I want to encourage? you to rise up like King David to awaken the dawn and see God’s breakthrough over the circumstances of life!
0 God, my heart is steadfast; I will sing and give praise, even with my glory. Awake, lute and harp! I will awaken the dawn. I will praise You, 0 Lord, among the peoples, And I will sing praises to You among the nations. Psalm 108:1-3
It was very early in the morning before sunrise. King David was lying on his bed musing in his mind, and preparing for the battle that he was going to face the next day. There, in the solitude of the night, something hit his spirit! Faith began to work as God gave him songs in the night. David, the warrior king, was also the psalmist of the Old Testament. When the Spirit came upon him one thing was for sure – he wasn’t going to be singing alone! And so, early in the morning, just before the dawn began to break, music could be heard coming from the palace. And the soldiers in the barracks were woken up with the dawn, hearing the sound of the triumph of the battle that they were going to enter into that day!
Joy comes in the morning
The dawn or daybreak in the Bible is highly significant. Just a quick word search will give you a lot of information concerning the kind of day that God is going to bring. At the break of day, the Bible says, the time of mourning and weeping goes, for joy comes in the morning! In Psalm 30 we read, “weeping may endure for a night but joy comes in the morning.” It doesn’t matter how dark your night is, morning is coming!
Morning in the Bible is a great time of mercy and compassion. Remember Jeremiah’s lament over Jerusalem? Nobody could possibly understand what Jeremiah was feeling after something like 40 years of prophecy, warning people to amend their ways. But they did not listen. Then the inevitable happened – the armies of the Babylonian empire came and took away the exiles into the land of Babylon and destroyed the city of Jerusalem together with the temple. Jeremiah is pictured in Lamentations chapter 2 as a weeping prophet, heartbroken over Jerusalem. Could there be in such an hour of darkness, in such a moment of sorrow, a word from the Lord, a word of hope and of comfort?
And then the sun burst into the dark night of Jeremiah’s gloom as he lamented over the destruction of Jerusalem and he realised that God hadn’t finished with him yet! There was still hope, still more of God’s faithfulness, more of God’s mercy, and more of God’s grace!
Morning in the Bible is a time of freedom and victory
Morning in the Bible is a time of freedom and victory. Deliverance and salvation come in the morning. Psalm 46 is about Jerusalem, a city that was under constant pressure and attack from its enemies. It was constructed for the glory of God, and a place where he promised to dwell. The temple in Jerusalem was the resting place for the soles of the feet of the God of Israel. Any place which you build as a resting place for the God of Israel, and as a place for God’s glory, will be under attack!
The moment you stand up for Jesus, you make yourself a target! And this Psalm is all about how God will come to the aid and defence of those who stand for him. Speaking of Jerusalem, David says, “God is in the midst of her, she shall not be moved. God shall help her, just at the break of dawn” (Psalm 46:5).
Daybreak in Bible language is the moment of salvation. It’s when God moves into the dark night of your soul, with his salvation, with his deliverance. It’s a time of fulfilment of promise, a time of deliverance, a time of rescue, and a time of rejoicing – the night is finished and the morning has come! Aren’t you looking forward to the morning in your experience?
God is looking for a willing heart
God’s armies are also mustered at daybreak. Psalm 110: says, “Your people shall be volunteers in the day of your power.” This verse can also be translated, “Your people shall be willing in the day of your battle.” So, when that day of power arises God releases his army. This is the army of the Lord gathering to him on the day of battle, on the dawn of a new day of his power.
God is looking for a willing response from his people and so he says, “In the day of my power I will assemble my armies.” David goes on to say, “In the beauties of holiness, from the womb of the morning, you have the dew of your youth” Psalm 110:3.
God is saying that by the Holy Spirit a prophetic word is going out like a trumpet call, and everyone who listens will hear the call on the inside of them: “It’s time to assemble to the Lord! It’s the day of battle! It’s the day of glory! It’s the day of power! It’s a new day!” And so the army assembles dressed in the beauty of holiness, arrayed with the glorious robes and garments of priestly splendour. They gather to Jesus, not himself!
It says, “from the womb of the morning.” What’s the womb of the morning? The dawn, daybreak. God is saying that when day breaks, the armies come. It doesn’t matter how dark your night is, or how desperately despondent or defeated you feel. Get ready, for the army of the Lord is coming! And the battle of the Lord is coming to take place on behalf of your life.
After all, Jesus always comes in the morning! He may have died in the afternoon but he rose from the dead in the morning! And for every Good Friday or every crucifixion there is a resurrection in the morning!
You may be going through a crucifixion experience in your life where you feel that God has forsaken you. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” you say. You have an unbearable thirst and you feel as if your bones are all out of joint. It is as if you’re going through your own agony, your own personal Calvary. Let me tell you, when the afternoon and evening are done, and when the night-time is over – the morning comes! And with it resurrection!
There’s a resurrection waiting for you, because the morning belongs to Jesus. Whenever he comes, he brings the morning with him.
You’ve got to learn to praise God before the manifestation
Every morning, as the dawn begins to break, we have the “dawn chorus”. It’s when the birds begin to sing. I’ve been in parts of the world where the dawn chorus is deafening! But we are not like the creatures. When the sun rises the creatures sing. But for us it’s the other way round, when the Christians sing, the sun rises!
David says, “I will awaken the dawn!” You’ve got to learn to praise God before the manifestation. God always does something in you before he does something around you! The song of the Lord is rising up in the inside of us. And it’s a prophetic song! Soon we shall be rising up and singing the dawn into reality. We will awaken the dawn! In Psalm 42, David speaks to himself. After he says, “Why are you cast down, 0 my soul? And why are you disquieted within me?” he has a revelation “Hope in God, for I shall yet praise him for the help of his countenance” (Psalm 42:5). He knew that one day God was going to come through for him. And so he says, “On that day I’m going to praise you. On that day you will break through from heaven on my behalf and you will fulfil your promise”.
