 Good morning. Welcome to morning prayer. I want to invite you to stand if you're in the room, if you're at home, whatever you need to do to be able to engage and focus, pull out your Bibles, your journals, and we're gonna begin from the command of Psalm 100 to walk through the gate of thanksgiving into the court of praise and offer the Lord the sacrifice of our worship and praise this morning. And I want to just begin in that way as the worship team leads us. I want to just begin with the offering of our thanksgiving. I know that we say it a lot, but just to emphasize it again, you know, the thanksgiving we are pulling from the reserves, the bank of what God has done in the past. Which is thanksgiving, which then stirs our faith for what he will do in the future. And so we don't typically start the morning in a place of great faith. I don't like pop out of my bed in the morning being like, I'm ready to raise the dead. Like, I'm not filled with that level of faith, you know, in the morning. I have to, I have to take the journey toward great faith. And I like to think of it like in my car, I have two forms of energy. I have the battery and I have the combustion from the gasoline. And the power of the battery is that it's automatic, it's instant. The second I turn the key, the power of the battery is engaged. Now the battery is not strong enough, at least in my car, to get it moving more than like two miles an hour. I need the combustion system of the gas to propel the car forward. And so thanksgiving is like the battery and the combustion system is like faith. And there's a, there's a turning of the key. We don't get in our car and punch the gas and we're going 80 miles an hour. You're like, you don't start in great faith. You start with thanksgiving. And that's the gift of thanksgiving is that you don't have to feel it, but you always have access. You always have the ability to just simply say thank you. You always have something to say thank you for. And you always have the person to say thank you. And so you have instant access to this energy, so to speak of thankfulness, which will get the car going and lead you to the place of great faith. And so, you know, I want to encourage you because we begin in a place of thanksgiving so often it can start turning into a mindless exercise where we're like, okay, we'll let the worship team sing for a minute. I'll just kind of like warm up and then I'll kind of start singing with a worship song. And I want to just encourage you to turn the key to start the engine and offering authentic thanksgiving of the heart, saying, you know, more than just, you know, thank you that you're good. A great phrase. But the biblical command to praise the Lord is not to say the phrase praise the Lord, but it's to get descriptive and detailed about the Lord and who He is and His goodness. And so when the Bible reads praise the Lord, it's not for us to go praise the Lord, PTL. It's for you to get descriptive and say, God, I praise you because you came through this week and you provided for my family or there's health or when I was straying from you years ago, you came and you found me and you met me and you saved me. And so let's just access and begin the process of getting to great faith and just begin singing and speaking out phrases of thanksgiving. Worship team is going to make it super easy because they're leading and there's music and they're singing these phrases of thanksgiving. Let's join their voices and sing. Let's not wait until the first song to utter anything. Right now just use your lips, use your mouth and say phrases of thanksgiving. Let it pour out from your heart. Remove your lips and say thank you. Even online, there's a grace right now that's being released to discover holiness and the worthiness of God. All across this room online, let's posture ourselves right now to receive revelation of who Jesus is, of who the Father is. If you want to pray in the spirit, go ahead and just begin to pray in the spirit and build up your faith to receive that revelation. But all across this room, let's receive and let's posture ourselves for the Holy Spirit to reveal to us who the Father is, who Jesus is. Holy Spirit, we invite you. We say come bring deeper and greater revelation of who God is. We want to see you and know you as you are. That we discover and see him rightly and clearly. And actually ride this till we intercede. Matthew 16, 14. Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi. He asked his disciples, who do you say that I am? The Son of Man. So they said, some say down the Baptist, some Elijah and others Jeremiah, one of the prophets. He said to them, but who do you say I am? Simon Peter said, you are the Christ, the Son of living God. Jesus answered and said to him, blessed are you Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I also say to you, you are Peter and on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of Hades shall not prevail against it. And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, whatever you bind on earth, you will loose on earth, will be loosed in heaven. Then he commanded his disciples that they should tell no one that he was Jesus. The Christ, this is exactly what we are praying over right now. Pastor Lee has an amazing teaching on this. Are you saying Peter isn't the rock on which he will build his church, but the revelation of Jesus Christ is the rock on which Jesus builds his church. You cannot be in his church without it being revealed to you and knowledge is discovered. We find it and discover it for ourselves, but revelation is disclosed. We cannot see Jesus truly