Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Good morning, everyone. Happy Wednesday. Hope you’re doing well.
We are all interconnected as the body of Christ…
God has not called us to do life or this spiritual journey alone. He wants us to link up and to be connected with one another. It’s so important. Sometimes that is the will of God on a given day to simply just make yourself available to another person, to just connect with someone else. After all, we are a body of Christ. At least the last time I checked my Bible, it describes us as a body, that we’re all interconnected. And it’s that interconnectedness and the relationships that allow the flow of Jesus, the flow of heaven to minister to every part of the body. So it’s possible you need to reach out to somebody today and pray for someone today to send a text or a message, or give a phone call, or stop by somebody’s office or home and just connect with them and just make yourself available to them.
God may be prompting you to reach out to someone…
Maybe you’re hurting, maybe you’re struggling in some way. God may be prompting you simply to just reach out and connect with someone. Spend some time with a family member, with a friend, with someone that you know God’s prompting you to connect with because there’s something that happens in relationship that does not happen any other way.
Pastor Lynne teaching…
Pastor Lynne has taught us down through the years that every time a group of people get together for prayer, for spiritual purposes, there’s a dynamic at work in that group and that company, if you will, that allows God to move and do some things that He can’t do otherwise, on your own anyway. So every time you get together with somebody, there’s a dynamic of the spirit there to do something, to bless, to pray, to accomplish something spiritual. Just expect that.
Jesus said wherever two or three are gathered in My name, there I am in the midst of them. So we believe Jesus is here, that He is here to meet with us today, that He’s available, that He’s at work ministering and moving in our hearts and in our collective gathering online and in this chapel to fulfill what He has in mind.
God wants us to look to the bigger picture…
How many of you know that there’s such purpose in the heart of God now that He wants to bring about, that He wants to discharge through our lives and into the very earth. This life is not just about you or me. The enemy is the one who tries to divert us and get us distracted and all caught up in our little issues and our problems. And I don’t mean to diminish what’s going on in your life, but the Lord is saying, “Hey, look up. Look to Me. Look to the bigger picture and what I’ve called you too.”
God wants to make a difference through you…
God did what He did, yes, so that we could be forgiven and we could be embraced by His love and we could be given a fresh start through the redemptive work of Jesus. Yes, so that we could know eternity with Him in heaven. But understand that there also comes with it, an assignment that He’s placed on us, that it’s not just about us individually. It is about those God has called us to reach and those steps He’s called us to take and prayers He’s asked us to make. Because there is real impact and real influence that He wants to bring through you, the body… through you, His son, His daughter. He wants to make a difference. He wants to bring changes. And for whatever reason, He’s set up His great plan that He has chosen and He has connected Himself with His body in the earth to do what He wants to do.
You have a role to play…
You have a role to play. And the role we play and what we do for Him has no bearing on His love for you. He’s stated, “I love you.” He has stated, “I’m committed to you. I desire you to be in a relationship with Me.” His Word says that. I’ve forgiven you. I crown you with My favor. I enrobe you with My righteousness. That is a promise because of the finished work of Jesus.
So what we do for Him, even in prayer together or on your own or what you do to obey Him today, has nothing to do with gaining His good graces or getting Him to do something for you personally. He’s already said “yes” to that through His Word, through His promises.
We’re not a bunch of human “doings”…
What we do for Him is because of what He’s done for us. We’re not a bunch of human “doings” to try to get God to save us or answer our prayer or heal us or bless us in some way. No, it’s not about human “doing.” It’s about the fact that Jesus has already done what needed to be done that we could never do, so that we could simply step into what has been completed. So that we can simply…
Live from the spirit
Live from a finished work
Live from a full supply
Live from the revelation that He has a plan for you today.
His assignment for you is glorious…
And He has an assignment for you to accomplish one day at a time, and that it’s good. In fact, even glorious. And that as we follow Him, we enter into divine flow. And that flow has an anointing and has provision that’s able to carry us and sustain us and bless us and take us down the road where He’s leading us to go in the days ahead.
Excerpt from Rick Renner’s book “Spiritual Promosion”…
I want to read an excerpt from a book entitled “Spiritual Promotion.” Who is ready for spiritual promotion by Rick Renner? It’s an oldie but goodie. And it talks about qualifications for leadership and ministry and life. I would suggest also prayer because to accept the call to praise is to accept a spiritual leadership assignment in the spirit.
He writes in chapter 10…
“Does your potential leader have a spiritual life?”
I want you to reflect on this and kind of reflect on your own life and situation.
He says…
“I have frequently been amazed how many people serve every Sunday in church, but have little or no private personal time with the Lord. They serve the Lord, but they really don’t know Him intimately. But when you serve in a leadership capacity in the church, an intimate relationship with the Lord is not an option. You cannot spiritually help people if you don’t draw from a regular source of spiritual fellowship with the Lord yourself. You may be able to draw from some spiritual reserves within you for a while, but eventually, you’ll run out of steam and feel like you have nothing more to give.”
Pastor Ken comments…
I’ve found that sometimes, oftentimes, when I feel dry or dusty spiritually or don’t have a capacity in me to give, it’s not that something’s wrong. It’s that God is prompting me to connect with Him and spend time simply receiving. Sometimes that’s the most spiritual thing you can do is understand God’s not asking you to do anything in the ministry per se. But maybe you’re in a season or in a week or a day or a moment where He just wants you to receive. It’s in the receiving that equips us to do what He wants us to do to even just pray. That’s the beautiful thing about His plan. He’s not asking us to do anything in and of ourselves, spiritual, practical, or otherwise. He wants to fully supply us, fully equip us, fully allow us to enter into that flow from heaven that is able to help us one day at a time, one step at a time, accomplish the assignment on our lives.
