~Open in prayer~
Icebreakers
• What is your favorite fall memory?
• How many “Friendsgiving’s” will you be attending?
• Are you traveling for the holidays?
MESSAGE REVIEW
“Shout Amen!” “Lift up a praise unto the Lord!” “Say Hallelujah!” Though we hear these things so often in church that it becomes robotic, we must remember that this is not just church culture. There is a reason for it. Everything God wants in and through us is preceded by a sound! A sound of praise to be precise. Praise is God’s mechanism for breaking pride. Praise should be “foolish”. According to the Merriam Webster dictionary, foolish means 1 “having or showing a lack of good sense, judgement or discretion”; 2 “marked by a loss of composure”. In the Bible, King David’s great praise for the return of the Ark of the Lord was deemed foolish by his wife Michal. Her disdain for his praise resulted in her being barren the rest of her life (2 Samuel 6 :16 -23 ). However, the praise of King Jehoshaphat and his men resulted in his enemies defeating each other in war (2 Chronicles 20:22 -23 ). Praise turns loose what God has placed on the inside of us to be released to the next level. What level does your sound have you on?
LET’S TALK ABOUT IT!
Romans 10:17 says “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.” In the Old Testament everything was done in the “outer, physical and natural”, the New Testament reflected the same in the “inner, invisible and spiritual.”
Read Genesis 1:3;10 -11; 1 6 -18;21;25 There are four things that we need to know about sound in the spiritual and natural realm.
1. The first thing God created was sound! “Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light” (Gen. 1:3 ) Had God not said “Let…” there would be no light. Some things we are waiting for God to do has not happened simply because we have not made a sound yet.
2. When God wants something done, he does not speak to what he wants, he speaks to what holds it and tells it to let it loose (Gen. 1:10-11)! When God wanted to create man, He said” Let us make man in our own image” (Gen. 1:26 – 27). God speaks to our spirit to pull out the future He has placed in us. Our spirit must LET GO to release the next in our lives. Our lives follow the sound that we make like everything follows the sound it makes (jets, trains, sirens, planes, etc.). Our sound can kill or trap us in our darkness, or it can spark life! Though speaking life when everything looks dead can seem ‘foolish’, sound can take you in the direction you want to go. What is your sound regarding your: finances, marriage, family, career, friendships, relationship with Holy Spirt?
3. Every significant power is accompanied by a significant sound! Great power and great sound is synonymous! God inhabits the praises of his people (Ps. 22:3 ) therefore our praise builds the dwelling place for God. You experience a God on the level of praise you give Him. If we give God a small praise, He inhabits a small house; if we give God a great, big praise, He inhabits in a big house. Does your praise provide God a small or big dwelling place?
4. Sound precedes any manifestation! We can create the atmosphere we want with our sound! Read Acts 2:2 -4.
With our sound, we must also remember that there is spiritual warfare occurring. In creation, God created the firmament which is where the prince of air (satan) dwells (Gen 1:6; Eph. 2:2; Rev. 19:20 ). The firmament is the 2nd heaven between the spiritual warfare happening about six inches above our heads (1st heaven) and the abode of God (3rd heaven)! Jesus teaches us to pray “on earth as it is in heaven” meaning from the third heaven to the first which also means whatever we pray for must pass through the second heaven. Read Daniel 10:1 -14.
There are three levels of praise.
1. The praise that silences the enemy.
2. Praise that stills the enemy and can cease all demonic activity against you.
3. Shout- the opportunity to tear your enemy apart piece by piece!
Praise is not a warmup; it is a time to magnify God and assert ourselves in the unseen realm and wreak havoc on our enemy! LET OUT YOUR PRAISE!
Reference Scriptures
Joel 3: 10 “Beat your plowshares into swords. And your [a] pruning hooks into spears; Let the weak say, ‘I am strong.”
Ezekiel 37:4 -7 “Again He said to me, “Prophesy to these bones, and say to them, ‘O dry bones, hear the word of the Lord! 5 Thus says the Lord God t o these bones: “Surely I will cause breath to enter into you, and you shall live. 6 I will put sinews on you and bring flesh upon you, cover you with skin and put breath in you; and you shall live. Then you shall know that I am the Lord. 7 So I prophesied as I was commanded; and as I prophesied, there was a noise, and suddenly a rattling; and the bones came together, bone to bone.”
Joshua 6:5” So the people shouted when the priests blew the trumpets. And it happened when the people heard the sound of the trumpet, and the people shouted with a great shout, that the wall fell down flat. Then the people went up into the city, every man straight before him, and they took the city.”
PRAYER FOCUS & REQUESTS
Ask your members if they have any prayer requests or praise reports. John 11:25-26 25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in Me, though he may die, he shall live. 26 And whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die. Do you believe this? Ask the question to yourself “Do you believe this?” and how can you share the gospel with people who don’t know Jesus?