Prayer and Fasting | Lynne Hammond | LWCC

so tonight we're going to go through a a whole series about corporate prayer and the prophetic amen so we're going to turn over to the bull gonna start in the book of Esther tonight and I've started going back to this about a week ago John Holocaust Remembrance week I always like to go and educate myself along the lines of certain things because it's so important and so along this line I didn't a lot of studying here in the last two weeks so over in the book of Esther you know probably most of you are very familiar with that story you're going to find out that you didn't know a lot about about it till tonight but at when I finish you'll do way more than you then you did well so we know that Esther here she comes into a position of authority as Queen and she has a direct influence over her husband who is the king because she was called for such a time as this and you can see that my t-shirt actually says that so all of us in this room are called for such a time as this and that is one of the amazing things that God is doing in this time right now he's thrusting people that are in the body of Christ into positions to affect the whole world and so we know that Esther was one of those people this was a critical time in a place called Shushan which we know is modern-day Iran and there had gone out decree in all the land by one of the king's advisors his name was Haman and that decree that had gone out was called the final solution and King assessors had had signed off on this decree and that that decree said that all the Jews in Shushan had to be executed by hanging on wooden gallows so all 127 provinces had gallows that all the Jews were going to be hung from and murdered so Mordecai Esther's Jewish uncle sends word to the palace - Esther - tell her to go into the King and entreat him to reverse this evil decree that is going to murder all the Jews so in verse 8 of Esther chapter 4 Mordecai gives this decree to his buddy to somebody that works for him and he's going to take this over to the palace to her Martis Mordecai also gave him a copy of the decree to destroy them that was given out in Shushan that he might show it to Esther explain it to her and charge her to go to the king and make supplication I thought that was very interesting that she is going to the king and make supplication or she is going to go there to plead with the king to save the life of the Jews well when Mordecai's friend told her this she said no I can't go and she said the reason I can't go is because the the King has not called for me and he hasn't called me in 30 days and if I go in to where he is and he does not he does not reach out his scepter for me he will kill me and so in verse 13 Mordecai sends word back to and says very well don't flatter yourself remember you are a Jewess yourself and the devil's come into your house so and so and he said if you keep silent Esther God will do something about the Jews he'll help the Jews some other way but didn't you know in that famous verse here in verse 14 that you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this or for this case so in verse 15 Esther said gave answer to Mordecai really verse 16 is what we want to look at here she said this was her solution to this whole problem or this whole thing this was the first thing the strategic plan that she has go gather all the Jews that are present in Shushan and fast for me and neither eat nor drink for three days and three nights I also and my maid's will fast as you do then I will go to the king though it is against the law and if I perish I perish so Mordecai went away and he did all that Esther had commanded him and so we see the here something very interesting she tells everybody all right we're gonna all get together and we're gonna fast and pray now when I was reading this back I think it was around September I saw that word fast in a different way it was kind of like it jumped out at me like a frog but it jumped out at me and jumped back in the book fast and pray I'm like hmm wonder why Christians don't ever do that they do the praying part but the fast in part they never do including me I remember one time I was reading after John Wesley and he said this if you don't fast two days a week you are not even qualified to be a minister I like oh dear anyway do you know that every religion of the world fasts Islam Buddhists Jews Hindus even Paul said I I fast often so I was meeting with some friends back in October and so we didn't we decided let's just tackle this let's let's see why the fast well what is it about a fast tell me about the vast well when we as started searching it out in the Bible we found that fasting is a tool or an instrument that helps us transition from the natural over into the spirit what what does that mean in the spirit when we say in the spirit remember Paul said that we pray in Ephesians 6:18 we pray all kinds of Prayer he said but we pray all kinds of prayer in the spirit capital S in the holy spirit so that was the kind of prayer well what is praying in the spirit in the spirit is where you become more conscious of God and then you do your circumstances for instance last Sunday night just about everybody in here got over in a dimension of the Spirit where they didn't come in here and they were in that dimension everybody was