He goes on to say…
“This is why a leader must constantly keep his or her spiritual life intact. So he or she is refreshed and filled with the life and the power of God to minister to others. It isn’t possible for a leader to tell others about one with whom he has no fresh living relationship. Therefore, maintaining an intimate relationship with the Lord is obligatory or required, you could say, for those who stand in any kind of spiritual leadership position.”
Commentary…
And I would add to that any sort of prayerful position.
And then jumping down, he continues later in this chapter by saying…
“What happens in a public worship service to a great degree depends on the private spiritual life of a worship leader. Using that as an example. His private or her private devotional life will carry over into his or her public life. If he has or she has no private worship, the worship service in the church will be dissatisfying and unfulfilling.”
Commentary…
And I like this because that reminds me that yes, there is a degree of study and effort we put in, in the natural. But at the end of the day, what makes you effective, not only in the ministry, but in your schooling and in your business and in the marketplace… What separates you? What sets you apart? What equips you? What anoints you to do whatever God’s called you to do in whatever area of society is that presence and His anointing on you.
That’s the difference maker.
That’s the separator.
That’s the thing that makes you an outlier.
That’s the thing that causes you to experience preferential treatment and favor in your life is His presence.
Our confidence is in Him…
Yes, we must be diligent. And, yes, we must apply ourselves in natural ways and study to show ourselves to be approved. But at the end of the day, our confidence is in Him. Not what we do. But in what He’s done and in what He’s provided. And that is the great and the mighty Holy Spirit.
2 Timothy 1:6…
The Bible says in 2nd Timothy’s 1:6 from the Amplified translation, it says, “That is why Paul writes, I would remind you to stir up, Timothy, to stir up or rekindle the embers of, fan into the flame of, and keep burning the gracious gift of God, the inner fire that is in you…” when he laid hands on him to stir it up.
God wants to give us a “level up”…
That is perhaps one of the most relevant promptings and admonishments the Spirit of God is speaking to us right now. I’ve been saying for some time now, we’ve been praying for some time now, God wants to give us a “level up” in our cooperation with Him. He’s wanting us to step up into a place of promotion, into a place of greater effectiveness, into a place of greater anointing in prayer and in what you do and what you’re assigned to do. And the first step is to stir up the gift of God that is within you. That’s our responsibility. That is our job, to stir it up. Of course, prayer is part of that.
Rick Renner goes on to say…
“As a pastor, the truth applies to me as well. I can teach Greek, word studies, doctrine, illustrated sermons, and so on, but my ability to communicate life through those messages depends on God’s anointing on my life. You may have an MBA in business, but the difference maker in your decision making will be His wisdom, which is part of that anointing. Decisions to invest, decisions to make a deal or not make a deal. There’s just something about His presence that can change the trajectory of your life on any given day.
“But we must pursue His presence and we must understand that we are desperate for His anointing to be stirred up in us and to remain in fullness of flame, to not lie dormant in the gifting of God, in the gifts of the Spirit for that matter. He wants them to come into a full place now.
Prayed…
Lord, we pray for hunger today. Make us hungry in this season of prayer and fasting. We pray and we agree this morning for hunger. Lord, grant us, impart to us, a desperation, a holy hunger and desperation to pursue you, to keep the main thing or to reestablish the main thing as the main thing in our lives. And that’s you! That’s intimacy with you.
Rick goes on to say…
“Without the anointing, my messages are simply empty words. But when the anointing comes, those same words become filled with power and life and have the ability to convict a sinner, reprove a believer, encourage one person and give instruction to another other.”
Commentary…
In other words, be wary of becoming flippant or casual or too familiar with the anointing and presence of God. It’s a holy thing. It’s a profound and powerful thing. Be reverent and respectful of the fact that He lives in you. The God of the universe who flung the cosmos into existence and is still expanding, lives in us and it’s His presence and it’s Him whom we trust and take confidence in. Not ourselves, not our ability, not our work ethic, not the degrees on the wall that we’ve obtained. Good for those things. But at the end of the day, we need Him in the church, in the prayer place, in the marketplace, in the schoolhouse, in government. There is a fire that He is endeavoring to fan into fullness of flame in the heart of every son and daughter. A fire that He’s endeavoring to kindle within the heart of His church. What’s going to get us from here to where He is calling us to be is not extra effort in ourselves, not willpower, but a want and a desire for Him. That we would truly be a people who welcome and seek and crave after His fullness of presence and fullness of glory. Because it’s His glory, it’s His presence, it’s the outflow of His anointing and power that does the work that must be done now and is able to do what you don’t even know how to do. He can do it. It’s Christ that desires to do the work through you, but we must want Him. And put our confidence in Him.
Rick goes on to say…
“If the anointing is working through me, the Word I preach has the ability to touch and meet every single need in the congregation. But for me to operate in that kind of anointing, I must have an active, private, spiritual life that is quickened by the Spirit of God. If I don’t have a spiritual life, the congregation will sense it as I preach. Therefore, I can’t wait until I get into the pulpit to prepare my spirit.”
