Pastor Ken…
Good morning, everyone. Welcome to everybody online.
We’re thankful you’re part of what God’s doing. Because He’s doing something. He’s going somewhere with this, the church with us, with our intentionality, with our pursuit of Him. I’ve said before that a raw dependence is God’s raw material. That’s all He needs. It’s just a raw dependence on Him. And He utilizes that and shapes that and mobilizes and leverages that as the raw material to create the reality of His plan in our lives and in the earth. And our prayers are our ability to create, to correct, to reroute, to do whatever God wants to do. We’re His conduit. We’re His channel. Whether we’re praying in the spirit or just simply showing up in His presence on a given day, He loves us. He loves you and He wants to do something in us and through us, as I often say.
Our highest form of activity is to press on…
I was reminded of a quote by someone by a great pray-er from many, many years ago. And she once said “Our highest form of activity is to press on into total dependence on the Spirit of God.” I feel like that’s kind of more and more as I journey what my aim and my focal point is … just to become more yielded, more surrendered, more abandoned to Him. Because the more I journey, the more I see that what I have to offer even though I’ve been a Christian all my life is really tiny and insignificant when you juxtapose it or put it in comparison to the bigness and the fullness and the awesomeness of my heavenly Father, what He has.
And as pray-ers and believers, we can choose to go with what we’ve got to offer. Our good Christian works, our best thought or idea, our strongest willpower. We can go with that. He’s very respectful. He’ll let you go with what you want. But we can as we journey and mature and grow and pray day after day intentionally and more and more let go of what we have and what we think, our preconceived ideas and our best thought and our greatest strength which is really tiny, once again, in comparison to what He is and what He wants to bring to us.
Paul understood that “when I am weak, then He is strong…”
I suppose that’s why the Paul the apostle said that he began to understand that when I am weak, then He is strong because when we see what we have to offer is insignificant and when we’re in our weakest point, yield to Him, surrender to Him, lean into Him, trust Him more than we trust ourselves to God’s able … or given permission I should say, to show up in a greater way.
John said, “I must decrease that H might increase.”
John the Baptist said, “I must decrease that He might increase.” Is it possible that this Christian journey, one of the great truths is that we’re to decrease in our own estimation, in our own efforts so that He could actually increase in us and live in us? He lives in us when you profess His name and you call upon Him and you receive that radical and beautiful experience of being born again. Absolutely! But as Pastor Lynne has often taught us, that’s just the introductory offer. Salvation is just the first offer. There’s more and there’s more and there’s more, until you and I can become a people who are wholly filled and flooded with God, saturated to our very atomic core… at the atomic level, in other words, with Himself.
You’ve got an opportunity to say to Him…
So if you feel weak this morning, if you feel life is chaotic, if you feel insignificant, if you feel whatever… you’re in a good place. Because you’ve got an opportunity to just look to Him and say, “Father, when I’m weak, then you have an opportunity to show up and be strong. So I just lean into you today. I abandon myself to you today.” That’s a good prayer, by the way. It doesn’t get any more complex in prayer than that. “Lord, I surrender myself to you. Fill me. Use me. Change me. Channel yourself through me.”
Whew! Come on now. That’s God’s plan for the church! Not that we would start organizations and doctrines and religious sects. Jesus came to make a way in our hearts to not just give us fire insurance for eternity, but to recreate in us of space and a place for the Spirit of God to dwell. To pulsate and beat at the center core of our being to ever be pulsating with power and wisdom. Prayer is our opportunity to draw upon, to tap into who God is and what He has to offer, to know what He knows. Right?
When the Spirit of truth comes…
Jesus said in John 16:13, “Howbeit when he the spirit of truth comes, he will guide you into all the truth. For he shall not speak…” Even the Spirit of God doesn’t speak on His own initiative, it says. “But whatsoever he speaks but what he speaks is inspired by the Holy Spirit, and he will show you things to come.” He will speak and explain and expound the truth and show you things to come. So even the Holy Spirit is just a conduit for what our heavenly Father God wants to do. That’s just a really beautiful place to get to where you just more and more yielded, more and more decreased, and more and more humbled and surrendered and just available to Him. It’s just a free place, joyful place, abundant place, blessed place that puts more and more of your life’s responsibilities on the Father for Him to fulfill what He said He would do in His Word and to your heart. Acts 17:28 says “For in him we live and move and have our being.” Psalm 73:28 says, “But it is good for me to draw near to God. I’ve put my trust in the Lord that I may declare all your works.”
This kind of goes with what I said yesterday about it all starts by being filled. Right? And that’s this: a divine outworking must first have a divine infilling. That’s why we yield. That’s why we surrender. Hallelujah. Thank you, Jesus.
