The House of Prayer

This week my church here in Harrisburg (Life Center) is launching a 24/7 house of prayer.  24/7.  Day and night worship and prayer.  A place where people come during every hour of the day to carry on continual intercession.  Who even came up with this idea?

More and more my heart is being stirred by the ever present theme of continual prayer and worship in Scripture.  I feel like the Holy Spirit opened my eyes to a message that before, my eyes had always swept over nonchalantly, and now this same message seems to scream at me from every page.  This book that lays over my lap is bursting at the seams with this steady rhythm.
Worship and prayer
Day and night
The house of God
24/7

Every time Scripture references the house of the Lord, the tabernacle or the temple, it is in reality speaking of this idea of a house of prayer.  In the Old Testament, the temple was where the manifest presence of God dwelt.  The shekinah glory of the Lord was contained in the Ark of the Covenant where only the appointed high priest could go and minister before the Lord.  Everything to do with the tabernacle was a model of worship.  From the craftsmanship of the temple to the sacrifices, and from the fire on the altar to the ceremonial washing, it was all a foreshadowing of what God had designed for all of his children for all of eternity.

Then there was David's tabernacle.  Never before had the place of the presence of God been made available for the common man.  It was only ever available to the priests.  But David was a man after God's own heart.  He was the boy who created a secret history with the Lord when no one was watching, worshipping Him with his harp in the fields.  His heart for continual worship started in that place, when he was a little ol' nobody with a life full of nothing looming in front of him.  And it was that same heart of worship that he carried with him into the courts of a king, out onto the bloody battlefield, into the caves and wastelands of a refugee, and eventually up the road that led to Mount Zion where he built a house for God.

(Just had to add a random church pic with the fall colors :) )

David established a house of prayer where he appointed professional musicians and singers to release 24/7 worship through psalms.  This continual worship lasted for 33 years and became a prophetic declaration of what would one day be available to all peoples.  Unhindered, uninhibited, day and night enjoyment of His manifest presence and the permanently clean hands that are required to be lifted up in a response of worship and prayer!  We look at the history of David and the house of God that he built and we marvel at it as some kind of miraculous phenomenon that marked history.  And yet we fail to understand that David only tasted of a reality that is every believer's inheritance and mandate.

Thus enters the Great High Priest.  Hebrews 9 says that through His sacrifice, we are able to enter the Most Holy Place and serve the Living God.  In fact, that is our inheritance!
Why is it that we have locked unending prayer and worship into the realm of eternity?  We picture angels sitting on clouds, playing their hearts and sweetly singing "Holy, Holy, Holy," without ever stopping.  We have safely packaged the idea of 24/7 and placed it into the great unknown of "forever" along with all the other things we cannot sufficiently understand.  However, we are robbing ourselves of the very thing that Jesus paid His life for.

Jesus said in Matthew 21:13, "It is written, 'My house shall be called a house of prayer.'"  1 Peter 2:5 says, "You also, as living stones, are being built up a spiritual house, a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ."  2 Corinthians 6:16 says, "For we are the temple of the living God."  You don't have to read between the lines to see it.  It's not an Old Testament history lesson or a future Millennial reality.

So why isn't this happening everywhere?  Well the encouraging news is... that it actually is!  God is moving amongst his people all across the globe.  There is a fresh wave of hunger for the place of prayer and worship, the same hunger that gripped David when he wrote, "For zeal for your house consumes me..." (Psalm 69:9)  This idea of 24/7 is catching like a simple spark takes to a dry forrest floor.  It's not something that can be conjured up or coaxed out of the church congregation.  You cannot make people devote their time to the place of continual prayer and worship and actually sustain it.  If there is not the passion and zeal that David spoke of, the meetings slowly dwindle until they are non-existant.  And yet, houses of prayer are springing up everywhere.  It would seem that during this chapter of history, God is stirring the heart of His children to cry out to Him.  And I truly believe that it is when the heart cries of a people collide with the purposes of God's heart that we will see revival break out in every corner of the world.  Obviously God could pour out His Spirit at any point that He so desired, but He is wanting His children to draw near to Him with desperate hearts of adoration.  And that is exactly what is happening in this hour.

So I guess that's just a tidbit I wanted to share as I continue to move toward making my life a "house of prayer", so to speak, as well as jumping into the ministry of 24/7 house of prayer.  Basically, to sum it all up, everything within me is jumping up and down like an over ecstatic little 3-year-old, squealing - YES!!  This is what I was made for.
Worship and prayer
Day and night
The house of God
24/7
Unto the purpose of the entire earth being set ablaze with the knowledge the Living God!

Our Burn Family (minus a few)

Some of the beautiful ladies that I am running with in this adventure!