Morning Chapel Prayer Playlist
Morning Chapel Prayer Today
Pastor Ken…
Good morning, everyone. Happy Wednesday, as I like to say. Hope you’re doing well. Welcome everybody who is in the process or may watch this later online. Love you guys. Appreciate your supply whether you’re in this chapel or online, on Facebook, on YouTube, on our online church channel. We just sense the agreements and the alignment and the supernatural supply of the Holy Spirit that is offered up from each of you online in the chapel.
Let me remind you of the position your hold as a pray-er…
This morning, I feel like I want to read Ephesians 6:10 in an effort to really just draw your attention, maybe stir up your consciousness, your remembrance regarding some realities from a spiritual standpoint. I know we’re going to pray collectively here this morning, or corporately. But for a moment, let me just remind you and provoke your thoughts in regard to just what you are and what you possess and the position you hold as a pray-er, as a believer, as one who professes Jesus, who chooses to take up your cross and follow Him.
Ephesians 6:10, “be strong in the Lord…”
There are some things that we’ve got to stay cognizant of in this day and this hour, and perhaps grow stronger in… without a doubt grow stronger in. In our thinking… renewing our thinking and our minds and our mindset. And there is one particular thing I want to point out in Ephesians 6:10. It says, “Finally, my brethren be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” And that’s interesting that he says that right away. I think one of the reasons why Paul begins to write this under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit is because he knows what’s going to come next. And that is, he’s going to unpack and he’s going to teach and communicate from a spiritual standpoint, just what we, as New Testament believers, have been endowed with, what we’ve been gifted, what we’ve been armed with as believers, as pray-ers. And he likens it to the armaments and the weaponry of a Roman soldier. And how many of you know that if you read historical accounts of what Roman soldiers were equipped with when they were fully outfitted was quite heavy. So you needed to remain strong.
The enemy comes to test you…
And so Paul says, “Finally, my brethren, be strong in the Lord and in the power of His might.” Because you’re carrying some things. You have some things on your person, so to speak, spiritually, that God has endowed you with individually. And yes, us collectively, but us individually, that we carry. And God wants to draw our attention to that this morning. Because we all face battles, and we all experience adversity. And we won’t know until tomorrow what may come and what we might be faced with—the decisions, the challenges. Of course, there’s a common enemy that comes to test our metal, test our fences if you’re a rancher or a farmer, to see what he can do.
And if there’s anything the Lord is drawing the church’s attention to in this hour, it’s that we must remain strong and we must remain sharp. And we must pick up our sword. And we must lift up our shield and our feet ought to be shod with the preparation of the Gospel of peace.
Put on the whole armor of God…
So Paul goes on to say, “Put on the whole armor of God that you may be able to stand against the wiles.” That means the trickery, the deception of the devil. “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore…” in light of this, in other words, “take up the whole armor of God that you may be able to withstand in the evil day. And having done all to stand. Stand therefore having girded your waist with truth.”
Lift up your shield of faith…
He goes on to say, “Having put on the breastplate of righteousness and having shod your feet with the preparation of the gospel of peace. Above all, taking the shield of faith.” In other words, lift up that shield of faith… “with which you will be able to quench all the fiery darts of the wicked one.” When you lift that shield of faith up, when you make those faith decrees, you can almost hear the extinguishing of those flaming arrows.
You are equipped and endowed …
I’m going to continue here, but I think one of the things the Lord wants to remind us of is that you are equipped… you are endowed… you are clothed and arrayed with some things to have an effect in this age, in this generation. As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, there must not be a day that goes by that we aren’t binding and loosening. Jesus taught us the prayer of binding and loosening. Your words of authority have a real bona fide effect in the spiritual realm. They send the enemy reeling. Your prayers open doors. They do have a powerful effect. Don’t let the enemy cause you to forget that even for one moment.
“And take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the spirit,” he says, “which is the word of God. Praying always with all prayer and supplication in the spirit, being watchful to this end with all perseverance and supplication for all saints and for me, that utterance may be given to me that I may open my mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel for which I am an ambassador in chains. That in it I may speak boldly as I ought to speak.”
We are to keep “praying always…”
I’ll just go back here for a moment. He highlights these various weapons of our warfare, and then in verse 18, it says “praying always.” There are a number of authors and Bible commentators that point out if you know the complete set of armaments that a Roman soldier would have arrayed himself with 2,000 years ago. Of course, we know that there’s a sword and we know that there was a shield and that his feet were shod and he had a helmet and so on and so forth. But one of the things that Paul doesn’t call out by name but is referenced here in verse 18 when he says, “praying always with all prayer.” With all prayer… all kinds of prayer actually is a better way to put it. All the various types of prayer. When it comes to prayer, one size doesn’t fit all. They are different types of prayer for different types of assignments and different things that need to be dealt with.
The prayer of binding and loosing…
Binding and loosing is a significant form of prayer that we must deploy when it comes to the enemy messing around in our lives and messing in our family’s business or our bodies for that matter. The Bible is real clear in the New Testament writings that we’re not necessarily to ask God that He would do anything about the Devil in our lives. Because if we’re going to be intellectually honest, from a scriptural standpoint, Jesus has already done something about the Devil. He’s already given him a beat down. He’s already defeated him once and for all and for all time, and assigned the authority and the right to deal with the enemy to us.
The Devil will flee from you…
You submit yourself, therefore to God… you resist the Devil and he will flee from you is what the scripture reads. And so I know this is not something you probably haven’t heard, but I just want to stir you up this morning by way of remembrance and remind us that, yeah, we’re going to do this collectively when we come together. But when you go out of this place, when you’re going through your daily routine, when you’re facing challenges and unknowns, when you get a phone call, when you see the news report, you are not helpless. You are not hopeless. You don’t have to fear. Jesus time and time again if there was one theme in His teaching, it was “let not your heart be troubled. It’s going to be okay.” He will be with us even to the end of the age.
