 Good morning. Welcome to morning prayer on this beautiful Wednesday morning here in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where we are crying out from the heart of our city to the very heart of God, asking for him to move, interceding, worshiping, exalting him for his holiness and his splendor. He is worthy of our praise. And so that is what we are doing for the next hour. We are coming together in agreement about the worthiness and the holiness of God. And also seeking him for him to continue to move in our midst and continue to do things in our midst, for him to continue to heal and restore and revive us, to truly revive us. This morning, the Lord turned my attention to Psalm 100 as we enter in to his presence. Starting verse one, the psalmist says, make a joyful noise to the Lord all the earth. It's not just make a noise. We're really good at making noise in today's world. We make a lot of noise, but it's make a joyful noise. Let the joy of the Lord that is deep within inside of us well up and come out from us. So make a joyful noise to the Lord. Have some excitement about the Lord. Serve the Lord with gladness. I know personally speaking, it's really easy to attribute the way that we can serve the Lord as duty or as work, but here it's very clear that we can serve the Lord with gladness, with the excitement, with the rejoicing of our heart toward him, with our hearts and our attention pointed at him with gladness for who he is and what he has done. We can serve him with gladness. Come into his presence with singing. Know that the Lord, he is God. It is he who made us and we are his. We are his people and the sheep of his pasture. Here it is, as we know, enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise. Give thanks to him, bless his name. It's really good, we want America, we want to, we want God to bless us and we have these slogans and these saints in America and they're good, they're not bad, but we've kind of turned in the wrong direction because of them and what I mean is we always say, God bless America, yes God bless America, God we need you to bless America, but how about this, America bless God, church bless God, bless him, for the Lord is good. His steadfast love endures forever and his faithfulness to all generations. I want us to focus on entering his gates and coming into his courts with that first verse which was make a joyful noise and serve him with gladness. I want us to actually position our hearts in our attention this morning by serving him with gladness. Psalm 118 verse 24, one of my favorite verses. This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it. Jesus, we come to you, this beautiful day that you have made regardless of where we are, whether we are in Kalamazoo, Michigan, or we are on the West Coast, or wherever we are at, whether we are at home or in this room or at our office, Lord, we come to you this morning, we come to you and we present you with worship, with a joyful noise out of the abundance of our heart, out of the deepest affections of our soul. We come to you with a joyful noise, God, to make a joyful noise for who you are, Lord, and what you have done. And we come to serve you, Lord with gladness. Thank you for this day that you have made. Just begin to thank him for this day that he has made. Whether it's gonna be a good day or bad day, doesn't matter, this is the day that he has made. We get to choose to rejoice and be glad in it. So, Lord, we bless you for this day. We thank you for the breath in our lungs, Lord. We thank you for another day to see your splendoring creation. We thank you for the beautiful sunrise that you gave us this morning, Lord. The majesty of your beauty displayed in the heavens this morning was captivating, Lord. Thank you for this day, Lord. All we thank you for this day, we bless you, Lord. We bless you for you are worthy, you are holy, you are true, righteous. Good morning to serve you with gladness, Lord. You are, this is bad to see you today, Lord. Gates, with thanksgiving, we enter your courts with praise, Lord. We come with the smile on our face reflecting the joy that's in our side of our hearts because of you. Be with gladness, Jesus. It is strong, bring all your burden. I just wanna be with you, Lord, and we know that you just want us to be with you. We just wanna be with you. That we've built up in our mind through various means. I'm going here and being there. Lord, we just wanna be with you. We repent, Lord, for having ate. The grass is greener on the other side. We just wanna be with you. We don't wanna just read from people who wanted to be with you. We wanna be with you. Echo with the psalmist. Rope with the ascribe, what they fled for, what they gave their lives to, what they petitioned for. We don't wanna just read. We just wanna be with you, Jesus. That is our song this morning, our joyful song. It is the gladness that we bring to you this morning. It is what we choose to rejoice in today. We just wanna be with you. God, just for 60 minutes, wanna just be with you all the time. We're not just Sunday mornings. Just wanna be with you all the time on this text and reviving throughout the United States and even around realities of saccharity. As we were singing, I just wanna be with you. The weight of what some of us are going through day in and day out of prodigals and us wanting our prodigal children and our prodigal friends and our prodigal relatives to just be with them just fell like heavy on me. Some of us are travelling great and have been travelling for prodigals in our family and in our lives to return home. And I wanna read from Zechariah 10 verse one and then I wanna skip over because the Lord just highlighted this to me. Starting verse one, this is what we've been reading and praying and petitioning for. It says, ask rain from the Lord. In the season of the spring rain makes the storm clouds and he will give them showers of rain, the vegetation in the field and then skipping over to verse six. I will strengthen the house of Judah. I will save the house of Joseph. Here it is. I will bring them back because I have compassion on them. I want us to be really diligent in our next moments and I want us to continue singing along this cry to the Lord but I wanna pray that prodigals would return back to the lovely dwelling place of God. How lovely is your dwelling place God? Lord, they have tasted and