Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Good morning, everyone and those of you online. I was about to say thank you for being a part of our prayer gathering or perhaps I should say good afternoon or good evening, depending on when and where you’re joining us from. It’s good to be with you guys on this Wednesday morning.
God is up to something good…
As I often say, God is up to something good today and today’s going to be an outstanding day. He is our sustainer and supplier. And He’s going to grace and empower and equip us today individually in our journeys with Him and through this life in the following of His plan. He’s going to inspire us collectively to pray this morning across digital channels here in this chapel.
2024 is the year of the open door…
I’m super encouraged in my heart at what God is doing and what I’m seeing and what I sense and know is opening up to us in 2024. And I believe that this will be the “year of the open door.” And it will be in addition to that, a banner year where God puts His favor and His beauty for your life on display. And so when we come to a place of prayer, not only are we being mobilized and organized by God the Holy Spirit to pray things out, to partner with Him and bringing forth His plan into the earth, but we’re also bringing ourselves before the Lord when we pray, when we seek Him, when we gather online or in this chapel. And I don’t know about you, but I often am just aware of the Holy Spirit’s presence and that He wants to work inside of us, in our souls, in our emotions, in our will, in the things that are all tangled up inside of us sometimes when we face challenges in life.
Be cognizant that His Spirit is inside you…
And so just know that this morning, you’re bringing yourself before the Lord and be cognizant that His Spirit is inside of us and He wants to reorder your world a bit. I believe He’s always doing that. Realign some things within you. He wants to put His finger on some things that He wants to address, He wants to remove maybe. He wants to heal, restore, and in many cases, He wants to add something on the inside of you.
God is an inside-out God…
God is an inside-out God, meaning what He does, He does inside, and then it shows up outside later.
“Oh, that’s a good quote right there! Come on now. You can take that and post it for yourself.”
He’s an inside-out God! In fact, I was driving in this morning and my daughter and I were praying just for a moment… Well I was praying; she was getting herself ready in the car… truth be sold. But she said, “No, I got to keep getting ready, Dad. But you can pray and I’ll agree.”
And you know, 3rd John 2 came to mind. Many of us know it. It states “Beloved, I wish above all things that you may prosper and be in health, even as your soul prospers and is in health.” In other words, if we’ll simply open up the door of our hearts, right? Jesus reminds us in the gospels that “I’m at the door of your heart. I’m knocking, will you let Me in?” And if we’ll do so, He wants to come in and He wants to address some things, speak to some things, put His finger on some things. He wants to impart some things inside, in our internal reality, in our thinking, in our emotions once again.
Satan will try to tantalize you with things…
He did not intend for us to be depressed and disgusted and wanting to give up. And I know that there are many people that we all face that at times, right? When the enemy comes knocking and wants to see what kind of bait we’ll take in our thinking, in our emotions, in how we feel. That’s all he has. He has things that he tries to tantalize us with. He’s sneaky that way. But I’m so glad God gave us His Word down through the years. I’m so glad that He sent the promised Holy Spirit.
We got “outcoached…”
Somebody said the other day on social media… I was watching and it reminded me of a phrase back in my days of athletics and sports that went “We got out-coached.” A young kid will get in the car and maybe he or she just lost the game and says to his or her parents, “Mom, dad, we were better, but we just got out-coached.” That should never be said of the church, of us as individuals because we have got the greatest Coach of all.
Jesus said, “It’s advantageous that I go back to my Father so I can send the down payment on your salvation.” That being the Holy Spirit.
The Holy Spirit wants to coach us today…
He wants to mentor us. He doesn’t want us to get out-coached by the enemy or deceived or duped in some way or to just kind of continue today following my emotions. I’m not saying your emotions don’t have a place. Or you shouldn’t process them. You should. But we’re fundamentally to live by faith, by what God’s Word says, by what we know to be true on the inside. But what the Holy Spirit is prompting us and leading us in by peace, not by pressure.
And so I want to kind of stir that up in your thinking today, that the Holy Spirit wants to coach you up. It’s okay if feelings don’t go away in a day or a week or whatever. But we can do the right thing when the wrong thing still feels like it’s happening. By faith, we can do the right thing. And that is to take hold of God’s Word such as John 3:2 and pray it and declare it.
You’re the prophet of your own life…
You are the prophet, as I’ve often said, of your own life. And just know that your feelings will fall in line in time with what you’ve chosen to say by faith, with what you’ve chosen to take a stance on. If prayer gets you pressured because “I don’t know what to pray or how to pray or whatever,” that’s okay. Grab hold of the Word and just pray John 3:2. “Lord, your Word says that you desire and will that I would prosper, I would rise and thrive more than anything, or just as or correlated to my inner life, thriving. So I pray, Lord, that you would address some things inside me today, that you would prune some things out of me, that you would just wash over me with your presence.”
Let God clear out the clutter inside you…
Maybe you’ve had this experience, but I’ve had this many times through the years where I’ve gone to my prayer closet, literally my closet on the floor and I’m praying and I don’t feel a strong sense of the anointing or know how to pray for something in particular, but I just begin to offer up my heart to Him. I just began to turn my attention to Him. I might just be praying in my heavenly prayer language, what I sense in my heart. And invariably in those tough times, the Spirit of God will just come through my door literally, it feels like, and just begin to operate on me inside. And sometimes He’s just clearing out clutter. He’s removing some things. He’s pruning and snipping some things that just don’t need to be there in your life in this next season. And maybe that’s why I’m talking about this, this morning. I hadn’t planned on talking about this, but I just know that we’re entering a year of open doors and God wants to open some doors for you. He wants to do it for you.
