Samuel & the Power of Words

Konstantin Stanislavsky.

Who knows who Konstantin Stanislavsky is?

I swear I was gonna say, other than Stuart Roberts, and he just put his hand up.

I was thinking Richard Braiding might have been the only other person.

He was the founder of the Moscow Art Studio back in 1898.

That's why Stuart does so well on those quiz shows.

He knows this stuff.

He actually knows it.

He had this famous quote.

He said, there are no small parts, only small actors.

His point was, in the drama, he was a great playwright and actor and producer and director.

He's saying, everyone plays a significant role, no matter how long you have on the stage.

There are no small parts, only small actors.

Today we begin a new teaching series in the Old Testament, we're looking at Kings & Characters.

We're going to look at some of the significant characters who God used to tell some of his story, the story of salvation, the story of his glory displayed in the people of Israel.

Through the people of Israel, and he weaves his story in and out of these characters.

Some of the characters you think would be significant, like kings, they abdicate their position through disobedience.

And there are other characters that you don't think are significant in the story, like a little gold box, four foot by about two foot by two foot, the Ark of the Covenant.

We're going to look, Lord willing, at some of the characters like the Ark of the Covenant, the city of Jerusalem, some of the other parts, some of the kings, but some of the people like the person we're looking at today who are just so extraordinarily significant in God's story of salvation.

Today's man was a judge of Israel, military leader, priest of Israel, prophet of Israel.

Can you guess who it is?

Well, we read it out before.

Samuel, it is said that not one of his words fell to the ground, 1 Samuel 3 19.

The Lord was with Samuel as he grew up, and he let none of Samuel's words fall to the ground.

I don't want to know how many of my words are already on the ground this morning.

I'm sure there's lots of words out there on the foyer because, what does that even mean?

It's so impactful to think none of his words, by God's grace, fell to the ground.

Not one of Samuel's words were wasted, were false.

Words were unnecessary.

Words have power, don't they?

I guess that's the thesis of today.

Words have power.

God created the universe with words, and we create good and bad with our words.

If you were to look at this picture on the screen, and I say to you, what do you see?

You have to grab your brain and your tongue from saying the answer that you want to say, but you know you don't want to say, because that would be too obvious.

I see a dot.

There's a lot more white than black, but we do, we see the dot, and we remember the one harsh word, and we forget the 99 words of encouragement, because words have power.

They can build up and they can tear down.

We come married with words.

It's happening soon for Hamish and Mel.

We say goodbye at funeral services to our loved ones with words.

We become followers of Jesus.

We receive the gift of eternal life with words.

Proverbs 18-21 says, The tongue has the power of life and death.

Words are powerful.

Not one of Samuel's words fell to the ground.

So from the life of Samuel, we're doing a bit of a survey of these characters.

We can't look at everything, but I want to focus in on the power of his words enabled by God's grace.

And I want to suggest to us today, and please critique this, please push back, not as hecklers now, but afterwards, think about this.

Is this true, what I'm putting forward?

From the life of Samuel, we're going to see that with God's power, words can break generational chains.

Do you believe that?

Confront generational drift.

Release generational blessing.

The power of words to break generational chains.

The scene is set in the land of Israel.

It's just above Egypt.

If you look at the map, we've been seeing a lot of Israel on the news.

If you should look at the next slide, it shows more the picture of the Old Testament.

It's interesting, isn't it, that Philistia, where the Philistines come from, Gaza is just down the bottom of that.

And then the next slide shows you where this action is happening.

There was a place of worship.

The most significant place of worship was just above Jerusalem, Shiloh.

And where we're going to be reading about, where it says Ramothea, it's Rama.

So it's the top half of Israel where this is set.

It's 1100 BC, 1100 BC, the story of Samuel.

There have been 300 years of the judges from Othniel to Samson.

And so if you remember some of your Old Testament history, they were released from, by God's grace, from Egypt.

They went through the Red Sea.

They were forced to wander in the desert.

For 40 years, they come up the Jordan side of the Jordan River.

They get to Mount Nebo.

They cross over into the land.

And in the Book of Joshua tells the story of the conquest of the land.

And so they sort of do this conquest of the land, take over the holy land, promised to them, the promised land.

And the 12 tribes are established.

And then the Book of Judges tells the sorry story of what that life in the land looks like.

If you remember Judges, it's pretty awful.

It says, it keeps, it says, it had this refrain that says, everyone did what was right in their own eyes.

