Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Worship leader…
Good morning, everybody. Happy Tuesday. Welcome to morning prayer.
I felt this morning just to remind us that He is as close as the breath in your lungs this morning. He’s as near as the inner thoughts in your mind. It says that Jesus is as close as a friend, even close as a brother. And it’s just this intimate knowing of Him and His intimate knowing of you, that’s who we approach today. That’s who we are spending time with today. The one that knows us better than anybody else knows us. And He is so near. He’s so approachable and present. He’s more present than we’ll ever know or understand or comprehend.
He is listening and attentive…
But I felt like the Lord wanted to encourage us this morning that He’s listening, that He’s attentive, that He is fully awake this morning, and fully alive and ready to partner with our hearts as we partner with Him, and that He cares about what’s on our heart, just like we care what is on His heart and soul. Don’t hold back this morning. Don’t let the cares of today, don’t let the stresses of today steal this moment from us because the Lord is so willing and He’s so eager and so longing to just sit with us this morning. Even if we didn’t say a word, we could just sit with Him this morning and be with Him and that would be enough. Because it’s not about doing things for Him or even sometimes doing things with Him. It’s just being with Him and just letting the Holy Spirit minister to us so that we can grow deeper in love with the one who made us.
Prayed…
So, Lord, we just honor you this morning. We honor your presence. We just say, “Come Holy Spirit, come and fill us up again. Come and renew our hearts. Renew our minds that we would be able to receive love from you and pour it down on your feet to know that we are loved and that our greatest desire and calling is to love you and return.
Pastor Heather…
God is waiting on us…
I see people waiting. You’re watching and you’re waiting for God to move. And He’s waiting on you! He’s waiting on you to step out, to step forward, to step up, to step in… You’re standing on the shore of the ocean. I see it. I see people standing on the shore and He is saying, “Come on, come on in, come on into the ocean of My presence. Come into the ocean of My wave. You don’t know the way, but I know the way. The deeper things, the deeper things. Don’t stand on the shore. Don’t stand and watch people dive in. Come and get in the ocean of My presence.
Is there not a cause?
So I see that now, even as you’re in this room. Come forward. Come to the altar. Come up to the front. What are you waiting for? Literally, people come forward. Is there not a cause? Is there not a time? Is there not a passion? Is there not a fire that can get you up out of your seat and to come up and to fall down at His feet and to worship Him with your heart today—in passion and truth and fire. He’s saying, “Stop waiting. Stop waiting for something to happen. For I am here and I’m wanting to move. But I’m waiting for you to come closer, for you to draw near, for you to bow down, for you to pour out your heart before Me.”
Prayed…
So we do that, Lord, we pour out our hearts before you. We say we can’t have it our way. We have to have it your way, Lord. It’s not enough to walk in our own ways.
Get into a posture of worship and surrender…
So get into a posture of worship and surrender. What is He speaking to your heart now? What is He telling you to do? Those of you watching online, go into a posture of worship and surrender.
Oh, we bow down before your presence. Lord, you’re so good. Thank you, Father. You’re moving. You’re moving. You’re moving on hearts.
“For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you…”
When I woke up this morning, instantly, I had Jeremiah 29:11–13 springing out of my heart. “For I know the thoughts and plans that I have for you, says the Lord.” This is the Amplified Classic. “Thoughts and plans for welfare and peace and not for evil to give you a hope in your final outcome. Then you will call upon Me and you will come and you will pray to Me, and I will hear and heed you, then you will seek Me, inquire for, and require Me as a vital necessity and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.”
And then in the parentheses there it says Deuteronomy 4:29, which says, “But if from there…” And the there he’s talking about is they were in captivity. They were in a really hard place. But from there, “you will seek, inquire for, and require as a necessity the Lord your God. And you will find Him if you truly seek Him with all your heart and mind and soul and life.”
He is a jealous God…
Just five verses earlier, in Deuteronomy 4:24, it says, “For the Lord your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God.” We forget that aspect of God sometimes I think. He’s a jealous God. And why is He jealous? Because He has such a passionate love for you that He wants all of your heart. Just like when you commit to a marriage, that person wants all of your heart. They don’t want you running around with other people. They want all of your heart. They want you to commit to them. He is a jealous God, a consuming fire.
God wants you to pursue Him…
Psalm 27:4–8 in the Amplified. “The one thing have I asked of the Lord that will I seek, inquire for, and consistently require that I may dwell in the house of the Lord in His presence all the days of my life, to behold and gaze upon the beauty, the sweet attractiveness and delightful loveliness of the Lord, and to meditate, consider, and inquire in His temple. For in the day of trouble, He will hide me in His shelter. In the secret place of His tent He will hide me. He will set me high upon a rock. And now shall my head be lifted up above my enemies round and about me. In His tent, I will offer sacrifices of shouting of joy. I will sing. Yes, I will sing the praises of the Lord. Hear O Lord when I cry aloud, have mercy and be gracious to me and answer me. You have said, seek My face, inquire for and require My presence as your vital need. My heart says to you, your face, your presence, Lord, will I seek, inquire for, and require of necessity on the authority of your Word.”
