TCA Mon10Jun24 - Look up to Him - Ps Josie Sithole

The speaker encourages listeners to pray in the morning and watch for God's response. They highlight the importance of giving ourselves time to be quiet and listen to God after praying. The speaker emphasizes the need to have a posture of expectation and to expect God to act in our lives. They also mention the example of Jesus who would rise early in the morning to pray. The speaker encourages listeners to see morning prayer as a gift and a sacrifice of time to God. They emphasize the importance of giving God the first hour of the day and expecting Him to intervene in our lives throughout the day. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah Good morning. Lift your voice and praise the Lord. I request that we open our Bibles, those of us who have Bibles, from the book of Psalm chapter 5 verse 3. Psalm 5 verse 3. And whatever. I have it in the King James, but I think any translation. Verse 3 says, my voice shall you hear in the morning. Oh Lord, in the morning, I will direct my prayer unto you and I will look up. Psalm translation says, and I will watch. May God bless the reading of his holy word. The psalmist says to God, you will hear my voice in the morning. In other words, before I engage and talk to anyone, before I start my day, you will hear my voice. You will be the first person I speak to in the morning. And he says, you will hear my voice and then he says, I will direct my prayer to you and then I will watch or I will look up. In other words, whatever things that we are facing on any day, when we wake up and direct our prayers to God. And then afterwards we watch. Sometimes the problem with us is we do pray about issues in our lives, but afterwards we don't watch. We want to help God or we want to deal with the people that are a problem to us or want to deal with the problems ourselves. And yet when we ask God to, when we present a thing to God, we need to leave it with God and watch. That is the act of faith. To say, I have presented my case to God. I will stand and watch to see what he will do, to see how he will deal with the matter. So as we start the day and as we pray in the morning, as we direct our prayer unto God, let us do the last thing of standing and looking up. In other words, you are looking up to God. You are watching to see how God will deal with whatever it is that you are praying about. It is an act of expectation. It is an act of saying, I know I have prayed. I know God heard me. Therefore, I will wait to see how God will answer this one. So when we do that, when we pray, you know sometimes even with our prayer, we need to give ourselves time. You pray, you know sometimes we want to be the only ones that are talking. You come to God, you start talking to him, you talk, you talk, you talk, you talk. When you say, Amen, you just jump out and leave. We don't give God that prayer. We don't pray and then watch. We don't pray and then give ourselves a few more moments in his presence to be quiet and listen to what he says. Some of us, we end up not knowing how God speaks to us except for maybe the Word of God and maybe when it is preached or maybe when we read the Word. But when we have that habit of speaking to God with expectation, you end up developing a language between you and God. And you know when God has spoken, you know how it feels. Sometimes you hear people say, the Lord said to me, the Lord said to me. And you realize that you don't have that. You don't have, you can't say really God said this to you. Because sometimes when we come before God, we pray, we pray, we pray, we talk to him, we give him our problems, we give him our concerns or we come, we praise him or we come, we honor him. But afterwards, we don't give ourselves time before him. It is time sometimes in the morning to say, let me pray to God and at the same time, let me give myself some time. Let me just watch. Let me be silent before him and look up to him to hear what he will say. But the watching does not only end up with us sitting and being quiet before God. But it is a posture of our heart the whole day to say, I have prayed, my day is in the hand of God, and I'm expecting God to intervene in everything I do. I'm expecting God to guide me in everything I do. I'm expecting God to give me wisdom to deal with everything that I'll be facing in the day. So when we say, I'm praying to God, and then I am going to watch or I'm praying to God, and I'm looking up to him. In other words, when we pray, we also have to expect him to act. It doesn't help to talk to God, you know, even with our human friends and family. You can't talk to somebody and then the next thing you just move away without hearing what they are saying to you, without hearing or listening or expecting to see the results of what you just said to them. So even with God, let us learn to, everything that we pray about, let us learn to watch God, watch him to see what he will do. And one other reason that makes us not to sit or to wait or to watch is because we pray prayers that we don't even, you don't even remember what you prayed about last week or even yesterday. Because sometimes we go to God and we just repeat words that have no meaning even to us. But if we know what we are praying to God about with expectation, you will be able to watch to see what God is going to do with that situation. If you were praising God, yes, it is okay. Because our prayers are not always asking and asking and complaining. But our prayers, sometimes you come to God with thanksgiving. Even then, it is important to listen to what God is saying or to watch to see what God will do with that situation. Maybe he will add more, maybe he will guide you differently to get another way of doing whatever. It is important indeed to give ourselves time. And I like the fact that the psalmist is saying, in the morning, I will direct my prayer to you. We see Jesus also in the book of Mark chapter 1 verse 35. He was, Jesus was a man of prayer. He prayed to a point where even his disciples came and said, teach us how to pray. Teach us how to pray. And he taught them how to pray. But apart from teaching them the words, he lived the lifestyle of prayer. Now, he would rise in the morning, before daylight, going out into a solitary place and prayed. It shows that Jesus, even though he was God, even though he knew he was the