The first Wednesday night of this year (1-04-2006), the word-of-the-Lord came unto me saying: “I want My people to return to their first love.” When I shared this with our church, the Lord continued by saying: “Like in the beginning of your walk with Me when you would approach My Word with tears in your eyes and had to wipe them away to read. Or when the pastor or some preacher would say, ‘Turn to such-n-such,’ and your heart would leap with excitement to hear what the scripture and preacher had to say! Not with, ‘Oh, I’ve heard that one before,’ then your mind leaves the service and goes shopping somewhere.”
As I’ve pondered this thought, I’ve been reminded every day of the exercise I used to do over twenty years ago (if you’ve never heard of doing this, it’ll be great for you to start!), that exercise is: take the two prayers in the book of Ephesians Paul prayed for them, and pray them for yourself replacing ‘you’ and ‘your’ with ‘my’ and ‘I’, etc.
I won’t type them in their entirety, but I’ll start you off and then you and the Holy Ghost can take it from there.
The two prayers are found in Ephesians 1:17-23 & 3:14-21. They go something like this: “That the God of my Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, may give to me the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of my understanding being enlightened; that I may know what is the hope of His calling” (that’s 1:17-18a). I’ve italicized the changes.
Chapter three would be the same: “…that He would grant me…that Christ may dwell in my heart” (from vv. 16 & 17).
You can do the same with Colossians 1:9-14: “…that I may be filled with the knowledge of His will.” These are powerful prayers the Spirit of God inspired Paul to pray and record for us. They stir up the spirit of faith and open our hearts and minds to receive directly from God His plans that He has for us (Oh, I better quit before I start preaching!).
In closing, I want to say a little more about having a prophetic voice in this hour. A prophetic voice is simply one that speaks the heart of God on any matter. The under-lying message will always exalt the Lordship of Jesus and it will minister faith to the hearer. We all are instructed to stir up love and good works in each other as we see the Day of Christ approaching. That’s done by the prophetic voice; a word in due season. As we meditate the scriptures, allowing the Word of Christ to dwell in us richly, receiving the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, we all can speak what the Father is saying in this hour and His glory will be released through each one of us! [Now you did it, you made me get to preaching!!]
I dearly love every one of you! You want to shout? Read Psalm 20! In His Love. Mike.