We have the full scope of armaments and authority in Jesus…
And I think one of the ways we can find confidence and learn to trust in Him is understand from a spiritual standpoint just who we’ve become in Christ. That you are weighted down in a good way with the full scope of armaments and equipping and the delegation of the very authority of Jesus Himself.
But you’ve got to take it up…
You’ve got to put it on. You’ve got to use it in the day-to-day journey. We must bind. We must loose. If we’re going to be honest, the Bible is very clear that heaven looks to earth for what it’s going to do, right? Jesus said, “Ask that you may receive that your joy may be full.” “I’ve given you,” Jesus said, “power and authority to tread on serpents the scorpions and over all the power of the enemy. And nothing shall by any means hurt you.”
The Bible still rings true that He holds us in the palm of His hand, that we are ever before Him, that His thoughts of good and blessing and favor toward us outnumber the grains of sand on the seashore or the stars that He flung out into the heavens. That’s how good He is and how much of a loving dotting heavenly Father He is toward you.
The Bible says there’s great and exceeding power toward those who simply believe—not achieve—not try to be good and not be bad—but because we believe.
Do you believe today?
Do you believe that that situation can turn around? Do you believe that God is opening the windows of heaven to pour out a blessing in various ways in your life and upon the church in this hour that there won’t be room enough to receive it. Do you believe that He’s pulling back the gates in this generation, that glory and power and the miraculous and the gifts of the Spirit and the fullness of His plan that He intends would flow unhindered in a generation in this church, in your home?
Do you believe?
He’s just asking us now, “Do you believe?” Will you believe? Will you choose to believe in Me? Not just that I can forgive you of your sins, but that I can do all these things that I promised and I prophesied and I’ve whispered to you down in your heart.
He can do it!
He wants to do it. He just asks us to believe. He asks us to simply take up what He’s equipped us with and go to war, so to speak, in the spiritual sense.
And so let me just remind you this morning, you’re not hopeless in that situation, whether it’s in regard to our nation… your city… your family… your physical condition… that evil report… that perennial problem that just keeps circling in your life.
You have the answer on the inside…
And His name is Jesus. And His supply flows direct from heaven to your heart, and He wants it to flow through your heart as well to the world around you.
The lance of prayer…
And so I just wanted to draw your attention to those implements that God has entrusted us with. And in particular what’s called the lance of prayer. Because the one armament that Paul does not call out by name is the lance or spear. And the lance or spear in the Roman empire among the Roman legions of military was very key and integral. So integral that there were many types and sizes of lances or spears. And Bible commentators say that Roman soldiers wore a belt where there were different types of lances and different types of attachments for lances so that the lance could be outfitted for the conditions at hand for the type of warfare for where the enemy was at. Fundamentally, though, a lance was used to hurl at the enemy from a distance to take him out before the enemy got close.
Take out the enemy from a great distance…
But they carried different types of lances. There was one type of lance that was 24-feet long that soldiers practiced and were equipped to hurl at the enemy and take the enemy out at great distance. So that close-up combat would not be a reality. So you wouldn’t even have to pull out your sword and deal with the enemy face to face.
What are you saying, Ken?
I’m saying that when Paul says in verse 18 “praying always with all prayer,” he’s likening it to all kinds of prayer, in other words. He’s saying, “Pull out your lance, church, and begin to use it out ahead of what the enemy would try to do to get close to you.” That’s why we gather together collectively and what we should be doing daily in prayer is letting the Holy Spirit equip us with the spears that we could hurl at the enemy and at whatever tactics he would deploy to take them out on a national scale in the church, in our families and in our personal lives.
Answered prayer of Russian believers…
I heard a story that I thought was interesting of American missionaries who were in Russia. They were helping to rebuild a church there. It was kind of a really cool redemptive work that they were doing. They were using stones from a Russian gulag, or prison, to build a new church. And as they were digging around in those stones, they found a canister. So they brought the canister to the pastor because when they opened it up, they found a message in there that was very old. So they handed the message over so it could be interpreted to what would be the pastor of that church once they had constructed that building out of those stones from that Russian gulag. And as the pastor began to read it, he was just overcome with emotion. And began to weep. And what he read was a note written decades earlier by a group of Christians that had a church. And it said “We are a community of Christians who are being forced to use the stones of our church to build a prison where we will be imprisoned and where we will ultimately die. And we have prayed in agreement that God would once again redeem what the enemy has done and use these stones once again to build His church.”
Prayer is our opportunity to sow canisters into the future…
So decades later, these American missionaries and modern-day Russians were building a church out of those stones that came across this note. Prayer is our opportunity to sow canisters into the future. Canisters of requests and supplications and intercessions that while maybe something’s not turning from our eyeball’s perspective in the moment, because prayers like a lance, we’re taking some things out before we get there. We’re establishing, we’re planting, we’re making a way well in advance, maybe even generations in advance. Who knows? Maybe into the next dispensations, our prayers are reaching.
Don’t limit God when it comes to prayer…
God cannot be cognitively categorized or understand with our intellect. He is so much greater than we even have any clue. And so don’t limit Him when it comes to praying. When it comes to binding and loosening, don’t get your mind all tangled up in what you think when you sense something on the inside. Just yield to it. Give yourself to it. Surrender yourself to the movement and the inspiration and the intercessions of God, the Holy Spirit. Let Him equip you daily, even moment by moment with the right type of lance, the right prayer.
