Mike Bickle emphasizes the profound privilege and calling of ministering to the Lord, highlighting its significance in the life of believers. He explains that this ministry is not only a duty but a divine assignment that allows us to experience God's nearness and love. Bickle draws from biblical examples, particularly the sons of Zadok and the Levites, to illustrate the importance of maintaining a sanctuary of worship and prayer. He encourages believers to engage wholeheartedly in worship, intercession, and the study of God's word, as these activities are essential to our identity as priests before God. Ultimately, he calls the church to recognize and commit to this sacred trust of ministering to the Lord.

You can turn in your Bibles to Ezekiel 44 if you want to follow along from your own Bible. Let's pray. Father, we come before you in the name of Jesus and we ask you that you would strengthen our heart. Father, I ask you for living understanding. Lord, I ask you for the revelation of this glorious calling to minister to you as we prepare ourselves next week to make commitments to stand before you and to keep the sanctuary. We thank you in Jesus' name. Amen. Well, I believe that the Holy Spirit is wanting to reveal to the body of Christ the revelation of how valuable ministering to God is to God. God greatly values this occupation and this calling before him. Many in the body of Christ don't think so much about this subject. It's not a topic that is often discussed. As I've researched it, you know, through the internet and through documents, it was surprising how little material, I mean worldwide, that I could find on the subject of ministering to God. But we ask the Lord to strengthen us with understanding of this because as we understand it, then it makes more sense to give our strength and our time and our energy to this glorious occupation. Now I'm asked often why we keep a 24 hour prayer sanctuary or a prayer room, we would call it. It's a worship sanctuary. Why do we keep it going 24-7? And of course, one of the first reasons is because God spoke audibly to us, the audible voice of God back in May 1983, and he said this. And it shocked me. It perplexed me. I didn't know how to make sense of it actually when the Lord first said it. He said, I will establish 24-hour prayer in the spirit of the Tabernacle of David. And of course, we understand the Tabernacle of David to mean with prophetic singers and musicians. And I remember being so perplexed by this surprising statement from heaven as to what our assignment would be as a ministry. Now, every ministry has two primary callings, every ministry, the same two. We are to be engaged in the great commission. It came from the very lips of Jesus. Go make disciples of the nations. The second mandate or calling that every single ministry has is to build the church. It came from the lips of Jesus. I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail. So we all have the same two primary callings, but as an expression of our primary calling, God gives specific assignments to many ministries across the earth and throughout history. And one of our specific assignments, our most important one, as we are committed to see the commission fulfilled and the building of the church is to keep this 24-hour sanctuary of worship and prayer. I mean, it means a lot to God because he emphasized it by speaking audibly to us. Now, I've heard people say, I'd love to have an angel visit or to hear the audible voice of the Lord to receive an assignment. That would be so cool. Well, there's a downside to this because God only sends an angel or speaks audibly because you're going to need that level of communication to withstand the opposition and the resistance that will come eventually due to that assignment. So if an angel visits and says, do this, no, this, you will find much trouble in the future doing that assignment. So you want an angelic visitation. Now, one of the verses that we have looked at over the years that has so many principles involved in it is in Ezekiel chapter 44, verse 15 and 16. Now I'm only going to make one or two, but this thing, this passage is loaded with spiritual principles and we use the language from Ezekiel 44, verse 15 to describe what we're doing in the prayer room, at least part of what we're doing in the prayer room. The Lord said this to Ezekiel. He says, the priests, the sons of Zadok who kept charge of my sanctuary when the children of Israel went astray from me. He says, tell them this, because they kept charge of my sanctuary, they were faithful when the majority were compromising. Tell them that I have a promise, a reward, a blessing for them. They will experience the nearness of God as they minister to me. Now this passage has so many principles that could be developed and that's not really what I want to do right now, but just touch a little of what this passage means. First, we see God's desire to be ministered to. Now this was a term we're going to see in a moment that he first spoke to Moses. He told Moses, tell them that I want them to minister to me. But here in Ezekiel, it's this idea of keeping a sanctuary. What does that mean? That means the work that is involved in maintaining a 24-hour sanctuary, that's what it means to us. Now a lot of the work is done inside the sanctuary with worship teams up on the platform and people in the chairs and the sound teams that all go together to maintaining the work of ministering to the Lord inside the sanctuary. But there's another part of keeping the sanctuary, it's all the support systems that are outside the prayer room that work diligently to provide the environment and the context for that sanctuary to continue. Now keeping charge of the sanctuary involves the work in it and it involves the support systems that are outside of the sanctuary itself. Now what the Lord is honoring is this, the sons of Zadok. Now Zadok was a man who lived in the same time that David did, which was a thousand years BC. Ezekiel is 500 years BC approximately. So we have Ezekiel giving a promise about Zadok's great, great, great, great grandchildren 500 years after Zadok lived. He said there's something about his family line, they had unusual diligence and faithfulness