Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Prayer leader Mike…
Morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us here today in the chapel as well as online. My name is Mike Hines, and typically my wife, Jeannie, is here with us, but she’s a little under the weather today.
Today, I didn’t have necessarily something that I wanted to start with. So I thought, well, okay, thank goodness that we don’t always have to come up with great ideas. We can be led by the Spirit. And really the main thing I got was let’s just maybe start by reading, praying about just the Word, different things.
Psalm 37…
And so there’s a couple things that I thought of, and we’ll just go from there. So the first thing I was thinking about was just reading through Psalm 37. It’s one I like to go back to many times, because there’s a lot of encouragement. There’s a lot of promises that He has for us in there. And if you’ve spent time in the Word long enough, you know that whether this is theologically correct, this is how I’ve seen it and experienced it and heard other people talk about where God is an “if/then God.” Meaning, “if you do this, then this.” It’s all over the Word. You reap what you sow. Give and it will be given back to you.
I’m going to read Psalm 37, in the Amplified…
Right off the bat, he says, “Fret not yourself because of evildoers. Neither be envious against those who work unrighteousness.”
That one always surprised me. Why would people be envious of people who are doing unrighteous things? I’m sure there’s a lot to that. And here it says, “the unrighteousness that which is not upright or in right standing with God.” I don’t understand that one.
So, Holy Spirit, you’re going to help us with that.
The word “fret” in “fret not because of evildoers…”
But years ago when I was reading this, I wanted to look up the word fret. And the dictionary said fret means “to be worn away, to make way by corrosion, to be agitated, to be in violent commotion.” So one way to say it is that we are not to be worn away, agitated, or to the point of even having a violent commotion in us because of evildoers.
Evildoing has been going on since the beginning…
And it’s pretty obvious that there’s so many evildoers. That’s been going on since the beginning. Evil, unfortunately, has been a part of the human experience. But Jesus also said, in essence, “I’ve experienced everything you will ever experience.” I don’t know how He could do that. That still amazes me that when you hear all the stories and the things that people go through, that Jesus could actually say, “I experienced all of that, but I overcame all of that.” And I love that that’s a promise for us.
Surely, we shall be fed…
And He says, “Don’t fret yourself.” Don’t get so worried. Don’t get so anxious. Don’t wear yourself away. Don’t be worn in your soul because of the things that are evil and the things that are going on, because they will soon be cut down like the grass and wither as the green herb. But we trust, lean on, rely on, and we are confident in the Lord, and if we do good, and we shall dwell in the land, and we will feed surely on His faithfulness. And truly, we shall be fed.”
Prayed…
So thank you, Lord, for these promises that no matter if we’re facing them or not, that they’re in your Word and they are truth.
They are not “a” truth.
They are not a good suggestion.
They are your truth.
They are the one truth of who you are, what your character is, how you perceive us.
Your will is that as we lean and trust in you, and we are confident in what you’ve done, and we do good, we will dwell in this land, and we will feed on your faithfulness. And we will surely, that means without doubt, we will be fed.
And as we’re doing that, we are delighting ourselves also in you.
We take delight in who you are, not just of what you’ve done, but for who you are, because you are the one who came in order for us to have complete and free and unfettered access to the Father in heaven like never before.
Lord, I thank you that we are living in this dispensation, the New Covenant, that those old things, they were just a shadow, but we get to live in it right now.
He will give us the desires of our hearts…
And, Lord, that as we delight ourselves in you, in who you are, in your character, in what you’ve provided for us, but what you went through for us. It says you will give us the desires and the secret petitions of our hearts as we commit our way to you. And we roll and just repose each care and our load on Him, on you.
We cast our cares upon Him…
Father, we throw all those in… the other verse says that we cast our cares. “Cast our cares,” I’ve read, also means it’s like a violent throwing away, that we cast them away. Like, if you’re thinking of casting a line if you’re a fisherman. There’s a difference between just dropping a line in there and casting it. Casting it means you’re throwing that thing out as far as you can. Why? Because you want it to go way out there. And He said that we are to cast our cares. It doesn’t say we cast our responsibilities, but we cast those things, those cares that are weighing on our hearts, those things that keep coming after our mind, those things about the what if and whatever’s going to happen, and I don’t know how this is going to happen, I don’t know how this is going to work out. That we take and we throw those. We violently just throw those away from us.