When Israel had no king, which is sort of an awful thing to hear, because they of course had a king.

It was a theocracy.

God was their king.

But they didn't have a king like the nations around them.

And they were in a pretty bad way.

And then along comes a character named Hannah in this grand story, the drama of salvation history.

And we read about her in 1 Samuel chapter 1.

I'm gonna sort of paraphrase because we've got to cover a lot of ground.

There was a certain man from Ramothaim named Elkanah who was married to a woman called Hannah.

Hannah had not been able to give birth to any kids.

Year after year, Elkanah went up from his town to worship and sacrifice to the Lord at Shiloh.

It was about a 6-hour journey where Hofni and Phineas, the evil sons of Eli, were priests of the Lord.

And if you read the text, they were really nasty pieces of work, Hofni and Phineas.

One day giving worship at Shiloh, in gut-wrenching anguish, Hannah prayed to the Lord weeping bitterly.

Verse 11, she made a vow, using her words, saying, Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant's misery and remember me and not forget your servant, but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life.

Words have power.

God heard her prayer and gave Hannah a miracle son, who she named Samuel.

And in keeping with her word, when Samuel was old enough, she entrusted him to the priest, Eli, who wasn't all that crash-hot a priest either, as we heard when Phil was reading out that text.

Verse 27, I prayed for this child, Hannah says, and the Lord has granted me what I asked of him.

So now I give him to the Lord for his whole life.

He will be given over to the Lord, and Samuel worshiped the Lord there.

If you take the time to read the next few chapters, it's quite astonishing just how evil Eli's sons are.

The priests were allowed to take some of the fat portions.

The liver, the kidneys, the fat, was all meant to be burnt in offerings to God.

And the priests had to survive, so they were able to take some of the animals that the people of Israel offered in worship in the sacrificial system.

But they were taking way too much, and it was disrespectful and dishonouring to God.

And so this is all happening, and Eli is saying nothing.

He's not doing a great job as a dad to these evil sons.

And then as Phil alluded to, Samuel hears the voice of God speaking to him.

Again, words have power.

This time it's God's words.

And then in verse 8 of chapter 3, a third time the Lord called Samuel, and Samuel got up and went to Eli and said, here I am.

You called me.

Then Eli realized that the Lord was calling the boy.

So Eli told Samuel, go and lie down, and if he calls you, say, speak, Lord, for your servant is listening.

Always a good response to the words of God.

So Samuel went and lay down in his place.

The Lord came and stood there, calling as at the other times, Samuel, Samuel.

Then Samuel said, speak, for your servant is listening.

And this is the beginning of the wonderful call and vocation of one of the most significant characters in the big story of the Bible.

His life and ministry all started with the power of words, didn't it?

Across generations, Hannah spoke into the next generation, the power of words.

And in that night, the Lord spoke to a young boy.

Words have the power to break generational chains.

Have you ever stopped and thought how extraordinary it is and how unlikely it is that Samuel would become the type of guy he became out of the grossly dysfunctional house he grew up in?

Think about that.

That's miraculous.

I mean, dad is a shocker, and your brothers, they're just terrible, step brothers, or the people that act like that in the environment you're growing up in.

Yet, he becomes this wonderful man of God.

I think because words spoken and prayed empowered by the Spirit of God and in the name of Jesus, it wasn't in the name of Jesus back then, but it was by the grace of God, they have power to break chains, generational chains.

Is it too much to say that you and I have power in our words, the power of life and death?

It's a power that can be applied to your own life and to those you interact with.

Words which come from the truth of God's word, spoken over generations, have the power to break chains of long-standing historic sin in families, long-standing injustice, long-standing addiction, long-standing deception, and it's all by the grace of God, through the power of truth-filled words, won by the blood of Jesus and the victory of His resurrection.

Amen?

Words have power to break generational chains, or do they?

It's a question, it's a statement.

It's something that's meant to be provocative.

I think they do.

And I know someone who has a testimony that they've agreed to share about the way the words of the Gospel have changed her and her family.

Would you give Vera a warm welcome to come up?

She's going to share.

Vera's going to share about the power of God's grace and his words to break generational chains.

Thanks, Vera.

Hi, everyone.

My name is Vera, and God has given me a story to share for his glory.

I was born and raised in a Catholic family, warm and loving Catholic family.

And we went to church every week, so I knew and heard about Jesus, but didn't mean anything to me.