related to keeping the sanctuary and the keeping of the sanctuary was so important to God. And God has a special blessing for them and that is this, they would minister to God and experience his nearness. Now if this verse is understood in its full context, it's talking about the offspring of the sons of Zadok in the millennial kingdom in the age to come. That there would be a generational blessing upon their children because of their faithfulness. But the blessing would be nearness to God. Now those that were faithful in the age to come, they'll have resurrected bodies and and they won't have the same assignment as their natural offspring will have as they're ministering to the Lord with their natural bodies in the millennial kingdom. But we know that the promise, though the Lord did not describe what the promise would be directly to the individuals that were faithful, but we know it has to do with a greater capacity to experience nearness to God in this age as well as in the age to come. That's a big topic. He says this, they were faithful in the context when the majority in Israel were compromising. They went astray from me and to be faithful in context to spiritual opposition and resistance, it requires greater fortitude. Now I know in our little context here, because this verse is about much more than our little thing here in Kansas City, but most of you have somebody in your life back home who is wagging their head saying, why are you wasting your life and your time doing that prayer thing? You know a little bit what it means to endeavor to be diligent in the face of opposition of even the people of God, because the spiritual culture was not fully in agreement with this kind of radical engaging of their life to keep that sanctuary. Well in terms of of our spiritual community, God told us to do this audibly, so we know it's important to God and we know it's going to have obstacles, that's why he spoke audible. So we have, we gird ourself to withstand the obstacles, not just from other people, but just the difficulty of the work itself. But just be encouraged that if the work is difficult for us to keep this 24-hour sanctuary, and it is difficult, I've never done anything in ministry of 35-year ministry that's been so taxing as keeping this sanctuary going. I thought I was changing my ministry focus from pastoring to just sit in the presence of God and enjoy him all day every day for the rest of my life. I thought this is going to be awesome, it was a great surprise, it was far more work than pastoring a church was. It was a divine surprise, but I have no regrets. If I had to do it over again, I would do it over again, but I was surprised by the workload. But I am encouraged by this, if you think our workload is tough, imagine what it was like to keep a sanctuary back in the generation of David a thousand years BC. I mean no sound system, I mean the singers and musicians, they had no sound system, they had no electricity, so there were not lights in the room, they were, it was lit up by lamps, they had no running water, they had no transportation systems, they all had to walk and they lived in houses a lot different than the ones we live. They didn't take showers every day, you do the math. A lot of people came in to do their worship sets, bad hair day, they hadn't had a shower for a few weeks, no air condition when it was 100 degrees out, and I look at that, the work of the sanctuary was singers and musicians, and in addition they offered animal sacrifices in the morning and in the evening. And I look at that and I said, Lord, they, that was old covenant, they didn't have the spirit in the way we have the spirit, and they had so much more difficulty, and the Lord says, but it moved me, their faithfulness to follow through in their own personal obstacles of just the difficulty of doing it, as well as the opposition they undoubtedly had to withstand from the people of God in the nation of Israel. Well, why do we do it? Well, he told us to, and by the audible voice of the Lord, it tells us again how dear it is and important it is to him, but how difficult that we should be braced to press through, not just again the obstacles of others, but our own natural tendency to lethargy and barrenness and dullness. We would have to contend to be faithful long term with this assignment. Now we do it, here's what we do in the sanctuary. We minister to God. Again, this was a revelation, will develop in a moment, that God first gave Moses. We declare his worth. We are a witness in a small way on earth to the worship that goes night and day in heaven. I mean, all the ministry of prayer and worship ministries in the earth are a witness to that, but we're in a very weak and broken way are giving a witness on earth in our frailty and weakness to what goes on around the throne of God. Night and day they minister to him around the throne. Number two, we labor in intercession for the release of the power of God. Now, it's interesting that all four of these things, they are activities we will do forever, even with a resurrected body. With a resurrected body, we will minister to God in the age to come. With a resurrected body, we will still make intercession. I mean, not to drive the devil off the planet because he won't be on the planet, but the power of God and the increase of his kingdom will continue forever and ever, but it will be released by intercession. Jesus lives forever to make intercession. We will never graduate from these four activities. Next, when we're in the prayer room, we have the opportunity to grow in revelation of the word, that we gain insight into his word, his will, his ways, his plan of salvation, and his global purposes. We gain insight into the world. I mean, into the word. Then number four, we grow in intimacy with God. We encounter the beauty and the majesty of God as our father and of the Lord Jesus as our bridegroom God. We touch his heart. We see who we are to him. We see a little bit more of his grandeur and his greatness. Now, some people take these four activities and they pit them against each other, and we don't need to do that. You know, one guy says, I'm really into ministering to God. I don't really care about the intercession. I've had a lot