Pastor Ken…
Well, good morning everyone. Hope you’re doing well on this Tuesday morning. We’re just about a week out from Thanksgiving here in the States. I doubt that anybody celebrates it outside of the United States. I think it’s a uniquely an American holiday, but nonetheless, we’re a week away from that.
Praying in the spirit repairs and builds you up…
Last night, I was reflecting a little bit and spending some time praying and thinking. I was going to read this. It’s just a quote. It says, “Praying in the spirit repairs you, builds you, strengthens you.” And that couldn’t be truer, right? Praying in our heavenly prayer languages is uniquely suited to equip us, to help us, to refresh us, to renew us, to transform us as God’s people. And it reminds me really that we’re not called to do life on our own, in our own ability, and in our own limitedness. And I think this is important because life happens to all of us. We all get busy. We all get distracted. There are competing things in our lives that vie for our attention and our hearts and our energies and our thought lives and everything about us. Because, at the core, the enemy is out for your time. He’s out for your attention. He’s out to steal and diminish and reduce your prayer life to just something that you do in case of emergency, right? If something is bad enough, then I guess we’ll pray. He wants to stop you in prayer because he knows your prayers stop him. Your prayers slam the door on the enemy, push back darkness, prohibit and prevent his operations in our lives and in the earth realm.
How God set things up for us…
I think it was John Wesley back 150 plus years ago made this observation. He said, “It seems like God can do nothing for mankind unless somebody asks Him.” And what he was identifying was simply that God has set things up in such a way that He’s co-laboring with us. He’s working in us and through us. He recognized that while He had finished the work and done the heavy lifting as far as redemption is concerned, Jesus handed the keys to the church… the keys of the kingdom, the keys to bind and the keys to loose, the keys to stop and halt the enemy’s advances and the keys to release and open up the plan of God.
And so it is absolutely essential to be a prayer person…
Can I just remind you to be a person who is passionately pursuing a relationship with your Heavenly Father. A person that is passionately pursuing building your prayer life. Your prayer life is meant to be a source and a supply. He is working for us. He is with us, and He has made heaven’s supply available to us. And what I was thinking about this morning is that God never intended for us to do life exclusively by ourselves and out of our natural abilities. Instead, He made all of heaven’s flow available to you and to me.
Do not fear, Daniel…
One of the things I was thinking about too, actually before I get to the punchline there, is what it said in Daniel 10:12. It says, “Then he said to me,” the angel that is of the Lord who came to Daniel, “Do not fear Daniel, for from the first day that you set your heart to understand and to humble yourself before your God, your words were heard.” Isn’t that interesting? So this is the man under the Old Covenant, right? Hadn’t been fully redeemed and transformed into a new creature like you and me who now house the presence of God within us. So God lives on board and in our lives and goes where we go each and every day. But Daniel still had a covenant, although it was an Old Covenant. It says “his words were heard. And I have come because of your words.” Isn’t that interesting? “But the Prince of the Kingdom of Persia withstood me.” The Prince of Persia is just symbolic of the enemy and his forces. The enemy forces and strongholds in that demonic realm, and all his minions, the devil, and all his minions. “But the prince of the Kingdom of Persia withstood me 21 days. And behold, Michael, one of the chief princes came.” So another angel at a higher rank and order showed up to help him. “For, I was left alone there with the kings of Persia. Now I have come to make you understand what will happen to you, your people in the latter days for the vision refers to many days yet to come.”
I guess the part that I thought was fascinating is in a couple of instances there, it says his words were heard. In fact, in one place it says his words were heard the first day. His words, his prayer, his words. And it was Daniel’s words that attracted the angelic ranks to his assistance to help him. It was his words that pulled an angel out of the spirit dimension to show up in his life to help him to transact the will of God… to help him to see and know and understand what God had intended for he and all his people.
