Morning Prayer began with worship…
Pastor Ray shared…
When we come into the chapel and Miss Annie starts playing, worshiping, singing, I always get such a sense of “everything is going to be alright!” It always comes to me. Everything is going to be okay. And we do believe for things to be okay, for things to be alright and worked out. When we welcome His presence and are open and yielded to more of His presence in our lives, we can say, “It’ll be okay.” It will all be alright!
I wanted to read something about William Seymour that John G. Lake had written. When John G. Lake was 17 or 18, he wrote about William Seymour and the whole scene in LA in the 1900s, 1906 or so. I found something else about him that revealed how William Seymour was led by the Holy Ghost to move to Los Angeles and take up a job as a pastor. I’m not sure if it was a holiness church, whatever it was, but they were not Spirit filled. And his whole thing was to be filled with the Holy Ghost and speak in other tongues. He had been yearning for it, desiring it, asking for it, and praying for it for years. He prayed five hours a day because he was hungry. When he got to Los Angeles, he became even more hungry and so he asked the Lord what to do and the Lord said, “Pray more.” It was like, “I’m praying five hours a day.” So he upped it two more hours, to seven hours a day for another year and a half or so. But he did receive obviously the infilling of the Holy Ghost and all those that were with him.
After he was filled with the Holy Ghost, the church padlocked the doors so he couldn’t come in because he was now filled with the Holy Ghost. So he started ministering at a home and he used the porch as his platform. The amount of people that came increased so much that the police said “you have to get some other place.” He had found a warehouse that was unoccupied, but he had no money to rent it. It’s interesting how the Holy Spirit led him after one of his night meetings to get on a trolley car and go to Pasadena. It was illegal for a black man to be in Pasadena after the sun went down. That’s just how it was. So he was illegally going to Pasadena. He stayed on the Trolley car until he was led by the Spirit. He was directed at a certain point to get off and go to an apartment and knock on the door. It’s dark. The door opens and it’s a lady. She had been having a prayer group in their home for revival. William Seymour was blind in one eye and his face was kind of scarred from a serious disease that he got and almost took him out years before that.
She said, “How can we help you?” He began to speak by the Spirit of God. He didn’t know them or the apartment. He just got on that trolley car. He said, “I understand that you’ve been praying for revival.” And it was a group of ladies and that’s what they were praying for and they said, “We believe that something big is about to happen in Los Angeles.” His answer was “I’m the man that will pastor the church for you,” or the ministry. So they invited him in. He preached a message to the ladies, took up an offering and in the offering there was enough finances for him to rent the warehouse. That’s how it started.
It was started by the leading of the Holy Spirit, obviously. It’s an interesting background. I read this book this morning. It’s a book that Billye has talked about. This man talked to people that were at Azusa revival. They were witnesses. They saw what happened. So he interviewed this man who I think was maybe 17 or 18 in 1906. This is something about the presence of God. This man’s name was David.
[excerpt begins]
Azusa Street: They Told Me Their Stories by J. Edward Morris
The story Brother David began with was the Grand Central Station experience. David lived about a half a mile on the other side of Grand Central Station and walked right by it coming to the Azusa Street Warehouse. One evening he ran to the meeting to find Frank Bartleman and told him that he needed to come to Grand Central Station. “Why? What’s going on there?” Bartleman asked out of curiosity. Brother Garcia, while trying to catch his breath; exclaimed, “You’ve got to come and see this! The anointing is far beyond where it had been in the past. You have to come on down and see!”
Together Bartleman and Garcia ran down to the station that was a half-mile away from the Warehouse. There they witnessed people come in from all over the world, get off the train, walk across the platform, and fall out in the Spirit often speaking in tongues. Someone had commented that the phenomenon had been happening all day long. When Garcia first saw the people laying all over the platform area, he thought it was a disaster until he realized what was going on and ran to find Bartleman. Frank had talked about a line or circle of blood several blocks around the Azusa Warehouse where the power of God extended outward. Several blocks before reaching the Warehouse, people were being healed, falling out in the Spirit, and speaking in tongues for the first time. This was the first time God’s power had reached all the way to Grand Central Station. Although no miracles were taking place, the presence and power of God, without question, had now moved out a half-mile from the actual warehouse!
Brother Garcia was awestruck by the Shekinah Glory that lingered for over three years at and around the Warehouse. He would tell me, “We have got to get the Shekinah back if we want to see a worldwide revival!” I asked Brother David, “Did you ever see the flame?” He told that there were times he was coming to the meeting late and would see the flames as far away as Grand Central Station. Brother Garcia would think, “Whoo, God’s moving again,” and would run to Azusa because he knew that when the fire was falling, there was more power at the meeting and he wanted to be a part of it. He explained that the experience was greater than breathing pure oxygen. There were times the Shekinah Glory was only a foot high, and he would lie down in it to breathe God’s Glory. He often stressed that the greater the Shekinah Glory, the greater the power. He would note that the flames were there when God, through Seymour, performed the miracles where a leg re-grew and another where an arm re-grew.
