Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Heather…
I was praying this morning asking the Lord what to share. He didn’t give me anything. He just said, “You’re just going to have to trust Me to fill your mouth when you get up there.” And as we were singing, “I love Your presence” that’s when He told me what He wanted me to share. And I’ve been arguing with Him for the last 15 minutes because it’s a very personal moment. So forgive me if I cry my way through this. But I’ve never shared this publicly. People that I love know. People that are leaders in my life know.
Setting my affections in the wrong place…
But 11 years ago when I first heard this song, “I love your presence,” we were on staff at a different church, not here. Scott was a pastor. I was a pastor’s wife and I was on staff. I had an emotional affair, not a physical affair. I want to clarify “emotional.” I set the affections of my heart on a different person than my husband. I’m sharing this because I am going to go somewhere with this.
In that time, I was so hungry for love, and we were very busy in ministry. And those aren’t excuses. Those are just part of the reasons why we got to where we got. But I was so hungry for love. And then all of a sudden, this person in my life starts filling my “love tank,” speaking words over me that my heart really wanted to hear. And I allowed him to speak those words into my heart because I was so hungry to hear them. Instead of allowing my husband to fill them and God to fill them. And in what I felt was the darkest point in my life, I had to share that with my leaders. I had to take a sabbatical, and it was a very humiliating, debasing time in my life where I had never, in my mind, failed the Lord before.
When everything came crashing down…
And in that moment, when everything came crashing down all around me, looking back, all I can say now is it was the most beautiful, terrible mess that ever happened to me. Because in that moment, I was not perfect. I knew I had failed. I knew I had sinned. But He loved me in that moment. And God found me down in the deep, deep depths of darkness of that time in my life. People didn’t want to text me. People didn’t want to talk to me. I had friends that didn’t know how to handle what happened, that didn’t want to talk to me for a while. And it was obviously a really hard time for Scott and I. But we walked through it. We walked through it with His grace.
I found He still loved me…
But in that time, I found that if I am just a daughter of God and that’s all that I am, and I have nothing going right in my life, He still loved me. He loved me so much and He showed me so much grace in that time. And I learned so much about the love of God that all my trying to “people please” and achieve could never teach me or I never learned it. I’m not saying that everybody has to get to this moment to find that love, but for some reason I did.
I was always craving someone to love me…
And there’s a lot of things in my history. For those of you that know my story, I didn’t have that father figure in my life. So I’m always craving that love, craving that love, craving someone to love me. And when I found Jesus, I was like “Finally someone that loves me.” But I still couldn’t fully open my heart to Him, for some reason. I felt like I still had to prove my worth to Him, even though He calls us worthy. I felt like I had to prove that. I had to be perfect. I had to be the perfect wife, the perfect pastor’s wife, the perfect mom, and spin all the plates and do all the things. But when all those plates came crashing down and I fell off my own pedestal that I put myself on, He loved me so much in that moment. He loved me so much. And I never experienced a love like that where I felt so unworthy. But He crashed through that. And that’s when I heard that song during that moment while I was processing just so many things, and I’m like, “That’s it! I’m done. I’m out of the running. I’m out of the call of God. I messed up. That’s it. I just got to sit on the sidelines now.”
He broke through all my barriers…
But He just kept calling me back. And He showed me so much love. And He broke through so many barriers that I had built up, so many ideas of I just thought I had to be this person. And when I wasn’t that person, when I didn’t fill that role, He still loved me. And I heard that song for the first time. I went to a conference and Patsy Cameneti was there. And so I drove hours to go hear her, a familiar voice. And as she ministered, they sang this song. And she says, “There’s some of you and you have a sliver in your heart. And God wants to remove it, but you’re so scared it’s going to hurt that you’re covering it from Him.” And she said, “But He’s a gentle surgeon and He wants to get in there because you’re not going to heal until He takes that sliver out, whatever that sliver is.”
And so I just received it…
And, of course, I’m sobbing. And I know this is for me. And so I just received it. And I just said, “Lord, you have to take the sliver out. I know what I did and I know where I wronged you, where I wronged my family. You got to take the sliver out.”
And He did.
