Pastor Ken…
Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. Good to see all your smiling faces.
We were meant to “do life” in conjunction with Him…
I was mentioning to somebody the other day that I don’t know how people apart from Jesus do life. I suppose that’s why we have so much addiction, and of course, no judgment. I’m not walking in other people’s shoes. I can only speak for myself. But I don’t know how people do it apart from God… do life much less a hard thing or accomplish a dream. Like I said, I suppose that’s why we have so much chaos and craziness and dysfunction and addiction and, etcetera, in our world because people have to lean on something else. Because ultimately whether you’re a follower of Jesus presently or not, God created us to do life, to live in this existence we call this world in conjunction with Him. I mean the Bible’s really clear that Jesus made a way so that the Holy Spirit would come and live in us and empower us. Amen.
Bottom-line Christianity…
And I was reminded last night at the end of a super busy day, and just feeling, “Wow, this is a lot. We’re back again.” I was just reminded of not only God’s faithfulness, but His ever present supply. This thing we called spirituality or our journey to know God and know what He’s about and what He’s called us to be and do isn’t just some “ethereal thing,” some “out there” kind of spiritual idea that we kind of mentally ascent to. Bottom line Christianity with Jesus is all about God equipping us… God with us. Emmanuel God with us. He’s with us this morning. That’s a good reminder whether you’re going through a tough time or you’re on a mountaintop in life. It’s a good reminder at the beginning of prayer. That once again, we’re not praying for something here today. We’re praying from a place, from a position of sonship, of being a child of God. That’s a reality.
We are to live our lives on “overflow…”
And so I was reminded last night about… Well, I think I collapsed for a couple hours and fell asleep from 10 to 12, but then I woke up at 12 and opened my eyes and just kind of started leaning into the Father and reminding myself of some key verses that always breathe life into me. I reminded myself that the spiritual journey starts from being filled. Things start happening. If things aren’t happening for you, then I challenge you to consider the concept of being filled. We were created to not live on fumes, spiritually speaking, but to live on overflow.
And so that’s why even though I was tired last night, I leaned in and said, “Lord, I’m gonna spend some time with you, regardless of how I feel, regardless of what my body says.” I’m not saying you ignore your body. If you’ve got symptoms in your body and you feel like you need to go to the doctor, then do that. But sometimes you just got to do what you know is the right thing to do in your gut, your spirit. Because ultimately our lives are to be led by our spirit, our human spirit joined up with God the Holy Spirit.
You’ve been recreated in spirit into the image of Jesus…
So you can trust your spirit because the Holy Spirit’s down in there and He won’t lead you astray. He’s leading you the right way. Your feelings? They’ll hijack you sometimes if you give them place and they’ll take you down a wrong road and cause you to make bad decisions, occasionally. Your feelings are woven into your being and they’re part of your nature, but even your feelings, God wants to redeem and sanctify. And He wants them to follow your spirit.
And so I was reminded last night that there is a supernaturalness, a fullness of God that’s available to us. That even when you physically are weary, even when things are challenging, there’s something we can draw upon that not only will sustain us, but will refresh us and renew us and cause us to keep steady and keep going through the most uncertain times that we find ourselves in. That’s one of the hopes and truths of the gospel that God comes to stabilize us and to sustain us and to lead us through this life. Not being beat up perpetually, but hopefully if we’re following Him, coming out of those difficult places and growing stronger.
God has exalted His Word…
Would you agree that the Word of God is good? The Bible says He’s exalted His Word. That His Word is eternal, and that He holds all things in the universe and in our solar system … He holds it all together by the word of His power. So there must be something about His Word that’s significant, that we can’t overlook. It’s just so easy to get sidetracked and distracted by the “sparkliness” of the age that we live in by technology and by all the stuff out there that captivates people. Christians included. And we lose sight of the fact that the most beautiful and sparkly and powerful and life-giving thing there is, is Him and His Word. Because they are one.
Jesus announced one day that His Word is spirit and its truth…
And everything that God does in your life emanates from your spirit. So when you give attention to, when you nurture, when you feed, when you sow the Word into your spirit, into who you are on the inside, recreated in the image of Jesus, it releases that supply to your physicality, to your mind and to your circumstances. He not only wants to do something through you. He wants to bring something through you.