of people over the years say, I'm really into intercession. Why do you guys spend so much time with those kind of syrupy little love songs saying, I love you God, I love you God. I mean, let's get back to the business of doing the war, and let's get back to real practical things. Some people say, you know, it's not the worship. It's not even the releasing of justice and power and the great harvest and the revival, but they're into encountering God in the word. I mean, they could just go hours a day just growing in the knowledge of the word. Other people just like to cry as they touch God and understand who they are to God, but I want to tell you this. We, Jesus, has ordained all four of these, and we will do them forever. And we don't have to put them against one another. All four of them are essential. You don't have to pick what your favorite is, your heart, your liver, or your kidneys. You get to have all of them. And so some folks debate about this like, oh, stop it. Let's do all of these God-valued, God-ordained activities with all of our heart, knowing that in different seasons, one of these may have a greater emphasis in the grace of God to you than the others. And in the season that follows, the emphasis may change. Let's look at Roman numeral 2, Deuteronomy 10, Deuteronomy 10, verse 8 and 9. Moses is talking. He says, at that time, he's now referring back, he's referring back to what happened in the, when they came out of bondage from Egypt, the slavery of Egypt. He's rehearsing the story. He says in verse 8, at that time, the Lord separated the tribe of Levi. Now, this was a surprising revelation to Moses. He says, and here's what the Lord said about the tribe of Levi. They should stand before the Lord to minister to him and to bless his name. Now, one of the primary ways we minister to God is by blessing his name. In the New Testament, we use the word worship a lot more than we use the word ministry to God, but it's actually the same word in most incidences. The word worship and minister to God can be used interchangeably. But God surprises Moses, and he tells him, he says, of the 12 tribes of Israel, there were 12 different tribes, this one tribe of Levi, they have a particular calling, and that is, I'm separating them to minister to me. They are to stand in my presence, and they are to declare to me the glory of who I am. And whatever they discover about me, they are to proclaim it back to me with gratitude and with affection. Now, this might have great, I assume, this greatly surprised Moses, because nobody had ever talked in the scripture about a lifestyle, a vocation, a life calling of ministering to God as the primary thing they do. It was not the only thing they did, but it was one of the primary things that they did. Now, in verse 9, the Lord went and warned Moses, so to speak, or braced him to go tell the tribe of Levi. He goes, tell them this, that here's kind of, at first it will seem like a negative, but it has a positive. They don't have any property inheritance in the land. What that means is, they're still, they've just come out of Egypt, they're 40 years in the desert when this is happening, they're about to enter the land of Israel at the end of the 40 years, and when they go to the land of Israel, the other 11 tribes are all given property for each tribe and family. So each of the families and all the tribe, the 12 tribes, 11 of them received property and that property enhanced their accumulation of wealth as the generations would unfold. But there's only one of the 12, they did not get the same economic opportunity, they didn't get the ownership of land. And so Levi is going, wait a second, wait, that's a distinct disadvantage. This calling you've given us to stand and minister to you, I mean there's a downside economically to this calling. And then the Lord says to Moses, tell them this though, that in a very special way, I myself will be their inheritance. I will make it up to them and tell them in essence, this is my interpretation, they're getting the better deal. It looks like they're not, but when it's all said and done, they will be very glad I gave this, them this assignment. Now in the general sense, the Lord is the inheritance of every believer. But the Lord gives some people ministry assignments like this one, and there's others as well, to minister before God and that very assignment causes you to lose economic opportunities and advancement in other things. And the Lord says, I understand that your obedience to that assignment in the natural has a negative, but know this, the positive is far more glorious than the negative, because though I am the inheritance of all my people, they will experience it in a very near and dear way in their heart. So tell them I myself will be near them. I will be their very inheritance. Let's look at paragraph B. Now we're continuing. They're still the 40 years in the wilderness. They've just come out of Egypt, the whole nation of Israel under Moses, and the Lord is speaking more about this subject of ministering to God. In Ezekiel 28, he tells Moses, take your brother Aaron, your older brother, and take his four sons. And there's this special thing I want you to do with them. Tell them that I've called them, Aaron and his four sons, and all of their children through all the coming generations, I've given them this special assignment. They will minister to me as priests. Okay, Aaron, he has no background in priest training. He has no knowledge this is going to happen. This is a surprise assignment. Verse 3, consecrate him that he would minister to me as a priest. He says it again. Verse 4, make them holy garments that he may minister to me as a priest. Now he actually says it four times in the passage. Tell Aaron he will minister to me as a priest. Again, I imagine Moses saying my brother's going to be a little confused by this calling. He had no anticipation of it. I don't think he knows what to do. And what do you mean minister to you? Because that's what I'm to tell my brother is his future assignment. Well, they figured it all out. But the point I want to make here is we see the emphasis and the value that God places on ministering to God. This is not a small thing to God. The fact that