Pastor Lynne Hammond shared….
To all of you this morning, thank you for joining us. And for those who are joining us from Periscope too. I started this new venture of Periscoping. It’s an App on your phone which allows you to connect directly with people. Last Wednesday, I was here with this group and had 345 people from all over the world join us through Periscope. So last night I was waiting on a phone call and thought I am going to Periscope right now. I put it out there and I said I want to pray for you and in six minutes I had eighty five people come on. Isn’t that awesome? Then I received a text from people who knew I was going to be on this morning that some people in South Carolina said “thank you so much for praying.” I just praise God for the tools that we can access to reach the world in prayer.
Yesterday I had asked Pastor Ray what I should speak about this morning. He is so funny. He said I want you to talk about corporate prayer. Somebody had asked him what corporate prayer was. He said they asked “Is it like praying for big corporations?”
So we maybe need to talk about corporate prayer and the power of corporate prayer. I am going to give you a few scriptures here this morning.
“Do you not know and understand that you [the church] are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells [permanently] in you [collectively and individually]?” I Corinthians 3:16 (Amp.)
We see a couple of things here. The Holy Spirit He does come and He comes into us and dwells individually but when we are in a gathering like this by the Holy Ghost, it become an assembly. We assemble. It’s like pieces in a box, puzzle pieces, and they are all gathered in there and you can shake them around but until they form a picture we don’t really get an assembly. What happens by God, by some supernatural connection He connects us all and we become one voice to the Father. That’s called the corporate anointing. I have always thought of it like this.
You know you can always read your Bible by yourself, you can worship by yourself, you can pray by yourself but there are things that God will call us to do together that we really can’t do, we can’t get it done by our self. It’s not possible to get it done. There has to be a supply given by everybody or by the group collectively to get the job done. That’s what we mean when we talk about the corporate. What we are talking about there is a corporate anointing. It’s where every member here would give their supply and as a whole and it would bring a fuller measure and I’ve said this before it’s like moving a grand piano. If I was going to move a grand piano across to another destination from here to there, I could take that piano and inch it along and eventually I could get it there. But suppose I had 10 really strong guys and each one of them got a part of it. I could say one, two, three and they would go just like that and it would be there. It’s exactly that way with the corporate anointing.
I want to show you this scripture in Ephesians four. Actually it was Brother Copeland who showed me this many years ago.
“For because of Him the whole body (the church, in all its various parts), closely joined and firmly knit together by the joints and ligaments with which it is supplied, when each part [with power adapted to its need] is working properly [in all its functions], grows to full maturity, building itself up in love.” Ephesians 4:16 (Amp.)
What the Lord showed him is that when we come together in prayer, there is an individual anointing on each one of us but when we come together a corporate anointing is produced from the group. In other words, the Bible says Jesus connects us to provide an anointing that has never been seen before, nor can it ever be recreated again because you wouldn’t have the same individuals and we all keep growing in our faith and with revelation we are not in the same place hopefully. We don’t stagnate but we keep growing and growing. So that’s what happens in this group.
God is going to take us this morning and not just us here but everybody that is following by Periscope across the world and we are going to be able to pray and God is going to connect us together. Isn’t that beautiful? It will be a supply and you know this is something I began to see early on in the Church. Right after I got born again, I saw that in the Old Testament you see the lone pray-er or we might call it the lone intercessor. For instance Noah, Job, and Abraham and all the rest of them that you can see. We can go through the Bible and see piles of things about those people. And it’s wonderful, but in the New Testament, Jesus actually gave us a pattern. All the way through the Word, the Holy Spirit will give you patterns to work in and if you keep those patterns it will produce for you. And so what Jesus did in Acts chapter one is He called for the first prayer group and in the whole book of Acts we see that’s the way He moved in the Church. He moved in groups of people praying. First He said you go up to the upper room, all of you, and you pray there. That was group prayer. And we know what that produced. It produced Acts chapter two, the day of Pentecost. Also, from that prayer group came miracles. We see in Acts chapter three, Peter and John were on their way to the temple corporately to pray and while they were there they met the man at the gate Beautiful. He had never walked before and they said “Sliver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee. In the name of Jesus rise up and walk.” That produced a big deal. In the whole city, they were taken by the government. But what happened when they left and the government let them go, after they were questioned and then what happened? They went back to their own company and they had a prayer meeting and that produced the most incredible miracles. Remember Peter… they brought the sick on stretchers all around him and just his shadow healed them. Where did that come from? It came from the church praying corporately together in groups.
