Pastor Ken…
Good morning, everyone. Good morning to our online family.
Prayer and Presence Conference
I try to mention this at least once a week, but we are just a week and a half out now from the Prayer and Presence Conference. Whether you would like to attend in person or online or want to learn more about it, visit lwcc.org and go about a third of the way down the webpage and you’ll see the Prayer and Presence Conference. Check that out. We do ask that you register. It is free whether you attend in person or online. So, be sure to do that. It promises to be just an outstanding marked moment in the plan of God for our church, and I believe for your life.
Once again, Pastors Mac and Lynne Hammond are hosting it. Our special guests are Leif Hetland, Heidi Baker, and Pastor Joseph Harris. And it’s going to be such a good time. So you don’t want to miss out on that. So check that out.
God’s elevator of revelation…
I like what you were singing out there, Kathy. “Your way is better.” His way is better. Amen. It resonates with me this morning because I feel like I’m always asking the Lord to take me up in His elevator of revelation. How many of you know that He’s got a spiritual elevator that He invites us into? And it goes up into the ways of God that are better, the wisdom of God that is better. And how high we go, how far we go with Him is up to us. But I’ve learned to just let my heart call out to Him… because as it’s recorded in the narrative of the gospels, I hear Him invite us to learn of Him, learn His ways, learn His thoughts. His way is better in every aspect of our lives, including prayer.
Let the “organicness” of your heart come forth…
Sometimes I’m on the floor eating carpet, other times I’m on my knees, sometimes I’m pacing and walking and talking to God. As I’ve learned, one of His higher ways is to let the “organicness” of my heart come forth and I just talk to Him. Oftentimes, I’m just praying out of my heavenly prayer language. Sometimes I’m just lifting up my hands and just saying, “Lord, I just worship you” and I just sing maybe in a simple song. And in that moment, just like He has this morning right here even last night, I was so aware of His presence coming into my room. And just like sparking across my life, just like sparks! Just the power of God. And I don’t think of myself as a high-end “feely” type person. I’m wired as a thinker, especially in my kind of natural personality makeup.
He’s preparing us for the final leg of the race…
But God is in the earth right now. Like no other time. He’s here visiting His people. He’s here knocking on doors, so to speak, out ahead of His return, knocking on the doors of hearts and lives, preparing the way for His coming, giving invitations, equipping, sounding the alarm in a good way, refreshing us, healing us, restoring us. Replenishing us for the final leg of our race as pray-ers, as followers of Jesus in His plan and purpose for His kingdom. Amen. And so His way is better. He’s got a better way. Sometimes I think we struggle in life and experience failure and frustration because we’re doing it our way. But He has a better way.
Prayer makes a way…
And I’m reminded one of the better ways of His kingdom and of God is prayer. Prayer makes a way; your decrees in fact, what you say over your life on a given day, not just in chapel or not just when your streaming morning prayer, but as you go about your day, your utterance, your words were intended to make a way… were intended to do something, to have an effect. As you all know, and I reference often, Jude 20:1:20 says that “he who prays in an unknown tongue edifies, energizes, rises like an edifice, makes spiritual advancement.” He who prays in that other tongue.
He knows the way…
Your spirit knows where you need to go today. Your spirit on the inside, the real you, knows the next steps, knows the solution, knows what route you need to take practically or spiritually or in your particular life’s journey. He knows the way. But it is us being willing to make a way. It’s us being willing to express in the spirit to begin with the mysteries of God that reveals that way… that creates a solution, that precipitates a breakthrough.
There are spiritual technologies the church has overlooked…
And I just was reminded myself too not only what I experienced last night with God’s presence coming into my room, but just even when I was a young person. I learned early on through Pastor Lynne, Kenneth Hagin and others, that if I would give my voice to the Holy Spirit, things would start happening that wouldn’t otherwise happen. There’s just something about… let’s just say praying in the spirit, singing in the Spirit. I heard somebody recently say that there are spiritual technologies that the church has long overlooked and underestimated. And those technologies really are the gifts of the Spirit. And one of the most important ones to our everyday life is the gift of praying in other tongues, which is available to each and every one of us.
If that’s something that you don’t have or regularly participate in, then I encourage you to call out to God for that. If you’re online, if you’re hearing about this for the first time, then I encourage you to ask one of our hosts more about it online. I know most of us probably have already received the baptism of the Holy Spirit, but I just felt impressed to say that this morning. But it is a spiritual technology and one of the great ones is the gift of praying in other tongues. It makes a way. It will make a way for you in this hour. It will precipitate things and produce things and cause things to change in your life like no other thing. As you engage in it on a daily basis, on a moment-by-moment basis, the Bible is emphatic that we’re to pray always in the spirit.