We were never taught to read the Bible for ourselves, and we didn't pray.

We didn't spend time alone with God.

We would just keep our heads down, work hard, be good, be liked, and then maybe we would go to heaven.

This is what my parents grew up with, and this is what my brother and sisters and I grew up with.

But then, when I was 15 years old, I started reading books about angels, other religions, spirituality, and I got interested in finding out more.

So one thing led to another, and I got heavily involved in New Age.

For those who don't know, New Age is a collection of elements from Hinduism, Buddhism, Paganism, Humanism, lots of other isms mixed with energy healing, astrology, lots of alternative therapies, and contacting the spirit world through fortune tellers and mediums.

It's basically anything that allows you to explore spirituality without committing to one truth.

You just pick and choose, as long as it feels good, and as long as it doesn't really hurt anyone else.

The aim is inner peace, deep healing, personal transformation, and spiritual enlightenment.

And the center of New Age is self, self-development, self-improvement, self-empowerment, self-help, and I was very good at it.

I actually discipled people into New Age.

I was wise according to the world.

And I got confirmation.

Two of my aunts are in New Age, and some of my cousins are yoga teachers.

So everything went well for me.

I went to university, had some high-powerful jobs.

I had, you know, lots of money, owned my own house, had a little family of my own, and I was well respected.

I was always striving for the best, and I was always scheming to get what I wanted.

I was in control.

But despite external successes, internally, I felt restless, and I tried to find lasting happiness in what the world had to offer and what it considered good.

So one day at my daughter's school, this lady came up to me and invited me to an Alpha course.

I'd never heard of it, but I wanted to be kind.

So I said, yeah.

I thought it was about miracles.

So when I got home, I looked it up.

Sure enough, it was all about Jesus and Christianity and the Bible.

And my husband and I said, oh, this is a cult.

But I had promised the lady that I would go.

So I did.

After some spiritual opposition, a few weeks of Alpha videos, and lots of discussion, I still didn't feel any closer to this Jesus of the Bible.

I mean, in New Age, we had a Jesus, a spirit, an ascended master called Jesus, who told us that the Jesus in the Bible was misrepresented by human error.

So I told the lady, I said, look, I understand the concept of God, I understand the spirit, but who is this Jesus of the Bible?

She said, we will pray for you.

A few days later, on a Friday morning, I was sitting on my kitchen floor, scrolling through some YouTube music, and this video popped up saying, this will change your life.

It was 16 minutes, I thought, all right, I'll have a look.

It was a video about a father who gave up his only son to save this whole train load full of people who didn't even know him.

And it clicked, and I understood who Jesus was and what he came to do, and I started bawling my eyes out saying, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, I'm so sorry, on and on.

After about 10 minutes, I stopped, and this amazing piece came over me.

It filled me from top to toe.

It lasted for the whole weekend, and ever since, my whole life changed.

My wisdom in New Age seemed foolishness.

The chains of my addiction were broken.

My heart was filled with a hunger and a passion for the word, and my mind was renewed and is being renewed by a strong sense of discernment.

His word broke my bondage.

He gave me an eternal purpose and joy of serving him with the gifts he's given me.

My citizenship is in heaven.

According to the world, my little family has not much to show for since my conversion.

We suffer financial hardship, we live in a subsidized rental home, we don't have high-profile jobs, and we battle chronic health issues.

But God has given me a fullness of life and the most precious gift anyone can ever receive, the Lord himself.

All praise be to God.

Amen.

When Vera first got saved, soon after that she was in a Bible study that we were at, and she had so much passion, and we were like, oh, it probably will fade.

She always said, I don't think it will.

And it hasn't yet.

So thank you so much for sharing about the grace of God, which can break generational chains.

After the death of Eli and his sons, Samuel became priest and judge of Israel, which we will come back to in a moment.

But as a leader, one of his greatest legacies was that he demonstrated how words have power to confront generational drift.

The most devastating moment in Samuel's life came in 1 Samuel 8, 4-7.

So all the elders of Israel gathered together and Samuel came to Samuel at Ramah.

They said to him, You are old and your sons do not follow your ways.

Now, appoint a king to lead us such as all the other nations have.

But when they said, give us a king to lead us, this displeased Samuel.

So he prayed to the Lord and the Lord told him, listen to all that the people are saying to you.

It is not you they have rejected, but they have rejected me as their king.

