Prayer Works Morning Devotion: May 8, 2025

"Waiting On The Holy Spirit - Getting Our Hearts Ready for Pentecost"

"Psalm 139:7 - Where Can I Go From Your Spirit"

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A very good morning to you everybody. I hope you had a wonderful night and you are ready for another day. Let us pray. Heavenly Father, we come before you today. We thank you for your goodness and your mercy towards us.  

We thank you Lord for all that you have done and all that you're going to do. We thank you Lord that you know our ways and you know our thoughts.

You have no problem whatsoever locating us and we're so grateful that when you find us you really never leave us where you find us.  

So we thank you that you know all things. You see all things nothing is hidden from you. There is nothing that we can tell you that you don't already know but yet you give us this ability to exercise our free will and with that in return Lord we want to exercise our free will loving you, worshipping you, communing with you.  

So this morning as we dedicate this time to commune with you, enlighten us in all the things that you desire to see and to know for this particular day and as we go through it Lord lead us in all things through and we bless you and honor you in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We pray Amen.  

If you're joining us for the first time, we are preparing our hearts and trekking the journey to the Pentecost Sunday which is 50 days after Jesus' resurrection. The reason we are doing it is because we believe in the one we want to commemorate this incredible phenomenal event.  

We celebrate Easter, we celebrate Christmas, we celebrate the birth of Jesus but I think it's important that we make this a habit to celebrate Pentecost Sunday because what was promised by God to all of humanity was released on the day of Pentecost. 

And it's incredible when you really trek this journey and understand the promise of the Holy Spirit because it makes you realize the true essence of God's love for humanity.

So when he says I'll never leave you nor forsake you, he was really talking about I'm going to send my spirit to walk with you to govern you to never leave you.  

So it's a matter of just turning to him and he's right there. So today we are in Psalms, today we're in Psalms 139 and we have a particular verse we are focusing on which is verse 7 but I think it's defeating that we read these Psalms because it's incredible and we are seeing  David's perspective on who God is and his relationship with him.  

So let us start from verse one. It says you have searched me a lot and you know me, you know when I see it and you know when I rise, you perceive my thoughts from afar, you descend my going out and my going and my lying down, you are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you Lord know it completely.  

You have me in behind and before and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me to lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your spirit and where can I flee from your presence? 

If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me. Your right hand will haunt me fast.  

If I say surely the darkness will hide me, then the light will become night around me. Even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day for darkness is as light to you. For you created my innermost being.  

You meet me together in the mother's womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that fully well. My frame was not hidden from you.  

When I was made in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth, your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book.  

Before one of them came to be, how precious to me are your thoughts. God, how vast is the sum of them? Where I to count them, they would have numbered the grains of sand. When I awake, I am still with you.  

If only you, God, would slay the wicked! Away from me, you who are bloodthirsty! They speak of you with evil intent; your adversaries misuse your name. do I not hate those who hate you, Lord and other those who are in rebellion against you.  

I have nothing but hatred for them. I count them my enemies, search me, O God, and know my heart. Test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me and lead me in the way everlasting.  

Earlier on, when I woke up, I was driving to the airport and I just came back from dropping April she was going to Boston. I was thinking about this. You know how you know some things and maybe because we know it too well, that we really stop putting some greater thought into.  

I was thinking about this, that every single human being that is existing today in this whole entire world, whether atheist, whether murderer, whether a pastor, whether a priest, whoever there might be.  

We are all existing because God in His infinite wisdom, but His generosity, He has given us His breath. We cannot be alive without God's breath. It's impossible and when God found men out of the dust of the earth, what made that thing that was on the ground alive?  

Was He breathing His breath and everything that was inside of that mud thing on the ground, came to life. When you think about that, you realize how generous God is that even in spite of what people do. 

Those who are hating, those who don't like Him, those who love Him, those who murder other people, those who do it, we are all existing because God has afforded us his breath.

The very first thing every human being does when they are born into this world is they exhale in humans and exhale out, which is literally translated Yahweh in Hebrew.  

That breathing in and breathing out is like Yahweh. That's the breath of God. So the word Yahweh literally means the breath of God that makes human beings alive. You are Yahweh. You are breath.  

Now, you think about some of the things that we do and you think about some of the people that hate God.

