Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Morning Prayer Summary for Thursday, January 2, 2025
Brother Mike…
Well, good morning, everyone, and Happy New Year!
When I was thinking about today, I was thinking this is the beginning of a new year. Like… we’re here already.
So as I was wondering about what could we pray about. There’s so many things, not just because it’s prayer and we’ve been off for a couple weeks just enjoying the holidays with family. It was obvious to me, like, okay, New Year and the Holy Spirit said, “How about something like new beginnings?” And I thought, “Okay, new beginnings, that sounds good.”
New Beginnings…
Didn’t know what that meant. And so I literally just put in Google “Bible, new beginnings.” I thought we’ll see what comes up. That’s kind of where I was. And I came across a website called New Beginnings. And basically somebody had gone through the Bible and listed a hundred verses that have to do with New Beginnings.
I went through some of them briefly yesterday and this morning. Some of them you might feel like that’s kind of stretching a bit. But what I really felt the Holy Spirit say is “Let’s start praying through some of these.” It doesn’t have to be all of them, really it’s just a scripture. There’s nothing more. There’s no commentary or anything. We’ll just go through some of these, and we’ll let the Holy Spirit be the commentary through us, both individually or corporately. And we’ll see what comes up, meaning, we all have those times where we’re praying and the Lord stops us and gives us something more on that verse, whether it’s for something that’s going on personally, or maybe a friend or a family member, or what’s going on in your country or state… whatever.
I’m so thankful the Holy Spirit, if we’re willing to stop and listen, will definitely give us things that He wants to say to us through His Words. So I’m just going to start going through these and we’ll see where we go.
2nd Corinthians 5:17…
So the first one was 2nd Corinthians 5:17. And these all come from the English Standard Version. It says “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ He is a new creation. The old has passed away, and behold the new has come.”
All things become new…
So, Father, even just right there, we take that and we let it just settle in our hearts and our minds that for those of us who are in Christ, that we are truly starting to see ourselves as a new creation. Not just that our lives are better or we’ve renewed our minds. All of that is true, but we’re actually a new creation.
That’s hard to imagine in our physical world. But in the spirit, we know there is something so much more powerful because we believe everybody wants to have something new. We all like new things, even if what we have seems kind of nice and it works. But there’s something about getting something new.
When you came into us, you made us a new creation. I’ve heard many people talk about how a new creation is something that’s never existed before. And that can almost be hard to understand. It’s like, “What does that mean… a new creation? I’m already a human. When you say my spirit’s new, what does that mean?”
What does it mean to have a new spirit…
And so, Father, we just praise you and we thank you that you minister to us what having that new spirit really means. And even when you said that you declared the old has passed away and behold, like, pay attention, see this, the new has come.
And, Father, we know that when we’re talking about a new beginning or a new year, we recognize that we are leaving something.
Holy Spirit, minister to your children right now, your people that those who have been dealing with something that’s been really hard in the last year or maybe it’s even been the last several years, that if they stick with you and they stay with you, that they can truly see that is the old and I am leaving that behind. And sometimes it has to be a conscious decision over and over and over. Because the enemy wants to keep us living in the past. Sometimes he likes us living in the past of good things, which that can be harmful too. But he really wants to keep us living in the old bad things to keep dragging us back into that.
Father, you said that’s passed away. And in our vernacular, when we say something has passed away, we are normally talking about a person. They’ve passed away, meaning what they’re doing is no longer. And maybe that’s a really good analogy for some people who maybe have had parents, grandparents, whoever have passed away. The enemy would want us to keep focusing on that person. And there’s a balance here, but you can’t ask that person for advice anymore. You can’t do something with that person anymore.
And I believe the Holy Spirit wants to just encourage us that those things that we used to do were the things that were bad to us… the things that caused us anguish or pain or hurt or loss. He wants to comfort us and say that has passed away.
Take… look… behold… it’s like trying to snap somebody out of their depression or their frustration that there is brand new things. “Behold, the new has come.”
But even though the new has come, that means if we don’t embrace it just because the new is here doesn’t mean that we’re going to experience that new.
Father, we ask you to minister to those people who know in their minds that the new has come, but in their heart they’re struggling with what the new really means of receiving that. So much of your Word is about “this is what I’m doing; I’m wanting you to receive that. I’m not wanting you to just to know about it. Yes, you have to have knowledge about things.”
But, Holy Spirit, help us to actually receive what you have and step into whatever that new is for each person, whether it’s in their health or their relationships, whatever it might be, that we would really, truly embrace who you are and that we would truly embrace that the new has come, that we would actually see it and we would actually step into it.
Father, you’re all about restoring things since the beginning of time that you created. You’ve wanted us to restore us back to what you really meant. And even though we’ve been fighting things and fighting things for our whole lives, some things we’re aware of, some things were not. Your best plan is that we would receive the restoration of what you have for us. And the best way you knew how to do that was to give us your Son, Jesus. And when He said “It is finished,” I don’t think we completely understand what He meant. We can theologically describe and talk about what it says in the Bible. But, Father, you’re more concerned about our hearts than anything.
So, Lord, as we are going into this new year, that if it helps you put it into perspective, the old year is passed, it’s gone. That’s not coming back. But behold, the new is here. That one’s passed away, but there’s so much more for us.
