, but we don’t know them.
To know God, you must be intimate with Him…
You don’t know something unless you’ve been intimate with it, unless you’ve spent a lot of time with it. The Pharisees knew the whole law and they didn’t even recognize Jesus. Because it was easier in a lot of ways to say, “Well, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do that. I’m not going to do this. I’m not going to do that. I’m know God.” And in actuality, Jesus was saying, “No, you don’t know Me. You don’t know My Father.”
Prayed…
And so, Holy Spirit, I thank you. There is nothing ever now in the past or in the future that is greater than who you are.
And so, Father, I ask that you speak to each of us individually and corporately that we have such hunger and desire for you. Even if we’ve said two decades ago, “I just want to know you more,” and all of a sudden it’s like two decades is gone and you’re thinking, “I don’t think I know Him any better. I don’t know.”
Just know that there’s no condemnation in that. He’s always drawing, He’s always speaking, He’s always wanting to engage with us.
The power of the 91st Psalm…
And so in thinking about what I wanted to at least start with and pray about today is a small book by Gloria Copeland called “Your Promise of Protection.” And it’s the power of the 91st Psalm. So I’m going to read some of this in here, but then also I would just want the Holy Spirit to minister to us, what He’s trying to get through to us in this. Because there’s so much in here; when I started reading through this… this was written in 2001. And if we’re really paying attention, I believe it was Solomon who said, “there’s nothing new under the sun.” Meaning the human condition has always been the human condition, whether it’s right now or 200 years ago, or 2,000 or 4,000 years ago. The truth is always going to be the truth. And that’s what we can rely on. But here’s how she starts it…
Gloria Copeland’s “Your Promise of Protection”
“With all the violence and calamity bearing down on us these days, that’s a question we hear a lot. What are we going to do? What are we going to do about crime? What are we going to do about economic failures? What are we going to do about international problems?”
And I was thinking, oh my gosh, that was like 22, 23 years ago. And that’s what she was starting with. And she goes on to talk about Noah and there’s the scripture that says something like, “as it was in the days of Noah, so shall be in the end.” And I don’t want to be necessarily talking about praying about the end times or the coming of Jesus. That’s not what this is about. It’s more the attitude of our heart and how we’re thinking about how are we supposed to get through all of this with everything going on.
One might be a way to limit how much of that we’re taking in, but even more importantly, it’s not so much of, “I’m going to avoid watching or listening or engaging with this to a level.” It’s more about “Am I going to really engage and stand and believe and change my thinking and change my heart with His Word?”
And so she goes through Psalm 91. And in this book, she’s breaking down every verse or two and kind of talking about it. And one of the lines in here, it talks about the last verse. God is speaking to man saying, “With long life, I will satisfy him and will show him my salvation.”
And here’s what Gloria wrote about that…
“Salvation is a big word. In the Greek language, it literally means “deliverance, safety, preservation, material and temporal deliverance from danger and apprehension, pardon, restoration, healing, wholeness and soundness.”
And obviously a lot of times people have talked about salvation as just being, “I’m going to heaven,” but just like with most things, with God’s Word, it says so much more than just what we say in our vernacular. And I’m so thankful of that.
The other thing she talks about is saying this salvation and being delivered, it’s not automatic. And she says here, “Now you may be wondering if safety and security and healing and deliverance are all part of my salvation, why haven’t I been experiencing all these things? Because they don’t come automatically. They are manifest in your life only as you begin to trust God for them specifically.”
And she talks about an example of healing…
Like if we believe that Jesus saved us and that we’re going to heaven and that’s awesome, but we might not have known about healing from these different things. And she said, “Until we find out what actually belongs to you through the blood of Jesus, you can’t lay hold of it by faith and see it happen in your life. That’s why it’s so important to know God’s promises of protection. You receive blessings by faith, and faith comes by hearing the Word. You can’t have faith for something you don’t know about.”
We like to say “in these days it’s harder and harder,” but every generation has something that’s been a distraction. There’s always something that we could be worrying or fretting about, or wondering about today, tomorrow, what’s coming? We can be worrying about our families, our finances. I mean, that’s been going on since the beginning of time. But if we truly want to believe that God means what He says… we have to spend time with Him. We have to get to know Him. We have to understand that this is all good news. I know it says the Gospel is good news and that’s true, but I believe all of this can be good news. Even the stuff that’s in the Old Covenant is still good news. Otherwise, He probably wouldn’t have revealed it to us.
So I’m just going to read Psalm 91 right now. I’m reading from the English Standard Version, Psalm 91.
1 He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will abide in the shadow of the Almighty.
2 I will say to the Lord, “My refuge and my fortress, my God, in whom I trust.”
3 For he will deliver you from the snare of the fowler and from the deadly pestilence.
4 He will cover you with his pinions, and under his wings you will find refuge; his faithfulness is a shield and buckler.
5 You will not fear the terror of the night, nor the arrow that flies by day,
6 nor the pestilence that stalks in darkness, nor the destruction that wastes at noonday.
7 A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.
8 You will only look with your eyes and see the recompense of the wicked.
9 Because you have made the Lord your dwelling place—the Most High, who is my refuge—
10 no evil shall be allowed to befall you, no plague come near your tent.
11 For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.
12 On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone.
13 You will tread on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the serpent you will trample underfoot.
14 “Because he holds fast to me in love, I will deliver him; I will protect him, because he knows my name.
15 When he calls to me, I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will rescue him and honor him.
16 With long life I will satisfy him and show him my salvation.”