You don’t have to have thousands and thousands. I always said this, a group consists of more than one. It could be two or a hundred and two. Here at our church we have all different sized groups, and so that’s the reason we actually do that. When Peter was released from prison, the Church was over at Rhoda’s house and they knew they had to pray together. So we see a pattern for the New Testament Church. That is the reason for corporate prayer.
In our corporate prayer we do pray for corporations when it arises. We will pray for businesses in our corporate prayer. But just so we could clarify that today.
We are going to begin to pray this morning however the Spirit leads us. I think we are to pray for doors today. Doors of the supernatural, doors of vision, doors of men’s hearts, doors of utterance, there are so many doors in the Scripture and so I want us to begin lifting that up this morning.
Prayed….
Thank You, Father, that in John 10 it states You are the door opener
We lift our voices and say “Jesus opens the door!”
Unlocking tremendous things
Watching over the entrances—calling doors of deliverance and healing
Keys that unlock those doors
It’s the time—You said ask for the rain in the time of the rain
We ask You for the increase of the anointing in our prayers
The fullness of the Spirit that You promised for this time
Rivers—open, open, open
Doors of utterance for the pastors—revelation
Time released anointing’s
Show us the steps—revelation on the timing
Eyes to see the divine order and to implement the steps
Thank You, Lord, for Your faithfulness
Yes, Lord, show us the main door and the keys that unlock that door
Words are the keys
Doors of financial provisions—corporations
Great favor, loosing angels on assignment
Divine intervention of God
Participation of Your Spirit—we welcome the Holy Spirit
The doors will take us to the right locations
Specific places on the earth and the Big Fish in those locations that will be brought in
Access for bringing in the lost
Reaching for the right doors
Pleading the blood—we come by the blood of the Lamb
By the Spirit, through the Spirit
Some things need to be shaken up and moved
For the advancing and increasing for the Church
Removing the hindrances—get out in the name of Jesus!
Satan, you cease in your maneuvers in the name of Jesus
Open up those locations, Father
Pressing toward the mark!
We exalt You Jesus, our healer
Send the showers, send the outpouring
Fullness of the operation of the five-fold ministry gifts
Word of the Lord came forth…
There are dimensions, there are places, there are depths that until this time we have not touched. Maybe only momentarily we have touched them but the Lord wants those places, those new anointings… He wants all of those things to become ours in their fullness. As we pray out that plan about the doors, we will be strong and we will do exploits and there shall come increase… a more and a more and a more for a working door shall open. The door that is effectually… the door that you cannot actually see it working for it is all kind of one undercurrent and it’s produced through prayer. And we see this coming forth, and we see that working and the change coming and then with our visible eyes, as the Lord works spiritually, then with our visible eyes we should see.
Continued praying…
Let’s pray about those dimensions and those doors. I see large doors. I see small doors that open into large doors. Kind of like reminds me of Tupperware where you have one big Tupperware and then you put another smaller one in it. So a large door, Lord, but first we see that little door that will open a greater door and greater door. Thank You, Lord.
Pastor Ray shared…
When you are trying to fit the pieces like the Tupperware, sometimes I have tried to put the bigger on top of the littler one. There is an order. When you said that I saw parts, parts of the body, that were maybe trying to be parts that they were not created to be because they saw how another part was operating and they started to say “well, I want to be that part.” It will not work, it will not fit that way. So that part that you were created to be will not be operating the way it should be because you are trying to operate like another part of the body was called to be. It creates not the right kind of assembly as we just heard about, the people that were assembled in the upper room were all doing their own part. They kept doing their part the corporate way and so things begin to be lined up the way they should be and there is timing on the alignment. Sometimes we will try and get over into another way when the time is not right for that assignment or that alinement. So we lift up those alinements in the way they should work together, compacted together, every part doing its part working together. Thank You, Lord, for the work, the working.
