Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Hello everyone. It’s Tuesday morning, the 21st of April. Well, my name is Ken. If you’re joining us today, welcome!
I wanted to read a passage of scripture found in Joshua 6:1. “Now Jericho was securely shut up because of the children of Israel. None went out, none came in. And the Lord said to Joshua, See I have given Jericho into your hand. It’s king and the mighty men of valor.”
Even if you can’t see it, know that God has given you the victory…
Okay, let me just stop there for a second and just highlight the fact that this is a bigger truth than just at that time. The truth of the matter is, God has already given that ground, that next place, that victory to you. Even if you can’t see it, even if you can’t feel it, even if it doesn’t appear to be the case, know that God has given you victory. In whatever arena, whether it’s physical, in your family, in a next step in the plan of God regarding your finances, your mental health, whatever the case might be, just know that God’s emphatic word to us today and every day is that…
I’ve given you this city.
I have given you victory.
I have promised and granted you healing.
We are already blessed in Jesus…
So as we approach prayer today from the standpoint we’re not trying to get something from God or convince Him that He should do something for us or bless us in some way. No, we already are blessed in Jesus. We already have been the recipients of all things that pertain unto life and godliness. And in whatever way you need victory, God is saying…
I’ve given you this city.
I’ve given you this territory.
I’ve given you a new step and a new place of liberty and freedom and deliverance and wholeness and soundness, and blessedness in every regard.
So it goes on to say…
“See, I’ve given you Jericho into your hand, its king and its mighty men of valor. You shall march around the city, all you men of war. You shall go all around the city once. This you shall do six days.” So for six days, they marched around the city once. “And seven priests shall bear the seven trumpets of ram’s horns before the ark. But the seventh day, you shall march around the city seven times, and the priests shall blow the trumpets. It shall come to pass when they make a long blast with the ram’s horn and when you hear the sound of the trumpet that all the people shall shout with a great shout, then the wall of the city will fall down flat. And the people shall go up, every person, every man, every woman, straight before him.”
The walls are coming down…
So get a fresh vision this morning that the walls are coming down, and they’re going to be laid flat, laid bare, so that you can do whatever God has assigned you to do in your life. Some of us maybe have felt restricted or bound in some way, not able to proceed because of fears or anxieties or unmet expectations or shame or sin or sickness… whatever it might be, insufficiency, what happened to you in some way.
Well, guess what?
God is saying He’s laying bare, He’s bringing down flat every barrier, every impediment, every wall, every stronghold that stands in your way is being brought down today in the name of Jesus.
Today is the day…
The Bible says, Today is the day the Lord hath made. Today is the day of His salvation. Today! If not today, when? If not you, who? We are His chosen people. He has sought us out to favor us, to give us victory, to make a way where there doesn’t appear to be a way. And so just know that today; strongholds are being removed. Barriers are coming down today in your life, in my life, in this church, in your ministry and church.
Testimony of woman in China…
I heard a woman share a story. She was a woman who worked for Apple computers. And she was assigned to work in some facility in China. And one day the Lord challenged her to get up and to walk or march, if you will, around the corridor of the offices where she worked and to pray. Pray quietly. So people didn’t really know what she was doing, but people did notice because the building she was in was made of glass. And so people could see easily from the outside and even in on the inside. So she began to pray. And in a short amount of time, as she got up each day and walked around this route in the office and prayed, things began to happen.
One day, a woman that she had asked once upon a time to come to church, came to her and said, “You know, I think I want to come to church with you this weekend.” This is in China! Another person came to her and said, “You know, I think it’s time we talked about starting a prayer group here at Apple. I think it’s time for us to do that.” One thing after another at Apple computer in China, no less. And she was, I think, of Chinese descent, but her accent seemed like she maybe grew up in America though. But she went back to China to work for many years. Now I think she lives in New York. But, all that to say, she also did a Bible study there in the community, wherever she lived in China. She didn’t say what city. And, she said because of her getting up and walking and praying on her break at Apple computer in China, she saw dozens and hundreds of people over the years that came to her Bible study, that she had the opportunity to minister. And came to faith in Jesus.
And she made this comment…
“There are strongholds and barriers to God’s plan in your life and in others’ lives that are all around you. You just can’t see them.” Hindrances, blockages, walls like Jericho that impede people’s progress, yours and mine and others. And she said, “If you’ll start walking by faith, taking steps of faith like those who walked or marched around the walls of Jericho and start claiming and praying, the walls will come down. Things will start to happen. Breakthroughs will be realized.”
God has chosen to channel His purpose into the earth through us…
I know that’s a simple truth, but I don’t know about you, but that just kind of refreshed my soul when I heard that. I’m like, “Yeah, that’s right! We need to be walking and praying.” I mean, I like to walk and pray. You don’t have to, but the truth of the matter is God has chosen to channel His purpose into the earth through us, through you, and through me. And as brother Kenneth E. Hagin said a number of times late in his life, “There seems to be a whole lot more authority invested in us as the church, in us as individuals than we realize.” Or we will even realize in this lifetime.
We are not without help…
So, you’re not helpless. You’re not hopeless. Neither am I. We are not without help, the Bible says. God is with us and for us, and guess what? Living in us! And He’s promised to be with us even to the end of the age. And that God is God the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus, whom Jesus prayed personally that He would be sent to inhabit a tabernacle inside of us as I said yesterday. And where you go, He goes.