This was a down moment in the history of Israel, in the great drama.

God had chosen the people of Israel to be His people.

He was to be their God.

He would speak to them, provide for them, empower them, protect them, and use them to take the glory of His story to all the nations.

They were to be the light on behalf of God.

They said, no, we don't want to be your people.

We want a king like everyone else.

The Lord gets Samuel to anoint as king a tall man named Saul.

Saul is an okay king for how long?

About five minutes.

Then we read in 1 Samuel 13, King Saul was going to war, and Samuel was meant to do some sacrifice, some worship, some offering, and to get a gauge from the Lord about what to do.

But Samuel was away.

Saul as king didn't have the right.

It wasn't his lane.

It wasn't his job to offer sacrifice and get words from the Lord.

But he thought he was impatient.

He said, I'll do it anyway.

So he dishonored the Lord by making a sacrificial offering in Samuel's place.

And so after Saul had disobeyed the Lord, Samuel had the courage to use his words to confront generational drift.

He said, you have done a foolish thing.

You have not kept the command the Lord your God gave you.

If you had, he would have established your kingdom over Israel for all time.

Isn't that sobering?

But now your kingdom will not endure.

Do you get what's happening here?

He's using words to state what will happen throughout hundreds of years of history.

Words have power.

Your kingdom will not endure.

The Lord has sought out a man after his own heart and appointed him ruler of his people because you have not kept the Lord's command.

Words have power to confront generational drift.

We drift, don't we?

Generations drift, people's drift.

They can drift in a matter of days, let alone decades, yes?

Hours.

The way of the master, following Jesus is a journey.

It's a pathway.

It's meant to be one-on-one discipleship, isn't it?

That's the model we have from the New Testament.

Jesus spending three years, one-on-one, 24-7, with a bunch of 12 guys and a broader group.

But the way of the master, the way of discipleship is a journey along a pathway.

And it's an easy pathway to drift from.

In the past, Christians drifted in the last 2000 years to believe that killing people in the Crusades was a good thing.

That was a generational drift.

Christians have drifted into racism and justified it from Scripture.

It's a terrible thing.

It happens all the time in generations.

Suppression of all sorts of people has been done wrongly in the name of Christian truth.

Bit by bit, falsehood becomes perceived to be the truth.

This is where you have to be careful, because it's easy to think that the past generation was somehow more righteous, I think.

And we can have a bit of cognitive bias to think that.

But I think it's true to say that in the name of progress and freedom, at the moment, there is doctrinal, ethical and theological drift.

Godly words, prophetic words, speak into generational drift.

What are we drifting away from at the moment?

I think we're drifting, as many generations, away from sacrificial love, from self-giving service, from sexual purity, from something that seems quite banal, from church attendance, from global mission.

How many people have we raised up in the last 20 years to be missionaries cross-culturally?

Not many, not many.

You can have a whole generation that drifts away from the urgent requirement of the call of God to go into all the world and take the gospel.

I think we're drifting from personal humility.

I think social media and the world of self is affecting this, from servant leadership.

We're certainly drifting from the scripture that says, do not even speak of what the disobedient do in secret.

In contrast, sometimes, some of us, we watch a 10-hour series about what the disobedient do in secret, streamed to us on our TVs.

Samuel used his words which did not fall to the ground to confront generational drift, the whole story of the kings of Israel is one drift after the other away from God's word.

King after king, they just drifted.

Are you drifting right now?

Are you drifting in your faith, in your journey along the path of righteousness, trusting in the grace that is enough that we were reminded of in the last three weeks?

I'm struck in recent months by the desperate need in our lives as Christians for what we might call course correction.

I think if you're a brand new Christian, you need to know this.

Everybody veers off course.

It's just the way it works.

We're sinful, and you need to have the word of God to help you course correct.

You need brothers and sisters who are like Flint, sharpening Flint to come get back on board.

Would you agree?

Course correction is absolutely essential.

We were talking about it in our Life Hub a few months ago, and Stephen, who's married to Kathleen, Kathleen, she speaks fluent French, so it impacts the two of them.

And sometimes Stephen has the Bible in French, and he's pretty good at his French.

And we're talking about discipline, the need for discipline.

And then we're talking about course correction, and he pipes up and says, you know, what's really interesting is he reads the French Bible.

He says, I can't say the word properly, but he said the French word for discipline, what do you reckon it is?

Correction.

That's good, mate.

So discipline is correction.