Keep the main thing, the main thing…
I read this yesterday. I’ll read it again because I thought it was pretty good. “The Spirit filled life is to be the flow of our life for the rest of our life. If there’s one thing we’re to focus on, if there’s a main thing…” and you’ve heard me say before, the main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing. Don’t mix it up. Keep the main thing, the main thing. And the main thing is to be ever filled with Him. To ever be open and inviting of the presence of God, to be conscious that the Spirit of God is with you and for you and in you, that He comes to fuel you, to minister hope to your heart, that there’s something greater than your feelings… There’s something greater than your limited intellect or your past experiences or what the world is saying. There’s a deep reservoir on the inside of you and me that we’re to live out of… not out of our limited understanding or our physical strength, which will run out at some point.
I just encourage you this morning. God’s got you! He’s with you. He’s for you. He’s in you. There’s a sustaining supply that’s rising up on the inside. That’s why I always emphasize that prayer isn’t so much a matter of us trying to convince or cajole or get something or extract something from God. God is already given us all things in Jesus. He’s already gone away as we say and prepared the way for us. He’s put provision in store. He intends to protect us. He even has prayers He wants to grant you and bring through you, that He’s already answered.
Just know that God has already dealt with your problem…
So it’s a matter of being filled and becoming ever more sensitive and responsive to His movement, to His inspiration on the inside of us. So that we can more and more just align with what He’s already said “Yes and amen” to. What He’s already answered, what He’s already prepared. For those of you who are freaking out today or recently because of what you’re going through, just know God has already dealt with that problem. He already has a plan to restore that situation, to redeem that loved one, to turn around that situation. Even if something utterly failed in your life in some way, whether it be a business or relationship or whatever His plan is to utterly and completely turn your life in a new way.
When the problem arose that wasn’t when God first realized you had a problem. No! Millennia ago, He went ahead of us and He put some things in place. So each day, prayer is just a matter of “Lord, What’s up. Where do you want me to go today? What steps do you want me to take? What risks do you want me to take?”
Faith is a risk…
But God promises He will always meet you at your step of faith. When Peter stepped out of that boat as we read in the narrative of the New Testament, that was a risk to step outside the boat, out onto the waters of the tumultuous sea of Galilee. But he heard Jesus come. On that notable day in Galilee, in the regions of Galilee in Jesus’ hometown, there was this man and there was this one who was also God who beckoned unto some ragtag fishermen who smelled and probably didn’t have the best clothing on and looked like the most unlikely ones. And Jesus said, “Come follow Me.” That was a risk. But they heard His voice and if you’ll respond to it will always lead to His goodness, to His intentionality and plan. It’ll be a risk and it may be difficult on your flesh and it might be counterintuitive to your motions or your wiring or what you grew up in your family cuz of what they told you. But He won’t lead you astray. He’s taking you to a better day. He’s taking the church to a better day.
The turnaround season is coming…
As Pastor Lynne prophetically announced here at our service the other night, we’re in a turnaround season right now. Grab hold of that turnaround. A boomerang! He’s turning things around. He’s rerouting things. Don’t be captivated or infatuated, by what the enemy has done or what the news media is saying, or even what you’ve experienced in your past. Your past does not equal your future. He wants His Word to equal your future. That’s why we have the Word in the scriptures. That’s why we have His Spirit on the inside of us speaking because His voice leads the way. And that should be the case for pray-ers. And our normal shouldn’t be just to nervously lean in and start praying. Because we know how to pray. But it should be to be filled, to be captivated by Him, to put up our spiritual antennas and listen for His voice.
Cuz I’ve experienced, maybe you have too, times in the seasons where there was a difficult situation and He gave me a strategy in that season, or with that circumstance that I was dealing with. And the strategy was maybe simple as “Lord, I just turned this thing over to you. I refuse to worry about it. And I ask you just to take care of this as I engage with what you’ve got me focused on right now in ministry or other aspects of my life.” And that’s all I did. And lo and behold, He supernaturally dealt with that situation and many others. Amen.
Everything starts by becoming filled with the Spirit…
Sometimes the Lord will lead you into a season where He just wants you to become captivated and in love with Him. He just like Psalm 91:14 says, you just set your love and your affections on you. You just slow things down. You calm things down. You come apart as David wrote in the Psalms to that still calm restful place, the still calm restful waters. Just let them work. Let them fill you. So everything starts by becoming filled with the spirit.
I can confidently say that God has in store for us good things that are gonna happen…
Because you’re seeing the goodness of God in the land of the living. Because you’re seeing a miracle happen. Prayer is designed to precipitate and perpetuate miracles. Not necessarily miracles as man defines them as sparkly and special effects like Hollywood. But miracles in the way of restoring people’s souls and redeeming people’s lives and healing bodies if not in a moment, then maybe over a period of time. Because in the ministry of Jesus, most often people were healed as they went walking with God and praising Him and giving Him the credit.
God has some moments for you…
And so I just challenge you this morning that God has some moments for you. There are a lot of things we don’t know are gonna happen that is intended in the Providence of God to occur in your life. Breakthroughs, appointments with unprecedented favor, open doors, whole nother next levels in your spiritual life of intimacy and knowledge of God and your walk with Him, restorations, things He wants to turn around completely that maybe you’ve completely written off because it didn’t change in a decade. A decade is nothing to God! He’s eternal, right? A thousand years is as a day to Him. He’s not moved. That’s why the call of the Spirit now is for the church and for us and as pray-ers, especially is to put down our roots to become stable and fixed upon His promises and in relationship with Him. And just become steady and stable in relationship with Him. It doesn’t matter if the wind is blowing. It doesn’t matter if there’s a fire and smoke rising in the distance in your life. It doesn’t matter. His still small voice is on the inside of us. And He’s speaking today. He is ever with us and He will be with us as Jesus promised until the end of the age. And He is speaking, saying, “Stay steady. Don’t back up. I’m with you. I’m for you. I’m taking you somewhere.”
There are moments intended for you and yours and the church and your faith community that you’re gonna say, “Well, I didn’t know that was gonna happen.” But God had planned it all along. Faith is a matter of resisting the temptation to go our own way, to bail, to get offended. Faith is a matter of resisting living life and filtering our reality through our five physical senses instead choosing actively and intentionally every day to go with God by going with His Word, by refreshing and saturating and filling our minds and our hearts with what God is saying. Faith is a matter of settling down, taking time every day practicing the ancient and the beautiful and the habit that we have that God’s given us to just wait on Him and let Him lead.
Never get out ahead of the Holy Ghost…
Brother Hagin used to teach, never get out ahead of the Holy Ghost. Never strike out on your own. The American ideal of “I can do this on my own.” That may be an American ideal, but it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s God’s ideal. His ideal is that we would wait on Him. And then when we see Him leading and then when we hear Him speaking, then we follow. If Jesus modeled that for us, then how much more should we aspire to live that way? Loud praying, extensive praying, gutting it out all night. Am I saying that’s a bad thing? I’ve done that. And you may do that. But that doesn’t necessarily equate to effective praying. It’s the prayers as Pastor Lynne teaches us that He grants inspired on the inside of us rising up and taking hold together with us that we utter, that we declare in the everydayness of our lives. It doesn’t have to be in this chapel or after you’ve been doused with holy water or something! Some of the most miraculous occurrences of God will happen in the days ahead in the most mundane unscheduled moments of yours and my life. Let’s not count God out because we’re not in church or we don’t feel exceptionally holy.
Prayed…
Father, we pray that you would cascade over us, refreshing us with a fresh supply for the journey that lies ahead of us in Jesus’ name.
I lift up those that are challenged with some things and facing some obstacles and bumping up against some locked doors maybe, or experiencing some debilitating trauma or going through loss or trying to figure out just the way forward. Lord, we agree together as a family for a release of the miraculous today into those situations…
We pray for a great breakthrough in Jesus’ name… We declare a furtherance today in your journey of faith
Lord, we pray that you would strengthen us, that you would strengthen our pastors today and our leaders today in our nation.