without the spirit of wisdom and revelation that Ephesians 117 talks about. And we can get, we're tempted sometimes to just be like, yeah, we know Jesus, you know, and we just, we got to learn a little bit more. We got to get a little bit more information to know more, but I, you know, I'm good. I don't really need revelation. And the rock on which Jesus builds his church is the revelation of Jesus. And it's not a one-time revelation. The four living creatures know that it's not a one-time revelation. Their eyes are continually open to new facets and new dimensions of his character, his nature, his heart, his ways, and it takes the Father to reveal it. And so let's keep meditating on this as we, before we enter into intercession, I'm just believing Jesus is revealing himself. I remember the time he revealed himself as servant to me and came and washed my feet and left me just in a place of being completely undone and shame being washed away. I remember when he revealed himself as bridegroom to me and I felt the fierceness of his jealousy. I remember when he revealed his kindness to me. I remember, I remember when he showed mercy when I didn't deserve it. I remember when he showed me just a glimpse of his resurrected self. And the awe and the tremble that I felt in my heart. Oh Jesus, we want to see you. We're not content with what we know. We're not content with what we've discovered. We're not content with what we have just searched out. Lord, we do search out. But the Pharisees, they searched the scriptures thinking they saw you, but they were completely blinded. And God, let us not be those who are hard-hearted and search for knowledge to be discovered, but that we would have intimacy of the man who wants to disclose himself, reveal himself to us. And so God right now, Lord, stir us from our complacency and our apathy. Stir the stagnant waters of our soul. Jesus, we have to see you. We have to know you. We have to have a new revelation of who you are. God, we can't live with just how we've seen Jesus in the past. It's not enough. Jesus, we have to see you today. You are our daily breath. You are our daily revelation. You are our daily spirit of wisdom and revelation. Without continual revelation and knowledge of you, we die. We perish. We lack knowledge. We lack understanding. So spirit of wisdom and revelation, the knowledge of Jesus, stir our hearts to see Jesus rightly. Just we want to see you on the cross. We want to see you glorified. Mind our soul and our spirit. All of us unite our hearts to fear you, like David said. Unite our emotions, our imagination, our will, our thoughts, our minds, our knowledge, our wisdom. Unite it all to fear you, Jesus. Let's unify and just sing this simple chorus together. There's power when we unify and all pray and sing. With one mind and one mouth, we glorify him together. Every voice, let's sing this together. In the apostolic prayer that Paul prays for the church and Ephesus and Ephesians 1, 17 through 19, that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation, the knowledge of him. That the eyes of your understanding would be enlightened that you may know the hope of his calling. What are the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints and his exceeding greatness of his power toward us? Who believe what we thank you just for the gift of this prayer? God, we thank you for Paul. Lord, we know that Paul did not discover you. In all of his self-discovery, he came away hateful, rageful, killing Christians. But one encounter where you disclosed yourself, the spirit of wisdom and revelation knocked him off his horse, blinded him, and showed him that the eyes of his spiritual understanding would be enlightened. Lord, we know that the apostle who prayed this prayer was not just thinking of a sweet mental picture, but he literally had to be blinded in his natural eyes so that the eyes of his understanding would be enlightened to who you really were. And so, God, we even say, Lord, if in areas where you need to blind our natural eyes because we have gotten so casual that we're riding around thinking that we're serving you and that we know you and our arrogance, but we've missed the nature and character of your heart, Lord, blind our natural eyes to open the eyes of our understanding that we might see you, Jesus, for who you are. Lord, we don't claim, we don't profess to know you in your entirety. Lord, we're not arrogant enough to just assume that we know enough of who you are. Lord, we say, we don't know you at all without your revelation of who you are. And so, would you enlighten the eyes of our understanding? We want to see you like Paul saw you. Lord, when his eyes were opened and he saw your church operating in the presence and power of God, like he saw you when you took him to that cave in Sinai, then you opened his eyes and you yourself taught him the word of God and he came back. And this was the prayer he prayed. God, let that burning desire to see you and to have you revealed that lived in Paul, God, let it not die out with his body 2,000 years ago, but let it live in his body today, God. Let that cry burn in our hearts, God. Let us not ever wake up assuming that we already know you, that we know enough, that we have enough wisdom and revelation. Oh, God, stir the stagnant waters. Like David said, our soul longs for you. We thirst like a deer who longs for water. We know that a deer can't drink once and be satisfied, but that that longing for more water is continual. And so, God, we long to see your son Jesus. We want to see him like Jacob saw him when he wrestled