He is your divine mentor, your coach…
He’s able to steer and order and orchestrate your life. He’s your divine mentor and coach God the Holy Spirit, but only to the degree that we yield ourselves to Him. One of the great ways we yield to Him is to pray out in the Spirit. And as a young person, I learned that if I would give myself… and I was probably horribly inconsistent at times when I was younger. But I knew and I valued that gift. And I knew what it had already done in my life. And as I gave myself to it, I started to see the supernaturalness of God show up in different aspects of my life. I started seeing favor. I started seeing that I was showing up in the right place at the right time to receive blessings and breakthroughs and answers and good breaks and windfalls and harvest. We’re entering into a season where God wants to speed up your harvest. It’s been prophesied that the reaper would catch up with the sower. There are harvests on the way. There are harvests that have been sent because of your prayers, because of your faithfulness, because you’re a child of God and because of His grace.
Praying in the spirit positions you…
And there’s something about praying in the spirit that positions you in such a way to reap those harvests… to become more efficient and more effective at receiving for yourself, for those you pray for, at receiving what God has for you. And so there are numerous accounts I can look back in my life and see, “Wow, look what happened.” And I can connect it to the fact that I grabbed hold of a spiritual technology called praying in other tongues.
Kenneth Hagin says to desire spiritual gifts…
I think it’s interesting. Kenneth Hagin wrote these words many years ago. He said the Bible teaches us to desire spiritual gifts. The Bible also teaches us to earnestly covet the best gifts. But remember that those words were written to people who already spoke in tongues. They weren’t written to people who did not speak with tongues. He said “I found over my life in a period of 60 or more years that the more I speak in tongues, the more I pray and worship in tongues, the more manifestation of the other gifts of the Spirit I have in my life too. And the less I speak in tongues, the less manifestation of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit I have operating in my life.”
Everything falls into place in your life…
It may seem like a small thing, but last night when the Spirit of God came in and I don’t doubt that there was an angel there too, that just really blessed me. That just made me more hungry for Him. I just felt Him all over me. I’m like, “Okay, this is why I exist… to encounter Him, to host His presence.” There’s just nothing better. Everything falls into place in your life. Everything gets better, brighter, clearer, more blessed, more productive, more efficient, more favored in and on and through your life when your determined purpose is to host His presence by the simplicity of bended knee and raised hands and worship, or silenced heart in His presence.
His way is better…
Oh, that’s just beautiful. I just pray that you would just get hungry for God this morning. His way is better. His way is higher. In fact, He’s already done things for you that you don’t even realize. He’s already put some things in place and set some things in store and marked some moments for you and scheduled some divine appointments and granted some things that He wants you to pray out that aren’t even inspired by you, but come from heaven to earth and He wants them to come through you as His portal and as His emissary, and as His voice in the earth. And it’s recalibrating to this simple principle of practicing His presence. That just changes the trajectory of everything. Shifts things, makes a way for you and yours and what He intends for your life.
Brother Hagin goes on to say, “The more I pray and worship in tongues, the more manifestation of the other gifts of the Spirit in my life too. And the less I speak in tongues, the less manifestation of the supernatural gifts of the Holy Spirit I have operating in my life. God has given each of us a supernatural means of edifying ourselves or building ourselves up spiritually.”
The lightnings of God…
So that you too, your spirit sparks with the lightnings of God. I dunno, maybe it’s just me, but since I was a teenager, I was just jazzed and captivated and drawn to God’s power and presence and what He was capable of doing. If I would just abandon and give myself to Him. Then I would find true meaning and true life and true wholeness and true change and true purpose down here, while I’m still here. Because of my yieldedness and surrendering myself to Him and pursuit to know Him and keep going with Him.
But Brother Hagin goes on to say, “God has given each of us a supernatural means of edifying ourselves or building ourselves up spiritually. God has given to us spiritual or supernatural means of communicating with and worshiping Him. And as you are a Spirit filled believer taking full advantage of the gift of tongues.”