Let’s leave the safety of the shores and jump into the river…
God wants to be pursued. He wants us to get off of the shores of just watching what He’s doing and get into what He’s doing, be a part of what He’s doing, be active in what He’s doing. And I have to be honest, I’m one of those people sometimes I’ll wait and I’ll watch and I’ll say, who’s going first? Who’s going to run? Who’s going to jump in? Who’s going to dive in?
He’s waiting for us!
We’re waiting for some big move or some big change or some big… He’s waiting on us. Why can’t it start here? Why can’t it start at Living Word? Why can’t it start in your heart? Why can’t it start in your home, in your community? What are we waiting for?
Seek and inquire…
The Hebrew word for seek is daras, which means to seek or inquire. It conveys a sense of diligent searching or investigation, often with the intent of obtaining information or understanding. In the context of the Bible, daras is frequently used to describe the act of seeking God, His will, or His guidance. It can also imply a demand for justice or investigation into a matter.
The practice of treading wheat…
In Arabic, it means to rub over or to tread as in treading wheat, to read repeatedly, to study, to beat a path, to discuss, to practice, to search out a meaning or to expound. So when they used to tread wheat, it was a method of threshing or separating the grain from the straw. And then they would have livestock or people would walk over the wheat and continue to walk over the sheaths of the wheat. And the impact of their hooves or their feet would separate the grain from the straw. It can also refer to the practice of treading wheat seedlings to promote growth.
Keep going until you get to the seed of who I am…
So think of that. That seeking is finding Him, that going over and over and separating and separating and separating. And sometimes we have a belief or a thought of God or who He is or His character, but He’s saying, “Press into that. Keep separating until you get to the seed of who I am, till you get to the heart of who I am.” Keep separating out that shaft or that straw. Just keep separating it. Because I guarantee all of us in here have some kind of straw in our lives about who we believe God is or who we believe we are. Right? And He’s saying, “Seek! Continue seeking. Continue separating, separating, separating, separating yourself and separating those thoughts that are not who He is. The word is a two-edged sword, right? It gets in there and it separates. Get in the Word, get in His presence, seeking Him.
And he shall seek me and find Me…
The Gill’s Exposition of the entire Bible on this verse says, “And he shall seek me and find me. When persons seek the Lord aright, they always find Him—A God hearing prayer. A God in Christ bestowing favors upon them, granting them His presence, indulging them in communion with Him and favoring them with fresh supplies of His grace and everything needful for them. Every mercy, temporal and spiritual that is. When they seek Him in Christ, who is the only way to the Father, under the guidance and the influence of the blessed Spirit in the exercise of faith upon Him and His promises, with fervency of spirit and our draw of mind with diligence and importunity, with earnest desires and strong affections and as follows with all sincerity of the soul. When ye shall search for Me with all your heart, which as in Calvin rightly observes, does not design perfection, but integrity and sincerity, when they draw nigh with a true heart and call upon Him in truth and search for Him with eagerness, with a hearty desire to find Him as men search for gold and silver and hid treasure.”
To find the treasure, you have to dig deep…
And so you think of that. You don’t find gold and gems and diamonds just sitting on the surface, right? You have to dig for them. You have to mine for them. And there’s a digging and a mining of the deep things of God. He’s easy to know. He’s easy to come to. But then there’s more. There’s facets of Him. It’s kind of like, “I like to go to the beach. I like to see the ocean, but have I plummeted the depths of the ocean? Have I gone down to the deep, deep things and seen every part of it?”
No. And there are deep, deep places in God that He wants to take us. But it takes a pressing and an intentionality. Not a difficult thing, but an intentional thing… beyond just our day to day, beyond just an intentional pursuit of Him and a digging and a pressing and a laying aside of things that are just wasting our time.
Exhortation to press into God…
If we’re not doing it, who’s going to do it? If we’re not leading the way and we’re not pressing into His presence, how are we expecting the church to do that? We are to be leading the way. We are to be pressing. We are to be hungry. We are to be on fire, passionate fire for Him. We have to be. We are setting a bar for our church.
People are hungry for the supernatural…
And so the Lord has rebuked my heart, and so I’m not a confrontational person. But I know that He wants us to press in. Not be waiting or watching on the sidelines, but to get into the presence of what He’s doing into the heart of it. Especially at this time. People are so hungry. They’re searching for the supernatural. They’re getting off into weird things like crystals and tarot cards and wicca … all that stuff is out there because people are hungry for the supernatural. We have the real thing and we’re just walking around hiding it.
Prayed…
So, Father, help us now. Help us to seek you to press in and to be a light wherever we go. We want your presence like nothing else. We require it as a vital necessity of our lives. More than anything else, more than comfort, more than riches, more than healing, more than our loved ones. We require your presence like a vital necessity.
So now we remind ourselves. We remind our hearts. We remind our souls of our deep, deep need for Him.
