~Open in prayer~
Icebreaker
• If you had to teach a class on one thing, what would you teach?
• What’s the best advice you’ve ever heard?
• Are you a sunrise, daylight, twilight, or night person and why?
Proverbs 9:1
You need wisdom to build. When I was praying on what to say God told me that last season’s delay is hindering people from this season’s door. Somebody is so affected by the delay of last season, that the door He is trying to open in this season you are not perceiving right. If you don’t let God deal with the disappointment of yesterday, you will miss the opportunity to seize a new day. God spoke to me and said that delay, and the discouragement that comes with it, is putting a demand on your attention. It’s still damaging your direction and effecting, and dictating, your decisions. You got to let it go because not all delay is evil. Danial, for example, had to wait twenty-one days for an answer that God sent to him the moment he prayed because the enemy had interfered in the blessing that God had sent Danial. That is a demonic delay. When God begins to release things into your life, you’ve got an enemy that doesn’t want to see those blessings come to fruition. The devil traffics in the realm of ignorance. As a result, he will step into the realm and create disturbances and create evil delays that will block what God is sending into your life.
This is why we need wisdom because we could rebuke, stop, and outlast the demonic delays. We can outlast what the enemy sends, but not all delays are demonic. Delay is horrible, but cancellation is worse. We can understand that practically when traveling. When you have put everything, you need to get from one place and transition to where you feel you need to be, and the thing gets wiped off, that is worse. Delay sometimes is a tool, or a tactic, to ensure that your pre-appointed take off is not canceled. So, instead of cancelation the Lord will deploy delay that will allow what you were supposed to have in the first place still take place. It’s just going to take place a bit longer from where you are. What delay will do is slow down the process to avert pending danger. Sometimes God will send delay to separate you from people that are trying to bind you to the pain of your past. The Bible said that there ten virgins that were waiting for the bridegroom to come. Five of the virgins were wise and five were not. The Bible says that the bridegroom decided to delay his coming. It doesn’t say that anything caused that delay. It just says that he decided to delay. The harder delay to deal with is when it’s from God. Sometimes God pauses a thing, and you have no one to rebuke.
Sometimes delay comes to test readiness. There is a difference between preparedness and readiness. When the Samaritan woman was radically changed at the well after being ministered to by Jesus, she ran into the city and told everyone to come meet the man that told me everything that I’ve done. The spirit of God began to move in the entire region because that woman prepared that place and said come and see this man. Another trip that Jesus took to Samaria, however, Jesus sends His disciples two by two ahead of Him to go and prepare the city for His coming. The Bible says that the disciples prepared the way, but the people did not receive Him. Why? Because they were preparing based on what it looked like last time. It was easy for people to respond to a woman that five people wanted to marry, but it was hard for them to hear that Christ is coming from two men that were strangers. Revival is not always wrapped in the package that we’re used to, but just because it didn’t look like it did in the last move, doesn’t mean that God is not in it in this move. As a result, you will not be ready if you prepare only on the condition that it looks like it did last time. If your expectation is that every time God blesses you it has to look like it did the last time God blessed you, you will miss the new day that God’s about to bless you in.
• Why is it important to let go of the delay and discouragement of your past season?
• Are all delays from the devil and what are their purposes?
• Will a move of God look the same in your life every time?
2 Kings 4:8-10
Do you have any idea what’s passed your house? Do you have any clue what passed by you during your praise and worship today? Do you have any clue the level of sacredness that you were in today? It’s not that God doesn’t send the answer, it’s that we don’t know when it comes by our house. We are not aware, which is why we need wisdom. The Shunammite woman had a routine in life where she became comfortable with stuff that God sent passing her by. We’ve come to a place in church where what God sends us passes us regularly. There are churches when God will step in and then He’ll just walk by those churches. Why? Because they don’t receive Him the way that He shows up because It’s not in their timing. They’re too busy following their routine, which becomes idols in our minds that we must tear down.
The Shunammite woman got tired of seeing God send her what she needed and watch him walk by. She suggests creating a room for Elijah on her roof so that he could stay with her. We’ve got to build a culture in our lives that attracts the presence of God. Jesus is searching for people that will worship Him in Spirit and in truth. When you decide to praise you will attract God right where you are, whether it’s in a valley, in jail, in a divorce or healing, and whatever you need can be opened in that moment. Your miracle and breakthrough are in the moment of praise. The Bible says that God inhabits the praises of His people. When you praise you create a place that God will rest in. If you magnify His name, He will step into your season and change everything. The Bible says that Elijah would have passed her by if the Shunammite woman did not constrain him. There are some things that you cannot be passive about if you are going to get them at the moment, they’re available. You must take it by force.
As believers and individuals, it is our challenge to tear down old walls to build new structures that can keep what God is sending. Your habitation, which is the world of your habits, is the place you live. You inhabit the world your habits have built. We’ve built habits about Sunday morning, praise, and worship and how preachers should preach, but God has come to tear down that habitation and reconstruct a wall that you can inhabit and what God is sending can inhabit. What walls are you willing to knock down so that God can step in? Because once the Shunammite woman created that room for Elijah, the Bible says he came one day then often then regularly. Even though he came to visit her regularly, he did it temporarily. We get used to the spontaneous and temporary move of God, but God wants you to repent and tear down what has forced Him to just visit you and give Him the space to fully inhabit you.
The Bible says what is man that you are mindful of him, the son of man that you visit him? That word “visit” doesn’t just mean temporarily showing up on His behalf. It means that You put yourself on and in differently than every created being for You have crowned Him with glory and with honor. God’s heart the entire time is for us to build a habitation that He can abide in. Different things, however, challenge us to do this. The Shunammite woman starts to rebuild, and the prophet says go get that woman and ask her what she wants. What can we do for her because she has served us so carefully and his servant tells him that she has no son? The Shunammite woman and her husband had been trying for years to receive a promise (a baby) from God and were perpetually disappointed when they did not get what God told them they would have. I believe the one restriction you’ve got to break today is the rejection you felt in delay. That restriction created a pattern that now made you not just rejected but dejected, and to the promises of God ejected. You can get so tired of hearing God tell you it’s about to happen that you become callous to the next Word that God said to you. Today God said that He is going to heal your inner critic.
Elijah told the Shunammite woman that this time next year she will have a son and she didn’t believe him. He touched a place in her soul that still hadn’t been healed. She had sustained rejection and lack of reception and now she thinks when God speaks, he is not going to do what he said He’s going to do. That doubt and unbelief is what God is saying you need to tear down, and He needs to touch to bring you to that open door. That’s the wall preventing God from moving in more. About this time next year, you’re going to see the thing you have been too afraid to ask for, stopped hoping God for and too afraid to believe for.
• Does God answer our prayers, or do we just not recognize His answer?
• How important and beneficial is praise in our lives and what doors can it open for us?
• Should we be passive in receiving God’s promise in our lives? What do we have to do?
• Does God want us to break down the habits that we have built, which restrict the move of God in our lives, and cause Him to fully inhabit us? How do we do that?
• How crucial is it for you to break the feeling of rejection that you felt from delay? What doors will open once you do?
• What walls is God saying that you need to tear down inside of you so that He can move more in your life and open doors?
Prayer Focus and Requests
Ask your members if they have any prayer requests or praise reports. Encourage one another to stir up your faith and pray BIG prayers this week and expect God to blow your mind with His answers.