Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Pastor Ken…
“…in and through relationship with Him, one that will yield His purposes and grace on a higher level for our lives… a flow or a cadence in your spiritual life that will take you to what God has prepared for your future and manifest His highest blessing and a favor for you.”
Our highest and first calling…
I think what I was just being reminded of is the fact that while I think oftentimes we define our calling in God as a particular title, a particular assignment, or a degree, or some preconceived idea, but as I was reflecting last night, I was reminded that in biblical reality, our highest and first calling is to connect with Him. To connect with the Lord and to maintain an intimate and ongoing relationship with the Father, to know Him.
Eternal life is to know Him…
Last time I checked, in my Bible, it still states that Jesus actually defined eternal life as to know Him. And I would just say this morning that the will of God is found in knowing Him. That’s our first and highest calling, right? That there’s a place of connection that He’s called us to, a place of intimacy, a place of a higher flow.
There is a higher flow…
And so that just kind of stirred in me last night. I just want to encourage you this morning that wherever you’re at, whether you be stuck or in a good place, that God is saying there is a higher flow that I’m calling you to.
Jesus prioritized His flow with the Father…
Jesus was really clear in His life and ministry that He prioritized His flow with His heavenly Father. And it seemed that effortlessly and organically ministry occurred. The will of God was manifest through Him because He valued and prioritized that place of connection with His heavenly Father.
Prayer is the key that unlocks the resources of heaven…
And I love this… which I stated a while back and I jotted it down. Prayer is the key that unlocks the resources of heaven so they can be released on planet earth. Prayer is what pushes back the kingdom of darkness. That’s why Jesus said,” My house shall be called a house…” not of good preaching. “My house should be called a house…” not of good programs… not of good singing, necessarily… not of a house of great spotlights and productions… not a house of great cafes, although we like our cafes, right? We like our lattes. Jesus said at the end of the day, “My house better be called a house of prayer.”
You could say a house of connection. That begins with this house, that being us. Our bodies, our lives individually. The one you presently occupy. Your body. In other words, your household, where you live, the address where you reside, your household where you reside… this church. Pastor Lynne actually has made it very clear and hopefully your pastor as well wherever you attend that at the end of the day, we better be a house of prayer.
Jeannie Wilkerson’s book, “Contact With God” …
Let me read something else to you here this morning out of Jeanne Wilkerson’s book, “Contact With God.” She states in chapter five, “Jesus is our greatest example for everything that we do. And even though He is our high priest, while He was here on the earth, He operated as a man who was dependent upon the Holy Spirit. So we must ask ourselves how Jesus had the power to perform miracles and wonders that He did. Jesus was born of the Spirit, but He still had to maintain continual contact with the Father through prayer. He was able to perform such miraculous signs and wonders because the Holy Spirit produced them through Him.”
And I know we immediately think, “Well, that was Jesus and those were signs, wonders, and miracles.” But I would just say, is it possible God can produce through us strategy, creative solutions, perfect timing, salvations, healings, administration from this place of higher flow, from this place of continual contact with Him?
She goes on to write…
“The Holy Spirit produced them through Him. Hebrews 5:7 says, ‘Who in the days of His flesh when He had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him who was able to save him from death and was heard in that He feared.’ This scripture is not telling us that Jesus was afraid of the Father, rather Jesus so respected and relied upon the Father to perform the works that He continually kept His communication with Him intact.”
That was what was most important to Him.
“James describes our need to remain in constant contact with the Father: ‘Confess your faults one to another and pray for one another that you may be healed. The effectual fervent prayer of a righteous man availeth much.’ The Amplified Bible says, ‘Makes much power available dynamic in its working.’
She says…
“What is this effectual fervent prayer that James is talking about? If all the prayers that believers have prayed throughout history had been effectual fervent prayers, the entire world would be knocking down the doors of the church to get saved. But sadly, most of our prayers have just been for show. Rarely do we pray in private.”
The reason for praising God…
And she goes on to talk about that. And then one more excerpt I want to share with you. She says later in the chapter, “One day God revealed to me the reason for praising Him that I had not known before. He told me the reason it is good for you to praise Me is not that it benefits Me, but because it benefits you and it prevents Satan from getting the glory.”