him. God, like Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego saw him as the fourth man in the fire. Like Joshua and Zarubabal saw him when they stood before him. Like Stephen saw him glorified before the Father at the right hand. Like the disciples saw him when they handled him after the cross. When he was resurrected, but not yet glorified. Like John saw him in his fully glorified state, with eyes like flames of fire, with hair like wool, with feet like burnished bronze, and a voice with the sound of many waters. We want to see you like Paul saw you in your revelation, in your glory, in your beauty. We want to see you like Mary of Bethany saw you, even though you hadn't gone to the cross, you were still worthy and you were still the one who deserved all of her love and her affection. We want to see you like the Centurion saw you, where he knew you carried the authority to just speak a word. And he had greater faith than all of Israel, just because he looked at you and he saw your authority. Jesus, we want to see you like that. We want our eyes to be open and we thank you that by your blood you've made a way for us to enter in boldly. And to come before the Father is more than just to have our sins cleansed, but it's to be able to see Jesus rightly and lifted high and glorified. So Father, we echo the prayer of Paul that you gave him, that the Spirit gave utterance to. We're asking that the Father of glory may give the Spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Jesus. And a little bit more, just in our personal life, Jesus, we want to see what you're doing right now today. Jesus, we want to see you in our family. God, we need revelation to see what you're doing in our kids, in our spouse, in our parents. Lord, we, one day without your revelation, and we slip in to looking with the eyes of the flesh, because man looks at the outward, but God, you peer into the heart, and you have more thoughts toward our loved ones than the sands of the sea, and your plans and your thoughts are for them, and you are always at work. You're always walking among the lampstand. You're always holding the seven stars in your hand. And so Jesus, right now, open our eyes. Lord, where there's a spirit of discouragement, where we're looking at our kids and we're seeing behavior, and that's all we can see is negative behavior, and we're not able to get out. Jesus, we know that's not all you see. You see not as man sees, but you see them a thousand years from now, when they're worshiping in glory. You see them 10 years from now, when they've said yes to the grace of God, and so would you open our eyes, God, and our spouses, our husbands, and our wives, Lord, that we would see what you're doing, and that we would call things forth that are not as though they were. Lord, open our eyes right now. Lord, in the unbelievers around us, Lord, that we would not look with natural eyes, but that we would see with your eyes, Jesus, like you saw, when everyone saw an adulterous woman, you saw a righteous woman. When everybody else saw one thing, you saw another. When everyone else said, Rahab the prostitute, you saw Rahab the righteous, and you called things forth that were not as though they were, and so Jesus, would you enlighten the eyes of our understanding right now? We don't see as we ought. Lord, we don't even know how to minister as we ought. We need our eyes open. We need to see the spirit of wisdom and revelation at play in our daily walk, Lord. Help us to see what you're doing in our church. Oh, God, stir us from our apathy and stir us from our negativity, Lord, where we come in to church services and prayer meetings, and our mind is so filled with criticism and negativity that we can't even see what you're doing. We can't even hear the word of God that's being opened up in front of us. Oh, Jesus, blind our natural eyes of criticism so you can open up our eyes to see what you're doing. Lord, in your national church, or where we've maybe been discouraged because it seems like every week a new leader falls, or it seems like somebody else leaves the faith, or there's negative press here and there, and it's heart-wrenching, it's difficult, it's painful. But Jesus, we know you're still walking among the lamb stands. We know you're still holding the seven stars in your hand. We know that you still have a plan and a purpose. We know that the spirit and the bride will say, come with a church that's fully prepared and made ready. We know that Jesus, you will return to a church that is fully established, fully unified, and fully filled with your spirit. But we need you to open our eyes, Lord. We are discouraged in this hour. There's a lot of heaviness and deep darkness, but we know the Lord is arising and He is shining. And so God, we ask in our personal lives, Lord, with our families, with our coworkers, with the lost in our lives, Lord, with our churches, God, will you open up our eyes? We want to see you. It's the things we've exalted above the knowledge of God. I just felt a real grace just in that last prayer cycle through when I was just praying for family members for us to see them differently. I felt like that the Lord was inviting us, the spirit was inviting us in particular to press in through the area of where there's some frustration in our hearts. Maybe it's a kid, spouse, parent, you know. But there's been kind of a lingering frustration that has kind of made its way to discouragement. Maybe it's a kid who has walked away from the faith. Maybe it's just a frustration with a spouse where there's disconnection, or maybe it's difficulty with a parent and relationship. And I just felt right now Jesus