lifted up we were in a place in the spirit and we became way more conscious of God than we were ourselves where God we get begins then to fill you up with a consciousness of himself now I learned this in the study of in the spirit when we say that word we find that you can go it with you're in the spirit you can go forward or backward what I mean by that is words spoken in the spirit have a a quantum effect that that you are not you are not bound to a realm of time those words the words that you're speaking are not bound to today or tomorrow or next year or next month or this millennium those words can go anywhere there it there it has a quantum effect for instance when Enoch over in Jude when Enoch prophesied about Noah's Flood and of course we know that that was a judgment on the world but he was prophesying or he was speaking we could say in the spirit or by the unction of the Holy Ghost but in that exact same prophecy where he's prophesying about the flood Noah's Flood at the very end of that prophecy he prophesized about the second coming so he went way out there he went from Noah's time all the way to the second coming because he was over in so he wasn't bound in one place so the further that you are in the spirit your words become more we might say they they become weightier spiritual things have more clarity to you fasting facilitates your spirit to work and and you can see in other dimensions you can hear in other dimensions of the spirit now I always one of those people that wasn't sure that fasting was not works but as I looked at Jesus and what he said rebuking religious people and and works he was rebuking them he said you are not heard for you're much speaking so and then he goes on to talk about works there then right after that he talks about fasting so we know that fasting is not works all right so I found for just looking through the word the greatest benefit that fasting does is it helps us lay our flesh aside distractions concerns worries things that would cloud your mind cares anxieties fasting helps you to lay those things aside and it makes you keener in the realm of the spirit just try it now there was a guy that I've read a lot about if through the years his name was Rhys Howl's and he had a Bible College and they were a pray in college and they really God gave them them the assignment during the Second World War to pray the Allied forces into victory and so his college would go before every battle the in prayer and they would pray about that Bob pray about that battle but I noticed about him that he fasted a lot and he didn't just fast food he did things like shave his head I thought that was interesting maybe that was maybe his hair you know was just too much to handle and it became a weight maybe that I could do something but anyway if you just is so ishe he actually it was a distraction for him so he read it himself of anything that would keep him out of the spirit he would rid himself of and he said this by fasting he it would strengthen his place he would secure his place with God perf purposefully to get a better grip on people that he was praying for or the situation he was praying for he could if he would fast he could get a better grip and actually he said he found himself in a lot of situations to be like Jesus remember the Bible said Jesus took our infirmities he said sometimes praying for people he would actually move over and take their infirmity on himself now if they were sick and he was praying for them to be healed he didn't get sick he just felt like that and so it gave him tremendous compassion but he but Reece Howells he didn't just fast food so I went on a looked like a little hunt through the bible and i found other things about fasting in second chronicles chapter 20 with Jehoshaphat you can go over and read that whole account later but he had a tremendous crisis situation so in crisis situations is a good time fasting would help you the enemy had surrounded them all of Israel came up from the south by the Dead Sea and they had surrounded all of Israel and so what did Jehoshaphat do he called the fastest for all of Judah not just not just him but everybody notice that is exactly what Esther did she called everybody so she wasn't just responsible by herself for the outcome so we see exactly the same thing with Jehoshaphat he did that too and this was very interesting they all got together and it said that they they sought they sought the Lord and they fasted and you know what happened the Holy Ghost came gave them such a strategic plan how to come out of this situation I mean just like one all the steps 1 2 3 4 everything that they were to do where they were to go it was amazing even that he was to send out the Prazeres first just an amazing story but it all started with fasting now I noticed with Daniel with Daniel it was a bit different in that he seemed to use fasting to tune his spirit to the Lord I like a like a to knob that would be like you're trying to find a channel on a on the radio station and you know it could be staticky and you just have to kind of tune it till you get right over he he's Daniels said that fasting helped him to tune and then this other one that I like well there's a lot of them over in the new test this one I really liked in acts 13 where church leaders got together and the Bible said they fasted