they minister to God around his throne in heaven forever tells you a little bit about how important ministry to God is. But it wasn't enough that God had those around his throne that would minister to him night and day. He wanted an expression of it on the earth and he wanted Aaron and his sons and all of their children to lead in this focus of a lifestyle of ministry to the Lord. Top of page two. Now what does it mean to minister to the Lord? Well, there's several things involved, but the primary thing that it means, we would use the word worship. But sometimes worship, it's kind of, we can lose the real meaning of what worship is. I like this intensely personal phrase that God used, minister to me. Because when I reveal myself to you and it moves your heart and you tell me what you've discovered about me, it actually moves God by how much we are moved by God. I mean, God is touched when us, even in our weakness, we come before him and say, holy is the Lord, worthy is the lamb. It may not move us that deeply, but it does a little bit. The Lord is actually moved by the way that he moves us. He's actually touched when we express the way that he's touched us. There's this dynamic interaction. There's an emotional dimension that I believe is inherent in this phrase, minister to me. Well, Psalm 145 describes the details of ministry to the Lord better than any other passage I know in the Bible. Then I would add 1 Chronicles 16. I would put it right alongside this, but let's look at this real quick. First, David is writing this. King David wrote, verse one, what do we do when we minister to God? I will extol you, my God, I will bless your name forever. We will make much of him. We will declare back to God what we've discovered about God from his word or from observation or the direct teaching of the Holy Spirit. We're going to declare back to God what we see about him. So verse one tells us what we do. Verse two tells us how often we do it every day. I will bless you and I will praise you. And I won't just do it day by day in this age. I will do it forever day by day in the age to come. I have no doubt that David is writing this Psalm to equip and motivate and stir up and fuel the singers and the musicians and the Levites in his generation. Verse three summarizes really what ministry to God is and how it functions. Verse three tells us how to sustain ministry to God. Now this is one of the great statements in King David is writing it here. We find this mentioned four times in the Old Testament, this phrase, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised. His greatness is unsearchable, David would go on to say. It's inexhaustible. We will never, ever understand the fullness of God's greatness. Well this phrase, great is the Lord and greatly to be praised, I believe it summarizes ministry to God as clear as any phrase that I know in the Bible and tells us how to sustain this in our life. Well the simple phrase, great is the Lord, has much to unpack in that one phrase. I mean it's a, it's a library of books could be filled behind that one phrase, great is the Lord. In place of the word great, I like to use the word transcendent. Transcendent is the Lord. Transcendent means more than the best. To be transcendent means more than to be better than everyone else. It means to have infinitely, infinite superiority to everything that exists. It's more than being the best, it's to be of another order, of an entirely different category. God is transcendent in His greatness. His love is infinitely superior to any love that exists. His wisdom, infinitely superior, it is great, it's transcendent. His power, infinitely superior, it is transcendent. Again David mentions here in verse 3, this transcendence of God in all of His attributes is unsearchable, or another phrase you might put, inexhaustible. We will never fully search it out. A million years from now, we will still be searching out with new discoveries of His greatness. I mean what a statement. Now verse 5 gives us more detail on this. Verse 5 really tells us how to, tells us more about great is the Lord. And we understand that worship flows out of a response of revelation as to who God is and to what God does. Meaning when we see who He is and what He has done, which are really two sides of the same coin, who God is is expressed by what He does. Some people set those apart and they go, I'm really into who God is, not so much what He does, that's a, that's an unnecessary division and argument. Because what God does is a perfect expression of who He is and vice versa. But here David says it really clear. I will meditate on the splendor of your greatness, of who you are. And the reason we meditate on it, because we search it out little by little, because it takes engaging our mind and going after it, because we don't automatically see His greatness just at a glance. Meaning to recognize it and to connect with it, we meditate, we study it, we search it out, we go after it. But here's the, here's the relationship. The more we see about Him, the more motivated we are to worship. Because worship is a response to a revelation of who He is. And so the reason this is important in our context, because it's easy in the 24-hourness of what we do. You know the full-time staff, 12 two-hour sessions a week, it's part of our vocation, it's part of our job, it's our occupation. Like the Levites, though we're not Levites, that was Old Testament. But He has given us this assignment to incorporate this as a major part of our vocation. I mean it's what we do as our occupation. We do other things outside of the prayer room, but what we do in the prayer room and supporting the prayer room is dynamic to our assignment in God. But in the 24-hour dimension of it, you know, year by year as they, you know, we've been doing it 13 years and we still have a good number of people that have been with us 12 or 13 years. It's really easy after a couple years to get into the mundaneness of it. The over-familiarity with the prayer room, where we can be in the prayer room fulfilling our commitments but not engaging with God at all. And it's really easy to do because we're broken, weak human beings. I'm not saying that even as a criticism. I'm saying that