When we pray, we bring forward His purpose…
So as we pray, we bring forward His presence, as I said yesterday by way of reminder. As we pray in the Spirit, we bring forward His wisdom. We activate His revelation knowledge. We gain access to His strategy as to how we’re going to reach our society, as to how we’re going to turn things around and in the direction of His intention for our nation, for our church, for our city, for your household.
I want you to get a picture in your mind’s eye, in your heart of faith and see maybe there are blockages and barriers and walls around your family members, around your neighbors, around situations. They are just waiting for somebody to walk and pray. Like the children that marched around Jericho each day until the seventh day when they did seven times and then they worshiped and they shouted and they blew the horn and the walls came down.
So let’s have an expectancy…
Walls are coming down and being laid flat so that we don’t even have to climb over them. We can just proceed forward and take the ground God has already given us by faith. Thank you, Jesus. There needs to be a tenaciousness within us now, within the church. Maybe we will pray about that today, but within our hearts that, bless God, we are taking ground today. If not today, when? If not us, who?
We’re called out to take ground…
We’ve been endorsed and invested in by the hand of God that we would march forward and take the land for Him. Spiritually speaking. But maybe you need to take some land naturally speaking. I don’t know. What do you will? What do you desire? When it comes to prayer, Jesus seemed to imply that there’s somewhat of a blank check. I don’t mean a blank check in prayer so that you can ask to indulge your flesh or to end up in a negative place in life. But a blank check, meaning Jesus said, “Whatever you desire, when you pray believe that you receive and you will have.”
So, I just want to maybe stir up your consciousness today and maybe provoke your thought patterns to realize we’re to be paying attention now. We’re to be fully awake now, recognizing the reality and the truth of scripture, which is God has set up this collaboration between heaven and earth in such a way that we’re to ask, that we’re to intercede, that we’re to get into the messy middle of what’s going on, not only individually in our lives, but in our nation. There’s a whole lot going on as we see on the news every day. And God is saying…
Church, will you respond?
Will you be reminded that I’ve asked you to bind?
And I’ve asked you to loose
And I’ve asked you to pray and intercede
And just shout the victory in advance of what I’m going to do
Will we do that?
For others, I believe that the answer lies in us asking Him and inviting Him into the affairs of what we’re going through right now. That He would have access. The Holy Spirit, the Bible describes Him in one place as a standby. In other words, He’s just standing by waiting to be welcomed, waiting to be engaged with, waiting to receive an invitation.
Don’t forget, God wired us up in such a way that we are, yes, created in His image as spirits that can create and can speak, but a people who have a free will. So we’ve got to leverage our free will, even when we don’t feel like it at times, to ask. Even when you don’t feel worthy, but you desire to walk in the gifts of the Spirit, but yet you feel like you’re too young in the Lord or you made some mistakes.
Well, guess what?
The blood of Jesus dealt with those mistakes. So acknowledge the work of the blood, not only once upon a time, but every time you feel that way. Don’t sit under a place of condemnation. Shake that off by the remembrance of the fact that Jesus did it all for us, so we could step into it today through acknowledging every good work that He’s accomplished for us.
He wants us to rise now, not be depleted, but rise in strength, rise in the spirit, rise in a fresh and daily renewing of our minds to the fact that we are strong in Him. And in Him, we live and move and have our being. We’re strong in the Lord and in the power of His might. Capable of far more than we see with our eyeballs—to ask, to bind, to loose, to pray heaven into the earth. And so that’s what we’re going to do today. Can we do that?
Dr. Yonggi Cho in his book on prayer…
Dr. Cho, once upon a time, was pastor of the world’s largest church, and it may still be today in Seoul, South Korea. He wrote a book entitled “Prayer That Brings Revival: Interceding for God to Move in Your Family, Church, and Community.” And while this was written a number of years ago, what he shares is still relevant today. I’m going to read just an excerpt and then we’ll worship.
But he said this…
“Paul testified, ‘that I thank God I speak in with tongues more than you all.’ 1st Corinthians 14:18. This, he spoke to the church. He was correcting on the overuse of the spiritual manifestations. Therefore, Paul practiced praying in his prayer language more than anyone in the Corinthian church. Yet he was motivated by the love of God. 1st Corinthians 14:15 says, “What is it then, I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the understanding also. I will sing with the spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also.’ Why should we pray in the Holy Spirit? Paul taught that speaketh in an unknown tongue edified himself.”
You’re rising higher like a skyscraper…
In other words, builds himself up. I think the Amplified says “when you pray in tongues, make progress individually when you pray, collectively, when you pray.” One thing I found when I was a young person, I discovered that while we were praying in that particular group for Israel, and things I didn’t even know a whole lot about at that time, I discovered that each week when I came faithfully to pray for an hour with that group, I seemed to grow. I seemed to be bettered because of it personally, even though I was praying for the will of God in Israel, that was the purpose of that particular prayer group. So even though you’re online or in this chapel, guess what? You’re rising higher today. Like a skyscraper, you’re adding a floor to your life today. One brick, one element, one supply of the spirit upon another.