they prayed and they ministered to the Lord three things they didn't just fast but they prayed they didn't just fast and pray but they ministered to the Lord all three of those things were equal all three of those things were were part of the strategy now I don't really know what they were going for here and why they were fasting and praying but they got over in the spirit and when they did get over in the spirit the Lord said separate me Saul and Barnabas for the work to which I have called them now I don't know if you know this or not but this was so strategic in the plan of God you know today Europe today would not have ever heard the gospel if it had not been for this Holy Ghost guidance right here because they right after that they set sail for Cyprus and then right after that they went over into Europe they cross the Aegean Sea and went over but this was the beginning of it is that they fasted they ministered to the Lord and they prayed and then of course Anna you remember that she was called she had a prayer assignment to pray in the first coming of the Lord and she Anna had said she would not leave the temple but she stayed and fasted and prayed all all of this is on fasting so in order for God to to bring forth his plan here in Shushan with Esther it became not just her responsibility hers by herself we could have said you just gone in there and you get her done but it wasn't her it wasn't just her she said this is everybody's responsibility now this speaks to us about the corporate place of Prayer and that's why member prayer changed over in the book of Acts remember in the Old Testament you see the lone intercessor and we could go through and see all of them Abraham and Noah what we could look at all of them the lone intercessor but over in Acts chapter one God called all of them together in the upper room and it became a corporate prayer meeting therefore it became a network a community of prayers and from this from that place on from Acts right there in the book of Acts chapter 1 all the way through the hallmark of the church was corporate prayer so we can wait just from what we've seen right here so many instances it wasn't just one by their self it was all of them so she knew this she couldn't do this by herself Esther and so she gets everybody in there because everybody had a role to play that they had a strategic purpose in the outcome and course this story you know it depicts the beautiful flow of the Spirit of God and how God supplied her with wisdom and grace when she went in to see her husband the king and so she goes over to him and in in chapter 5 and verse 1 now I told them of Esther 5:1 I told them I have been reading this from the Hebrew Bible and so because I I don't read Hebrew I and if I put Hebrew up here for you you wouldn't read it either and so I'm just gonna have to tell you what it says so in Esther chapter 5 in the original text in the original Hebrew it said on the third day of the fast Esther put on her royal robes now that's what it says in the amplified she put on her royal robes and stood in the royal inner court of the king's palace the king was sitting on his throne facing the main entrance of the palace now this is what the Hebrew says is that when she went in to the palace here she put on a prophetic spirit her clothes were spiritual clothes not natural clothes when she goes into him she transitions and she goes over here and she goes in in the spirit well we see here that everything is reversed everything here is Evert reversed because we find out what happened we're in this prayer meeting or in these three days of fasting and prayer that the the anointing was dispensed upon her and so we see that the decree was reversed and the instigator of this decree Haman and his ten sons they were hanged on wooden gallows that were meant for the Jews and for Mordecai there is so much here in the original Hebrew about those gallows and I wish I could read all of it to you it is absolutely amazing because of what I'm gonna tell you in a few minutes okay now let's turn over to Isaiah chapter 40 and we can tell you here what is happening you know for me I'm like the person that said I think they said about Moses Moses Moses others knew the acts of God but Moses knew his ways I like to know how God does things and I like to know why he does things and so here in Isaiah the fortieth chapter we see what happened in these prayer groups where prayers go out before the situation and they pray here it is of Isaiah the fortieth chapter and this is from the amplified a voice of verse 3 a voice of one who cries prepare in the wilderness the way of the Lord clear away the obstacles make straight and smooth in the desert a highway for our God every Valley shall be filled lifted and filled up every mountain and Hill shall be made low and the crooked and uneven shall be made straight and level and the rough places a plain and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed now why was the glory of the Lord revealed because there were instruments there were machines there was muscle here that was going out and actually you know a lot of times when the prophets in specially in the Old Testament when they would prophesy they would actually paint a picture to explain to make you understand the truth so in Isaiah's day when this king when the king of the