It's correction.

We need discipline.

We need course correction.

Samuel was used by the Lord, called to use his words, to speak prophetically to Saul.

And of course, he did it on so many different occasions.

It was about course correcting.

Words break generational chains.

Words confront generational drift.

And thirdly, from the life of Samuel, we see words release generational blessing.

From humble beginnings, the story of the rise of Samuel to be leader of Israel is extraordinary.

Not only is he the military leader, he's filled with the Spirit of God for battle.

He's a judge, which means he's a governing arbitrator.

He's filled with the Spirit of wisdom for this task.

He's also functioning as a priest, interceding for the people of God.

And he's a prophet, judge, priest, and military leader.

This is what you would call rare, broadband leadership gifting, I think.

But it's more than that.

He's fulfilling his God-given destiny out of obedience.

His life was marinated in the prayers of a faithful mother, and he took those blessings and ran with them through obedience to the Lord.

Of course, we don't have time to explore the amazing life of Samuel as a character in the story in detail, but he's the one who got to anoint David with words.

He anointed him with oil, but he said words over that young man's life.

And David was a significant character in the story.

Anyone whose name gets used in Revelation at the end about Jesus sort of gets a good job.

The Davidic King is Jesus.

Samuel got to use his words to begin that guy's journey, King David.

He launched David's career, ministry career with words.

When Samuel met David, 1 Samuel 16, he was glowing with health and had a fine appearance and handsome features.

Then the Lord said, rise and anoint him.

This is the one.

So Samuel took the horn of oil and anointed him in the presence of his brothers.

And from that day on, the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon David.

Samuel then went to Rama.

This is my thesis that I'm suggesting from a survey of Samuel.

We have a tongue, each one of us, that can speak life.

Words release generational blessings.

Samuel's life was so pivotal.

There are all these characters in the story that he brings together, like Saul and David and the Philistines and Israel and the Ark of the Covenant.

A constant character is this battler.

Come good.

Child of the promise.

Child of the prayer.

Who never dropped a word to the ground.

You and I steward words, don't we?

I've been challenged by that in the last two weeks as I've thought about this message.

And it's a really good challenge to carry.

We steward words and words have power.

Do you reckon as parents, you are stewarding the release of either blessing or curse over the next generation?

A hundred percent you are.

You can damage the next generation if you have children, or you can release blessing over them, amen?

It's the truth.

That's absolutely the truth.

You can build up and empower and encourage and share the gospel in word and deed.

Prove it to them that God's words are real.

But of course, it's not just parents.

We are all stewarding the words that we have, if we're certainly, if we're Christians, seasoned by the grace of God, and if we're not Christians, you still have power in your words.

You know, I hesitate to go down this path.

Cal, my son-in-law, has a PhD in exercise physiology, and he was preaching a little while ago and talking about how contempt, because he studied a lot of cellular stuff in his expertise, his type 2 diabetes and all that.

So when he's talking about it, he has an expertise in cellular stuff.

I don't.

But I'm interested in reading, and I find it fascinating.

Cal's point was, contempt lives in your cells, lives in your body.

We know that.

It's there.

It's affecting you at a cellular level.

You know what I found out about trauma recently?

It's beyond question that trauma lives in the DNA of the next generation.

Children of Holocaust victims experienced trauma that they never lived through.

Children of the next generation of the Pol Pot genocide, awful stuff that happened in Cambodia.

The children express the effects of trauma that they never lived through.

It's in their genes.

And trauma, I'm no expert in trauma, but it's such an important area.

Trauma is so profoundly impacting, but it would seem that there is an event that produces feelings and emotions.

But the limbic system of the brain that stores memory has to put narrative with that emotion.

It makes sense, doesn't it?

An event happens, there are feelings that come from that event that drive emotions, an emotional response, but that doesn't live by itself as just an emotion.

The brain says, what words, what narrative can I attach to the feelings associated with that trauma?

Are you with me?

I just find that fascinating.

That in God's wisdom, words, our self-words, so much define our identity, because we determine what happened to our parents, what that means to us.

We determine what happened to us, what it means to us.

Words, your words, to yourself are some of the most powerful words that you'll ever express.

And we need to have those words seasoned by the awesome power of the grace of God, amen?

Because our identity changes.

The event, the tragedy, the horror that could have happened to us or our parents, that hasn't changed.

But what we determine by our narrative, what it means to us, can change.