Heaven is a flow…
So if a man under an Old Covenant could draw a flow out of the spirit dimension… could draw heaven to earth, how much more should we have the privilege and the opportunity and the ability to draw the flow of heaven into our lives? So as I’ve said many times, heaven isn’t just a place. Heaven is a flow. And God intends that you would take advantage of that flow, that we wouldn’t live alone, isolated, and limited to our natural being and self only able to filter what we can see and understand through our five physical senses. He wants us to function. If there is one thing that God is doing to prepare. Remember we said yesterday, we’re in a season of preparation. We’re in a season of transition. We are on an upward incline as Pastor Lynne once said, into God and into the third Great Awakening and into an outpouring of God’s Spirit that is now presently filling the earth.
And I declare filling Living Word and filling America and filling your home. But as we do so, God is revealing and exposing the enemy. And as we do so, God is preparing and He is working and transforming and wanting to have an encounter. That is how the move of God precipitates. It’s by each of us hungering and thirsting and recognizing that there’s a flow for us individually, that God endeavors for us to encounter Him. He is passionate, the Spirit of God and He’s pursuing you today. He’s following you around whether or not you stop and turn around and say, “Hey, Holy Spirit, there you are.” Or “Hey, Jesus, thank you for showing up on in my life.” That is up to you.
God is on a journey with you…
But make no mistake about it. God is on a journey. He is on a path to cause His presence and person to show up in your life and in my life in a fresh way. If there’s one thing He desires, He desires a fresh encounter for each and every one of us every day. That we would no longer live out of memory and out of tradition and out of what was or what we think should be, but instead live out of inspiration. God the Holy Spirit is perennially the inspirer and the life giver. And the healer and the prophet of all things future. So just like the angels showed up to reveal the future and the intent of God for the nation of Israel in this moment of time that we saw there in Daniel 10, so too God intends to reveal and to pull back some curtains and to help you and I see the way forward, to see what could be and really should be.
God wants the church…
He wants us to not operate and function on what we’ve known, or what we can sense through the filter of our five physical senses. He wants the church. He’s preparing and leading and inviting you and me each day. That includes all of us online around the world wherever you’re joining us from. He wants us to operate from a new perspective. He wants to illuminate. He wants to drench your heart, your inner life, and your consciousness with eyes with an anointing that opens your eyes and helps you and me see that there is a way forward… that there is a plan that our God is eternally good and He’s working all things, including the negative that has perhaps transpired in our lives or presently in our circumstances. He wants to transform it and leverage it and use it for good.
When you prioritize prayer, heaven prioritizes you…
And so what I was thinking of was that it’s good to be reminded that heaven isn’t just a place, it’s a flow. And it’s a flow because of Jesus that’s been made available to each of us. Somebody once said, “When you prioritize prayer, heaven prioritizes you.” So we’ve got to get out of this mode that we’re only prompted to pray when there’s an emergency and we shift into emergency tongues or emergency seeking God. No. God intends for there to be a flow. And as heaven flows to you and to me individually, those flows in this prayer community, in your church family, in your household, in your city, in your nation will begin to coalesce to become a whole bona fide move of God that will bring awakening… that will bring revival.
I am willing. Will you simply believe?
God is well able to transact the miraculous. He is well able to perform signs and wonders. In fact, the Bible reveals to the ministry of Jesus, He is willing more than you are willing to do something good for you and in you and through you today. He said that more than once to people that He encountered in His earthly ministry. He says, “I am willing. Will you simply believe?” That’s all God wants us to do. That’s really what prayer is. It’s an expression of faith, an expression that, “Lord, I say yes, I believe you.”
Prayer isn’t a matter of us arduously trotting forward, trying to accomplish the will of God. Prayer is just saying, “Lord, your Word says, I believe. Lord, I’m hungry for you. Lord, I need you. Lord, I want to go deeper. Lord, I want to know you more. Show me your ways.” And when we begin to more and more posture ourselves in the rest of God, which is faith and trust and deepening and in grounding ourselves and in redemption in the beauty and the fullness of the Gospel and the words of Jesus, the more we’re going to see that God intended all along to perform and to put on a show through our lives what only He can do. Not because of what we did, but because of what He’s already done.
Christianity is not spelled “do.”
