Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Brother Mike…
Well, good morning everyone! Thank you for joining us today.
We’re going to let the Holy Spirit lead and guide us today. And so, Father, we’re going to purposely come now just to connect with you.
God cares about what you’re going through…
And I speak over anyone who is facing the day with heavy burdens that they’re carrying, whatever that might be. And I want you to remember of how good and faithful God is. And He’s always right there regarding whatever you’re facing today. Or maybe it’s even from something that was started yesterday or you’ve been dealing with it for a while. Just know that our Father does care about every single thing that you go through.
David’s relationship with God…
It says in Psalms where David was a man after God’s own heart and he had such a unique relationship with Him. But really what I sometimes feel is that it’s just a relationship in the sense where you don’t have a relationship with somebody that you don’t want to be around. You only have relationships with those who you want to be with. And David, whatever it was, hopefully we’ll find out in heaven, he had that something where even in the Old Covenant, he had a connection with God.
People cry out for a god to worship…
Cause back then, most people believed in gods. And it’s pretty obvious when you look at even just the drawings, the hieroglyphics, the architecture, everything. They’d be worshiping all these… There’s always been people who will willfully walk into deception because they’re looking for an answer of some sort. They want… I haven’t studied any of this. There’s the sun god, and there’s the “this god” and “that god.” And they were all… I believe our Heavenly Father placed that desire to be serving a god before He even founded the world. Because it’s evident that people are just crying out for that.
But what I can be encouraged about today as I’m going through everything that I’m going through, is that God put that desire in you to follow Him. And yes, we can get things messed up because of our circumstances. We start leaning toward, maybe you don’t necessarily fully consciously realize, but maybe we make a god of status or money or position or power.
A pastor said “we’re suckers for religion…”
Yesterday, God put on my heart, I remember somebody hearing a pastor years ago talking about how we’re suckers for religion. Because we really enjoy… I shouldn’t say enjoy. It can seem easier just to have things in a box because then we can go “That’s it.” Well, you know, the Israelites had a huge box of 600 some laws and they still couldn’t keep them because it was impossible.
And so whatever you’re facing today, I speak the blessing of God over you. That He doesn’t want you thinking about Him as He’s in this box, that He is so free because He is over all. And if you’ve decided to follow Jesus and believe who He is and what He says and what He’s done, He wants to have that free relationship… He wants you to see Him as that freeing relationship that you want to be with Him, because what He offers is so much greater.
Ephesians talks about what God did for us…
Yesterday when we were here, we were thinking about maybe just starting off in Ephesians and reading it. And we maybe touched on some things. But what was interesting when I was reading this… this must have been years ago. I was listening to something, and I was going through Ephesians one. And Paul for 8 or 9 verses, all he’s talking about is what God did for us. And he covers a lot. So I’m just going to read through that and just kind of emphasize like… in my Bible there’s a little heading sometimes on different parts and it talks about spiritual blessings in Christ. But then in the margin, I underlined everything where it talks about what He did, what God did for us. And even in the margin I wrote, “He’s already done this.” All of this is available for us right now.
So just starting in verse three: “Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Christ Jesus, the one who blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenlies.” I have another version here that I love how this one says. It says, “Praise God the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, through Christ God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing that heaven has to offer.” He blessed us. It doesn’t say He will continue to bless you if X, Y, Z. You do all these things. Now, there’s a lot of “if then’s” in the Old Testament. And there’s also some in the New Testament, where, yes, there are conditions, but God’s conditions are easy. It’s just believe in what He said, believe in who He is, and believe in the one who sent Him, which at times can feel really challenging.
He blessed us with every spiritual blessing…
But just going on here. So He blessed us with every spiritual blessing, all that heaven has to offer. He didn’t leave anything out. Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. I mean, that to me, that’s so hard to imagine that He imagined all, however many people, there’s what… seven some billion people on the earth right now? Well, that’s not even including all the people who have died before up to this point. You know, billions of people. He knew each and every single one of them before He even said, “let there be light.”
That is almost too much for my mind to comprehend. But I thank God that my spirit gets it and my spirit wants to speak out. So He says, “Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, for us to be holy and blameless in His presence in love, because He predestined us into adoption through Jesus Christ unto Himself according to the good pleasure of His will.”
It’s His blood—not our blood…
So far, he’s doing all of this. He’s doing all of it! According to the good pleasure of His will, into the condemnation of His glorious grace by which He favored us with the beloved one by whom we have the redemption through His blood.” Thank God it’s His blood and not our blood. And thank God it’s now His blood instead of the blood of animals.