Brother Tommy, he didn’t have a ball joint in his shoulder, it had been ripped out of there. I was close enough to be looking right at the shoulder, and all of a sudden I saw the bones start to come out and then flesh started coming around them. His arm just shot out in what seemed mere seconds as I watched.” For Garcia, it seemed like he was watching in slow motion as he was awed at what God was doing. Brother Garcia was the first to tell me of Seymour’s prophesy that in about 100 years there would be a return of the Shekinah Glory and a revival that would surpass the Works of God at Azusa. When we talked in the sixties, Garcia realized that the prophesy was still forty years away from being fulfilled, but still longed for God to accelerate His plans and allow the Shekinah Glory to fall again in his lifetime.” [end of excerpt]
It goes on and on. This book has all kinds of different things that took place. Right after this part, there was a testimony of three people they brought in from a retirement center. They were in wheelchairs. A couple of them couldn’t talk or walk. So David, he was 17 or 18 years old. God was moving through anyone that would yield. And this young man went over and laid hands on this lady that couldn’t speak or walk. Basically, she was locked in her wheelchair getting ready to check out. He laid hands on her and she began to talk and walk. She was revived. She looked up first before she got up out of the wheelchair and said, “Are you Jesus?” He said, “No, I’m not Jesus but He’s in me. And He’s working through me. Stand up and walk.” I’m paraphrasing.
Why are we always yielding and opening up our hearts for more of His presence and glory? I’m sure that each one of us have been in services where the presence of God was manifested where we could say “Praise God, everything is going to be okay. It’s going to work out. I’m serving the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. His manifested presence is here and in that presence everything we need is there. Do we need boldness? It’s in His presence. That’s how the disciples were able to move out and speak and Peter was able to deliver the message that brought in thousands to the Lord. It wasn’t him. It was the presence of God upon him, the Spirit of God working through him.
So every time we get together we’re accessing and welcoming and actually don’t know the bigness or what is happening within us but we will know. There are times we’ll be right where we needed to be with the Word to speak. Yesterday, Pastor Folu testified that he’s seeing more groups of people come to the Lord at one time. Groups of people. He told me about ministering to a group of six people and the Lord gave him a word of knowledge. He said, “Sir, you’re a basketball player, right?” Yes. He goes to this man, “You’re a wrestler, right?” Yes. But what that did is it got their attention. Here’s a person they don’t know but he seems to know what they do. All of them came to the Lord. Things are changing and expanding. It doesn’t always look like it in the natural but we sense it in our hearts.
Prayed…
We lift up the house of God
We’re looking for those demonstrations for the glory of God to fill the temple
Fill the houses full to overflowing
That bodies would be whole and healed
Many more entering into God
Father, today we pray for every tributary, every church, the body of Christ
We pray for a move of Your Spirit when it comes to the baptism of the Holy Ghost
The rivers that have not opened themselves up to that
We ask for that, a greater move of Your Spirit that would enter into these places
Fresh baptisms, being refilled again and again
Greater cooperation with You and Your supernatural manifestation on the earth
Many are being filled but we pray for increased numbers in Jesus’ name
Across the United States
We lift up the states and lay out the blood over the states in the US
We pray for baptisms in the Holy Ghost to increase
Greater manifestations and revelations
We pray that these blockages to be removed in Jesus’ name
We pray for the openings to hear and see
Pastor Ray interjected…
I keep having the Baptist church come up in my spirit.
Continued praying…
That they would hunger and thirst after righteousness
Look to God and have a desire to wait upon You
A desire for holy assembles that occurred in 1906
Gather together in seclusion to seek Your face
Father, do for them what You did in the old
Pour out Your Spirit upon them for hunger and thirst for you
They will humble themselves and seek Your face
They will receive power from on high, the unction to believe for more experience in God
Pour out Your Spirit on the Baptist church
What is this? This is that which was spoken of the Holy Ghost
He will be in them and move them into the neighborhoods
The hospitals, schools, marketplace
Crutches will be used as a testimony of the power of God
They’re speaking in divers tongues
The Chinese will hear the word of the Lord spoken in their language
The Hmong are coming and hearing the word of the Lord spoken in their language
The Somalians are coming and are hearing the word of the Lord spoken in their language
The Russians are coming and they are hearing the word of the Lord spoken in their language
This is God, this is God and it’s like a river and its flowing
Lives are being transformed and restored
Miracles, signs, and wonders following
The Somalians are saying we’ve never seen this before
Even the Lutherans are saying, “What is this that we are hearing?”
Prayer for laborers…
Thank You, Father, for the laborers
We call out the men and women that God has been speaking to
Come and take their place in the name of Jesus
It is time! It is time that you respond to the plea of heaven and take your place
We cry out, Father, send more laborers into the harvest
Lord, we say thank You for the laborers to come forth
It’s coming, it’s coming, it’s coming
We come against the forces that hinder the people
We bind you in the name of Jesus
All the obstructions, every hindrance against the people from obeying the word of the Lord, we come against it now
Ministering spirits, go forth in the name of Jesus and loose people to do the will of God
Laborers are coming forth
Fire, fire, fire in Jesus’ name
Pastor Paul shared…
As Pastor Folu was praying, it was like as if the Lord was answering right away. As he was praying, I had this, “It’s coming.” And as he was asking for more of the power, I heard, “It is added!”
There is a testimony of a missionary in the first part of last century. He went to Latin America to minister the Gospel. The name of the book is called Unusual Miracles. This man would spend his time praying for protracted periods of time like Pastor Ray mentioned about Seymour. Sometimes he would go out and hide himself in the hollow of a log. He used to see the squirrels and chipmunks come to deposit food in the log but they would not bother him and he wouldn’t bother them. He would spend hours inside that log. Then he would get out of the log and go to minister. People with missing limbs having their limbs restored. People with blind eyes, incurable diseases… this was in the early part of the last century because he spent time in the presence of the Lord. It’s like you spend time with God, God does not allow you to go away empty. There’s a part of Himself, a residue of who He is that accompanies you wherever you go. The Word of God says He lifts up the light of His countenance upon you.