Continued praying…
Into Your place in perfect alignment
It will work stronger and greater assembling of the body
Higher and higher in the body
Get men in their places – into the place of prayer
Every part of the body, in the name of Jesus, take your place
911 kind of call to get them up and get them in!
Pastor Lynne Hammond shared…
When we are praying for that word “door,” in the mind of God is a tapestry. There is all this working going on. It’s like sewing and we are producing this great tapestry of God. Like a network we could say and that is the way we produce. Each one of us is a stitch. We are doing our part but then in the end it’s going to make or produce something. It’s very interesting. I have been praying a lot about doors lately and I found in first Thessalonians chapter two it is called a “working door.” A working door but it is not me working. It’s the Holy Spirit working where there is this undercurrent. It is by prayer this undercurrent starts to be produced.
I will give you an example. For you to carry anything… say right here is my purse and I am going to want to carry this purse. Now I cannot give this purse to a six-month old baby to carry. It’s too big and it’s too heavy and they can’t carry it. It’s the same thing spiritually for us. For you to carry something greater, you have to increase spiritually so you can carry the greater. Do you see what I am saying?
Okay I am going to give you an another example. My friend Hakan Gabrielsson who is an apostle in Asia, a church planter, has Bible schools all over Asia and he is just one of the greatest men I know. The Lord told him that this is his year of increase. His first thought was finances because he is a missionary. But what happened he said for six months the Lord called him away and he would pray and pray with a lot of travail. Then he would read the Word of God but wouldn’t read it for more information but rather to meditate on it. He said after he had this season of about six months that the undercurrent for him started to work. Where he had an increase the year before of 25% in church planting, it now went up to 50%.
He had one of the most major miracles in my ministry. Twenty five years before this, He was on the border of China preaching and a young boy came to him. He had just gotten born again through a vision. Jesus had come to him but in the vision Hakan was with him. He came up to him in this meeting and gave him his name and said “someday I will work for you.” Well, after the time of putting all of his energy into the spiritual for those six months because God was wanting to see him carry more, he was up at the area of Mandelay and a man came up to him and said “do you remember me?’ He said “No.”
“Twenty five years ago I was born again and you were in the vision when Jesus appeared to me and I became born again. I was told then that I would work for you one day.” Okay after all of that the man now is leading his Bible school on the border there. Do you see? He had to increase there before he could carry more. And so much about doors is like that. There needs to be that undercurrent of working for that door to be open.
Now we will look in Acts 16. The Bible said that Paul got up and went over to Bethania and he was going into Asia but the Spirit forbade him to go. So he went to another place and the Spirit forbade him to go there also. Why? There was no door. Then he went over to Troas and the man from Macedonia appeared to him and said come over here. That was their door to go in. In Acts 19 suddenly something happened. He went over to Ephesus and there was only six Christians there and he asked if they had all been baptized in the Holy Ghost? They said they never heard of him. So he prayed for them and they got baptized in the Holy Ghost and speaking in other tongues and something started to work there in Ephesus. First it was just a minimal thing. Paul preached there and the door didn’t seem to open. He took his teaching and prayed there every day but the door didn’t open and there was a lot of harassment and hindrances so he moved over to another part of town. When he moved over there, he preached two years, and the Bible said all Asia heard the word. From there do you remember what happened? Handkerchiefs and clothes were tied to him and taken from that place out to the sick. Isn’t that interesting how a door is closed and you could beat on it and try to kick it down but by the Spirit there is that undercurrent. Just go read Acts 19 and the progression as you see that door as it begins to work. It works and works. And do you know when that door opened, Ephesus stood on the very highest pinnacle of knowledge of all the churches and Ephesus was the church that Paul asked to pray for him the most. I believe because they got the doors opened. Amen.
Continued praying…
Lifting up the Winners Minute broadcast –speaking continual increase
Financial supply will be met in Jesus’ name
Bringing forth great change, unexpected change
Calling forth Supernatural Breakthrough—It shall see its completion
Shalom, everything needed brought forth
We thank You for it, Father—praise, You Jesus
