Morning by Morning—Daily Prayer Journey with Tommy Hays

Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Morning by Morning, January 30 - "Many Convincing Proofs" that Jesus is Alive!

Good morning, Lord Jesus. In these first moments of my morning, I want to get quiet and listen with my heart centered in You, as I watch and wait to see where You'll lead. ...

"After His suffering He presented Himself alive to them by many convincing proofs, appearing to them during forty days and speaking about the Kingdom of God" (Acts 1:3).

Between Your resurrection and Your ascension, You "presented (Yourself) alive ... by many convincing proofs." And every day in my life, You continue to present Yourself alive to my by many convincing proofs.

When the failures or sins from my past come to my mind, but then I hear in my heart that I'm forgiven and free, cleansed and released from all unrighteousness by the power of Your blood, I'm convinced that You're alive. When peace like a river fills my soul even when there's chaos and confusion around me, I'm convinced that You're alive. When faith and hope and love rise up in my spirit in the face of discouragement, disappointment, and doubt, I'm convinced that You're alive. And when I see You move in Your power and love to save and to heal in Your mercy and grace, I'm convinced that You're alive. And maybe above all, when Your Spirit is "bear witness with (my) spirit" that I am a child of God, deeply loved and seen, known by name, and precious in Your sight, I'm convinced that You're alive (Romans 8:14-17).

These are "many convincing proofs" to me -- along with so many more. And not only are You alive, You're alive in me! The very "Spirit of Christ," full of all Your resurrection power and life, lives in me! (Romans 8:9) "Christ in (me), the hope of glory!" (Colossians 1:27) You fill me up and raise me up into the embrace of Your Presence by grace of Your mercy and love. "God, who is rich in mercy, out of the great love with which He loved us even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ -- by grace (we) have been saved -- and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus" (Ephesians 2:4-6).

Somebody ought to give Him some praise! Somebody ought to say Thank You, Jesus!

Thank You, Jesus, that I'm alive in You, that You're alive in me. And I'm looking forward to see some more convincing proofs of Your life and Your Presence all along my journey with You today. In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Be encouraged today! In the Love of Jesus, Tommy Hays

My friend, may you be filled with the Spirit of Christ, fully alive in Him and convinced that He is fully alive in you today, in Jesus' name! Please pray the same for me! God bless you, my friend!

Register for the Healing Academy.

Friends, I'll be teaching at the Healing Academy on Healing and Deliverance Prayer Ministry this coming February 5-8, 2019 in the Nashville area at the Aldersgate Renewal Ministries Center. Please come join us if you're being called to healing prayer ministry! Sign up today: Healing Academy

I'll be Teaching from the principles of my book on healing prayer ministry, Free to Be Like Jesus -- Transforming Power of Inner Healing and Deliverance (Endorsed by Max Lucado, Randy Clark, and Andy Reese)

Order Free to Be Like Jesus! from Amazon

Endorsements for Free to Be Like Jesus

from Trusted Spiritual Leaders

"Tommy Hays has spent a lifetime studying the place of prayer in inner healing. I have personally benefitted from his teaching, writing and encouragement. This book gathers a wealth of helpful insights and experiences into one volume. I am honored to have it on my shelf and honored to call Tommy my friend."

Max Lucado

"Tommy Hays combines a lawyer's keen logic with a spiritual intuition to bring inner healing to a practical, effective and applied level. His proven techniques have been used in hundreds of ministry settings and can serve as simple yet profound tools in the hands of even the novice minister."

Andy Reese

Author of Freedom Tools

"Free to Be Like Jesus will take you on a journey to learn more about the inner healing ministry. This book has many foundational spiritual truths and will help you if you want more healing in your own life, or if you want more tools to assist you in your inner healing ministry."

Randy Clark

Global Awakening

Keynote Speaker in Shropshire, England for March Conference "Release for the Captives!"

Friends, I'm excited to be invited as Keynote Speaker this year for the European Conference of the Holy Spirit through Aldersgate Renewal Ministries in Shropshire, England in March. The theme this year is "Release for the Captives!" Come join us!