as an observation in my own life, as well as as a spiritual family, that that is one of the obstacles we have to resist constantly. Our natural dullness and over-familiarity with the prayer room and forgetting what we're to do in that prayer room and that being minister to God. And so you can be up on this on the platform, a singer, musician, know all the language, be a musician, and actually never ever interact with God while on the platform. But here's the problem, and I know it because I've experienced it. I've had times of brightness in God and dullness in God in these 13 years and I've had to sign back up to minister to God over and over. I have to do that because I easily drift from it and get captured in the work of the missions base and I lose sight of the core reality of ministering to God. So I have to sign back up all the time. I have to do this. But here's the issue I'm addressing. If we're not actually growing in revelation of God in our private times where we open the word, whether we're in the prayer room or home or somewhere else, we're growing in the word. And if we're not actually talking to God while we're in the prayer room, that prayer room becomes unbearable. It becomes a burden that we try to escape. I talk to people all the time. It's not the majority, but there's always about 10 percent. And I understand this because I've been part of that 10 percent a few times. But there's always about 10 percent any given year. It's always different group that is trying to find a way out of doing the prayer room so much. Like, you know, a few here and there in the worship teams. Can we do less sets? I don't want to do so many sets. I get it. Or different ones in the departments. Can we do less in the prayer room? I get it. Here's what I get because I've done it. They're in the room, but they've lost sight of why they're in the room and they're not talking to God while they're in the room. So they're disconnected, but they're fulfilling their obligation timewise on the platform or in the room. Therefore, the prayer room becomes a burden to them. The answer isn't to do less hours and to change our occupation that God called us with. The answer, verse five, is to get a greater revelation of who he is. Because when I see a little bit more about him, they're not sustainable to talk to him about who he is. Well, paragraph C, let's read this. To minister to God includes worshiping him. It includes meditating on him. I've just described it. It includes interceding or praying for the breakthrough of God. Look at Joel chapter two. That the priest are those who minister to the Lord. They are weeping between the porch and the altar. Weeping, meaning they're interceding for the breakthrough of the favor and the power of God. So crying out to God in a time of calamity that his power and favor would break in. This is intercession. This is an expression of ministry to God. Now it's good to know that all the work in the prayer room and the work outside the prayer room that supports the prayer room, the shuttles, the accounting, the IT department, the media team, so many different ministries, they are all in the Old Testament sense considered part of keeping the sanctuary and they're all considered part of ministering to God. But those that are in the support systems, you minister to the Lord and keep the sanctuary by driving the shuttles, etc. The maintenance team, the security team, I mean I could go on and on. But you also keep the sanctuary by sitting in the room and talking to God directly. So you keep it in two cents. And most of us keep the sanctuary in the room and we have support work or outreach work we do outside of the room. Let's look at paragraph D. Now David had an unusual extravagant response to praising God in a great way. Because great is the Lord greatly to be praised. What that mean is, because David wrote that, to greatly praise God means that we use the best of our strength. We use the best of our strength to offer God praise individually and corporately. We put a lot of money in it. We put a lot of effort in it. We seek to have excellence. Our worship teams practice and train. Our Bible teachers study and prepare. I mean all of the excellence and the wholeheartedness, all of that is involved in praising God greatly. Praising God with all of our strength. We're not trying to get by with something like, well we'll praise you a little bit and we'll get back to you later. We want him praised to the greatest measure that we can with the strength that we have. Our time, our energy, our talents, our money. We want him praised at the greatest level that our strength can afford. That's what David said. Well David put it into action. Because here in 1 Chronicles 16, he appointed Levites. Well he didn't appoint just a few. He paid over 8,000 full-time Levites to keep that sanctuary. I mean that was intense. I can imagine David going to the other leaders of the nation after he had the revelation. He comes in. He says, I got a new revelation. We're gonna pay the Levites. They're gonna minister before the Ark of the Covenant. Now the Ark of the Covenant was a rectangle, a rectangular box, a little bit bigger than this pulpit actually, quite small, that was covered in gold. It was in the Holy of Holies and the glory of God rested on it. And it represented on earth the throne of God in heaven. So when David had them minister before that rectangular little box, he understood and they understood they were before the throne of God and they were ministering to God. Now the three things David had them do was commemorate. They were to remember. That's I think a better word is the word remember. God's works. Number two, they were to thank Him for them. And number three, they were to praise. They were to declare the majesty and the grandeur and the glory of who God is. They were to do those three things. But verse 37, they were to do it regularly every day as their full-time occupation. First Chronicles 6.32, they were to add music to their praise and their declaration about God. Now here's what David said. He said, they served in their office according to their order. Now that's a very, those are two very key phrases. David established under the Holy Spirit's direction, under