Living Word came about through prayer…
Now let me add one another thing to this. Yesterday I was reminded too of just the beginnings of Living Word, this church. I was reminded that the Lord made it really clear to Pastor Lynne all those years ago, and Pastor Mac, that this house would be called a house of prayer. That in fact the building blocks and the DNA of this house shall be one of prayer. This house physically shall be a house of prayer, Jesus said. And it’s through prayer that this ministry came into existence.
Phillip and Fern Halverson…
Some of you may know it, but even long before Pastor Mac and Lynne were here, there was a man by the name of Philip Halverson and probably others, and Fern Halverson, his wife, who would find themselves praying out the name “Hammond,” for example, without knowing who Hammond was. Paul teaches us that when you pray in the spirit, pray that you may interpret. That’s why I’ve encouraged us at times, if you sense a word or a phrase or you hear me up here praying things out like “What is he praying out?” I don’t always know, but sometimes I hear things or I see things. So pray that out. Because Paul taught pray that you may interpret what you’re praying in the Spirit. Utter that. Speak that out.
And so Phil and Fern would pray sometimes all night long in God’s higher way in using the gift of other tongues, and they found themselves praying out Hammond along with other words, years before Pastor Mac and Lynne even moved here. And prayed along with others, this church into existence. So there’s something dynamic about what God is able to bring up out of our hearts. He’s able to do something with the substance of what comes from our hearts. Of what He inspires us to speak out in the spirit and in our understanding, that He’s able to use that and utilize that.
Faith is like a substance…
The Bible reveals that faith is like a substance. It’s like a heavenly material. It’s like a building block, a supernatural concrete, if you will, that He’s able to use to construct and create things. So your decrees are something that is useful to God, that He can take and watch over and create the reality of what we’re speaking and what we’re saying and what we’re praying in the spirit.
So I was just reminded of that just how this church even came to be. God made a way for Living Word to come into reality in its time and in its place. The Bible says that God wants to make all things beautiful in its time. And so just kind of let your imagination run this morning and think about, “Lord, what do you want me to say and pray today?” Just make room for that, that higher way. That’s how God is operating and wants to operate even more so as He presses down on the accelerator of His purpose in this hour. He wants His church to give voice to His intentions and to hidden things and secrets and purposes for you and for the earth in this hour.
Learn to relax and flow with the Holy Spirit…
Kenneth Hagin, inspired by the Spirit of God, wrote this a number of years ago. He said, “Being conscious of a mighty move in your spirit, wanting and desiring to do the will of God. But don’t try to do it yourself. Just learn to relax and to flow with the Spirit.”
“Am I doing it God’s higher way?”
I know when I start getting weary and kind of frustrated and tired, I have to ask myself, “Okay, what way am I doing what I’m doing right now in life? Am I doing it Ken’s way? Am I doing it God’s higher way?” And His higher way is that He would always lead the way in your life, lead the way out ahead of every concern and every responsibility and every ministry in everything, right? That He would be preeminent and the paramount thing in our lives. And I know we know that but that’s good to stir that up and remind ourselves.
[If you want to hear the rest of Morning Prayer, click on the audial link below.]
Yesterday Pastor Folu shared this prophetic word.
“Inquire of Me” Prophecy
Kenneth Copeland
September 11, 2015
“Don’t do things,” saith The LORD, “large things or small things, without inquiring of Me. For many, many things that look small to you are big in My eyes. And many things that look big to you are small in My eyes. So inquire of Me. Don’t just say, ‘I’m going to go.’ No. Inquire of Me. Inquire of Me about which route you should take in the morning. ‘But I’ve been going this way for 15 years.’ That doesn’t make any difference. Inquire of Me. Haven’t you learned anything from 9/11? Inquire of Me. I have plans. My plan is a blessing plan. My plan is big. My plan is wonderful. There are others who have plans for your future and plans for your security. This group says, ‘Come join us.’ This group says, ‘No, come join us. Oh, we have a plan. Oh, we have a plan.” ‘Ah ! But they’re all Babylonian, and they don’t know what they’re planning one way or the other. But My plans I have for you,” saith The LORD, “My plans are big, and they are good, and they are rich, and they are full of good health and full of debt-free lifestyle.” Hallelujah. “Rejoice in Me and I will show you how to be fear free. Rejoice and know full well that all that I have is prosperous. All that I have is wonderful. All that I have for you is love, and magnified love, and more love and more love; more than you can see any way to use. More than you can imagine. For My love is rich unto all who call upon Me. My Name is rich unto all who call upon Me. And remember, I have given you all things richly to enjoy,” saith The LORD.