son of God, what he would do was to rise up in the morning and pray to God first, before he does anything. He would go and pray. And many times, he would give himself time to pray overnight. He would pray all night through. Sometimes, if he didn't pray all night through, he would make sure that he wakes up early in the morning and pray. So, as children of God, we have a good example of Christ when it comes to prayer. Especially early morning prayer. Sometimes, we can look at early morning prayer as a gift. You know, in the Old Testament, which is the shadow of the New Testament, which is the shadow of what God would fulfill in the New Testament. There used to be what they call the morning sacrifice. In other words, the priests would come before God, and the people would go, maybe giving themselves, coming before God, and the priest would stand on behalf of the people in the morning. And give and come before God on behalf of the people. So, that early morning sacrifice, when we come before God in the morning, we are saying to him, I am sacrificing the time that you have given me this day. I am giving the first hour or the first whatever time that you give to God. You are saying, this is my sacrifice to you. This is my offering to you. You give me 24 hours in a day. I want to give you one hour in the morning. Maybe, if possible, you can say, I will give you another hour in the evening. But everything that starts, that's why God has what he calls the first fruit. Everything that is starting, everything that is first, when we give it to God, God realizes that you take, you honor him. It is an honor for us to give him the first things in our lives. That's why he said, the firstborn is mine in the Old Testament again. And he also said, any animal that opens the womb first, it is mine. So, they would take the firstborn of their oxen, they would take the firstborn of their goats and their sheep and take it to God to say, this is yours. So, even when we come in the morning and say, Lord, my first activity, before I engage, I'm giving it to you. It is an offering to you. It helps us and it makes God realize that indeed, when we say he is our God, indeed, he is our first. This is it in our activity, in how we treat him. That before we engage in anything, the first hour of our day, when we wake up, we give it to him. So, as we are going to be praying, I urge you to make the morning prayer, whether you are at home or you are wherever, give yourself time every morning to pray before God and then watch to see what he will do with your day. Give yourself time to pray to God and then look up to him. You know, looking up to God, it is a looking up of expectation. You are expecting God to do what you prayed about. You know, sometimes when we pray, we don't have that heart of expectation. Sometimes even when God answers your prayer, you don't realize that it is an answer to prayer because you were not expecting. You are not living with expectation. It is good to expect God to do things for us. Yes, sometimes he will use people. Yes, sometimes he will come using ways we don't expect. But when we expect him to answer, we know that he is a God who is able to do things however and in whatever way that he can because he is God. I want us to take time to pray before God. To pray and really give God everything that we have to set before him and then watch him the whole day. Look up to him the whole day. Expect him to intervene in your affairs the whole day. Expect him to direct your path the whole day. Expect him to give you the patience that you need, to give you the wisdom that you need, to give you anything that you need in your daily activity. If you are at work, you pray and you are going to expect God to give you guidance in whatever it is that he has given you a hand to do. Let us all pray. Give yourself time. Even if we are cooperatively praying, even if we finish early, give yourself time alone with God to really watch and listen to what he is saying to you as an individual. Yes, cooperatively today we heard about the psalmist who said, I will rise up in the morning and direct my prayer to you and then I will watch. We also heard as a cooperative body of Christ that Jesus himself woke up early in the morning to go to a solitary place and pray. But as we pray, as you pray as an individual, listen to what God is saying. And also, let us be in a habit of not only praying for ourselves, but let us pray for others. Whether the Bible even gives us direction as to who to pray for, but let us learn to pray for others. If you pray for me, if you pray for somebody, it will be difficult for you to also rise up from that prayer and start talking negatively about that person. Because you know you have prayed for them and you will want to see God answering your prayer. So, when we pray, when the Bible says pray even for your government, pray for your leaders, pray for the government of the day and whatever, it is because God knows that there will be a lot to say negatively about people around us. There will be a lot to say negatively about the government. There will be a lot to say negatively about people that we live with. But as we pray for them, God will also guide us not to speak negatively about those people. So, let us also learn indeed to pray even for our children, those of us who have children, to pray for our parents, those of us who have parents, to pray for our bosses, those of us who are employed, to pray for even that troublesome child, whether in the family or in the classroom, pray for that one. And as you pray, you will be expecting God to come through for you. So, you will be positive around that person. Your words will be positive around that person, even if not in prayer when you are talking about them. Looking up to Him. Looking up to Him in expectation. And God bless you and your children. God bless you in your workplace, in your business. God bless you in your decisions that you have to make today. May God show Himself powerful in everything. May God show Himself powerful even to those people that are against you. Let Him be seen as God in your life. Let people testify or witness, I mean to say. Let them witness God at work in your life. Let them witness God at work in everything that you do. Let your life be a testimony of the power of God. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Praise the Lord.