“The forgiveness of sins according to wealth of His grace from which He furnished richly abounding to us wise and understanding in everything when He made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure, which was planned by Him.” Hopefully we can really get the point of how many times they say His grace… He furnished… He made known… it’s His good pleasure… it was planned by Him… He predestined us… He chose us in Him before He even started any of this.
It’s all for Him…
We like to talk about how we do everything. It’s all for Him. And it’s not about me. And that’s true, but let us also not forget it was He who first did everything for us. And so, naturally… hopefully… even though it’s not evident yet in this world, that we can really see what He’s done for us. If somebody does something really nice for you, you’re drawn to that person. Now, you might not become friends, but if somebody were to come up to you and say, “Hey, I’m going to build you a brand-new house, give you a car, give you lots of money. I’m going to completely furnish it. I’m going to pay for your child’s education. I’m going to take care of it all.” I mean, that would really rock your world. You would feel compelled then to want to be with this person, thank them profusely, whatever it is, in our own human… We like that.
But after a while, we may end up starting feeling a little resentful. Because like, “I have to keep thanking him. I keep seeing this guy. Do I keep thanking him. Do I not keep thanking? Do I ignore him? Because I don’t really know him that well.” But that’s how the world does it. But that’s not how our God does it. He is way far above that.
So, Father, I just thank you right now that as you are ministering to each one of us individually, with wherever we are in our life right now, that we really start to understand your goodness, your grace, all these things that you’ve prepared for us, all these things you’ve actually already given to us before we even showed up in this world. You were thinking about us. You were planning for us. You had us on your mind and in your heart. So whenever we’re facing something that maybe we’re struggling to believe you, we’re struggling to see how you’re going to make something work. We’re starting to maybe even doubt a little bit… is your Word actually going to come true now? Is it going to be like 50 years from now when it doesn’t even matter at that point? Cause I might be dead.
We know all things. This isn’t scripture or doctrine. I believe that the words that He gave inspired people to write down, they point to what it’s going to be like in heaven. But this is for us right now. If we really believe that in heaven, He’s wiping… And I’m not going to get into all the different things where people would try to explain something. All their tears can be wiped away. We’re going to have new bodies. And some people are like, that’s awesome because I’m really getting sick of this one. Everything’s going to be there. We’re just going to understand so much.
You hear people who go to heaven and come back and they have these just fantastical things that maybe they experienced or saw or what Jesus told them. We’re going to be able to live in that. And they point to some of this stuff. And even if nobody went to heaven and told us this stuff, He’s still pointing to what it’s going to be like. Like everything’s going to be brand new. But He wrote this for us to encourage us now in our day-in, day-out life.
And so I just pray, Father, like when Paul later on this, “Ever since I heard of your faith in the Lord.” And I’m even going to say ever since we heard that somebody decided to follow Jesus or decided to say, you know what, I’m deciding to follow Him. I’m giving Him my heart. I’m going to change these things. That we would truly start to see all the goodness that you have for us. And then it’s meant for here in this life. And it’s meant for the things that we’re going through. It’s meant for the things that we’re being challenged on. It’s meant to get us through every hard time. It’s meant so that we could encourage others when they’re down. It’s meant to encourage ourselves. Just like David said, “Hey, if everyone wants to kill me, I’m going to encourage myself in the Lord.” He didn’t say, “I’m going to encourage myself in all the things that I have, or how smart I think I am. I’m going to encourage myself in the Lord.”
Because he knew that everything that he was given came from God. Even the desires of his heart. Going back to David, he made some bad mistakes. But his heart kept saying, “I’m still chasing after my God. And my flesh wants to do different things.” But even in all of that, he still believed that God was for him and that he had so much for him and that God would get him out of every single solitary situation.
So, Lord, we continue to encourage ourselves, encourage others when they’re going through things, and it’s not just encouraging. It’s also as Holy Spirit’s kind of showing me as well that we have been given the authority to come against all these things. He gave us His peace. He gave us His authority to do all these things. He finished what He needed to do, and He wants us to enforce what He’s already done. And He gave us that responsibility.
So, Lord, I just speak encouragement to us today, to our minds and our souls. Cause that seems to be where we process so much information. Even though I know we’re supposed to live by the Spirit until we get there, we can be encouraged in our hearts and our souls that what God said He actually meant.