Praising God prevents Satan from taking any of the glory.
Acts 2:41 says, ‘And they continued steadfastly in the apostles doctrine and fellowship and in breaking of bread and in prayers.’ Prayer has always played an important role in the lives of those who serve God. Exodus 38 outlines instructions for keeping the tabernacle, which serves as a type of prayer for us today. The priests were never to let the incense die out in the holy place. There was to be a perpetual incense before the Lord throughout all generations. Prayer is to constantly rise into God’s presence as an acceptable work of mankind. He taught us by example of the golden altar of incense, that in the church of the living God, prayer is to never go out.”
And I heard a collective, amen?
“God gave us these instructions for a reason. He knows the end from the beginning. He wants His church to continue in prayer until the end. The book of Revelation speaks of the end of church history and foretells how the church will complete her journey. But the beginning of the book of Revelation reveals certain messages to the church and the news is not good. Great changes have come to the churches that were once strong in prayer. They have grown cold. The great Ephesian Church for example, which had reached a high pinnacle of spiritual knowledge had become so cold that Jesus says to her ‘you have lost your first love,” (Revelation 2:4). In this passage, it is the church, not the individual sinner, whom Jesus calls to repentance. If we have access to the power of prayers that avail much, but we do not use it, then we are in sin. We sin against the people in our generation when we don’t pray for them. If we don’t pray for our church, their light can become dim and they can lose their first love.”
From the place of abiding is a higher flow…
And so I just want to provoke your thinking this morning that there still remains a higher flow to those who believe. And if we go over to John chapter five, you’ll find that Jesus is divine and we’re the branches to remain connected or abiding in Him. And from that place of abiding, there is a flow, a higher flow that’s going to take us where we are to where God has destined us to be.
That in fact, it’s that continual communion that a continual incense of prayer rising from our hearts that is able to do what we’ve not been able to do on our own individually in our areas of responsibility, in our homes, in our individual callings and the dream God has dropped into our hearts. God intends to bring that into reality, but He requires a constant hosting of His presence. He requires that we passionately pursue that higher flow. That in fact, that’s what God originally intended in the garden when He created all things in its original state. That there would be this continual interaction between heaven and earth… between God and His people. And that He was going to produce. That He was going to cause fruitfulness to be born. That He was going to cause miracles and signs and wonders and creativity and solutions and answers and resources and abundance to flow.
We’ve got to contend for it…
And so it’s that heavenly interaction, it is that relationship, once again, that is to produce the results of God’s will and purpose for our lives. God’s will and purpose for our church. But we’ve got to contend for it, right? The will of God for us collectively as a church body and your home for us individually is not something we can just leave to chance or hope that we get some time to spend on later today. It has to be something that’s contended for. And the price is going to be well worth it to contend for the will of God. For us, but also for all those we’re called to influence.
It’s time for the church to hear the sound of His call…
It’s almost like the Spirit of God is saying, “Hey church, it’s time to wake up. It’s time to hear the sound of My call. That heaven is resonating with the reality of the time and the season that we’re in. That there’s an urgency, not just for us to find a better place and to experience more of God’s blessing, but for us to be that conduit… and that lighthouse… and that source of supply and hope and help that a generation is looking and searching for. Most don’t even realize it.
God always uses a remnant…
Will you be a part of that remnant? Will we as a church be a remnant church? Will we as individuals be a remnant people that choose to stir ourselves up to take hold of more of God? That choose, as it is written in the letters to the church, to give ourselves to prayer. Choose to go God’s way rather than our own way. Choose to refocus and reposition and step in and lean in through intercession.
Intercession is the call of the hour…
It’s not a call of Pastor Lynne Hammond. It’s the call of the whole church. It’s the call that should be at the center of our departments. It’s the call that should be at the center of our homes. Intercession simply means to get in the middle, to step forward into the messiness and into the middle of what’s going on in our lives, in our families, in our atmospheres that we traverse through each day into our world, into our nation, and be the remnant that says, “I will go.”