And He was so loving. And like I said, I experienced His love. And so I would just go on long, long walks and I would put this song on repeat. “I love your presence.” And I had to get to a place where I loved His presence more than anything else. More than what I thought people thought about me, more than my just trying to fix things, more than… We had a long road ahead of us of repairing our marriage and repairing my heart. But God was so faithful through it all.
Where are you putting your affection?
And when He prompted me to share, I was like, “But, Lord, what are people going to think?” And then I’m like right back where I started. Right? It doesn’t matter what people think. He wanted me to share because I think there are people here that are having emotional affairs on God, where you are putting your affection in a place where it’s not supposed to be, right? And you’re receiving affection from places that only God can fill. And that might look different for everybody in this room. But He loves us so much and He has to be our first love and our only love. He’s a jealous God.
We’re so worried about this façade that we put out…
And the Prayer and Presence Conference was so good, and it “wrecked” me in such a good way. I don’t like to use that word, but I mean, it really did. I’m the kind of person where I just like things in order. I’m a little bit of a perfectionist at times, and there’s a certain way, and I feel like there’s times He just wants to kind of come up and unravel us a little bit so we can be vulnerable again. So we’re not worried about this facade that we’re putting off on everybody. Like, “Well, everybody needs to think I’m this… everybody needs to think I’m that.” And it was just kind of like, I just really don’t care what everybody thinks except what God thinks. And if He’s going to tell me to go up and lay in front of the altar, “Oh, that’s Pastor Heather up there.” If I need to do it, I’ll do it, Lord. If I need to lay my life low, if I need to be a fool for you, I’ll be a fool for you. If I need to humble myself, I’ll humble myself. Because I never want to find myself in that place again, where I’ve built up a charade of who I am. And it’s not true to who I am in my heart.
The Lord showed me a Rubik’s cube…
I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to solve a Rubik’s cube. This is what the Lord showed me. I see pictures. That’s how He shows me things. I could never solve one because if I got one side or two sides right, I just didn’t want to mess it up. Right? And I feel like sometimes we’re like that in life. We’re just “Don’t meddle in my business and don’t make a mess over here. Like I just got this part of my life cleaned up and I just got this part of my life. And I know this is kind of messy, but if you start meddling in that, I’m going to be a mess.”
But I think there’s something beautiful about just letting Him mess up our perfect little lives in the best way. Because, of course, and I am using this in analogies. He’s not going to mess up our life. I hope you know the heart of what I’m saying. But when He gets in there and moves things around, He makes it so much more beautiful than anything we could ever do. And it gets down to the heart of the matter.
Sometimes things hurt more before they get better…
And it’s like healing. Sometimes things hurt more before they get better. Sometimes things get messier before they get healed. And I think there’s people here who need to let Him mess a few things up for you… in a good way. Let Him deal with some heart issues, some core issues, some things “where is the seat of your affection?” Is it on Him? Is it on success? ambition? your family? I mean, some of those things are good things. But nothing needs to take the seat of your heart, the throne of your heart where He’s supposed to sit. That’s only for Him. And anything that’s in that spot other than Him is not going to succeed. It has to be Him first, and then all these things will be added onto you, right? When we seek the kingdom first, all these things would be added onto you.
Through it all, He loved me…
And I’ve had times where I’ve done it right and I’ve had times where I’ve done it miserably wrong. But through all of it, He loved me. And His mercy and grace are so overwhelmingly beautiful that whatever you might be hiding or covering or hesitant to bring before Him, first of all, He already knows. So why do we hide it? Or maybe you’re trying to hide it from others and you’re trying to be like this perfect person that everybody would look up to. Everybody thinks she’s just got it all together. He’s got it all together. I don’t have it all together.
I definitely do not. But at least I hope I have it all in His hands. Because I know He puts it together. And then there’s some times where I’m just learning to live with an open hand and like what does He have in my hand today? Because tomorrow that might not be there. It might be a different thing He puts in there for me to do.
