Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Well, good morning, everybody. Welcome to morning prayer. Thank you for joining us.
Be still and know that I am God…
The scripture reads in Psalm 46 from the New King James, “Be still and know that I am God. I will be exalted among the nations. I will be exalted in the earth.”
The Passion translation renders those verse two verses as, “Surrender your anxiety. Be still and realize that I am God. I am God above all the nations. And I will be exalted throughout the whole earth.”
This passage reminded me of what Noah was leading us earlier with an inspired song in Psalm 45:4. It says, “God has a constantly flowing river whose sparkling streams bring joy and delight to His people. His river flows right through the city of God most high into His holy dwelling places.”
You and I are wholly dwelling places of the presence of God.
Excerpts from book “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” by Peter Scazzaro
Let me just read a couple of excerpts from a book entitled “Emotionally Healthy Spirituality” by Peter Scazzaro. He talks about the importance in these passages of prayer. I don’t know about you, but oftentimes when your productivity in the natural sense becomes counterproductive from God’s standpoint that, in fact, God has a rhythm and a way of doing life, doing ministry, doing what we do on a daily basis that is counter to what the world teaches and tries to mold us into.
God’s way is a lesser traveled way…
And one of the most important things we need to recognize is that God’s way is a lesser traveled way. But it’s a way that is counterproductive, once again, or counterintuitive to our natural discernment or our natural thinking.
When the world says strive and struggle and work even harder… I’m not saying work isn’t a biblical concept, but I’m just saying that it becomes counterproductive at some point. Because God calls us to places of rest and silence and prayer.
Peter Scazzaro, writes in one particular chapter…
“God is offering us a rope to keep us from getting lost. This rope constantly or consistently leads us back home to Him, to a place that is centered and rooted. This rope can be found in two ancient disciplines, going back thousands of years. One, the Daily Office, which is also known as the “fixed hour of prayer.” And two, the Sabbath.
“When placed inside our present Christianity, the Daily Office and Sabbath are groundbreaking. Counter-cultural acts against Western culture, they are powerful declarations about God, ourselves, and our relationship, and our beliefs and values. Stopping for Daily Office (or a.k.a prayer) and Sabbath is not meant to add to our “to do” to our already busy schedules. It is the resetting of our entire lives toward a new destination—God.
“It is an entirely new way of being in the world. The Daily Office and Sabbath are ropes that lead us back to God in the blizzards of life. There are anchors for living in a hurricane of demands. When done as a “want to” rather than a “have to,” they offer us a rhythm for our lives that binds us to the living God. They’re nothing short of revolutionary disciplines for Christians today.”
He goes on to say…
“At the heart of the Daily Office (or prayer) and Sabbath is stopping to surrender to God and trust. Failure to do so is the very essence of sin in the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve legitimately worked and enjoyed their achievements in the garden. They were to embrace their limits, however, and not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. They were not to try to see and know that which belongs to the almighty God. God was teaching them that after the full flowering of their achievements and activities, they were invited to not be active, to not to accomplish, but to surrender in trust. Action, then passivity… Striving, then letting go… Doing all one can do and then being carried only in this rhythm is the spirit realized.
“As the theologian Robert Baron argued at the heart of original sin is the refusal to accept God’s rhythm for us. The essence of being in God’s image is our ability like God to stop. We imitate God by stopping our work and resting. If we can stop for one day a week or for many sabbaths each day in our Daily Office, we touch something deep within us as image bearers of God. Our human brain, our bodies, our spirits, and our emotions become wired by God for the rhythm of work and rest in Him.
“The term Daily Office also called the Fixed Office or Hour of Prayer, Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours differs from what we have labeled today as “quiet time” or “devotion.” … The root of our Daily Office is not so much turning to God to get something but to be with someone… To be with someone. The word office comes from the Latin word, opus, or work. For the early church, the Daily Office was always the work of God. Nothing was to interfere with that priority. It was the act of offering by the creature to the creator. Prayers of praise offered as a sacrifice of thanksgiving and faith to God and as a sweet-smelling incense before the throne of God.”
Prayed…
Father, we just thank you this morning for the privilege to do just that.
We thank you that we, as your creatures, have the privilege and the opportunity to offer our worship and our adoration and our praise to you.
We have the privilege to reflect your image and the earth even and especially in the practice of ceasing our striving and surrendering our anxieties and our penchant for perpetual work to just be still and know that you’re our Heavenly Father to be still and to know that you are at work in us.
Lord, we give you permission to rewire us on the inside emotionally, to rewire our thinking, to rewire and recreate our perspectives and our outlooks, our vision.
Holy Spirit, we invite you to have your way in each of our lives right now.
Have your way during this time to change us and rearrange us and make adjustments.
And do the profound work only you can do in silence, in solitude, in the Daily Office of prayer.
May grace be applied to hearts right now, to circumstances right now, to situations we’re grappling with, to the unknowns of the future, whether it be financial or relational or ministry related.
Lord, we speak grace and mercy to those things this morning.
We invite you, Lord, to come and have your way in the midst of that, break the stalemate.
I hear that phrase: “Break the stalemate.”
Break the blockages up in Jesus’ name.
Break that which is stuck up in Jesus’ name, even in hearts and in relationships in the ministry.
Lord, right here at Living Word, in our departments, in our ministries.
Break it up. Break it up. We speak Breakthrough to the stalemate.
Lord, we speak to hearts today across our congregation, across our television audience, our partners and our friends of our ministry, across our church this morning, we speak release in Jesus’ name.
A release from the old, that an entrance to the new would be granted.
A release now, breaking it up.
Now it’s time for a new day.
It’s time for a new season.
Lord, clearly you’re doing something new.
Teach us to let go of the old and take hold of the new in Jesus’ name.
Released…
Released onto a new path.
Released into a new space.
Released into a new time and season.