Tommy Hays | Messiah Ministries

Healing from the Inside Out

www.Messiah-Ministries.org

Pastoral Director | Rapha God Ministries

4 Dominion Drive, Building 1

San Antonio, Texas 78257

www.RaphaGodMinistries.com

Please share this word to encourage a friend!

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Tuesday, January 29, 2019

Morning by Morning, January 29 - Let Your Fire Fall!

Good morning, Lord Jesus. Put Your thoughts in my mind and Your desires in my heart to guide my steps in Your will today -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of God. ...

"The you call on the name of your god and I will call on the name of the Lord; the god who answers by fire is indeed God.... Then the fire of the Lord fell and consumed the burnt offering, the wood, the stones, and the dust, and even licked up the water that was in the trench. When all the people saw it, they fell on their faces and said, 'The Lord indeed is God! The Lord indeed is God!'" (1 Kings 18:24-39).

Yes, Lord! Let Your fire fall! Consume everything in me that is not yet like You! "For indeed our God is a Consuming Fire!" (Hebrews 12:29)

Burn out of me timidity and insecurity, complacency and compromise. Burn out of me everything that would hold me back from being all You created me to be. Don't let me spend another day "limping about" the altars of indecision or indifference (1 Kings 18:26). Set me ablaze with a fiery passion and holy zeal for You like "a brand plucked from the fire!" (Zechariah 3:2)

Let Your Fire fall! Let Your Kingdom come! Baptize me afresh with Your Holy Spirit and Your Holy Fire! (Matthew 3:12; Acts 1:5) Empower me to be Your witness, full of Your Spirit, everywhere You send me today in the power of Your name, and the heart of Your nature, and the authority of Your Word. Here I am, Lord. Send me! (Isaiah 6:8) In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Be encouraged today! In the Love of Jesus, Tommy Hays

My friend, I pray you are consumed with the Holy Spirit and set ablaze with His zeal to be His witness everywhere He sends you, in Jesus' name! Please pray the same for me! God bless you, my friend!

Register for the Healing Academy.

Order Free to Be Like Jesus! from Amazon

Keynote Speaker in Shropshire, England for March Conference "Release for the Captives!"

Tommy Hays | Messiah Ministries

Healing from the Inside Out

www.Messiah-Ministries.org

Pastoral Director | Rapha God Ministries

4 Dominion Drive, Building 1

San Antonio, Texas 78257

www.RaphaGodMinistries.com

Please share this word to encourage a friend!

New Friends and Subscribers: Please Click Here if you would like to be added to the list to receive Morning by Morning by email each day

Monday, January 28, 2019

Morning by Morning, January 28 - Learn to Discern the Voice of the Spirit

Good morning, Lord Jesus. All that I am and all I have, I entrust completely to You today -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of God. ...

"Do not quench the Spirit. Do not despise the words of prophets, but test everything; hold fast to what is good; abstain from every form of evil" (1 Thessalonians 5:19-22).

Holy Spirit, You are always with us, always speaking to us, always seeking to lead us. "For all who are led by the Spirit of God are children of God" (Romans 8:14). We're to be Spirit-filled and Spirit-led (Ephesians 5:18). It's part our inheritance as sons and daughters of God who are deeply loved and lovingly invited to live in a deeply intimate, personal relationship with You -- Father, Son, and Holy Spirit of God.

You speak to us and seek to lead us both individually and as a people, as Your Church. So give us spiritual ears to hear "what the Spirit is saying to the Church" (Revelation 2:7, 11, 17, 29; 3:6, 13, 22). By the power of Your grace, help us hear. But also help us obey what we hear. As Your Word says, "Be doers of the word, and not merely hearers who deceive themselves" (James 1:22).

Your Word says "do not quench the Spirit" and at the same time tells us to "test everything" so we can "hold fast to what is good" not deceive ourselves. So give us both the faith to listen and also the humility to submit everything we think we hear from You to the testing of the standard of the Word of God and the nature of God. Only through the process of judgment and discernment will we be able to determine "what is good" and what is "a form of evil," what we must "hold fast" to and what we must "abstain from."

