Why MORNING PRAYER Is Life Changing For Your Walk With GOD!

Welcome to Raise to Deliver podcast with Vladimir Savchuk to episode 26. And today we're going to talk about starting morning prayers, or five reasons to having a morning prayer. Now I understand there's a lot of people that are very different. Some people are night owls, some people are morning people. And I'm a more of a morning person as you probably, if you ever listened to my messages, you probably have kind of heard my mention of that. My pastor is really the one that inspired prayers in the morning, in my personal life. When I was a teenager, I started that very early, an hour before going to school, before going to high school. And that continued all through my high school years. I made an even promise to God, if he gives me a car, I'll start going to morning prayers. And then I got the car. And of course I didn't go to morning prayer until I got pulled over. And so then I repented and started going to morning prayers. And sometime later in my life, the prayer in the morning really took the back seat. And I kind of did not make it a huge priority. And as a result of that, you know, I struggled spiritually. The ministry struggled. I really believe there's a connection to that. And a friend, one friend of mine stayed in my house one time, and he gave me this book. It's not a Christian book. I think it's a self-help book called Morning Miracle or Miracle Morning, something like that, deals pretty much with how a lot of successful people wake up very early in the morning. And so as I was reading that book, honestly, I got provoked to jealousy with the fact that most of people who are leading large companies and who are making great things happen in the world are extremely early people. They wake up early and they're not sleep deprived, but they're just very, you know, conscious about being as productive and as creative in the early times of the morning. And that sparked a desire within me, honestly, to start going back to morning prayer. And step by step, some of you heard the story. We had a church that was renting our facility and this church would come at five o'clock in the morning to have their morning prayer. Now, they were renting our facility. They didn't own the facility. We didn't have morning prayers at that time. And I remember one time I didn't, couldn't sleep at. And so I decided to go to church to pray. And I come to church very early and I see these, you know, elderly people, Spanish, they are playing cassette tapes. At the time they still had like cassette tapes, playing cassette tapes, like some kind of a stereo on the stage and crying to God and praying. And I was very frustrated because I don't remember ever giving them permission to use our church in the mornings. They were only supposed to use our church on Sunday in the evening and that's it. And so I'm standing there, you know, kind of upset because they're there praying and they're there, you know, worshiping God at five in the morning. And at the same time as I'm about to give them a little speech, you know, landlord speech, you know, that, Hey, you guys are not supposed to be doing that. The Lord convicts me and the Lord really started to remind me of how I used to do that. And he said, you know, these people are doing that. And you know, you stop doing that. My house is supposed to be a house of prayer. And you know, you're lazy. That's why you're not doing early prayers in the morning. And man, I got so convicted. I never gave him that speech about them doing it, you know, the wrong way and et cetera. But I was really convicted. And I said, Lord, you know, give me, give me a little bit of time. I'm going to come back to it. And that became honestly kind of a personal prayer revival for me to start coming back to prayers by myself. There was nobody else there. And then we started to bring it to the church and we started to open, you know, every Wednesday for the church to come for prayer. And then we've opened it every day. And now it's been at least I think five years. I honestly lost the count of how many years we have had it already. We're a five o'clock in the morning, Monday through Friday, the church doors open for prayer and different people come and open it. I used to be doing it for a very long time. Now we have other people doing that. And so, and I would say really, that's been the one of the strongest keys to seeing personal revival in my life is through sustaining morning prayer. Now I'm currently reading a book called Teach Us to Pray by Corey Russell. Now I haven't met Corey Russell personally. He's actually coming in a few months to Hungry Gen and I'm really excited to hear him preach, but I've heard of him. And he's a leader of the Apple Room right now. And then he was a leader in the iHub prayer movement. Seems like he's a great man of prayer from what I'm reading and what I'm understanding. And I'm actually going to mention five reasons he gave for morning prayer. I would highly encourage you. This is not, he didn't ask me to do this, but highly encourage you to get this book, buy this book, download this book, teach us to pray. It will really rekindle your prayer life. There's a lot of books on prayer that have been a great blessing in my life, but this is one of them that's been a great blessing. Honestly, it rekindled my passion