Prayed…
And you said to give them to you. So we do that, and as we do that, we are trusting and leaning and relying on you, and we are confident that you are bringing whatever we face or will be facing to pass.
And it says you, God, will make our uprightness and right standing with you go forth as the light, that we are upright and in right standing. And we are upright and in right standing with you because of what Jesus did on the cross. It is your righteousness that you gave us.
Father, there’s nothing we can do to become more righteous. The only thing that we need to do is that fight of faith and believe that, yes, that we actually live in that world. We live in that mindset. We live in that reality that we are in right standing and living righteous in your eyes because of the blood and the finished work, the once and only finished work of Jesus on the cross. And we will be still and rest in you. We wait for you and we patiently lean ourselves upon Him.
Rick Renner’s book, “Sparkling Gems…”
I was doing a study in the Sparkling Gems book by Rick Renner. He was talking about standing your position no matter what. It’s like having such a resolve that what we are believing for is going to happen, that that’s where we stand. So we are still and we rest in the Lord, meaning, again, we throw those cares.
Resting is having that confidence and that assurance that by doing that, you’re going to be taking all of that on as you walk through everything with us, and we patiently lean ourselves. We persistently lean ourselves upon you.
We will not fret ourselves…
And again, we are not going to fret ourselves. We’re not going to worry. We are not going to be worn away. There’s not going to be a corrosive effect of all these worries because we will not fret. Because we are going to be prosperous in our way. And just because people are doing wicked things, that they will be destroyed. We are going to cease from anger and forsake wrath.
We will not allow worry to wear us down…
Father, that belongs to you. We will not fret ourselves because it says it tends only to evil doing. Father, when we are sitting in our worries and our anxieties, and we let these things build and build and build without you, and without actually saying something and declaring your goodness, it starts to wear away at our confidence in you. It starts to wear away. We start to doubt, and we start to wonder, “Is your word good? Is it not good? Is it good? Is it not good?”
We do not waver…
And that’s when He talks about not being tossed about to and fro. It’s like, “I believe you, I don’t believe you, I believe you, I don’t believe you.”
Help mine unbelief…
Still one of my favorite verses is that when the man came to Jesus and he said, “Father, I believe in you, but help my unbelief.” So it’s not a sin to be that. But He said there’s a way to be, there’s a way to get there where we’re not just going back and forth, that even though we might be facing things that make us feel that we are being tossed back and forth, Father, that there is a place for that we can achieve and be and live in this world where that is not. How we can look through all of that.
The Lord’s protection during a storm is like being in a vehicle…
It’s like being in a vehicle during a rainstorm. We’re protected from that even though we have to navigate through that. But if we just keep looking ahead, we are being protected, and you get us through that.
Evildoers will be cut off…
It says evildoers shall be cut off. It doesn’t say evildoers might be cut off. It says they shall be cut off. But those who wait and hope and look for the Lord in the end shall inherit the earth. And it says, “For yet a little while, and the evildoers will be no more.” And it says even though we really look for them and where they used to be, they will not be found. Those things that used to come against us, those things that were evil, Father, as you take care of those from us, we’re not going to go look for them, but if we did, we wouldn’t even find them because you took care of them.
The meek will inherit the earth…
And it says that the meek, the ones who are, again, knowing your strength and your power will inherit the earth and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace. Even though the wicked plot against the righteous, and us that are in right standing with God, and they gnash their teeth at us, the Lord laughs at that, for He sees that their own day, the defeat of evil, is coming. Even though the wicked draw the sword and bend the bows to cast down the poor and needy and slay those who walk uprightly, blameless in conduct and conversation, swords of the wicked shall enter their own hearts, and their bows shall be broken.
Father, we thank you that the arms of the wicked will be broken, but the Lord upholds the consistently righteous.