Think of the people who believe their atheists, yet in order for them to even believe and to think like that, they have to be alive. And in order for them to be alive, it has to be God's generous breath that He gives you and I and all of humanity.  

It's unbelievable to fathom that this God's breath is sustaining and keeping all of us eight billion people alive in spite of, that God's generosity. So when David writes this Psalm, he has an incredible perspective about who God is and what He is capable of doing.  

So when he gets to verse 7, which is our focus today, I mean, it says, where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? Because the very presence of God is His breath inside of you and I.  

So there is no way you would go and you are alive and you are breathing where God is not. Whether in the nightclub, in the church, in the broth or whatever it is, you cannot go anywhere with that God's breath being present.  

Otherwise, if it's not present, you are dead. So when the concept of hell is a place that is devoid of God's spirit, in other words, there's no breath of God in it. If you ever hold your breath to almost when you're about to faint. 

Which I ask you not to try or if you've ever been underwater and you're trying to get out, which I still ask you not to try, is that you understand what it means to not have God's breath. I remember years ago in Zimbabwe when I was water rafting and our raft went under.  

I don't know how many seconds, if not minutes, I was down there. And the idea of not breathing is a very scary proposition and thought. So when David is saying, where can I go? Where can I go where your spirit is not?  

And as only place you can go where your spirit is not, that's hell. Where can I sleep from, from your presence? And when you think about his breath, you realize there is no way you can ever go where God is not, because wherever God is not, there is no breath and you cannot leave.  

You cannot remain alive. So now, when you think about that, God then says to Jesus, then says to His disciples these are lives and living human beings that are already breathing God's breath in order to remain alive.  

Jesus then says to them, I want you to go and wait at Galilee, so that you can receive what the Father promised. So the promise of the Holy Spirit is a much bigger and over above what we already have in terms of breath.  

God then gives us an extra dosage of that to enable us, not to do what we want, no to enable us to do what he wants, because here the spirit does such as all things, even the good things of God and reveals to them, reveals them to us.  

So when the Holy Spirit is poured out and it sits on a believer, which David was and man after God's own heart, so what he is saying in his, in this section of the Psalms is that even though I am alive, the very fact that your presence is now with me always, this is absolutely no place I can ever think of going, that you are not.  

For us, this is what it means. I gave you the Holy Spirit to walk with you, to consult you, to give you all the necessary knowledge and information that you need to leave this life. So wherever you are. 

Because of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the promise that Jesus said, my Father will send, because of that, the concept is that when you receive the gift of the Holy Spirit, wherever you are,  whatever you are doing, he is ever present, never leaving you, the only difference or problem that we have is how much of him do we recognize at every juncture.  

Otherwise, he is right there, wherever you find yourself. So David, when he says, where can I go for us, it simply means there is no place you can go once you are baptized with the gift of the Holy Spirit, where he is not present, where he is not communion, where he is not communicating, where he is not giving instructions. 

There is no place you can ever find yourself without the promise that the Father sent. The challenge is how much of him do you see him, acknowledge him, and walk with him. Here is an example, this just came to my mind.  

How many of us in the past weeks have ever really stopped and noticed your own shadow? I can almost guarantee that not even once this week, even this past month, that I have ever stopped and said, where is my shadow?  

But every time the shadow is with you, whether you recognize it or not, whether you pay attention to it or not, as long as there is light, there is your shadow. That same reality is what the Holy Spirit is with us.  

He is your shadow. Everywhere you go, he is not living, whether you acknowledge, whether you see it, whether you recognize it, the fact of the matter is that when the Holy Spirit is poor and we are baptized, immense into the indwelling of God's presence, we will never leave you nor forsake you.  

Now, David is writing this before the outpouring of the Holy Spirit in the Book of Acts. Which show you this special relationship that God had with David, because now David is saying something that not so many, pretty much nobody in the Old Testament has ever said.  

So he is saying, God, we can I go. You formed me before you saw me. In the depths of my mother's womb, you were knitting me together, you know my thoughts, yet you let me leave and the same thing was given to us.  

So we have a clear and a better understanding of our relationship with the Holy Spirit. Being as much as David had an incredible relationship with God and man after his own heart. Where can I go where your spirit is not.  