nation would travel to a place that he had never been a group of people would go before the king and they would actually clear a path or make a highway they they would make the roads completely ready they would fill in the ruts they would level all the bumps though so that the king's travel would be smooth and easy in the same way God sends praying people he sends praying people before and but the tools are the instrument that we use are our words by speaking words in the spirit by Holy Ghost inspired words by words that are under the anointing we actually clear our path or we make a highway for God to work which is exactly what we saw with Esther the people that were praying what did they do they went before her in her assignment and they prepared the way you remember over in the book of John Jesus praying they said out of your belly shall flow rivers of living water the in the original there is out of your belly shall flow words are out of your belly shall there shall come a flow of words or we could say a flow of utterance in other words your words that you were speaking in the spirit are containers and they contain power burden removing yoke destroying power so words that are spoken in the spirit or words that are spoken by the Spirit move things as we see here from description Isaiah 40 they straighten things they set things in motion there were terrible obstacles in this situation you can imagine with Haman and his sons and all their constituents with their that were bound in anti-semitism the ones that were going to kill the Jews and then this whole scenario over an ester it was imminent wasn't it like they had a lot of time but through the prayers of those people you see they did exactly Isaiah 40 they routed out the obstacle they they came and I would say that he was an obstacle wouldn't you yeah he needed to be removed and so the decree that decreed to kill all the Jews had to be dealt with it had to be reversed they went out and they made a highway now turn with me over to revelations and I'll just show you this and before I get to this other part here so that you can understand that sometimes this happens in revelations chapter 8 listen to this scripture I'll just quote it to you but we won't turn there psalms 141 it says this let my prayers come forth with the incense before you let my prayers come forth with incense all right now listen to this scripture here in revelations chapter 8 verse 2 then I saw the seven angels who stand before to God and to them were given seven trumpets and another angel came and stood over the altar he had a golden censer and he was given very much incense that he might mingle the incense with the prayers of the people of God upon the golden altar before the throne and the smoke of the incense arose in the presence of God with the prayers of the people of God from the hand of the Angels you can see here prayers are very live they're very real they were as real as the incense that was being burned and these in it was going up before the Lord so look what happened so the angel took the incense filled it with fire from the altar and cast it into the earth then they're followed peals of thunder loud rumblings blasts noises flashes of lightning in an earthquake so what happened Wendy when this came back in the earth it came back as judgment as a judgment did us head so the prayer goes up and God decides how it comes back down all right now we see the exact same thing happening over in Acts the 12th chapter with Peter we'll just look at this really quick I probably gonna go longer than I normally go so you know that's the way it is all right so here in Acts a twelfth chapter here we know that they had killed James and the and the brother of John with the sword the next day which was Pesach they took Peter and when they took him they knew exactly what was going to happen to him that they were going to probably kill him too so the Bible says in verse 5 of Acts the twelfth chapter and the fifth verse so Peter was kept in prison but notice what it says but fervent prayer for him was persistently made to God by one man who's praying everybody everybody's in this prayer meeting everybody that was in the church was responsible to get him out of prison okay and so they prayed you know and it was really really supernatural how he got out of prison it was so supernatural it's it's an amazing story and I can't go all the way over there except I will remind you of verse nine where he's carried over into another dimension of the Spirit where he does not notice natural things praise or alright notices verse it says so they took the angel came his chained the felt chains fell off his hands the angel told him to tighten your belt get up follow me out the door swung open everybody all the guards we don't know what happened to them but there were sixteen of them and all of them they weren't there either and look what Peter says and Peter went out along following him the angel and he was not conscious but he was not conscious that what was apparently being done by the angel that it was real but thought he was seeing a vision moving right along okay so you can see that supernatural things really begin to happen when you get over in the spirit and you start praying about things especially as a corporate as a congregation you start praying about things but