God's guidance, an office of the full-time singer and musician and the gatekeepers who supported the sanctuary. And he established a new order in the kingdom of God in Israel, his generation. I mean a new kingdom order was identified and validated and recognized by the whole nation. So there was an office, there was a dignified, God-ordained, God-commanded office of the full-time singer musician and it was to fulfill a new order in the kingdom that God revealed to David. Now David required that this happen because he said God commanded him to do this. And he commanded him to tell everybody after him, you must do this. Second Chronicles 29 verse 25, I don't have that on the notes, God commanded David to command Israel for the next thousand years. Because remember David's about a thousand year BC, right up to the time of Christ, Israel was under this divine command to keep the office and the order of the full-time singer musician as well as others that participated in keeping the sanctuary. I mean that's an amazing reality because they were to minister to God. Now sometimes, some young people will join us and I appreciate this, they want to join because they love good music. They're musicians and they want to be in an environment for their music creativity to increase and this is a good environment. You'll get lots of practice and a lot of chance to work that muscle. But there's more than good music and growing in creativity and skill. That's good, I like that. But there's more. We're called not just to have good music, cool people and good coffee next door at the coffee shop. We are actually called to minister to God, that's the point. David could have said to these new ones that had this new occupation, because this was a new concept. Full-time singers, this was a new idea. He would tell them, don't forget it's not mostly about growing in your instrument, making new music, that's good. It's mostly about the person that we're talking to in the sanctuary. Paragraph E, now we understand that ministry to God was not just an Old Testament concept, it's a New Testament concept as well. Paul the apostle and Barnabas and the other leaders, Acts 13, they were ministering to the Lord, which means in the New Testament we say worship and prayer. They were worshiping, magnifying God with fasting, it's called ministry to the Lord. This is the context that launched the great mission movement in church history. Because in Acts 13, when the Spirit said, set Barnabas and Saul, which you know is Paul the apostle, Saul was his name before he was converted, and then after he got converted he changed his name to Paul, set them apart for the work. This is more than just a ministry outreach, the entire missions movement in church history began right here. Here's my point, ministry to God is the context that will most effectively launch and sustain the missions movement. That's the message that I believe the Spirit intends that we understand by reading Acts 13. In Acts chapter 6, the apostles said they had to draw back from some of the responsibilities they were engaged in, good ministry responsibilities, I mean good ones, because they were to be more continually focused on ministering to the Lord, called prayer and ministry of the work. There was a divine adjustment, correction of the apostolic team. They were too engaged in other necessary ministries and the Lord was saying to them in Acts 6, reconsider, recalibrate and understand. I called you to prayer continual, that in the Old Testament was called ministry to the Lord. They all understood those passages. Now paragraph F, 1 Peter 2 verse 9, after the resurrection of Jesus, after he raises from the dead, we are now every born-again believer is now a part of the priesthood. Every single one of us, we have a new identity the day we're born again. We are priests. What that means is we have the awesome privilege, but we have the responsibility to minister to God and then to represent him well. That's what being a priest means. It's more than that, but that's just a good kind of summary. We have the privilege of ministering to God as priests because the priesthood that Peter was talking about, its frame of reference, was the Old Testament priesthood and they were mandated to minister to God before anything else, but it's more than that. We represent God well. We are representatives of him. Now here's the point I'm making. Every believer, not just house of prayer full-time staff people around the world, and there's houses of prayer springing up so fast around the world, and so many of them are developing this idea of the full-time singer-musician intercessor. I mean, it's a God thing. It's taking root worldwide. Multitudes are being stirred and gripped by this reality of the full-time singer-musician intercessor being established in this generation, but you don't have to be one of those to be a priest and to have your primary call to minister to God. God calls most people in the kingdom to the marketplace or their primary assignments in their home. Not very many are called to be on a quote house of prayer staff, but we are all called to minister to the Lord and to represent him well. Now, this is foundational to our identity and to our life calling, but we look at prayer and worship and we say, no, we know it's biblical. I mean, it's in the Bible clearly. Jesus did it a lot. It's undeniable, but in this kind of Western culture of productivity and efficiency, I mean, how practical is it? I mean, we got a business, we got problems, we got troubles to fix, and I mean, let's be realistic, and that's a Western kind of pragmatic approach to this awesome eternal identity we have. It is the most foundational reason we exist and why we're born again to be part of God's family as the bride of Christ and the children of God and to function before him as priests and then to go forth in partnership with him and to represent and release his works into the earth. Now, we do that in the marketplace. We do that in our homes to release his works into the earth, but this idea of ministering to God is lost to many people. They don't even think about that. They try to squeeze in a little prayer and worship in the course of a week. If the week is not too