House of Prayer

You know we hear a lot that God's house is a house of prayer. And we nod our heads dutifully and tell ourselves, "yep, we need to schedule more time to pray together at church." And we COMPLETELY MISS THE BOAT.

Interestingly enough we stand on the side of Pharisees when we think this way. Stephen got stoned over this very matter. Pharisees thought that God's house was a temple -- we've just updated it to say a church building, chapel, house of God, house of Worship, etc...

But Stephen said that God does not live in houses made by human hands.

Now we dutifully not our heads at that, and fail to see the insanity of believing both contradictory things.

If God does not live in houses made by human hands then His house being a house of prayer is NOT a church building (and neither does it have anything to do with it).

Remember Jesus when He said that He would tear down the temple and in 3 days rebuild it? And everyone thought He was out of His mind, because they thought in their fleshly minds that the true temple was a building. But Christ was talking about His body -- a person.

So where does God dwell? Where does He reside? Where is He housed? In believers. We are the temple of the Holy Spirit. Christ in you the hope of glory.

So if His house is a house of prayer, what is it? Remember Paul says pray unceasingly. Is that a clue?

Christ tore down the "House" house, the physical house of prayer, which was just a shadow, a picture, a polaroid of the real house of prayer which is you the believer, which is us the entire family of believers.

See, here's the rub. If asked where is a house of prayer, what do we think? We think of a church building. OR, if we're "smart" we say a congregation of believers, that meets in a church building (which is actually the exact same thing). So our first thoughts, our foundational impressions before we start to hem and haw to look and sound Christian, is a physical building, the update to the temple, that God did away with at the Cross.