God is as good as his word. When he says, “It’s done”, it’s done! God says it and that settles it. No promise of his shall fail. No purpose of his shall be thwarted or frustrated. He is the sovereign God who honours his word. His word is integrity itself. David said, “You are the faithful God. You are the God of all power, the God of all grace, the God of all glory! Oh yes, I’m going to praise you. I am going to praise you when you come through for me. So soul, why don’t you practice now? Get ready now! Praise him now!
The song that awakens the dawn
The song that awakens the dawn is the song that’s sung at night! You may be in the middle of your nighttime experience with darkness on every side and saying to yourself, “Will morning ever come?” And then God says, “Sing! Sing!” Like Paul and Silas at night-time in the darkest part of the prison they began to sing praises to God. When you learn to let the song of the Lord, rise up inside you in the night-time, that song becomes the song that will awaken the dawn! You will praise him when he answers.
So often the key to moving from promise to fulfilment is the praise of faith, ahead of the final manifestation. Learn to praise God before the final manifestation. Whatever the problem, the answer is coming because all the promises of God are ‘Yes!’ and ‘Amen’.
You learn to awaken the dawn when you understand that the victory is always won in the secret place. David won his battles on his bed of praise not the battlefields! When he had the assurance that God was going to be with him he could stand up and sing the song of the Lord and wake the whole palace up to have an early morning praise party – because he knew that if God was with him, who could be against him?
Every seed of faith needs to be germinated by the waters of intercession.
I want to tell you, the battle is won in the secret place- not in the public place! It’s too late out there! Win it first on your knees. Every seed of faith needs to be germinated by the waters of intercession.
It’s time for you to rise up. David says, “I will arise and waken the dawn”. Cry out to him in that secret place. Do it with endurance. Do it with persistence. Do it bearing the cost of it all! How badly do you want your breakthrough? If you want it badly enough you will get it.
God says ‘The time is coming’
If you’ve been holding onto God’s promises for many years, through the darkest times of life, he says to you, “The time is coming. Lay hold of me!”
“I wait for the Lord, my soul waits, and in his word I do hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than those who watch for the morning – yes, more than those who watch for the morning”. Psalm 130:5-6
That’s how the promises are fulfilled in your life. Learn the principles of prophetic proclamation, and join in the song that awakens the dawn! When you say, ”I’m going to wake up the dawn!” or “I’m going to make the sun rise!” it is a prophetic declaration!
The prophetic word is an active ingredient that brings the fulfilment of the promise. It’s an ingredient that is released in the earth realm so that God’s purposes happen. God says in Amos 3:7 that the Lord does nothing without first revealing it to his servants the prophets! Why? Because that’s how God’s purposes happen on earth.
Before the fulfilment there is always the prophetic promise. God kept promising the coming of Jesus, generation after generation, and then the word was fulfilled! And that’s how God will deal with you! He will speak into your heart and he will say, “Here’s the prophetic word, hold on to it”. It’s like a light that you hold onto in the darkness, until the day comes. Start to praise God for the prophetic word you’ve received. Praise him for the validity of his prophetic word to you.
This is what Psalm 108 is all about. David says, “I have the victory in my spirit. I’m not fighting my own battles, I’m fighting the Lord’s battles as I go out into this day”. And so David begins to awaken the dawn.
I will praise you, 0 Lord, among the peoples, and I will sing praises to you among the nations. Psalm 108:3
He says, ”I’m going out among the nations and I’m going to do battle for the Lord. I will be victorious and I will teach them the song of the Lord.
I’m not coming home defeated! I’m going to win my battle today!” Be exalted, 0 God, above the heavens, and Your glory above all the earth. Psalm 108:5
This is God’s glory, so David says, “I know that I can awaken the dawn because GOD’s glory is going to be seen”. I’m not talking about the glory of your particular church, or the glory of any other church or ministry. It’s not the glory of a method or a man.
It’s the glory of God in the earth realm – that’s what’s at stake! There’s only one thing that God wants to see on the earth and that’s the glory of his precious name – that it might be seen and acknowledged so the world may be blessed through his servant Jesus! Psalm 108:7 says, “God has spoken in his holiness.” That’s why David got up early to sing the song of the Lord and to muster the musicians of the palace and wake everybody up with the noise of a psalm and the lute and harp – because he’d heard from the Lord! He went on to prophesy, “I will rejoice: I will divide Shechem and measure out the Valley of Succoth. Gilead is mine; Manasseh is mine; Ephraim also is the helmet for My head; Judah is My lawgiver. Moab is My washpot; Over Edom I will cast My shoe; Over Philistia I will triumph” (Psalm 108:7-9).
David knew even before he set foot out of the palace to get ready for battle, that he had the victory! Before he began to arm himself, and to prepare himself for the battle physically, David understood spiritually that God is the God of battles and he said, “Through our God we shall do valiantly. It is HE who shall tread down our enemies” (Psalm 108:13). No wonder he could awaken the dawn and proclaim that he was going to win the battle.
And that’s what you need to do! You need to know how to awaken the dawn! You need to look over your Manasseh, your Gilead, your Philistia – over every situation of enemy control and domination in your life – and you need to be able to prophesy and say with the language of faith,
“I will awaken my dawn!” This is revelation to your soul, and your spirit!
Whatever your situation or personal circumstances, you have the victory in Jesus’ name. Whatever our faith corporately or individually, we have the victory in Jesus’ name! Whatever you’re facing, God is with you! And if God is with you, who can be against you? Awaken your dawn!