you notice this the person that was really causing all the trouble trouble and and the persecution was Herod well let's see what happened to him verse 21 of the same chapter and on an appointed day Herod arrayed himself in his royal robes took his seat upon his throne and addressed an oration to them and the Assembly people shouted it is the voice of God and not of men and at once an angel of the Lord smote him and cut him down because he did not give glory to God I will guarantee you the people that were over praying for Peter they called forth unbeknownst to them you wouldn't know you were because you were praying words holy spirit given words you don't always know that you would be praying like that I'm just telling you that sometimes it happens and you're gonna see in a minute you're gonna see when else it happened to and it's going to be amazing when you see it alright so the with like with the Esther and with those people there they probably didn't even know that that she was going to call a judgement down on Haman and his sons which is what she did now I was reading after a Jewish rabbi and he said this about Esther when she came in to the King in the original and I just read you let's go back to Esther when she approaches him in Esther chapter five down here and let's see what verse that is verse four in the original text this is the way it reads she calls him she says an Esther said O king of kings this is what she says prophetically so right here this is appalling that she comes in now she's speaking to her husband who was standing in front of her but she is also here appealing to a higher court which is the court of heaven so here God grants her this place into the higher court and we see that God answers her so she invites Haman over for dinner with her and the king but in the end what she asked for was Haman and his ten sons to be hanged and of course we know he said you can ask me anything to the half of my kingdom well she could have asked him for anything she could ask him land jewelry Eve even took build a third temple she could have asked him that but she asked for Haman and his ten sons to be hang and so he grants a request we can see that over an Esther chapter 7 and verse 10 notice so they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai and the King's wrath was pacified so then if we look over at a chapter 9 go over to chapter 9 and we see there in chapter 9 the names of the sons of Haman very interesting in the original Hebrew Bible and the rabbi's have no idea why it was like this if you put up that first slide here this is a way that it appears in in the in the original Hebrew this is the way it is it's not like written across the page but the 10 sons of Haman are written like like this from verses 7 to 10 and then an inverse let's see 11 on that day the number of those who were slain is shoosh and the capital were brought before the king and the king said to Esther the Queen the Jews have dis Lane and destroyed five hundred men in Shushan the capital and the ten sons of Haman so we see that the ten sons of Haman have been hung on the gallows and all of them are dead and so at the end of that verse verse 12 we would say and a half there in the original Hebrew the King looks to her and he says they've all been hanged what else what other petition do you have of me what else can I do for you is what he says to her verse 13 then Esther said if it pleases the King let it be granted to the Jews which are in Shushan to do tomorrow also according to this day's decree and let Haman's 10 sons be hanged on the gallows they were already hanged they had been hung the day before now this is what the the rabbi's say here the rabbi's say at this very minute here is in the original text she is prophetically reaching over fifteen hundred years later to 1946 October the 16th in which the ten Nazi criminals were tried and convicted in the Nuremberg trials and hanged for the death of six million Jews so here she is in her prophetic place she gets over in in the spirit her words are not bound by time but she reaches all the way over here fifteen hundred years later and begins to prophesy about the Nuremberg trials and that was actually October the 16th 1946 in which they were hanged now if you look up at the slide that's those that were some of them that were tried and convicted in Nuremberg but if you go back to the to the the the names of Haman sons go back to that one for me and the original that one now in the first in if you know this in and in the Hebrew language every letter has a numerical value has a number value some letters or capital letters and some letters are small letters the first name here is the name and you I could see it better and the amplified then I really could hear his name was Paris John death ayah and in the it appears in this the Hebrew letter Tove and I don't know that if you can actually see it up there it's pointed with a red arrow I can't see it as good I'm looking at this one back here but it's pointy and it's it has the numerical value of 400 all right the second one is par masta and it's in the seventh name and it is the Hebrew letter shin and it has a numerical value of 300 then down later on the last more the next of the last one is vases ACTA and in the Hebrew the little word is Bob and the taller word or the taller letter is