Hence that's why in worship, the first songs we sing are strong clapping ones, and why are they doing that? They're to get our body awake, but you know, I can tell you this: you don't have to sing three of those songs. If everyone for 30 seconds would clap and shout for all they're worth, you'd have the same effect. That's the thing, isn't it interesting? Yet we can take so long, because it takes a wholehearted engagement to break the apathy and the heaviness off you, and all it takes is 30 seconds of wholehearted and it breaks. But people go for a long time heavy and passive and shut down, because they just didn't give themselves to something. Okay, here's another one you can try now, and that is by speaking scripture aloud.
Now I'm going to give you a scripture out of one of the Psalms, Psalm 103 and it goes like this. I'll quote it to you, but it's something you can all pray, and I want you to pray it. If you don't know where it is, you can look it up in Psalm 103, Verse 1. Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, heals all your diseases and so on. Okay, now let me ask you this: what part is he speaking to? [Soul.] He's speaking to his soul, so where's he speaking from? His spirit, so you see his spirit is speaking to his soul, and what is he telling his soul to do? Bless the Lord! In other words, he's saying wake up! Bless the Lord, O my soul and all that is within me, bless His holy name!
See he's stirring himself, and he didn't have tongues, but he did find that by speaking to his soul he could command his soul, to what? To bless the Lord, so why did he have to do that? Because he didn't feel like doing that. You read through the psalms and you find how often David was miserable. He said I began to think and I pondered, and as I pondered on my distress my soul became overwhelmed, then I meditated on the works of the Lord. I remembered the great and mighty works He did, and then everything changes you see, so you read Psalm 77, first half of the psalm he's in depression as he thinks about all his problems. Then immediately he makes a change, and he starts to meditate on the works of God, and his whole spirit comes back up again, and faith arises - so why don't we just try that aye?
Now remember, don't just say empty words. Speak to your soul, like you're telling something that's rebellious in you to come into line. Now you know what it's like when the kids are rebellious - don't want to do that. Straighten up boy, you know! [Laughter] See, so this is kind of military warfare, so you've got to speak into your own soul, so if you haven't got it you can get the Bible and open it up, bless the Lord o my soul. Bless the Lord o my soul and forget not, and all that is within me bless His holy name. Aye? Bless the Lord, O my soul. You know, come on, let's hear it on the count of three, just get your Bible out, open it up. It's a great one. I pray this, it wakes me up immensely. I love it - then you find there's other things you can do, and we'll talk about that, taking authority over your day, commanding your day to come into order.
Bless the Lord, O my soul; And all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all His benefits - so we'll just do that part. Are we ready? [Laughs] Okay, on the count of three: one, two, three. Bless the Lord, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul and forget not all His benefits. Halleluiah, okay - no, you can carry on - forgives all your iniquities, heals all your diseases. Amen - redeems my life and so on, come on. Okay, try it again from the top. Bless the Lord, O my soul; all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, hey, come on, there we go - your diseases, yes, exactly. Redeems your life, Halleluiah, glory to God! Okay, now just stop for a moment.
Now what I want you to do is to identify what you felt as you started to do that, what happens inside you when you spoke to your soul. How many felt yourself arising on the inside? How many felt a change on the inside? What did you feel? [There was a change in the atmosphere.] The change in the atmosphere here wasn't there, when we gave voice to the word of God the whole atmosphere began to shift - so let's have a look what we've noticed. We've noticed that the spirit of God inside us can be awakened and aroused and stirred. The one that causes that is me, by my choice. I can pray in tongues any time I want, so the second thing we saw was, our body tends to resist the flow of the spirit. We can make our body be subdued by just shaking it, and once you've learned how to stir your spirit you could just shake yourself like that and be alive, just like that, once you've learned to have dominion over your body and what it does to you.