A house of prayer Part One

Yesterday at NRN we continued in our teaching about prayer. I presented a message by Jim Cymbala entitled "My house shall be a house of prayer." In the closing moments of the worship experience I shared that I would place a portion of the message on my blog each day of this week as a primer for a time of prayer.

At the close of the service there were many people who came to the altar seeking an answer from the Lord and making decisions about their prayer life. I recommended the following decisions:

1. Pray at lest 10 minutes a day.

2. Begin to journal your prayer life.

3. Join us at 6:30pm each Wednesday for a corporate time of prayer in the worship center.

4. Other - What is God speaking to you about your prayer life?

It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer,

’but you have made it a den of robbers.”

Luke 19:46

Donkeys braying, birds chirping, people rushing about, voices crying, “Best deals here! Change your money at my booth! Finest animals for sacrifice!” Activity everywhere, all focused on commerce, on making a buck. Perhaps there was a contest among the moneychangers that day – who can squeeze the most money from the pilgrims today? Who’s the best swindler? They were a den of robbers.

Our Lord’s words were not soft; nor was his response gentle. With a whip he drove them out. He cried against them, “This is a house of prayer! You have made it a place of desecration, a den of robbers!”

What about today’s house of prayer, what is its condition? People sometimes are too quick to make the leap from temple to church, calling the church a house of prayer. But consider what the New Testament has told us in passages like 1 Corinthians 3:16, Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? From the day of Pentecost onward, the temple is found in the people of God. You and I are the house of prayer.

What are you doing to drive the robbers out of the house of prayer? How are you keeping it pure and holy and focused on its true business, leading people in the worship and exaltation of God? We know that God is at work to purify his people. What will Jesus be driving out of your life to make you a holy house of prayer? Is your life so filled with noise – traffic, television, work, school, games – that you bear little resemblance to a house of prayer?

Here is the first clip as I promised as the beginning of the message: