Morning Prayer Summary for Tuesday, December 13, 2022

Pastor Ken…

Good morning, everyone. Good to see you with us on this Tuesday morning.

Announcement…

I wanted to give you a heads up that we will be hosting live prayer here from the chapel and online each day this week. And then starting next week, we’ll be off for two weeks. With that said, we’re going to still stream “the best of morning prayer.” And then we’ll reconvene back here in the chapel live after the new year. I believe it’s Tuesday, January 3.

The power of God morphs to work in your situation…

Let me encourage each of you to just sink deep into your heart this morning, move from your intellect and the surface things of life. And just sense the Holy Spirit drawing you this morning. He’s drawing us deeper. We’ve been praying about that, drawing us deeper into broader, wider places in the spirit and in our hearts. And, as I’ve often taught, effective prayer, prayers that are answered are prayers that are first prayed from the heart. We all know the verse in James that says in the Amplified version of James 5. It says, “the effectual, fervent, heartfelt prayer of a righteous man makes much power available, dynamic in its working.” Or I like to say the power of God morphs to work in your circumstances and your situation, in your need. It flows and morphs and works in the way that is needed for your personal situation to bring answers, to set you free, to bring provision, to provide protection, whatever it is. And that all begins from a heartfelt place, from a place emitting from within us.

God wants us to pray from a place of inspiration…

God doesn’t want us to pray from our heads or from memorization, but from a place of inspiration, from a place that emanates from the core of who we are. Firstly, we are spirits, right? We are created in the image of God, and you are a speaking spirit created in the image of Jesus. And that real you, a.k.a. your heart on the inside, is where we want all things to flow from, especially prayer.

Prayed…

Father, we thank you this morning… as we turn our hearts and our affections and our attention to you this morning.

Lord, we pray that anyone joining us here that is struggling in some way emotionally in their thoughts, Lord, in what’s going on in their present circumstances. Lord, we just pray that streams of hope and encouragement and light and peace and rest would fill their souls this morning.

Lord, teach us to yield to those rivers… rivers of living water to sustain, to supply, to heal, to take us from where we are to where you’re calling us to be individually and collectively.

We pray you would work in us and that you would work through us today. We don’t want our agenda, Lord. We don’t want our will or our ways or even our preconceived ideas this morning. We want what you want, Father. So we just open up to you.

Lord, give us the “want to” today… give us a hunger today to follow you and chase after you and know you more intimately.

Lord, we lift up America and all the nations. And we agree together for an infectious hunger that would spread across a generation and nations today, to captivate and capture our attention, Lord, and lead and draw us to not another sparkly, world-inspired thing, but instead draw us to a knowledge and an intimacy with our Heavenly Father that we were created to have.

Father, we pray for a supernatural visitation… that heaven would inundate our lives this holiday season. That this would be like no other Christmas, no other end of the year, New Year, a celebration in time.

We agree together, Lord, that you would show up in the midst of our holiday celebrations… that you would show up in the midst of the circumstances and the darkness in some instances, and the need to make decisions in people’s lives.

We pray for heaven to stream and visitation to flow into people’s lives, that there would be changes, that there would be supernatural healing and a gift of the Spirit deposited within each of us this Christmas season.

Sandra shared…
Share the gift of Jesus…

I feel in my spirit that the best gift anyone can give to someone this Christmas, not just Christmas, but really the gift of Jesus is for every season. Think about it. God is putting in my heart every single day: “Don’t assume that everyone knows Me.” Think about this. Don’t assume that everyone knows Jesus. And believe me, if you shared Jesus, guess what? That’s not just a gift for a little short time. That’s the gift for eternity. Can you imagine? Eternity! That’s a long life. So think about that. The gift that you can share for such a time as this. It’s a gift that it lasts for eternity. Their names will be written in the book of life. I don’t think there’s a better gift, can you? I don’t think that there is any better gift than share Jesus with someone.

Pastor Ken…
The gift to disconnect…

Yesterday I was talking to Pastor Lynne and she shared with me how if she could give everybody a gift for Christmas for this holiday season, it would be the gift to disconnect and just be with the Lord and with family. And she went on in a passionate way and said, “Ken, we’re all fighting and we’re all in motion and doing for God perpetually, it seems like. There needs to be time where we just disconnect from the fight of faith. And from the praying even, because pray-ers are dutiful and quick to pick up on what we sense needs to be prayed about.” And we’re always fighting in prayer and interceding and praying about something. And, she just went on to say, “If I could give everybody a gift this holiday season, it would simply be to just disconnect even for a day, for a week. And just be simply be with Him and with your family and be refreshed.”

God created us to rest and to trust in Him…

And as we were worshiping this morning, I was reminded that we were not created to be in perpetual motion, perpetual striving, struggling, fighting, working. God created us first to rest and to trust. That’s what redemption is. The Bible invites us to enter into that rest which has been prepared for us. That rest which is also known as salvation, which is also known as an intimate and personal relationship with the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords.

And so I just want to encourage you with that and remind us that God has called us to a rest. He offers a refreshing to all those who are called by His name, not a perpetual working and religious duty or even praying, but that at regular intervals and in a cadence that has woven into our lives that we would unplug and be with Him.

We minister to the degree that we have first received ministry…

The scriptures reveal a principle of the kingdom that we can only pray or minister to the degree that we have first received ministry that we’ve first been ministered to in that place of rest. And my concern is that many of us and many in the church that we may be on the outside doing good things and looking like we’re spiritual, but really on the inside we’re nothing but dried up and weary land. Because we’re doing it out of repetition. We’re doing it out of tradition. We’re doing what we do often out of a place of memory rather than a place of first receiving from Him. And that begins with your heart.

Jesus said to His disciples, “It’s time for us to go” …

I mean, even Jesus, you think about the narrative of His life on earth 2,000 plus years ago, there were instances where He seemed to do an abrupt halt to the ministry that was going on with throngs of people surrounding Him. There was more than one instance when He told His disciples, “It’s time for us to go.” In the middle of praying for people, in the middle of preaching, in the middle of feeding people, He got up and said, “Disciples, let’s go.” And in one instance, got on a boat and went to the other side of Galilee to simply replenish and to rest and to be with His friends and His heavenly Father. Even Jesus recognized that His ability to impact this world, His ability to follow through with what His Father had intended for Him was joined or connected with His time with His heavenly Father, His time in His Father’s presence.

Your heart is your lifeline to a spiritual life…

And so this morning, I just want to highlight something in particular and that has to do with our spirit, also known as your heart. And I jotted down this thought the other day, and that is, is that what your physical heart is to your physical life your spiritual heart is to your spiritual life. It’s your lifeline to a spiritual life. And we all need a vital, spiritual heart. That’s why, of course, the enemy goes after our hearts. He attacks and burdens our hearts. He clutters and covers over and hardens people’s hearts. You know, perhaps because of things that have occurred to us in our past, even our childhood, perhaps just day to day, the pollution of this world and this life has an effect oftentimes to block up and stop up the flow of God’s Spirit to and through our hearts.

So this is why it’s so important for us to practice solitude and silence and worship and simple waiting before Him because it allows God the Holy Spirit to work. Just praying in the Spirit activates the Holy Spirit’s ministry as our divine, as I say, psychologist and counselor and comforter to do what He wants to do on the inside of who we are. And effective prayer starts with a heart that is vital, a heart that is pulsating with the heart of God, with the presence of God. Amen.

Keep your heart with all diligence…

And so as the Bible says in Proverbs 4, “Keep your heart with all diligence for out of it…” That is your heart, your innermost being. “…out of it spring the issues of life.” One translation says, “above all that you guard, all that you watch over, all that you tend to tend to watch over guard your heart for outflowing from it are the forces that create your future, that create your life.” Isn’t that good?

Let not your heart be troubled…

So the Bible reminds us of that. Jesus Himself said this in John 14:1. He said, “Let not your heart be troubled.” You could also if you’d meditate and translate that, it also means don’t let your heart be distressed, agitated. Don’t surrender it to fear. Don’t let it be drained out and running on fumes. If there ever was an hour where the church, when we as pray-ers need to live from the core of our being, from our hearts, it is now. The plan of God calls for it.

The answer is in your heart…

The answer is in your heart, not only for you and yours, but the answer for the world is in us. The answer is not in a properly prepared and practiced sermon. The answer isn’t in another organizational strategy for the church. Although those things may be good and have their place. The answer for you and for me and for the church and for our generation is a body of believers, are pray-ers who get back to the ancient ways of a practicing time. First with our Father receiving the ministry of God the Holy Spirit, so that our hearts could be ministered to, so that our hearts could receive surgery, so that our hearts could be healed, so that our hearts could be whole and united.

Jesus, remember, prayed in John 17, that we would be one, even as He was one with His Father. And He meant one in spirit, one in heart. And you can’t do that… you can’t experience that if you’re running Mach 10 with your hair on fire every day, even if it is Christian things. No! We need to first pull back and be with Him, as Pastor Lynne reminded me yesterday.

I’ve often said that the Lord wants to do a great work in you before He will ever do a great work through you. The answer resides on the inside of you and me, on the inside in our hearts where Jesus has chosen to take up residence, if you professed His name. He’s on the inside of us. The forces that created the world are on the inside, not on the outside, not in a bunch of activity, not in a bunch of mental gymnastics to try to figure out my future or my next steps or what we think God might want us to do.

He is in the stillness and the quietness of that still small voice…

The Old Testament writer and prophet revealed that it’s not in the wind or the waves or a mighty tempest blast. It’s in the stillness and the quietness and the simplicity of our heavenly Father’s still small voice. That it’s not by might, that’s not by power of man or cunning or great wisdom or experience or degrees that we add to our name, but it’s by His Spirit, says the Lord himself. And that flows from here. Your superpower is inside of you. Your superpower is not obtained. It’s received when you disconnect and unhook and let not your heart be troubled and give place to guarding, watching over your heart. And if you were to go back up into Proverbs 4 and look, you’ll find that the Bible talks about letting the Word saturate and marinate in your heart as a key component to your heart being right.

Some of us have a lot of unpacking to do in our hearts…

I mean when I started out in my young adulthood, I had been a Christian since I was a young boy. But in my young adulthood, I realized quickly in my late teens that I had some unresolved issues in my heart. I had some things that needed to be resolved and healed and restored. I mean, I knew it to some degree anyway. And over the course of a number of years, as I began to develop a deeper, more intimate relationship with my heavenly Father, I realized that there was a whole lot of unpacking to do in my heart, in my soul. And that God wanted to meet me in the secret place. That He wanted to meet me in a place all alone with Him. Because in that place, He could place His finger on my soul, place His finger on my heart where it hurt, where it was broken, where it was cluttered over by so many things that I thought were it. But really weren’t.

Don’t let the enemy fill in your well…

I’ve used this analogy before, but if you go back and read about the ancient tactics of war during biblical times, there was one that specifically that Israel’s enemies used often, which was to fill in the wells in the land of where God’s people dwelt and lived. They would contaminate and fill in their wells and their watering holes with earth, with all dead animals, with all kinds of things. To clutter, to cover over, to contaminate the heart of God’s people, the heartbeat of natural life and existence in a very arid land. And the truth be told, the enemy has no new tactics. He’s still working only on a spiritual level to fill in our wells. Remember Jesus said in the Gospel of John, “Out of your belly would flow rivers of living water,” rivers to live by.

Just yield to Him…

And last night as I was meditating, I thought very often those rivers that Jesus prophesied that were supposed to flow from within us aren’t allowed to do so. Don’t flow as they ought to because our hearts are troubled, burdened, cluttered, broken, closed due to sin. For 1,001 other reasons that require the help of the divine psychologist and healer, Holy Spirit. And so perhaps I’m just kind of prompting you ahead of the holidays, and being inspired by Pastor Lynne shared, that we need time alone with Him. Amen. Individually. Not caught up in the wordiness of social media. That that has its place and that can be inspirational and we can learn and find good in that. But there’s just something about the simplicity of being with Him and just inviting Him to do a work in us. Amen. Just yielding.

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