they have seen it. Just like the prodigal son in Luke 15, he knew what was in his father's house. He had been there and he still walked away. Lord, we have family members. We have friends. We have dear loved ones who have walked away. They've walked away. And Lord, we ask for you to rain down on them, showers of repentance, showers of repentance that would lead them to return home. God, that you would bring them back because you have compassion on them. God, I pray that today you would awaken them with showers of compassion, God. Wake them up with showers of compassion to realize how lovely your dwelling place is, Lord. How lovely your dwelling place is, Lord. That better is one day. Better is one day, Lord. Knock them to their senses with showers of praying, God. Clear up the fogginess of their praying, Lord. Just like the prodigal son, son, son said, it's better there. What am I doing here? Here, Lord, I pray that you would awaken prodigals by name, Lord. We just want them to be with you. We want to be with you, but we want them to be for this one thing, Lord, to lead them back home through compassion and with compassion in Jesus' name. Natasha was just singing it. Says, and he being the prodigal son who left home arose and came to his father. But while he was still along, his father saw him and felt compassion and ran and embraced him and kissed him. Right now I want us to begin to actually name people, to ask the Lord, ask and it shall be given. Seek and you shall find. Knock and the door shall be opened. I want us to begin to out loud ask for prodigals by name. Begin to say them out loud. Don't just don't think about them in your head. List them by name. The father is waiting. The father is waiting. Come home, come home. Lord, I ask you for my sister this morning. I say to Sarah, come home. The father is waiting. You have wandered for too long. You have strayed for too long. You have looked for hope in all the wrong places. You have built your life on sandy shores. Come home, sister, come home. Release compassion on my sister God. Would you remove the anger that has riddled her and consumed her God? Soften her heart. Another son from this father's house comes into the picture. Says in verse 27, and the father said to him, your brother has come and your father has killed the fat calf because he has received him back, safe and sound. But it says this of the other son, but he was angry and refused to go in. Lord, right now we lift up to you the prodigals who are still at home, who are full of anger. Who, although they are in the house of the father, they are far from the father because they are so filled with anger toward the father. Lord, I pray that you would break anger off of our angry sons and daughters, our angry loved ones, our angry friends that are keeping them from coming in to your celebration, whose anger is holding them back from your compassion. Lord God, Lord, I pray that you would break anger, the anger of hostility, of divide, of frustration. Lord, would you break anger off of us? Would you break anger off of the prodigals? Who do not know you because their anger is keeping them from coming forward? Would you soften them today? Would your compassion soften them today in Jesus name? Father, we pray for a fresh perspective of who you are. We pray that you restore the images in our mind that we are created in the image of the father, that we are his image bearer. I just feel the Lord highlighting right now that there are people who have shame in their lives and shame is a direct attack at who we are. Not guilt. Guilt is a feeling of something that we've done but shame says you're not worthy. You're never will be good enough and I just wanna cast that off right now because there are some of us who need to give that shame to the father. It's from the enemy and he's trying to distract us from what the father has in store for us. We try to rely on ourselves. We try to say that we can trust in money, that we can trust in luck, that we can trust in our relationships or our own abilities, but God is like, no, look at me. Run to me, come home to me. 1 Peter 2-6 says, C.I.L.A. in Zion, a chosen and precious cornerstone and the one who trusts in him will never be put to shame. There are so many scriptures saying that we trust in the Lord. We will never be put to shame. So Jesus right now in your mighty name we cast off the bondage that shame has given us. Whether it's something that we've done or something that's been done to us, Lord, we lay it at your feet and we say, Lord, come and take it. Lord, we want to remember that we are your image bearer and in you there is no shame. When you look at us, you see the pure, spotless, Lamb of God, Jesus Christ, the cornerstone, the chief architect, the high priest who takes away our sins. You see us as pure. You see us as blameless. You see us as shame-free. So Lord, we give you our shame. We say, Lord, take it. Lord, inhabit our praise. Lord, take the first place in our life. We lay it at your feet. We don't run to it anymore. We run to you as you run to us. As you see us from far off, Lord, we run to you. We meet you. We say, Lord, I want you to take away the darkness, the shame in my heart and replace it with joy. Replace it with your peace that only you can give. And in Jesus' name, I pray these things. We thank you that you came to take us out of the field and bring us to the Father. We thank you. We thank you. Just prophesy this last verse over what we have just cried out for and pleaded for. It was fitting to celebrate and be glad for this your brother was dead and is alive. He was lost and is found. Lord, we prophesy this over the prodigals. Our family members, our children, our sons and our daughters, we begin the celebration now. We begin the celebration now. Lord, rain down. Showers of compassion upon them and return them home in Jesus' name. Amen. Thank you for joining us today. We will be back here in the prayer room at noon and at 6.30. Otherwise, we'll see you on the live stream tomorrow morning. Here in the room, we're gonna continue seeking Jesus by continuing on in devotion. So we have a devotion set set right now. And so if you wanna talk or if you want to meet with anyone, I wanna ask you just to go out the doors and have it in the hallway or go down to match head and enjoy a cup of coffee, but we're gonna continue seeking the Lord for the next hour.