busy, they'll put some in because they don't have the revelation of their fundamental identity is to be a priest, and that is actually their number one calling in this age and the age to come. We need revelation of ministering to God, how valuable and central it is to God's heart and to his kingdom purposes in this age and the age to come. I mean, it takes it literally takes revelation of what ministry to God is to see how valuable it is to God and how central it is to his work and how foundational it is to our identity as believers. You don't have to be on an IHOP of a house of prayer staff to do ministry to the Lord, but we don't just throw a little bit in if we get a little time. Rather, we go the other way. We turn down opportunities to increase our own sphere because we're not going to take our ministry to God time and just develop more opportunities for our life. We're actually going to live with some restraints because we get how critical this is to God, his kingdom, and to our identity as his people. Now look at Isaiah 56, that this is a main house of prayer verse. The foreigners, that would be Gentiles, most of us in this room were Gentiles, who joined themselves to the Lord, that means they're born again. Now look at the two ways that Isaiah describes the people joined to God or the born-again Gentile. They minister to God and they love God's name. Those are the two most fundamental descriptions as to who we are of the people of God. We minister to God and we love his name and this is the foundational identity, verse 7, of the house of prayer. I will go on and develop that we know the verse. Let's look at page 3. God is love. That is the nature of God, is love. Now paragraph 8, and we're not going to go through much more of this, but worship is an end in itself. I mean God is worthy of our most extravagant continual declarations of his greatness. And God is, but it's more than just that God is worthy. It doesn't stop there, but that's an end in itself. If it did stop there, that would be good enough. But because of the nature of who God is, he is love. He is a, he is an eternal fountain of love and desire. That's his nature. He's the consummate eternal generous love in his personality. Here's my point. When we minister to God, because he's not just a stoic God who has all power, but he's the most relational being in existence. He's the most loving being. Beloved, he is a really good communicator. He is the most expressive being in existence. I mean just look at creation and see his creativity in expression. Here's my point. We go before a God with that kind of personality and we say worthy is the Lord. I tell you when we touch love, love responds in love and awakens more love in us. We cannot touch that consuming bonfire of love without it marking us with love. And we can't go before him with adoration and love and say worthy and to offer our love without it moving he who is love himself. God loves love. God is moved by love. My point being that as we minister to the Lord, though it is worthy in itself, end of story, end of statement, it never stops there. Because when we give love to the one who is love, he responds in love in his creative expressive personality. And I tell you it just goes on and on and on. Romans number four, John four, Jesus says this. He talks about God's desire to be ministered to because remember many places, not everyone, the word worship and ministry to God can be interchangeable words. He declares the father is seeking to be worshiped. The father wants to be worshiped. He wants you to worship him. He wants this. Now again, it happens in heaven from ages past and we'll go on for eternity future. It will, the earth will be filled with this in the age to come, but at the very core of the kingdom is the God who seeks to be worshiped. Now there's several reasons why he's not a narcissist. I assure you of that. God just doesn't need more affirmation to feel better about himself. That's not what's going on. I don't want to go into the several things I believe are why God declares this besides the glory of who he is demands a response of wholehearted adoration. But Jesus gives us this revelation. The father is seeking this. Now what does the God who has everything, what does he seek for? You have everything. What do you want? I mean, you're all powerful. You can have everything you want, except for one thing. There's one thing he doesn't have. That is the voluntary love of your heart. And by the nature and definition of love, he won't take that from you, but he will wait till you offer it to him voluntarily. He seeks for the one thing he does not have, and that is all of your love. Nobody else can give God all of your love. Only you can do that. And he waits and he seeks and being loved, he would say to us this deeply, this is of deep value to me. And again, the very glory of who he is provokes this kind of response anyway. But Jesus went on to say, he said, those that worship, they need to worship in spirit. And you can read this on your own. Here's my point. We need to engage our spirit when we worship. It is easy to be involved in this ministry in the prayer room on the stage or in the chairs in the prayer room in a professional way. Meaning we can learn the language, learn the music, even say the prayers, know the language of prayer, and not actually interact with God from our spirit. To interact with God in a personal way. And if we do that again, the prayer room is a burden. If we're logging time in a dutiful way and we're not interacting. But Jesus said, I want those that worship me to do it. I want them engaged. I encourage the bass players and the keyboard, the drummers talk to God, whisper the sentences to God. Don't just play the music. Don't just do the job, but actually minister to God on the platform. Yes, with your music, but with your, but with your spirit engaged as well. Now it takes effort to exert our mind. That to me is one of the great sacrifices of love. I mean, the great statements of love. We come in, our mind is tired. We're prone to distraction. We got a hundred things going on and we stop all of the, the, the scattered thinking and we take the reins of our mind and it takes effort to do this, but it is an