In these days where many claim to hear what the Spirit is saying to the Church, we must learn to walk in ever-increasing spiritual discernment. "Let the wise also hear and gain in learning, and the discerning acquire skill" (Proverbs 1:5). We acquire skill by looking to You in humility and faith in the challenges of obeying Your command to "test everything." And above all, we "test everything" by the authority of the Word of God as our plumb line and standard. "All Scripture is inspired by God and is useful for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness" (2 Timothy 3:16). "The sum of Your Word is truth; and every one of Your righteous ordinances endures forever" (Psalm 119:160). "Your Word is truth" (John 17:17). And "the Scripture cannot be annulled" John 10:35).

When we believe we hear Your voice, we should ask: Does this line up with the Word of God and does this line up with the nature of God? Does this bring peace in my spirit with Your Holy Spirit bearing witness with my human spirit? What is the fruit that comes from this? Does it point me to God and His ways or to my flesh and my ways? "The tree is known by its fruit" (Matthew 12:23). But all must be filtered and seen, judged and discerned, against the standard of the authority of Scripture if I truly believe "All Scripture is inspired by God."

One of the gifts of Your Spirit is "the discernment of spirits" (1 Corinthians 12:10). And we desperately need this gift and Your grace to learn how to live into it -- not avoiding Your spiritual gifts in an effort to be safe, but learning how to grow in Your spiritual gifts in a desire to be obedient. "Those who are unspiritual do not receive the gifts of God's Spirit, for they are foolishness to them, and they are unable to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. Those who are spiritual discern all things" (1 Corinthians 2:14-15). Let us not "throw out the baby with the bathwater" but learn how to love and nurture the baby You've entrusted to us as a means of Your grace to be Spirit-filled and Spirit-led.

Not all spiritual activity in our lives and in the community of relationship with one another is the activity of the Holy Spirit. Not every spiritual voice we hear is the voice of the Holy Spirit. The enemy of our souls often "disguises himself as an angel of light" when his unholy spirits attempt to masquerade as the Holy Spirit to gain our trust and ensnare our thoughts in his deception and confusion (2 Corinthians 11:14). So we need Your Word and we need Your Spirit to help us learn to discern in both humility and faith. And we need one another, in relationships of trust and respect, of honor and accountability, to test and discern together in Christian conference and loving community that's centered upon the confession of our faith and the authority of Your Scripture, as "iron sharpens iron" (Proverbs 27:17).

The answer is not to quit longing for spiritual leading or to "despise the words of the prophets." The answer is not to be so afraid of being deceived by the voice of the devil that we're no longer willing to seek the voice of God. As You promise us, "The One who enters by the gate is the Shepherd of the sheep.... and the sheep hear His voice. He calls His own sheep by name and leads them out.... the sheep follow Him because they know His voice. They will not follow a stranger, but they will run from him because they do not know the voice of strangers.... I Am the Gate.... I Am the Good Shepherd" (John 10:2-14).

So by the power of Your grace and leading of Your Spirit, firmly grounded in my submission to the authority of Your Word, help me learn to discern. Give me the courage to hold fast to what is true and resist what is not. Give me grace to hear and grace to obey, a hearer of Your word and a doer of Your word. In Jesus' name I pray, Amen.

Be encouraged today! In the Love of Jesus, Tommy Hays

My friend, I pray you are being empowered to learn to discern the voice of the Holy Spirit, testing everything and holding fast to what is true, with courage and faith to resist all that is not, in Jesus' name! Please pray the same for me! God bless you, my friend!

Pastors and Leaders Spiritual Retreat. Friends, thank you so much for keeping us in prayer this past Saturday as I had the honor and joy to speak on prayer at a spiritual retreat for pastors and leaders of the Crossroads District of the RioTexas Conference of the United Methodist Church. My topic was "Deep to Deep -- Greater Intimacy with God" and I believe the Lord gave me His words to express His heart, "speaking the truth in love" (Ephesians 4:15). God bless and thank you for your prayers and encouragement!