even for morning prayers, though I come every, you know, every week for prayer and keep my morning prayers, you know, very early. But I'm going to mention five reasons for morning prayers from him. The first one is my prayer life has been formed in the early morning prayer. And honestly, I would agree exactly the same with mine. My prayer life has been fashioned through early morning prayer. My alarm clock goes off at, you know, 445. My coffee machine automatically starts at 440, the time that I'm not fasting. And by five o'clock, you know, I'm in church. And that's been my kind of a lifestyle for many years now. And my prayer life has been established through that. Number two, he mentions early prayer saved me from stupid decisions after 10 p.m. because I've made many stupid decisions after 10 p.m. I couldn't agree more. For you to have an early prayer lifestyle, you're going to have to go to sleep around 10 o'clock. Most of us will make stupid decisions after 10 o'clock. We will have conversations with people we shouldn't have. We'll watch things we shouldn't watch. We will spend time, especially if you're a single person, there's a lot of fornication that can happen, a lot of sin. If you're spending a lot of time on your phone, you can look at things that you should not have been looking. And so if you really make a priority to spend time with God in the morning, you will see how a lot of foolish things that happen after 10 p.m., you will avoid. Number three, early morning prayer has increased the spirit of revelation in my life. I've seen the similar thing in my life where one of the things that I do in my prayer is I also mix prayer with the Word of God. So I read through the scriptures and then I pray the scriptures. A lot of times it starts like this where I come in and I spend, you know, 15, 20 minutes just in prayer and confessing my sin or worship or whatever that's, you know, that's kind of coming from a day before that's on my heart. And then I read the scriptures. I read until God speaks. The moment I read and it hits me like something just kind of, I read until God speaks. I read until something just hits me. The moment God's Word speaks, I stop reading and then I stop praying that thing. I stop praying through the Word of God. And that could take, you know, 30 minutes. It could take 20 minutes. It could take five minutes. And then I go back to reading. And I don't read a lot actually. In fact, last year was one of the first years that I did not finish my one year Bible reading plan in a whole year. I try to digest more of the Bible because a lot of times and I'm all for reading three chapters a day or five chapters a day. That's all good. And I've done it for many, many, many years, but I'm at the point of my life right now. I really want to be fed by God's Word. I don't want to just feed God's Word. I want to be fed by God's Word. And so one of the things that happens is that I try to digest it. I read until He speaks and then I pray through what He speaks. And I write things down of what He speaks for me, not for the church, not for you guys, for me to share with other people, but for me what He speaks. And sometimes I can't get through half of the chapter because the spirit of revelation comes upon a life of prayer. And I've seen this to be so true in my life as Corey Russell shares that spirit of revelation will fall upon a morning prayer, a life of prayer. Number four, early morning prayer recalibrates me to His loving kindness. And that's so true. When you begin to spend time with God, you begin to be recalibrated to His love. You begin to be recalibrated. You know, contrary to popular opinion, where sometimes people feel like, Oh, those people who pray a lot, you know, they don't know that God loves them. And you don't need to pray because you know, everything is already in God and you know, like those people they just seem to earn God's love. That's not true. You can't live a sustainable life of prayer if you're always trying to earn God's love instead of living out of God's love. You might come to prayer because you need to be touched by Him. But I'm going to tell you one thing. When you continuously come, He recalibrates your heart. He renews, resets you toward His love. He begins to remind you of how much He enjoys your presence. Some of you heard of the revelation that I had when, you know, I was coming to get God's presence. And then God gave me this revelation of how He wants my presence and how He doesn't just want me to come so I can get His presence. He wants me to come so that He can get my presence. And that was a mind blowing revelation that changed and pretty much gave a fuel for sustainable morning prayer lifestyle for me. Number five, early morning prayer is a sacrifice. It's true. Early prayer is a sacrifice. It's not easy. It's beating laziness. It's battling with the blankets. And a lot of people, you know, not realizing is that if you want to have a fire on the altar, you got to put a sacrifice. And when Abraham and Cody Russell uses the example of Abraham, when he offered a sacrifice, he did it very early in the morning. Jesus would wake up before anybody and He would go to the silent desert and He would spend time with His father. You know, you see many men in the Bible, women in the Bible, they would go very early in the morning and they will seek the