Jesus was the original intercessor…
There was such a need that God sent Jesus who volunteered when the Godhead met in eternity’s past and said, “I will go, I will be a remnant, I will be an intercessor, I will give of Myself, I will sacrifice of Myself, I will lay down Myself that there would be a repairing of the breach or the disconnect between humanity and heaven.” That’s who we’re to follow after… Jesus.
We may not go to the cross as He did, but we don’t have to, thank God. But we must choose daily to pick up our cross, to lay down our lives and follow Him. Lay down our agendas, lay down some of our time, so that we can step into the messiness in the spirit dimension anyway and intercede, build up the wall.
Intercessors repair. They repair what’s missing, what’s broken, what’s absent, what’s out of joint, what’s dysfunctional. But we can’t do it exclusively on our own time and when it’s convenient and comfortable for us. We’ve been called to a higher flow, and while that higher flow is good and blessed and beautiful, it also requires that we be inconvenienced and we lay down ourselves in different ways. We lay down our preconceived ideas, what we want on a given day, so that we can go with what God wants. Choosing to believe and have faith that His flow is the higher and better way. And will in the end, and in times ahead, produce the fruitfulness of His plan in our lives, in our church, in our departments, and in the lives of all those we’re called to impact and influence.
We are in the birth pangs…
That’s the process of disciple making… discipleship. That’s where it begins anyway. And I don’t mean to be all whatever here, but I just don’t think we realize, like, really how far along we are in the timeline of God. Clearly, in my mind, we are in the birth-pangs period that Jesus spoke of. Right before the Great Tribulation. You can see it. You can feel it. You can sense it. You can quantify it, if you compare it to Scripture.
Will you respond to His tap on your shoulder?
So, where are we at? What are we doing? We can maintain and chance our lives in the will of God and just flow in a lower, carnal flow. Or we can recognize this beautiful opportunity that’s extended to us, like Pastor Lynne used to teach us that God has given us His original offer, which was salvation. But then after salvation, there are many, many more offers that the Holy Spirit comes to us each day and says, “Are you interested?” He’s not one who’s going to beat down our door like the enemy tries to do… to steal, kill, and destroy. He’s the perfect gentleman, as we all know, the Holy Spirit. He just taps on our shoulder. He just puts His finger on our heart. He just says, “Hey, will you hear My voice today? Will you accept this offer? Will you step into the messy middle of this situation and be a remnant and make a difference?”
Join the great rising tide…
That’s how the will of God is precipitated and results is all of us connecting to Him collectively and individually that produces a river. Jesus said, right out of your belly would flow rivers and those rivers coalesce and result in a great tide… a great rising tide of His glory… a great rising tide of signs and wonders and miracles… a great rising tide of heaven’s resource and supply prepared before the founding of time to produce the plan of God in a generation, in a church, in a city.
Prayed…
Open our eyes, Lord, today. Open our ears, Lord. Help us to see what’s before us today. Help us to not be caught asleep at the wheel. As a church, Lord, as individuals… Yes, Lord, the end is in sight. Oh, the time. The time is far spent. The hour is late. Lives hang in the balance. America, for that matter, hangs in the balance and is coming up wanting right now. What must we do, Father?
We stand up today, Lord, and we choose your higher flow. We choose the Spirit of God, the spirit of prayer flow this morning. Come up, church. Come up higher, church. Shake that off. Shrug that lower thing off. Open up. Open up. Orders. Orders are being sent today… to your heart, to your life. Yes. Great assistance now. Great assistance.
Yes, Lord, help us to see it plainly. Now clear up our sight lines, Lord. Clear out the clutter, Lord. I pray that the Spirit of the living God today would address our hearts.
Lord, we pray that there would be strong dealings on the heart of your people… at the center of your church now… It’s definitely not a church as usual hour.
Lord, we pray that there would come a shakeup. And a breakup of enemy strategies and lies and deceptions. Shaken up, broken up now … interfered with by the hand of God.
Yes, Lord, even in our nation today. Open Open Open …
