My House Shall Be A House Of Prayer

Mark 11:15-18

My House Shall Be A House Of Prayer

     “Is it not written, My house shall be called a house of prayer for the nations? But you have made it a robbers den.” -Jesus 
     Jesus went to the temple and began casting out those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those selling doves. And He would not permit anyone to carry goods through the temple. Jesus has come to cleanse us! He has called us to be the temple of His Holy Spirit! We are to be houses of prayer to the nations! This means that we are to be places of prayer and refuge to everyone around us. We are to be a comfort and help to our neighbor and a living example of God’s kingdom and power.

     What a wonderful job. What a wonderful life to live, being places of refuge for those in distress and for those who desire to know our Lord and Savior. The world has no way to offer hope and comfort to it’s distressed people, but we carry that hope and comfort with us wherever we go. 

     As God works to clean out all of the corruption in our lives, His Holy Spirit becomes pleased to dwell in us and we find ourselves truly a place of prayer for people. It is the chaos of sin in our lives that keeps us from being effective houses of prayer. Our lives have been filled like the temple, with selfish pursuits and greed making us more concerned with taking care of ourselves than others. We cannot be houses of prayer and refuge for others if there is no room left in our lives for them to be able to enter into it. It is time to learn how to love.

     Love gives us freedom. Love gives us the ability to pursue people with kindness, and to help with no thought of the pains and the time that it will take to see results for our labors. Love will pursue a person and even if it is rejected it will continue to love unconditionally. Love requires your whole heart. It has to give all of itself with no fear of rejection for if it is afraid of rejection it will not be able to make it past the very shallowest form of love. The love of self. If we don’t put all of our heart into it, it means that we are more concerned with our own well being than of the other persons. Love has no fear of rejection. Love has no fear of speaking the truth even if it means it will be ridiculed or tortured for it. Love has no fear of having wasted its time on someone it will pursue indefinitely. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7) - Love is patient, love is kind, and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek it’s own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never fails.

     Let us pray for true love for one another that we may indeed prove to be houses of prayer and refuge to our neighbor. God bless, -Seth