Morning by Morning, Daily Devotional Book. One's year's worth of a selection of my daily prayer devotionals -- written fresh every morning from the communion of prayer to begin your day embraced by your Father, centered in Jesus, and filled with the Holy Spirit. Join me on the journey or share this with a friend who's longing for a deeper, more intimate relationship with God.

Order Morning by Morning through Amazon

Register for the Healing Academy.

Order Free to Be Like Jesus! from Amazon

Keynote Speaker in Shropshire, England for March Conference "Release for the Captives!"

Tommy Hays | Messiah Ministries

Healing from the Inside Out

www.Messiah-Ministries.org

Pastoral Director | Rapha God Ministries

4 Dominion Drive, Building 1

San Antonio, Texas 78257

www.RaphaGodMinistries.com

Please share this word to encourage a friend!

Thursday, January 24, 2019

Morning by Morning, January 24 - The Gate of Deeper Humility

Good morning, Lord Jesus. King of kings and Lord of lords, be King of my heart and Lord of my life this day. ...

"For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth takes its name. I pray that, according to the riches of His glory, He may grant that you be strengthened in your inner being through His Spirit, and that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith, as you are being rooted and grounded in love" (Ephesians 3:14-17).

In these few verses, Your Word speaks of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; Your Word speaks of power, purity, and purpose; Your Word speaks of faith, hope, and love; Your Word speaks of identity and destiny, of intimacy and maturity. And it all begins with humility -- "I bow my knees before the Father."

Humility is such a gateway to all You have for us. As we come to the end of ourselves to willingly choose to be desperately dependent upon You alone, You fill us up and grow us up -- "that (we) may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19). As we "humble (ourselves) in the sight of the Lord, (You) will lift (us) up" (James 4:10 NKJV).

To humble ourselves is to agree with You and Your Word that "apart from (You), (we) can do nothing" (John 15:5). And to embrace our identity, rooted and grounded in the security of Your love, so we can grow up into maturity is to agree with You and Your Word that we are never apart from You, that "(You) are with (us) always" (Matthew 28:10). Then to live into our destiny is to agree with You and Your Word that "I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me" (Philippians 4:13 NKJV).

Through our spiritual journey of learning humility, security, identity, destiny, and maturity, we come to the place where "all things are possible to him who believes" (Mark 9:23 NKJV). This is a gate of greater faith that must begin by first going through the gate of deeper humility.

Your life on earth as the Son of Man shows us the way of going through the gate of humility first: "And being found in human form, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death -- even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted Him and gave Him the name that is above every name" (Philippians 2:7-9).

You exalt the humble. You give us our name as we take on Your nature. And the heart of Your nature is humility, faithfulness, and obedience, all rooted and grounded in sacrificial love. "For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). As Your Word commands us, "Let the same mind be in (us) that was in Christ Jesus" (Philippians 2:5). That's the way that leads through the gates of all You have for us and to the fulfillment of Your Word "that (we) may be filled with all the fullness of God" (Ephesians 3:19; Isaiah 62:10). In Jesus' name I pray. Amen.

Be encouraged today! In the Love of Jesus, Tommy Hays

Tommy, I pray you are growing in deeper humility, desperately dependent upon God alone, that He may lift you up and take you through every gate of His promises for you, that you may be "filled with all the fullness of God," in Jesus' name! Please pray the same for me! God bless you, my friend!

Pastors and Leaders Spiritual Retreat. Friends, please keep us in prayer this Saturday as I speak on prayer at a spiritual retreat for pastors and leaders hosted at the First United Methodist Church in La Grange, Texas: "Deep to Deep -- Greater Intimacy with God" and "Spirit-Filled, Spirit-Led"

Order Morning by Morning through Amazon

Register for the Healing Academy.

Keynote Speaker in Shropshire, England for March Conference "Release for the Captives!"

Tommy Hays | Messiah Ministries

Healing from the Inside Out

www.Messiah-Ministries.org

Pastoral Director | Rapha God Ministries

4 Dominion Drive, Building 1

San Antonio, Texas 78257

www.RaphaGodMinistries.com

Please share this word to encourage a friend!