Anyway, here it is below, including the images i used as slides.
PRAYER PERFUMED WITH PRAISE...
a sermon preached at VFC ; Victoria Fellowship Church
On Mothering Sunday 30 March 2014
Good morning Church!
Let us Pray:
I yield my heart, soul, psyche and spirit to the full control of the Holy Spirit, so that I will be a vessel used to bless your people this morning. And may it be a fragrant offering acceptable to you, to the glory of your name. Amen!
I am grateful to God and delighted for this opportunity to share a few words with you.
When I was first asked to come and share a message with the theme ' prayer perfumed with praise, my immediate reaction was 'what is that!?' I imagine, that you too are asking yourselves what on earth that means. Before I confirmed that I would take up this assignment, I asked for time to think about it and committed it to prayer. To be honest, my initial agenda was to change find a new title for the theme, but The Lord had a different idea, as all my prayers and pondering did not reveal a new theme to me. What was spoken into my heart was to use it as a springboard to share a personal , practical application of both the theme and the bible passage for today.
The word perfume generated a few thoughts in my mind. Firstly in my language Yoruba we have a phrase 'gbo orun' which literally means to ' hear a smell' . Secondly, I am borrowing a definition from my eldest daughter which she coined when she was a little girl, but I think it is quite apt that she said she thought perfume means perfect fumes. This led me to think about what the role of perfume is in a person's life, and I concluded that perfect fumes bring about an enhancement of the atmosphere around the wearer for their own enjoyment and also for the benefit and enjoyment of others. Perfume brings a certain note to the wearer, some of us have a favourite aroma which others can distinguish us by as we walk into a room, the scent wafts in with us.
In the context of our prayers to The Almighty through Christ Jesus, this led me to think about the role of praise in our prayer lives, and how praise brings a beautiful aroma into our communion with our heavenly Father. It made me think how hearing the word of God and ingesting it in a manner that it becomes an intrinsic part of our self talk can introduce a special dimension to our fellowship with our loving Father God.
The Lord hears us saying His own words back to Him, and that is a sweet aroma to His ears, just like the Yoruba description of what it is to perceive a smell that I said earlier.
In my blog, I shared a definition of prayer, which I came to after being part of several bible studies on the subject, and I quote:
Prayer is a conversation with God that communicates with Him in fellowship.
It therefore follows on, that praise can be a sung prayer. The bible says that praising our Father God is what we were created to do, and also when we reach heaven, it is what we will be doing 24/7 into eternity. We will be joyfully in the presence of God. What we are striving to do here on earth should be a pattern after that which God has created us to do. In doing that we know that we will be walking in His purpose for our lives. I believe this is why God made praise so enjoyable. I have observed that praise triggers other good things, like thanksgiving and gratitude.
I went on to read the scripture for the day and was filled with excitement because they are words I have read over and over again, and written notes and commentaries in my journals about. On further reflection, I realise that I have totally absorbed these words into my being, and in retrospect I recognise when I have applied them. That is what happens to the ingested word of God, and how it can be activated to release the promises of God. Just like a drop of perfume is activated by the heat in our bodies to release a beautiful fragrance into the atmosphere around us.
Phillipians 4:6-9 (NIV) says…….
6 Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. 7And the peace of God, which transcends all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things. 9Whatever you have learned or received or heard from me, or seen in me—put it into practice. And the God of peace will be with you.
Lets take a look at this beautiful word of God together and break it down a bit.
 |
| art by Lara |
 |
| art by Lara |
Basically, He is telling us to think about what we are thinking and substitute them with the list in the passage. He has asked us to Pray and bring our Petitions to him, with Thanksgiving, believing and trusting that He will come through for us. He says The outcome of those kinds of thoughts is not fear but peace.
 |
| art by Lara |
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid.
However, I found that I could not receive that peace while still meditating on my anxieties. In fact, I simply took the words 'Do not be anxious' as a command. What happened to me when I took this word of God as a command still leaves me astounded and grateful to this day. In a nutshell, I obeyed the command, this ignited praise in my heart and I chose to love God through obedience to that command in spite of the massive difficulties I was facing. I made joy my choice, and kept gratitude in my heart as a default. I began to think about what I was thinking, and went about changing my self talk. After choosing to meditate on the word instead of my troubles, I received a very strong palpable message that I was a child loved by my Father, God. He said these exact words to me 'Lara, I love you from eternity to eternity' The import of this powerful exchange will become clearer in the context of what I am about to share.