xoan which makes in in in the numerical the year in the Hebrew 5707 is written in there in the Bible code the year 5707 which on our go gorian calendar is the year 1946 so those Nazis the Nazi criminals they were hanged on October the 16th 1946 but it was on the Hebrew calendar it was on the 21st day of Tishri 5707 the 21st day of Tishri this rabbi actually told me this it it's the day that marks the judgment of people and nations that have done wrong to the Jews so the 10 Nazis criminals were hung on that day on October the 16th 1946 now if you do more work in the Bible code of the book of Esther you can find out so many things and I'll tell you a couple of more things that are interesting but remember that we said when your words all over in the spirit those words spoken by the spirit those words can go backward are those words can go forward and they have a quantum effect that means that you're you're not bound to any realm of time and they move in other dimensions of the spirit you your words can actually reach into another age I remember years ago I used to pray with a lady in this church and her assignment was to pray in the Millennial age and the reason that I ever started to study the Millennial age is because I would pray with her in her prayer group and it was so interesting the words that she would speak by the Holy Ghost about that age it may it made me so hungry to know about the Millennial age that she could be over in the spirit and she could be praying in that age I I just want you to see what capacity we we have okay and so we see here what happened in with Esther by by the prayers of the people and by her she actually reached over and pronounced judgment on people fifteen hundred years later so you see they were not only clearing a path for the Jews in Shushan but they cleared upon the path that announced the judgment on the ten Nazi criminals that were executed on October the 16th 1946 there's many things in here that are very interesting about those trials the Nuremberg trials usually by German law Nazi criminals or German people by law they were shot by a firing squad but in this case the gallows that were built for those ten criminals were the exact replication they repeated exactly the dimensions of him and the man that built those gallows his name was woods there were actually 11 of them convicted at Nuremberg but we know the night before they were all hankering took cyanide and committed suicide also a rabbi when I was in Israel he told me that Heyman's favorite color was black Redd thought that was interesting and that Adolf Hitler had a Swiss bank account under the name of a Haman now the reason that the rabbi's ever came up with and broke the Bible code here with Esther was because of a man by the name of Julius Streicher he was director of an anti-semitic newspaper from 1933 to 1939 and he mass a considerable fortune by stealing Jewish properties and goods he had a lot of ancient tourism and documents and he studied the Torah Julius Streicher he studied it extensively he had a solid knowledge of the Jewish people their religion and their customs and so the psychologists that was sent in on behalf of the International Military Tribunal to Nuremberg he would go to the cells of the accuser and he learned that Stryker has studied Judaism and the towel mood for 25 years now he wrote this magazine and he was the last one of the Nazi criminals to hang do you Stryker and as he climbed the gallows he shouted these words the Jews will be happy again Purim 1946 so they actually they actually hung during the time of Purim and of course you know what Purim is that's when the Jewish celebration commemorating the whole story of Esther and saving the Jews and you know they that is an appointed time with them they keep that day - now it's a remembered and appointed time with you so that was the reason it why he got up on the platform before he hung on the gallows and said that that is what made the rabbis finally go in to break the Bible code to find out what the significance was because of Julia strikers words so you can see as we as we get over as we corporately would get over in the spirit it would be similar to you climbing a mountain the perception that you get when you climb up a mountain you get a different perception than you do walking just a natural plain walking a natural plain you see what's in front of you you can turn around see what's behind you but but you you don't have any kind of vision that lifts you when you get over in the spirit it's like climbing a mountain you you get a vision you see things you could never see walking on a natural plane even with binoculars you couldn't see it so you can see the value of that so that's why we put great emphasis on prayer in the spirit possible to to facilitate our praying

Channel: Living Word Christian Center

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Keywords: Living Word, Mac Hammond, Lynne Hammond, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota, Minneapolis, Faith, Grace, Jim Hammond, Jamey Hammond, Word of Faith, Love, God's Love, You Are Blessed, Jesus, Healing, Church, Sermon, Online Church, fasting and prayer, lynne hammond, living word christian center, prayer, fasting

Id: h-iz4DholIo

Length: 45min 30sec (2730 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 11 2019