expression of love. And we focus on the revelation four and five throne of God and him who sits upon the throne. Now I found a little secret is that when I learned this years ago, somebody told me and I followed it and it worked that when my mind is distracted, which is prone to distraction, all human minds are, everybody's art. So people go, I have a real problem with that. I go, the human race does every human being does. The only person not prone to distraction was Jesus. Every human being, every servant of God's prone to distraction. So don't kind of think you got a worse deal than the other guy. Now you can make a worse case out of it by feeding that. But here's my point. If you will even whisper, if you will even slightly utter the phrases to God, your mind will follow your words. I used to study in the library all the time and my mind would be so distracted. I want to pray some and meditate. And then just the simplest whisper that the guy across the table couldn't even hear me. Jesus, my mind would follow my whisper. And I want to encourage the people up here to whisper the phrases that the singers are singing. I encourage the people in the chair and I've, I've said this for 13 years, that about every third or fourth phrase that the intercessors pray on the microphone, Lord, release your power. Just say the phrase, Lord, release your power about every third or fourth, fourth phrase. Say it. I mean, you can't say every phrase because the guy's talking too fast, but every third or fourth phrase say it. And when the worship song is going, you don't have to sing every word, but speak some of the words. And I tell you, your mind will follow your words. Now, last point I want to make here. Jesus said the father is seeking such to worship him. The whole point of the IHOP ministry at the center is that we would worship him. Now, one of my big values I said on day one, I mean, 13 years ago, I began to say it and I'll say it like a broken record by the grace of God. I go, we don't want a worship sanctuary that people draw attention to themselves. The father is seeking people who worship from their spirit, meaning they actually say the words to him, but he wants them to worship him. He doesn't want him in the sanctuary to get people to notice them. We want people to notice God, not us. So I've said for 13 years, I say it all the time. I said, I want no antics on the platform. We're not looking for Christian rock stars. That's not what we're after. We're looking for worship teams that lead people to God. We don't lead people to you. And I say 13 years later, I am very blessed and pleased as a spiritual leader at the high quality of this value that our worship teams uphold. I said, you can get your own little signature moves and do this and that and be like those other teams over there, but you can't do it here. We're not interested in you getting a little following. We're interested in a sanctuary that's focused on him. But again, I'm talking about a 99.9% success rate by the grace of God, 98.9%, something like that, a high success rate of people buying it. And we've said the same thing for 13 years in the congregation. The goal in the congregation is to talk to him, not to draw attention to yourself. And we are quite good about that. There's always that one guy and that one gal, but 99% really buy this. And when the music is going, you can jump and shout, but here's what I urge you to do. Talk to him, shout to him. Don't shout. So your friend will high five you because you shouted louder than they shouted. Talk to him. Don't try to get the attention of the people next to you to show them how zealous you are. Show God what he means to you. Talk to him. Jump before him. Not when everybody's sitting down, then you jump. So everybody sees you jump. Not when everybody's quiet, then you shout. So everybody knows you shouted. Talk to him. And so in the sanctuary, on the stage, in the chairs, I tell you the Lord has blessed us and I believe the Spirit's pleased by that, that we have a value of which Jesus said it, my Father is seeking people that will worship Him. He is the centerpiece. Or we could say Jesus is the centerpiece. He is the full expression of what the Father's like. And so we don't need to separate that issue. But what it is, it's all about Him. It's not about us. But more than that, I want people to come to worship services and actually talk to God, not just work up a sweat, burn off a few calories, and leave unconnected. Unconnected. It takes effort to connect our spirit. We have to lock in and focus to do that, but that's who we are. Whether we're sitting in the chair at IHOP, whether at a conference and it's real fun and exuberant, we want to always be talking to Him and not trying to make a point to our neighbor about how zealous we are. Amen? Let's stand. Well, next week we are going to be presenting our sacred trust. Again, some people are committing to one week, one prayer meeting a week, others 12 prayer meetings a week. And if you go more than 12, only put the 12 that you consider sacred on your sacred trust form. And we're coming to God saying, Lord, we don't know why you gave us this assignment, but you did. That's your business. You called us here. As long as we're here, we're going to engage at whatever level we can. And you don't have to be on the staff to do that. Well, I've seen this over the years. People are on the staff, then they're not on the staff, they get an assignment in the workplace, then they don't come to the prayer room ever at all. They go, well, I'm not on the staff no more. I go, wait, you're called to minister to God. Now, you can do it at home in your prayer closet for sure, but our assignment is still to minister to God, even corporately together. I go, don't wait until you're on staff again some year down the road. Continue to engage a lesser amount of time, but come and join in to this mandate that he's called us to minister to him. So I want us, just as Matt leads us here for a few moments, I want you just to be talking to the Lord saying, Lord, I want to re-sign up to minister to you. I want to talk to you. I want to see who I am to you. Close your eyes for just a moment and just talk to him. Lord, we say yes to this calling.