A prophetic word…
Can I share something with you prophetically? The Holy Spirit’s constantly orchestrating, administering, moving, shifting, rerouting people toward God… always prompting, leading, inspiring. It’s kind of like in the airline industry, you know, most planes nowadays are operated by computers, right? And when a plane lifts off from LAX, Los Angeles and takes off for New York City, that’s about 3,000 miles. It’s not a straight line from LA to NYC. It’s not. If you look at it on a map or a computer screen in that cockpit, that plane is constantly being adjusted in its path. If it would just set a trajectory to one spot on the compass or on the map and just only go there without adjustments, it would end up probably in Norfolk, Virginia. Because there are lots of factors that are going on. There are cross winds. There are storms. There’s drift of the plane. So it’s constantly experiencing micro adjustments.
And that’s what the Holy Spirit is endeavoring to do each and every day. That’s why we get up and we look for Him and recognize that He’s standing right by you. Right? He’s the standby. Prompting us, giving us cue cards, helping us to make adjustments, helping us to take steps here, there, to call so and so, to confront this situation, to pray that prayer, to decide to apply with an application to this thing over here. He’s constantly adjusting and directing us to our eternal destiny in accordance with our book of destiny in the libraries of heaven. Because God intends to do good and only good in your life, to bring increase and only increase in your life. But it’s not a straight line. It’s a path we must follow to get there by God the Holy Spirit.
And this is something that is a prophetic word. And once a prophetic word, always a prophetic word. So if this speaks to you, then receive it, take it, pray it, contend for it. And I pray that it would encourage you. But the Spirit of God would say you’re trying to gain understanding about things you’ve gone through. Anybody here gone through anything at all? The Lord says I’m using these things to groom you because I’m more concerned with your character than your comfort. I’ve allowed certain things to groom and develop your character so that I can trust you in what I’ve called you to do. It won’t be much longer. Your promotion is right at hand. (That might be a promotion at a job, might be a promotion in your soul, freedom in your soul in some way, deliverance, breakthrough, financial increase, a dream in your heart, a goal, an objective, a step into ministry, a step into business could be any of those things and more.) So your promotion is right at hand because you’ve loved and you’ve been diligent and you’ve stayed in there.
How many of you know that sometimes the most profound word you can hear from God is just to stay in there. Stay in there. Learn. Grow. Change. Let the Holy Spirit reroute you where necessary. Make tweaks and adjustments but stay in there with that situation. Stay in there in your praying for your nation. Stay in there with your church. Stay in there in your place of prayer.
If you’ve fallen off your relationship with God, if you’ve messed up, lost your cool, made a stupid decision, whatever. Then just repent. “Lord, I repent and I receive forgiveness. I receive grace.” The Bible says if you humble yourself under the mighty hand of God, He will give you more and more grace to meet the challenge, the difficulty, to overcome the adversity that you’re in. And then just keep going. Don’t sweat it. Don’t get obsessed with it.
You know, in athletics, if you’ve been in athletics, you know that a lot of athletics and competition and winning is up here. Honestly. Most failures happen here mentally. Not in your body or on the court or on the field. And the same is true in our Christian journey. The enemy wants to engage us in a mental warfare. The truth of the reality is that sin has been dealt with. God made a solution once and for all, for all time. And for all those who would call upon His name available to us so that we could just quickly take advantage of that fountain that flows from Emanuel’s veins. So that we could quickly receive what we need to receive as pray-ers, as believers, in the way of forgiveness and mercy and grace and a fresh start to keep going.
Don’t become obsessed with failure. Don’t become bore sighted on what happened. Just receive the waterfall of God’s mercy and grace, and just keep going. Keep praying. Keep pursuing. Stay in there. Turn yourself over to God and stay in there. That’s for somebody. I know it is.
Prayed…
We pray over the church today that there would be a divine cooperating in and among the believers …
There’s a shifting now in the church…
Lord, we pray for hearts and those families in the body of Christ to open in Jesus’ name, open up to the work of the Spirit. Open up to the gifts of the spirit. Open up to the glory of God, open up to the assignment that you are dispatching now.
I see that, Lord, you’re not only opening doors, but you’re taking the doors off the hinges because you plan that they would never close again now until the end of this dispensation. So we pray for doors coming off…
We declare openings, now divinely appointed, planned and timed out openings now in churches, in nations today in families, in the ministries of pastors and teachers and missionaries and leaders and prophets
I declare open in Jesus’ name. I command that door that has held you back in your life, personally, that opposition, that blockage, that stoppage, whether it be shame, whether it be a past trauma, whether it be a failure, whether it be a debilitating, emotional state or an obsession in your thought life… I command that door to be blown off
Lord, we loose your hand to move and to dynamite those things the enemy has erected to slow us down and to stop us
We assign your angels, Lord, to deal with those things… that there would be a clear path now for the church of the Lord Jesus Christ to step and to move and to progress into that place that you’re calling us to
