What is a House of Prayer

One of the fundamental tenants of many religions including Christianity is prayer. I am not an expert on religions. Most of what I now about religions other than Christianity comes from the sporadic items that make the news occasionally such as in Islam they are encouraged and even perhaps required to pray 5 times a day. I spent 15 months in Turkey while serving in the U.S.Air Force and remember vividly the calls to prayer loudly broadcast from the mosques. I don't remember there being that call 5 times a day nor do I remember seeing local residents stopping what they were doing to participate in such activity. I have had no experience or enlightenment as to the practices of other religions. However, in Christianity I know there have literally been tens of thousands of books and articles written on prayer: the importance of it, postures for it, its content and hindrances to it, just to name a few of the topics.

What prompted this article is a quote from the Bible by Jesus in which he said, "My house shall be called the house of prayer."(Matthew 31:13)(KJV) That quote was prefaced by "It is written" which means he was quoting a passage from ancient writings. In this case it was Isaiah 56:7. As I thought about this I realized it could be taken in either of two ways.Did he mean the temple was the place where prayer was actually conducted or just a place to be made available for prayer. It is possible for a temple, synagogue or church to be available for prayer but also possible that it never occurs. I think all of us that consider ourselves Christians truly hope we can find our churches to be place where we can pray. However if it is to be the place where we do pray how much time are we spending in fulfilling that commandment. I know the length of a prayer is not important. Some of the Bible's most powerful prayers are short. But I write this article to just raise some questions?

There are examples of corporate prayer in the Old and New Testaments. And even though most of those occur in places other than a temple, synagogue or church it is safe to conclude that corporate prayer is pleasing to God. It was during a time of corporate prayer that the Holy Spirit was sent as related in Acts 2.

There are several purposes of corporate prayer: (1) A sign of solidarity or unity. The Bible speaks a great deal about unity among believers and corporate prayer time is a great opportunity to demonstrate unity. We see an example of that also in the book of Acts when Peter was released from prison by angels as a result of corporate prayer. (2) We have been instructed to pray for our civil leaders, Jerusalem and those in authority over us. Those are things that effect us all so why not pray together for those things? (3) When we get involved in corporate pray we most generally pray unselfishly. We get our minds off ourselves and our needs and get them on others. That has to be a good thing.

I grew up in (and still belong to ) a fundamentalist church that has church services not only on Sunday but we also have always had a mid-week service. When I was young they were called a prayer meeting. Today we call it a Bible study. Corporate Bible study is important but I don't think it should be at the expense of a prayer meeting. It is my personal opinion that all churches would benefit from emphasizing corporate prayer meetings. How much time does your church spend in corporate prayer. Do you think it would benefit from more corporate prayer? Are you an active participant in your church's corporate? Let us make our churches a place where we do pray and not just a place available for prayer.