Words have enormous power to release blessing over the next generation, and it starts with us.

It lives so, like, I think of that and I think, wow, when the Lord said the sins are passed on to the third and fourth generation, he really meant it.

Like, it's in you, the effects of sin, which often produce trauma so frequently.

You know, I don't know if you're keeping abreast of the development of AI at all, artificial intelligence, but the word that's often used is generative AI.

You're familiar with generative AI?

The idea that you can talk to the computer, a program, and say, could you, just with my words, could you please create me a picture in the style of Monet of a dancing panda on a unicycle with an archery, with a bow and arrow?

There it is.

Generative AI.

Your words, generative.

And I got looking at this and reflecting on a thought, it's again fascinating.

Generations get affected by words because words are generative, coming from the word gene, genus, which means beget.

No wonder words have power to release blessing because words are generative.

Yes, they create stuff.

When Martin Luther King said, I have a dream, he used words to create something.

And the beginning of everything is the word, the word of God.

You and I have the power to be generative.

And I'm not talking about some of what Vera was alluding to, New Age scripting of destiny, as though I'm God.

I'm not God, and neither are you.

I don't have words that can create universe.

And I'm not talking about a prosperity gospel, word of faith stuff.

I'm not talking about that either, because that's really funky and at times completely heretical.

But I am suggesting that we reflect on the power that we have as human beings made in the image of God, that our words can release or bind up blessings on the next generation.

So, what's your calling?

What are you meant to use your words to do to release blessing on another generation?

You may not feel like you have had a particularly impacting, significant life, but someone that you're meant to speak to might, which makes your job in the casting of the great divine drama not insignificant, but significant.

Amen?

There are no small parts, only small actors.

And there's no small actor who's filled with the Spirit of God.

Amen?

He uses really insignificant people like 15-year-old little young women in woe-begotten places to be the mother of Jesus.

He uses people from all sorts of walks of life.

We've had this theme this year, C23, looking at life with eyes of faith, C23.

And I just want to circle back to that and just remind us, are you seeing the fingerprints of God in your life?

Are you seeing the opportunities to use your words?

They're so easy to get to, they're just there.

But to use them to build up and not tear down, to use them to release generational blessing, to see the 8-year-old in kids' ministry and see with the eyes of faith what they could become as a 28-year-old on a journey to serve God with their whole heart, committed, passionate to His glory.

Amen?

Are we seeing that?

Are we a church who sees the significant potential in the next generation and that we have a part to play in it?

There's nothing more powerful on earth than the power of words, and for Samuel, not one of his fell to the ground.

God's story is a five-act play.

I'm not gonna extrapolate on this picture, because I can see you going, no, don't do it.

Act one is creation in the biblical story.

Act two is the fall.

Act three is Israel.

Act four is Jesus.

Act five is us.

It's not finished.

He knows where it's heading.

God knows where it's all heading, but we get to play a role in the divine story unfolding in this part of the world.

We're actors in it.

We're more than actors.

We play a part in the real story of God's glory.

Words can break generational chains, confront generational drift, release generational blessing.

I hope you feel as I do in preaching and preparing this sermon, a challenge, a weight, the gravity of words, the gravity of my words, I want to up the ante on my belief in my words, seasoned by the grace of God, and I hope you will as well.

Lord God, thank you for this invitation you have given us to use our words for the glory of your Son.

We thank you for Samuel and the man who didn't get everything right, he didn't do such a good job with his kids, it would seem, but by your grace, he lived a truly extraordinary life.

And I pray we could be challenged and encouraged by his life today.

Lord, I want to raise up to you the people in this room who hear the word trauma, and that sparks a whole lot of pain.

And I pray for grace and peace and protection and compassion, nurture from your spirit.

I pray for those of us who right now are feeling bad because we have used our words so often to curse, so often to tear down.

I thank you, Lord Jesus, you died on the cross for our mistakes.

And we want to come humbly under your grace and cover it in the blood of Christ that cleanses us of all unrighteousness and gives us a new beginning and another fresh start.

I pray for my brothers and sisters who need a fresh start here today.

Lord as we sing now the numbers blessing, we invite you to do a supernatural work in our hearts and minds.

May you take this blessing and cause it to produce fruit in our lives, to release chains of injustice and oppression, generational, lifestyle, habits and dysfunction.

Lord, may today be the beginning of something supernatural to break that.

We ask all this in Jesus' name.

Amen.

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