House of Prayer

“I will bring them to my holy mountain of Jerusalem and will fill them with joy in my house of prayer. I will accept their burnt offerings and sacrifices, because my Temple will be called a house of prayer for all nations.” – Isaiah 56:7

Have you ever thought about starting a House of Prayer in your church? We did and God is not only answering our prayers but He is moving us into a deeper relationship with Him.

I don’t believe we can ever talk too much about prayer and some of the wonderful promises God has made to us in regard to our petitions to Him. God promises to heal our land, if we as a people would humble ourselves, turn from our wicked ways, and pray (2 Chronicles 7:14). Oh, how I believe this applies to America today as never before.

How does God want us to pray? By looking to Him for what we need rather than the world and continue to ask Him until He provides the answers (Matthew 7:7-11).

Like most of you, I’ll never forget what happened to our country on September 11, 2001. We refer to it today simply as “9/11” and everyone knows what you mean. Besides the horror of those graphic images of planes flying into the twin towers, what I also remember as a pastor is the filling up of our church during the days that followed with people wanting to pray. We experienced several weeks of prayer meetings until most of us returned to our normal activities when we felt the danger was over.

Oh, how I wish that would become a normal activity for the body of Christ again, not caused by a catastrophic event, but by a desire to join together with the body of Christ and pray about everything (Philippians 4:6-7).

In the scripture above from Isaiah, God makes His desire known to the nation of Israel in regard to His Temple in Jerusalem. It was to be known as a “house of prayer” and everybody was welcome. It would be easy to dismiss this as Old Testament, had not Jesus said the very same thing as recorded in Mark 11:17: “And as he taught them (in the Temple), he said, ‘Is it not written: My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations?'”

In the above context, Jesus had just cleared out the Temple vendors with a great deal of zeal, and loudly proclaimed the purpose of God’s House for all to hear was to be a place of prayer. Do you know that we are God’s House, His Temple (1 Corinthians 3:16)? I hope it doesn’t take another tragedy in America or elsewhere to cause God’s people to want to get together and be devoted to prayer.

Yes, we can pray on our own and I hope we all do, fervently and consistently, but there is something powerful that happens when people come together in one setting to bombard the halls of heaven as intercessors as expressed in this promise from Leviticus 26:8: “Five of you shall chase a hundred, and a hundred of you will chase ten thousand.” The results are exponential.

So my friends, why not join a prayer group or start one in your church? Your pastor will love you for it. If you live in the Albuquerque area and don’t have one, you’re invited to join us at Koinonia Church on Wednesday nights where we come together to worship, learn about prayer and then pray.

Remember, we are encouraged to “Pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17) because God is always listening. Maranatha!