Religion is spelled do, do, do, do, do. You got to do this, and you got to do that, and you got to do more. But true relationship and true redemption if you unpack it clearly from the Word and you appropriately understand it, it’s spelled d o n e. Done. Done! The work is finished. Jesus said it is finished and He gave up the ghost. He gave up His spirit. He had crossed every T and he had dotted every I. He left no stone unturned regarding humanity in our redemption regarding your healing, regarding your provision, regarding your safety and safeguarding through arduous and difficult and unknown times. He left nothing to chance.
Jesus long ago met with the Godhead. All three of them got together and Jesus said, “I will go and be the scapegoat. I will go and be the sacrifice. I will go and I will take the brunt and the punishment for all mankind’s sin that is yet to happen, but I will go and make a way where there doesn’t seem to be a way. I will go and make myself available so the Spirit of God can come and inhabit and indwell every single one of my sons and daughters who profess My name. So not only are they forgiven of their sins, not only are they healed of their diseases, but they will be imbibed and a perpetual flow of heaven on earth.
Mill City used as an illustration of the flow of the Spirit…
And so I was thinking about how in the old days Minneapolis was called Mill City. And still occasionally there’s some restaurants, like for example, Mill City Cafe or Mill City Restaurant reflect that past. And some of us might wonder why we are called the Mill City. Well, back in the middle 1800s, Minneapolis was on the cutting edge, really on the world stage as one of the fastest and most rapidly growing cities in the middle to late 1800s. And one of the reasons was because we had an unparalleled source of power. That being the St. Anthony Falls which is where Minneapolis on the west side, St. Anthony on the east side sprung up and began to grow. Presently, 150 plus years later, we call the Twin Cities, Minneapolis and St. Paul.
But mills sprung up for grinding wheat into flour and trees into lumber. So much so that we were for many decades the leading place in the world for flower milling and for lumber milling. I mean, even to this day, right? We’ve got some multinational Fortune 500 companies, a number of them, like General Mills, for example, that many of them were born out of those milling families that took advantage of the Mississippi flow. That flow of the Mississippi down from Lake Itasca all over the Gulf of Mexico came right smack dab through Minneapolis and St. Paul. Right through Minneapolis in particular. And it powered the lumber that was milled at the falls. Those mills all up and down the northeast part of the river. And the world famous Pillsbury, one of the first mills built in like 1856. It was powered by a “flow.” It didn’t just happen by chance or out of nothing. There was a flow that provided power, at least up until late 1800s and almost 19 or 20th century when electricity took over.
Our words give expression to the flow within us…
But I just thought that was just a really good word picture for the fact that you and I have a flow. There is a river. But we must, like Daniel, give expression to that river. Our words. We must use our words intentionally, purposely in the spirit and in our known language. Because in doing so, we allow heaven to flow, to power us, to resource us, to bring wisdom to us, to take our lives from one degree of glory to another degree of glory. From one state emotionally to another state. Where you’re at right now, isn’t it? There is more to the child of God, to the person who will build their prayer life and prioritize their time with God. There’s another level for you. God is preparing you for something. It doesn’t end here. You don’t stop here. I mean, you can choose to pull out your aluminum lawn chair and pitch a tent and roast some weenies over a fire and stay where you’re at and hang out until Jesus comes. Hopefully nothing bad will happen. Or you can say, “Lord, I want to go where you’re going. I want to follow you.”
The Way…
In the first century AD, the church and believers weren’t called Christians. They were called part of “the way.” The church was called The Way. Because it was a journey to follow Jesus. We are called followers of Jesus. That doesn’t mean we stay stuck in one place. That means we follow. We go where He’s going. And prayer causes the flow of God’s leadership in our lives to be made available so we can flow with Him, we can follow Him. We can take advantage of His power source and His wisdom and His purpose that He desires to bring through us. This is critical for us to grab ahold of this. It’s not about some far-off cosmic idea or purpose of God that’s just going to happen automatically. God intends to work through you and through me. We have been given an indispensable, eternal tool, weapon, if you will, in prayer. And as one great man of God said, “It would be a travesty for us to not use prayer, engage in prayer.” Engage and invest in our connection with our Heavenly Father. It is the most needful thing right now. If there’s anything you get, get that this morning. The most needful thing is time with Him, with your Heavenly Father.