If being vulnerable brings Him glory, I’ll do it…
But if I’m willing to live like this with an open hand, willing to come up and share a really vulnerable story, but if it brings Him glory, I would do it. Because I know I’m not the only person that’s walked through hard things in life. And I could stand up here for hours and tell you some of the really hard, hard things I walk through. That’s just one of them. But through it all, He’s been so faithful to carry me, to love me, to pick me up and put me back in my call. The callings of God are without repentance. That call is always there on your life. And whatever you’ve done that you think maybe you disqualified yourself, or maybe you just think, “I just don’t want it. I don’t want it anymore. This is too hard. I’ve just encountered too many people that are driving me crazy.” Whatever your reason is…
Ministry can be hard. Am I right? Because there’s people. But if you just lay it all at His feet, and that’s what it always comes back to, is just… I love what Heidi Baker always says, just “Here’s my little life. I lay it at your feet. Just do what you can do with my little life.” And letting Him live through you.
So here’s my little life…
And sometimes I can make a mess of it, Lord. But thank you that you can live through me. Thank you that you can live through all of us, through those moments of failure when you come in and you hold us close and you tell us “It’s okay, I still love you. I’m still here.” Now what are we going to learn from this? What are we going to do moving forward? How can I bring healing? How can I come in this place and move through you? And how can you take this key that you use to open and get out of that prison cell? And how can you say here… You need a key. Because when we share those moments of how He brought us up and out with others, it rescues them too. And sometimes when we go through things… He doesn’t cause us to go through those things, but He will use those things to help others. Because He wastes nothing. He’s a perfect God. He wastes nothing.
Let Him do a work in you…
So whatever the enemy brought for bad, He’s going to bring it together for good, right? And so here’s my little broken part of my heart that He could take it and make it whole and help whatever your thing is, whatever that is that you’re holding back from God. And I don’t know… He told me to share this, so I just have to be obedient. But I think there are people here, you’re having an emotional affair on God. And if we could sing the song, “I love your presence” again… I want you to let Him do a work in you. And the altar is open if you want to come up here. Some of you I know are more private. Y’all like to hide in the back. But if I can share what I shared, you can have your moment in front of people too.
He wants to sit on the throne of your heart…
But just bring whatever that is… whatever is in that seat, no matter how big or how small, whatever’s holding you back from being vulnerable before Him, whatever you’re holding back or you’re covering because you’re just… you don’t want Him to see it. You don’t want others to see it. He wants to heal that. And He wants to sit on the throne of your heart. So let’s go ahead and sing that and let Him do a work on you. Our hearts have to be fully set on Him. And I think a lot of healing needs to happen for a lot of people to get to that next place that He wants us to go because we can’t be an army of God if we’re all limping and have broken legs and broken arms and we’re bleeding. We have to be healed to do what He’s called us to do.
Ending prayer…
Thank you, Father, that your tangible love is overshadowing every heart right now as they place it before you and as they ask you to search their heart. Lord, show us if there’s any way of turning in it. Show us if our affections are set on things other than you.
Father, you give us the grace to make those changes, to turn our hearts back toward you.
Sometimes it’s just a slight little navigational fix. It’s just a little change of heart. It’s just seeing things a little differently through his eyes instead of our own eyes.
Father, we know you’re coming back for a Spotless Bride, a bride that’s just so fiery and in love with you.
So I speak that right now over everybody listening. We’re your bride and our affection is set solely on you.
I pray, Father, that you’re touching hearts. You’re changing hearts. You’re shifting atmospheres. You’re realigning destinies.
I thank you that you have big things planned for Living Word. And we want to be in our right place, in the right lane on fire with the right motive. Running for the prize, which is you, you alone, nothing else. No trophies, no titles, just you, Father. We just want to run that race for you. And so we lay down every idol, everything that has tripped us up along the way. Every selfish ambition or motive in our hearts. We lay it all at your feet and we say, “Use these little lives.” We humble ourselves and we know that we can do nothing apart from you. We have gifts, we have callings, but apart from you, they’re just useless.
You make beauty out of ashes, and we thank you for that. We give you all the honor and glory for this time. I speak blessings over the people, favor surrounds them like a shield as they go about their day. We give you all the honor, all the glory, and all the praise in Jesus’ name. Amen.
