DAILY DEVOTIONAL
June 17 — A house of prayer
A spoken reading of this is being recorded — it will appear here soon.
June 17 — A House of Prayer
"And said unto them, It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." — Matthew 21:13 (KJV)
When Jesus walked into the temple and turned over the tables, He was not improvising. He quoted Isaiah. The temple was supposed to be a house of prayer. It had become something else — a market, a thoroughfare, a place where the cost of getting to God had quietly gone up.
The temple is no longer in Jerusalem. The believer is the temple now. So is the household where believers live. The same verse still applies. A Christian home is meant to be a house of prayer. Not only a place where things happen — meals, school runs, sleep, repair — but a place where prayer happens too, regularly enough that it is part of the architecture.
This does not require a chapel. It requires a habit. Five minutes in the morning. Grace at the table. A short blessing at bedtime over the children. A psalm read aloud on Sunday. Across a year, these accumulate. Across a childhood, they become the air the children remember.
The platforms cannot do this. The assistant can find the verse. It cannot pray it. The video can teach a topic. It cannot kneel with the family. The work of a house of prayer is done by people in the house, one quiet minute at a time, in front of the One who hears prayer.
Today, before bed, walk through the rooms once and pray a single sentence in each. Lord, bless this room. That is enough.
"Pray without ceasing." — 1 Thessalonians 5:17 (KJV)
May the Lord bless you and keep you.