Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Prayer leader Kay…
Good morning and welcome to morning prayer this Thursday morning. Hallelujah. Anybody excited to be alive?
James 5:21…
I want to read a little bit in James 5:21. And I want you to notice a common theme here. It has to do with what Goke started with. But just listen, there’s common words and theme here.
“Are there any believers in your fellowship suffering great hardship and distress? Encourage them to pray. Are there happy, cheerful ones among you? Encourage them to sing out their praises. Are there any sick among you? Then ask for the elders of the church to come and pray over the sick and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith will heal the sick. And the Lord will raise them up. And if they have committed any sins, they will be forgiven. Confess and acknowledge how you have offended one another and then pray for one another to be instantly healed, for the tremendous power is released through the passionate, heartfelt prayer of a godly believer.”
Theme: People coming together…
So the theme that stuck out to me was that people showed up in a room, not just the sick. If the sick were there… because it says, “Are there any believers in your fellowship?” That means people. People coming together. Goke read the scripture about the house being filled. People came together to praise. It takes effort to come together. It takes effort to get out of your own world and come together.
People came to the temple and God met them…
But look at what happened in Chronicles. The house was filled not just with people. It was filled with the presence of the Lord. But people had to come together. People had to show up.
You have to “do life” with people…
“Are there any believers in your fellowship suffering great hardship and distress? Encourage them to pray.” How would you ever know if there are people in your fellowship suffering sickness or great hardship? How would you ever know that? You have to get to know people. You have to actually “do life” with people. You actually have to ask about them. Unless they all just come running up to you, like in Walmart, “I’m suffering great hardship.” No. That’s just not real. They want to be with people that know them and that care about them. And how does that happen unless you come together? It’s fellowship.
Two groups of people: people suffering and people encouraging…
I’m going to read this again. “Are there any believers in your fellowship suffering great hardship and distress? Encourage them to pray.” That’s two groups of people: people suffering and people encouraging. “Are there happy, cheerful ones among you?” There again, you’ve got to know them. “Encourage them to sing out their praises.” So there again, it’s somebody super happy with joyful noise and someone encouraged them. Let’s sing out those praises. “Are there any sick among you? Then ask for the elders of the church to come and pray over the sick and anoint them with oil in the name of the Lord.” You guys are all elders, just letting you know.
It takes time to get to know people…
“And the prayer of faith will heal the sick, and the Lord will raise them up. And if they have committed sins, they will be forgiven. Confess and acknowledge how you have offended one another.” Well, that takes more than three minutes in a pew. It takes getting to know people. And then knowing them and loving them and being honest with them enough to know, “I think I’ve offended you. I’m sorry.” That takes time. There is no way around it. It takes time.
So we all have an option when we come. Any gathering. It doesn’t matter if it’s a church or any gathering. We have an option to sit long enough with someone and say, “I think I’ve offended you.” Or to be honest and say, “What you said bugged me and I felt hurt.” So it’s that sharing of hearts, one for another. And the Lord said, “They’ll know you by your love for one another.” But if you never take time with one another, you never share highs and lows and hardships and joys, how will they ever see how awesome we are with our love for one another? How will they ever know that?
You can’t get a sense of that just from a church service or from streaming a church service. They would have to see people talking, hugging, laughing, crying together. They would have to see people doing life together in order to get that sense of, “Oh my goodness, these people love each other. They want to be together all the time.”
Praying together produces power…
“So confess and acknowledge how you have offended one another, and then pray for one another.” When was the last time you did that? And it says, “Pray for one another so that you’d be instantly healed, for tremendous power is released through passionate, heartfelt prayer of godly believers.”
Now, that scripture is quoted a lot, but in context, it’s with people getting together and fellowshiping and sharing hearts and getting passionate about each other’s needs and joys and lives. It takes time. But the Bible says here that that kind of fellowship, when they pray, it’s passionate, heartfelt prayer of a godly believer and tremendous power is released.
Tremendous power is released.
The Word tells us to fellowship with one another…
So we always have an option when we come to church or any meeting. I’m big in book clubs. I love books. I love to read. So any time you’re together with anyone, you have an option to let down your guard and be open and honest and hang around long enough and just fellowship or go home in your own world. And the Word says that we’re to fellowship, so you don’t have to ask God, “Do you want me to fellowship?” He says you got to fellowship.
