Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
As I was reflecting before I came in here today, I was reminded that the Bible instructs us that we’re to learn, at least in the Message rendering of this passage in the Gospels, that we’re to learn the unforced rhythms of grace. That we’re, to Jesus’ point, to join Him in how He rolls and how He does life and how He does what He does. We’re to join Him in that and learn from Him that His burden is light and His yoke is easy.
Encouragement to someone struggling…
And so I just want to speak to anybody who may be struggling with many cares. Maybe your soul, some aspect of your soul, has been hijacked recently by a care, by a worry, by a temptation to take offense.
Maybe you just feel a bit spent emotionally.
Maybe you’re struggling with a decision.
Maybe you’re facing some challenges in some way.
Holy Spirit is the great life coach…
It definitely has affected you in your soul: your mind, your will, and your emotions. And I just pray on this Tuesday that the Holy Spirit would be free to enter into our journeys here today in a new way, to enter into our souls and minister hope and help that is needed most. I like to say the Holy Spirit is the divine psychologist. He is our life strategist. We don’t need to pursue a life coach. If you do, that’s great, but ultimately He is the great life coach and is able to minister help where we need it most, including in our interiors, in our inner lives.
When you’re going through the heat of adversity…
I just want to share a couple of thoughts with you. The first comes from Acts 3:19. And I think this is an apropos passage, especially when we’re going through a challenging situation, or we’re feeling the heat of adversity, or our emotions are all over the place.
It says this in Acts 3:19…
“Repent therefore and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out, so that times of refreshing…” Somebody say “refreshing!” Come on now, somebody put some prayer emoji hands up in the chat online today and post refreshing. “Times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord.”
Aren’t you glad that God isn’t all about what we do for Him? But the Gospel preaches that it’s all about firstly what He’s done for us. That’s our “a-number-one job” is to keep our eyes on Jesus, keep our eyes on what’s been done on our behalf. Yes, as pray-ers, because as pray-ers, we can get real dutiful, and we can get real taking the weight of things upon ourselves. But we’re not called to carry the weight of the world. We’re called to become daily imbibed with the Spirit of liberty and grace, the spirit of Jesus. That we might experience refreshing.
We do what we do from a place of refreshing…
Because we don’t do what we do on a daily basis, whether it’s in the marketplace or in the ministry, whether it’s your specific calling or even prayer. We’re not to do it from a place of “Well, if anybody’s going to get it done, I guess I need to get it done,” or from a place of self-effort. We’re called to do what we do in every regard from a place of refreshing, from a place of overfull, from a place where we are filled with the presence of God. That is the prerequisite to all things in life, to be first filled with the Spirit of God, to experience times of refreshing.
Quote from Corrie ten Boom…
I like what the great Corrie ten Boom once said. She said, “If you look at the world, you’ll be distressed. If you look within, you’ll be depressed. If you look at God, you’ll be at rest.”
Quote from A.W. Tozer…
One of my favorite all-time quotes comes from A.W. Tozer, who said, “A low view of God is the cause of a hundred lesser evils. A high view of God is the solution to ten thousand temporal problems.”
Anonymous quotes…
I noted this: You reproduce what you behold. What you focus on and feed grows, thrives, and reproduces. So perhaps there’s some of us here today or online, we need to repent…
Regarding what we’ve been focusing on
Regarding what we’ve been caught up with
Regarding what we’ve entertained
Regarding the fact that we have not deployed the right boundaries
Jesus is the main thing…
We’ve been distressed because of a thousand other things. When Jesus is reminding us to recalibrate to the one thing—to Him. He’s the main thing. He’s the one who’s able to give us rest. He’s the one who’s able to restore our souls. In fact, let me read that out of Psalm 23:1.
It says…
“The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside the still waters.”
One translation says, “Calm, restful waters.” Backwaters, if you were. Places where we just reflect and remain before Him, where we let our souls quiet down—our mind, our wills, our emotions.
Before He launches you, He pulls you back…
I’m convinced that we’re in a time when we can’t overlook the importance of a slowed down Christianity.
There’s something in the Word, I see it from Old Testament and the New Testament, that seems counter-cultural and counterintuitive to our intellects, but the truth is it’s there in the scriptures. And that is, is before God launches you out, before He sends you forth, before He even has you pray for something, He pulls you back. He slows you down. He invites you to remain.
It’s okay to press “pause” on some things…
In the Gospel of John, it says that if we’ll abide in Him and His words will abide, that also means “remain, dwell, take up residence, continue” in His presence, His Word in us, the Bible says that sets us up to be effective in prayer. You can ask what you will. It goes on to say, Jesus said, “And it’ll be done unto you.” So it’s okay if He’s slowing you down today. It’s okay to press “pause” on some things perhaps, to just remain and linger in His presence and let Him lead you in the ways of unforced rhythms of grace.
In fact, this comes to me right now…
Perhaps there’s somebody here, you’re feeling weary and you’re wanting to “tap out.” You’re wanting to maybe even wave the white flag and give up in some way. And God’s saying, “No, no, you’re on the right path. You’re just synced up to the wrong rhythm.” You’re trying to match the rhythm of this world and this age and maybe what you think ought to be so, and how you’re doing life, and how you’re doing prayer, and how you’re doing what you’re doing, maybe your stance of faith.
God invites us to come apart…
Somebody once said, “We must come apart before we come apart.” He invites us to come apart, in other words, separate ourselves. In fact, the scripture records that. It says, “Come out and be ye separate.” That is a word to you and to me, His people. “Come out and be ye separate.” In other words, be sanctified or separated from those things that defile. That includes sin. But that could also include a way of living that’s just wearing you down.
The enemy endeavors to wear you down…
You must understand the enemy wages a war of attrition. In other words, he works overtime to wear us down, to erode our vision, to obscure our sight lines of, like Daniel said, who we are and what God has called us to be. He endeavors to erode our strength naturally through the little distractions over here, little distractions over there, effort in things that maybe God didn’t even ask us to do, attempting to do life at Mach 5 with our hair on fire, not realizing God didn’t call us to live at Mach 5 with our hair on fire.
Overscheduled, overtaxed, overburdened, carrying the weights of multiple people. When the last time I checked, the Bible says we’re to offload as quick as we can, like a hot potato, every care and cast it over unto Him. For He wants to care for us! For He wants us to come to Him. When it says, “Come unto me all that are heavy laden, overburdened, come to Me,” that’s an invitation every day to us we’ve got to hear and respond to.
Jesus is our high priest…
Because the truth of the matter is Jesus is our high priest. He is the one who has been commissioned to minister to the church, to work in us the work that must be done, to lift heavy burdens, to impart grace. Not just once upon a time in a land or far, far away when you went to the altar to receive Christ, but every day He invites us to the altar. He invites us to come boldly into His throne room and just wait. Scripture records that when we wait, He works. But when we work and strive and struggle and double down in our own efforts, we get tired. We wear ourselves out. And we don’t get any further towards what God has called us to.
God’s ways are higher than our ways…
His way is that we would be led by the waters, the still, slow-moving backwaters of time in His presence and time in worship and time in prayer and time in reflection, and perhaps time when we just journal. Because when you begin to write and you trust the Holy Spirit, He’ll begin to flow through you and write the most meaningful and beautiful and personal things you have ever written that are for you, hot off the presses from heaven.
But you got to slow down.
God’s way is that we would slow down, come apart to be with Him, to wait on Him, to not struggle and strive, to not incessantly process, to try to figure out your situation or your problem, but to recognize God has already figured it out. He’s already gone ahead of you. He is already in your future saying, “I’ve got the answer. I’ve made provision. Wait on Me. Trust Me.”