Where can I hide? It's no way I can hide where your present is not. The brothers and sisters, the true essence of our existence is not outside of God's spirit. It's impossible to be alive without God's spirit.  

In as much as it is impossible to be a believer without the aid and the counsel of the Holy Spirit. Ask the disciples, they would tell you how challenging it was to be like Jesus when he was walking with them every single day.  

They tried and they failed time after time. To an extent where the Peter, the great, denied the Jesus. But when that Holy Spirit was poured out on the day of Pentecost, the same man who could not utilize the power he was given way back, Matthew 10.  

The same man, he became a whole different being altogether. The gifts and the promise of the Holy Spirit. If you want to be a strong and mature believer, it's not dependent on how much you worship, how much prayer, how much all those things are necessary and important.  

But your relationship with the Holy Spirit is an indicator of your maturity in God. Because he speaks constantly and all he ever desires is whoever has an ear letting hear what the spirit says.

And after you hear what the spirit says, you must be a doer of the word. And you cannot do this word without the aid of the Holy Spirit. 

Life is complicated and complex, extremely unpredictable. None of us right now knows what we are going to eat for lunch.

But yet God has gone way ahead of us and somehow during the course of the day when you hear him say, hey, I think you should eat a sandwich, I am craving for a sandwich.  

His spirit is involved in all that. Because he searches all things, even the deep things of God. So when David pens Psalms 139:7 where he says, where can I go, where? If you just stop and think about where can I go where he's spiritually is not.  

Where can you flee? How can you flee from God's presence? Because wherever you have to exist his breath has to be present without it, you are dead. The gifts, the gifts, the gifts of the Holy Spirit, tremendous gift.  

You know, I'm praying as much as I'm enjoying this, that when we get to June 8th that our appreciation, our level of appreciation and understanding of the Holy Spirit would have gone to a whole different level altogether.  

That's the difference maker. That's the difference maker. I always say to my kids, if you learn to listen to this, to this voice, the Holy Spirit's voice, you will never be in trouble. Ever, because you hear him say, hey, don't do that.  

Don't go over there, watch out. Today, as we go into today, I want us to appreciate throughout the day the gifts of the Holy Spirit. Just stop in amazement that God's Spirit is allowing me to experience all the things that I'm experiencing today, when the Holy Spirit is giving me knowledge and information of things that I did not know existed.  

Let's appreciate the gift of the Holy Spirit, the promise that Jesus says my Father promised, that I will send him. If you have time, this is from the opposite angle. If you read, 2 Thessalonians where he talks about the Holy Spirit holding at day, the Antichrist.  

The reason why the Antichrist isn't causing any havoc right now is because the Holy Spirit is holding it at bay. This is the source of this gift.

So today, I appreciate if you want a good example, just look at your shadow and realize this is how close he is and the end, leaving no where as long as the light which is Jesus is shining upon us.  

The shadow on this won’t leave you. Your shadow only disappears in the dark, but wherever there is light, wherever Jesus is present, His Spirit is present. So let's go on today, appreciate the Holy Spirit.  

My prayer is that we become so aware of Him in everything that we do. And life will be much more enjoyable because you're understanding the things that you see, the conversations that you have, the instructions you will get, the warnings you will get, even in the simplest thing.  

So let us go on today and appreciate the promise, the Father's hand, which is the gift of the Holy Spirit. Let us pray.

Dear Heavenly Father today we come with grateful hearts. We just want to acknowledge your authority, how magnificent you are to us, that in order to even gather on this prayer call is because you've accorded us the breath of life.  

So we thank you and we honor you. And we pray Lord that as we go throughout the day with humble hearts and with much appreciation. We thank you for the promise that you send to us. Bless us Oh God, in everything that we do.  

Bless the works of our hands. Bless the works of the one who send us as we journey along this course, may you continue to reveal yourself so strong that our understanding will continue to be broadened.  

Now as we go throughout this day, lead us not into temptation, continue to deliver us from the evil one, for thine is the kingdom, the power and the glory forever and ever, Amen.  

Brothers and sisters, let's go on and have a wonderful, wonderful day in the presence of our mighty God and with the counsel of the Holy Spirit, leading, guiding, instructing, giving you wisdom to live a successful life in the midst of chaos.

May the Lord bless you and may the Lord bless your families. We'll see you tomorrow.