What happens if you don’t fellowship?
But then what is the option if you don’t? What happens if you don’t do this? What happens if you don’t fellowship? You get bitter. You get critical. You get crabby. You don’t… There’s so much. I hear words coming out from you guys, and you’re all right. So we have options to obey what the Lord says and come together and fellowship and be healed and do the work of the Lord, which is let people see how much we love one another. And our life gets richer and richer and richer.
Or we don’t obey, and our life gets smaller and smaller and smaller. Now, I know Cindy’s got some things to share, too. But we’re going to pray here when we’re done. Cindy’s going to share, and then we’re going to pray. If you have any– And I’m talking to the people in the audience, people online. If you have any broken heartedness because of friendship or you have any trauma associated with friendships or relationships that would keep you isolated, we want to pray that you’ll be healed. There is tremendous power available.
Prayer leader Cindy…
I’m just thinking about the Father’s heart. Eternal life is defined that we would know Him, not just know about Him, but know Him intimately. And on that day when we stand before Jesus, He’s either going to say, “I knew you,” or, “I never knew you.”
We all have a desire to be known…
And for me, I have the same… I think we all do. We all have the same kind of desire in our hearts that people would know us, that really would know us, not just on a superficial basis, but that we would be known. He’s given us the Holy Spirit and so that the Father can know us. He searches our hearts and knows us and reveals things that are deep and locked up so that they can be released. We want to be known, and we want to know each other because we are expressions of Him.
Love never fails: the key is that we love and value each other…
And He’s like, “Well, I really like your relationship with Me. I like fellowshiping with you. But I have placed Myself in earthen vessels that you would know Me there, too, that you would know Me well.” But you have to trust that… So, like, love never fails. And He’s given gifts unto men, and answers and solutions are right there. And the key is love and value, that we would love and value each other.
Simile of the working farm, how everybody has a place…
And when we come together, not be in strife or division or hungry for ourselves that we don’t share our bread. But we thank you, Father, that you’ve given us places that it pleases you that we would be planted. Specific places. I’m thinking about, like a working farm and how everything works together. Everybody has a place. And everything is conducive to life when we’re doing what we’re called to do. And we’re doing it in fellowship with one another.
Example of Acts 2 church…
Years ago, I went to another church with DJ, similar to our church here in the Twin Cities. He used to go to this church. Anyways, the pastor wasn’t preaching, but it was the daughter-in-law. And I was told that she was a very big prayer woman. She loved to pray. And that was her heart. But she was admonishing everybody that day of how the first church, the Acts 2 church, started out. And their template was… Okay, I’ll read it. Acts 2:41, “And those who gladly received the Word were baptized. And that day about three thousand souls were added to them. And they continued steadfastly in the apostles’ doctrine and fellowship.” Number two, fellowship in “breaking of bread,” communion of the saints.
Acts 2 church template is breaking bread together…
So when we get together, God’s pleased to give each one of us a gift and a word. And we take it and we break it. And we share it with our brothers. And there’s a strengthening of the body. There’s a feeding of the body. I love to get together with Christians, like-minded believers. Of course, we all hear from God in different ways. We see things. Vantages are different, but we are seeing something that culminates in a big picture. And so when one person shares what God is showing them, it resonates with me. I’m like, “Wow.” Actually, it’s a witness and it encourages me in what God is speaking. And then I share it, and then we all come to a place, like Pastor Lynne was saying, that no congregation or no gathering of people is ever going to be the same because sometimes Kay is here, sometimes she’s not. By design, she’s here today. And she broke her bread with us. And we’re feeding on it today. And we’re getting stronger. And it’s witnessing with our hearts of the things that, you know, like you’re being allured back to what He’s been saying.
Maybe you were starting to go down into a ditch, but now Kay spoke something, and it’s gotten you back on course, and it’s feeding us. And we’re all together here to encourage and to edify and exhort and equip you. The world does a good job of discouraging, but we’re here to encourage and to bring forth that word of the apostles, the Word of God. Bring it back into our forefront and then fellowship with another. That means we enjoy each other. And we value each other. And there’s not one person we disdain or think is not going to add to the mix. Because God uses the weak things and the things that the world despises to confound the wise.