Lord's face. And so if it's not a habit, this is not to impose it on you, but I would like to give you a challenge to develop. It's a habit you can develop. Many great men and women of God have had this habit anchored and it anchors them in their walk with the Lord. I understand there's a lot of people that have this kind of a very fluid relationship with God. You kind of talk with God all the time. And maybe you're like, man, I just like, me and Jesus are just like all the time. And that's good. God bless you. But it's good to have a place and a time that you spend time with the Lord. Before the noise of the world, before appointments, before emails, before notifications, text messages, responsibilities that you anchor yourself in time with God. Whether it's 30 minutes, whether it's 15 minutes, whether it's an hour, how much time you have to give, God will take that time. And remember, for those of you who feel like that, Oh, prayer takes time. Prayer saves time. If you spend time with God regularly, consistently, daily, you will see that God will give you wisdom to maintain the rest, to manage the rest of the time that you maybe wouldn't be able to do it without His help. So I would like to encourage you to make a morning prayer a priority in your life. Make it consistent. If you've never been consistent, I just, in the name of Jesus, break that spirit of inconsistency over your life. And I pray that you will begin to make it consistent. You know, to do that, I would like to encourage you with a few practical things. One of them is in order to consistently have a morning prayer, go to sleep a little bit earlier. Sacrifice doesn't start in the morning prayer when you wake up. It starts with sacrificing movies, TV shows, browsing through the phone, hangouts. And you may say, Oh, but I really want to spend time with people. That's good. You can do that up to nine 30 or 10 o'clock. And then after that you have to get ready to spend time with your King. Your morning prayer doesn't start in the morning. It starts the night before. If you stay up late, I can assure you, you're probably not doing meaningful things. You're doing meaningless stuff. And then you're not energetic and awake to spend time with God. So I would encourage you to go to sleep earlier. That's where your sacrifice starts. Secondly is be reasonable. You know, some people like, Oh, I'm going to wake up at three o'clock in the morning. You know, that's cool and stuff. It's radical, but that's not going to last. So do something that is reasonable. Bible says to give your body to the Lord as a living sacrifice, a reasonable service. With me, I started at six o'clock first. And then, you know, I brought it back to five o'clock and I've been consistent with five o'clock for, you know, for a very long time. And so do something that is not radical, but reasonable and sustainable. And my other encouragement is bring God's word into your prayer instead of your phone. Now, some people read their Bible on their phones and that's fine. But if you are able to bring a physical Bible and leave your phone in the car or somewhere else, it's better to do that. And if something comes to your mind of the things that you need to do, write it down so that you can then take care of it instead of allowing yourself to be distracted and start taking care of that. I get so many ideas during my morning prayer. You have no idea. And so I have a reminder list on my iPad and I just type them in my reminder list. Otherwise, I'm going to try to remember all of those things throughout the day. And some of those ideas are from God. But there also could be a distraction if I don't mentally remove them from my mind and put them on a reminder list. And the last thing is that remove as much of distraction as you can. Now it's not, distraction honestly is always going to be a temptation of morning prayer. But if you can remove as much of that as possible, maybe muting notifications, muting notifications for all your apps, or if you are able to not even bring your phone to prayer and leave it somewhere else in the other room or in the car if you're coming to morning prayer at your church, but remove as much notifications and as much of distraction as you can. Jesus says, if you come to the secret place, close the door behind you and that door speaks of distractions. As you close the door of distraction, God will open the windows of heaven. So I just pray that God will encourage you that this was encouraging to you. If you are not having a morning prayer to start it, if you gave up on it to resume it, and if you are doing a morning prayer to keep on doing it. Thank you for watching this episode or listening to this episode. I hope it was a blessing to you. It would mean a lot to me if you would leave a review on where you're consuming and subscribe to this podcast as I strive to bring you different content every single week and also share it with your friends. And if you don't know yet, all of my content is available for free on my website, vladimirsavcek.com All the sermons, books to download and eBooks, reading plans, and so many other things. As well as I have Vlad's school, which is where I release online courses free of charge to people everywhere. And you can take those courses and go through them at your own pace. 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