God wants to do His will for us…
Much of the will of God, God wants to do for us. He’s already planned the way. He’s already sent the provision and He’s put it in place and it’s ready for you and me and for the church. Usually what takes time is Him getting access to our souls and being able to address the issues of our lives because He doesn’t want you to take that old thing into a new season. He’s wanting to give you and I new wine skins for a fresh outpouring and a new project that He wants you to pray and a new assignment He’s going to give you and a new opportunity that’s going to open up to you in the marketplace. Or a new idea He’s going to download to you in a nanosecond of time that is going to launch a new nonprofit or a new ministry or a new business that’s going to go viral in an economic sort of way.
But first, He wants to address us inside…
He wants you to thrive and flourish in the prayer space. He wants you to be a living, breathing oracle for Him in the spirit realm. But oftentimes before He can do that, He has to prepare us and transform us and lead us to a new space in our souls, in our emotions, in our thinking, and how we do our day to day. So that old thing, that old habit, that old thought pattern, that old maybe a relationship that’s dysfunctional, whatever it is, doesn’t get dragged into a new season where it then corrupts and short circuits and sabotages the new season.
God wants to be our mentor…
So perhaps that’s a word to us this morning. The Lord wants to supernaturally mentor and coach and work in you even when you don’t even really know what He’s doing. But you know He’s put His hand on your heart and your heart is just reverberating. Because God has stepped into your interior affairs and He is doing some surgery. He’s making some adjustments. Invite Him to do that!
So often, even as pray-ers, we’re looking outside and perceiving and seeing and “Lord, you got to do this for me and that for me, and I need this and I need that” when really God’s saying, “Let’s just start with what’s going on inside of you today.” Your perspective of how you’re thinking, the pressure that you’re carrying around 24/7. So much so that you don’t even sleep well at night.
You know, our pastors taught us that true prosperity isn’t in dollars and cents alone. That’s a small part of it. True prosperity is that we would thrive and that we would learn to be present, not distracted, not medicated, not comfortably numb (as I think a song a long time ago said) but alive in our insides to God.
“That’s really good. I’m glad you agree with that. I just thank you.”
Just alive inside to God, enjoying the journey of prayer and life and faith. And I’ll probably talk about this in the days ahead, but learning to slow down, be present. Enjoy the sunsets. Acknowledge the people around you. Give space and time for the Holy Spirit to speak and show us and not be so antsy and discontented. But become a people more comfortable in our walk with God, even in our own skin. Because our trust is more and more in Him.
Invite the Holy Spirit to work inside you…
So I’m going to stop there, because I’ll probably share more in the days ahead about some of these things. But I just encourage you wherever you are streaming this, whether you’re online or in this chapel, just invite the Holy Spirit to just work inside of you. He sees, He knows, He cares so deeply, so profoundly. He went to such great lengths in His redemptive work that He actually stepped away for a time from His place at the right hand of the throne of God. He laid down His godhead and deity, as Bible commentators say, and He took on the form of humanity in human flesh so that He could go through what we go through.
The Bible says He was touched with the feeling of our infirmity, our weakness, our struggle. What fear feels like when it comes knocking and tempting you to give into it so that He could, the Bible says, be a more excellent or more effective intercessor and minister to our needs. Yes, even emotionally, He wants to integrate our emotional life with our spiritual life. He doesn’t want our emotions to be this segmented part of us. That’s all one big hot mess. And then our spiritual life is, “Oh, we know exactly what to say. Bless God. I’m strong in the Lord and the power of our His might,” but yet inside we feel feeble and broken and unable, and “I don’t know if I can do today.”
He wants to integrate those two sides of us: our emotional life and our spiritual life. So they’re whole and healed and functioning together so that we can enjoy the journey of life and experience love, and be strong inside and whole inside, so that we ultimately are in a position to receive on the outside the increase and the promotion and the good things God wants to do externally in our lives… relationally, financially, in ministry, in every other way. Healing, right? I don’t need to go into that, but even healing itself is often connected to how we’re doing emotionally. I mean, I don’t know what the exact statistic is, but the Mayo Clinic and many other research institutes have done studies and it’s shocking the high percentage of illness that relates to our psychology, our emotional state. It’s called psychosomatic illnesses. In fact, the Bible even speaks to that, but that’s a whole other message.
So let’s just do that this morning…
Wherever you’re at, whatever’s going on, just draw a deep breath and exhale and just kind of center yourself by putting your hand on your heart or just being aware that you are firstly a spirit, a recreated human spirit if you’ve accepted Jesus. Recreated in the image of Jesus because of what He did for you, and just let the Holy Ghost wash over you as we worship this morning. Let Him address issues that need to be addressed. Let Him take off of you the weight of that sin, that mistake, that dread, that discouragement, despair where you have regrets. Just release them to Him. The Bible says that we’re not to take the care of anything, but to in fact, cast… or the Bible gives the image of just getting rid of it like a hot potato. Get rid of it.
I was reminded that when it comes to relationships in particular, the New Testament writes about a husband and wife, but I think it applies to any relationship that if you have ought in your heart towards someone, don’t even go to bed until you have addressed that with that person and left that with the Lord in prayer. Invite the Holy Spirit, in other words, to process with you inside this morning as we worship.
Prayed…
Father, we just do that today. We invite you to have your way in us. Put your hand on our hearts, Lord. As we worship this morning, I pray that, Holy Spirit, you would be released to minister to those who are struggling on the inside, who are hopeless, beaten down because of circumstances in life.
Lord, I pray for a downdraft of holy fire and healing power into every heart wherever they are.