just saying, man, I want to give the gift of my eyes and my sight. When we talk about his eyes burning like fire, it's not just that they burn with an ambiguous passion, but they burn with real insight and love and knowledge for the very same people that are in our lives. And sometimes because we love them, they frustrate us. And so Jesus, I just ask right now, God, we want to see our family the way you see. God, we can't look with our natural eyes. We don't trust our natural eyes. But our eyes are deceitful and wicked, just like our hearts. And we only see what we want to see sometimes in our arrogance. And so we need your Holy Spirit to give us the spirit of wisdom and revelation and the knowledge of what Jesus is saying and doing. Lord, I ask right now, even everybody praying in this room and praying online, or that you would highlight a family member and Jesus that you would begin to speak. We know that testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy. We know that the accuser is up in heaven accusing this person. But we know Jesus is at the right hand of the Father and he is the faithful witness who is faithfully speaking and prophesying on their behalf. And so Lord, we don't want to come into alignment with the testimony that Satan is saying up there. We want to come into alignment with the testimony of Jesus. What the Son of God is saying about our loved ones. And Jesus, would you open up our eyes to see in this moment, oh God, we want to dream, like it says in Psalm 126, when you brought us back from captivity, we were like those who dreamed and our tears were turned into laughter. Lord, we ask, we want to reap a harvest that comes from sowing tears in prayer that reaps joy. Lord, I ask for encouragement where there is discouragement. Lord, I specifically ask for parents. We have kids that have walked away from the faith. Lord, I ask, God, what you would come with the comfort of the spirit. Lord, that you would come with the love of the Father. And you know what it's like. You know what it feels like. But Lord, I ask that you would bring comfort and encouragement to stay the course. For some of you, the Lord is speaking that the arrow is going to find the target. It's going to hit homes. It's going to hit homes. Lord, bring us spirit of encouragement. Lord, where discouragement has blinded our eyes. God, we just ask for a tsunami of hope. God, a tsunami of hope to crash over our hearts. Lord, you haven't given us a spirit of fear, love, power and a sound mind. God, we want a mind that is filled with the power and love and the soundness of what the Spirit is saying in the testimony of Jesus. So Lord, open our eyes to see an encouragement. This is the spirit of encouragement this morning. This is how he's strengthening us today. What the Spirit wanted to encourage us with today. You're not done with my family. You're not done in my city. I just saw the servant running to Elisha just panicked. Like, we're done. We're, it's over. There's an army around us and there's two of us. It's, you know, let's, I don't know what we're going to do. We're dead. That's why I'm waking you up. And Elisha's like, take a breath, chill, don't fear. Let's pray for a second. And I'll show you that God's not done in this situation. There's maybe an army surrounding us, but there's an army of angels that are 10 times as powerful that's surrounding that army. And I really felt like that was the Spirit's encouragement today. Where there's discouragement in the right now. Where there's discouragement in what hasn't happened. And I've seen that assignment from the enemy even recently, just in my own life, to bring a discouragement where things aren't yet and haven't happened. And seeds that we think haven't gone deep enough. And I just feel the Lord just saying that seeds are at just the right depth. You can trust me. You can trust me. This isn't the end. You're not done with my family. You're not done with my city. You know, let's get back up and agree with my heart. And then as we leave, I just felt just the Gate of Thanksgiving, it's not a one-way gate. When we leave again, we're going back out. So when we leave the prayer meeting, we're also leaving through the Gate of Thanksgiving again. And so we end in that place of just giving thanks. And sometimes when we feel the burden of the Lord, I can do this. I can leave a prayer meeting and I can feel more discouraged than when I came in because I'm like, oh God, there's so many things wrong. We take those things to the Lord. We lay them at His feet. That's the threshing floor. That's the garden where we say, God, ultimately it's not my will, it's yours. And then I'm going to put it in your hands and I'm just going to obey and I'm going to leave with thankfulness. And so let's do that, God. We just leave this place thankful. Thankful for what you're doing. Thankful for what you're saying. Thankful for what you're speaking. And God, we thank you that the story isn't over. You're not done. Or we thank you that this present discouragement, we're not going to feel this in a thousand years. We're going to just feel the joy and the laughter on the other side. And so we thank you for your voice. We thank you for your spirit. We thank you that if we felt like we did great in this prayer meeting or we felt like we were disengaged the whole time, we thank you that you still love us and you're for us and you were still working and moving whether we sought or not. Just thank you for your spirit. Jesus' name. Amen. Amen. Thanks for joining us in prayer. We'll be back to our morning broadcast and today at noon and 6.30. Have an amazing day.