welcome to Raised to deliver podcast with Vladimir Savchuk with 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 um i'm a more of a morning person as you
probably if you ever listen 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 it 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
uh sometime later in my life um it 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 that desire would take 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 um 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
um 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 they're there praying
and they're there um 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 them that speech about
them doing it you know the wrong way and etc 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 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 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 where five o'clock in the morning Monday through Friday the church doors open for prayer
and different people come and open it use 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 um called Teach us to Pray by Cory Russell now i haven't met Cory
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 the leader of the upper room right now and then
he was a leader in the ihop prayer movement seems like he's a great man of prayer from
what i'm reading and what i'm understanding and 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
i 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 um 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 4 :45
my coffee machine automatically starts at 4 40 the time that i'm not fasting and um and by five
o'clock you know i'm in church and that's been my kind of a lifestyle for 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 pm because i've made many stupid decisions after 10 pm
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 will 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 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 pm 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 when i come in and i spend you know 15 20 minutes just in prayer
and confessing my sin or worship or whatever that you know that's kind of coming from a
day before that's on my heart and then i read the scriptures i read 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 God's word speaks i stop reading and then i
start praying that thing i start 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 the one of the first years that i did not finish
my one year bible reading plan in the 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 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 for me to share with 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 Cory 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 all 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
re 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 a it's not easy it's it's beating laziness it's battling with the blankets it's um
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 Cory 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 can make it consistent if you've never
been consistent i just in the name of Jesus break that spirit of consistency 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 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 9 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 gonna wake up at three o'clock in the morning you know
that's cool and stuff it's radical but that's not gonna last so do something that is reasonable the
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
and 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 to 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 vladimirsavchuk.com all the sermons books to
download and ebooks reading plans and so many other things as well as i have vlad school which
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 if this ministry was a blessing to you would you consider
becoming a monthly partner so you can help me to do more what i'm doing and take it even further
for the kingdom's sake thank you for doing that for those of you who are the partners
and who are supporters it means the world to me and remember you will raise to deliver!