I have lived with acute asthma since I was a child, and had many emergency grade attacks as an adult. My family and myself thought this was bad enough to deal with until I began to have issues with extreme fatigue and muscle weakness. The anxieties in my heart and mind escalated in direct proportion to many un answered questions. I visited doctors over a span of eight to ten years in four different countries, and every where I went, all the tests came back normal and there began a downward spiral in my mind and spirit as each doctor attributed the symptoms to psycho somatic issues. At first I believed them until I became unable to chew properly, swallow, walk, sit up for more than a few seconds at a time. I became disabled and bed ridden, and began to have double vision and rounds of eye problems that made me so sensitive to light that I had to sit indoors with the curtains drawn and put dark glasses on. On top of that, I had serious breathing problems which took me to the emergency room often .There I would be jabbed with hydrocortisone and adrenalin and would be revived.
At a point, I was so frail and weak that my children took over the running of the house and together with my husband became my care givers. Things got so dire, that the threat of imminent death hung over me, and I cried unto The Lord in anger, frustration, fear and desperation. I cried until there were no tears left to cry. Then I resolved that I would fight, to the last breath in my nostrils, I would fight.
I started making affirmations in order to change my self talk. If God was calling me back, so be it, but if He was not, I would keep on fighting. What got me through those times were scriptures, hymns and choruses I had internalised before I was struck down. These I sang repeatedly in my head over and over again, as I resorted to praise as part of my arsenal of weapons against the enemy. Even in the midst of breathing crisis, I would struggle to sing, as well as praying over myself in tongues. I couldn't read because of blurred and double vision, and my bible was too heavy to lift, so I fed on all the scriptures that I had memorised, one of which is Phillipians 4:6-9.
The practical application of this scripture was played out for me in ways that make it possible for me to say that I am now walking in the physical manifestation of my inward confessions , thoughts and spoken words. Praise was a key element in getting me from where I was to where I am now. Those confessions came intrinsically from the word of God, and I found myself in a place of praise at a time when I should have been totally dejected. But let me back track a little to share with you a phenomenon in which God himself enriched , enhanced and perfumed my life with praise.
When I started receiving various songs complete with lyrics and tunes years before, I had no idea that The Lord was preparing me for a time when praise was the main weapon I would use to weather the storm of very trying times. I had no idea that I was about to enter into a season of torment that was generated by an up scaling of health challenges that had been bothering me for over two decades. I don't play any musical instrument, at least I haven't done so since I was a teenager at secondary school. I have a good appreciation of music just like everyone else, so you can imagine my surprise when the songs started dropping into my spirit. With no other tools to record them apart from my singing. I sang them over and over again, such that my family got a bit fed up of hearing me! I went on to write down the lyrics as well, and the repeated singing soon made them part of me.
We used some of them in our family devotion and I used them often in my personal quiet time.
One of the songs downloaded to me by the Holy spirit is titled
' nothing can prevail' and this and other downloaded songs became a declaration that would see me through many tough times.
SONG
Nothing can prevail
Nothing can prevail
Nothing can prevail when you're standing in the Lord
Nothing can prevail
Nothing can prevail
Nothing can prevail when youre standing in the Lord
Great is His love
Higher than the Heavens
His faithfulness reaches to the clouds
Great is His love
Higher than the heavens
His faithfulness reaches to the clouds
I said….. Nothing can prevail
Nothing can prevail
Nothing can prevail when you're standing in the Lord
Nothing can prevail
Nothing can prevail
Nothing can prevail when you're standing in the Lord
 |
| art by Lara |
Ultimately, I can say that what I received was a Godly exchange, and that was because my burdens were lifted, once I acted in obedience to His word. God has been faithful to His word, He has really 'Perfumed my prayer with praise'
Slide 5
To conclude, I will now share another one of the songs downloaded to me way ahead of my season of torment, that has become a victory song. It is titled "Look at me now'
Look at me now
Look at me now
I'm sporting a beautiful crown
The ashes are blown clean away
Look at me in this place
Look at me by His grace
I'm sporting a beautiful crown
He crowns me with love and compassion
Satisfies me with good deeds
My youth is renewed like the eagles
Im soaring high above the world
Sing…
Higher and higher and higher
Higher and higher and higher
I'm soaring high on eagles wings
I'm sporting a beautiful crown.
Thank you!!!!
