House of Prayer - Part 4 — Jim Cymbala

Prayer in Trouble and Persecution

And was shaken and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness. My house shall be called house of prayer. They had this instinct went in trouble. Pray when intimidated.

Pray when challenged. Pray when persecuted. Pray when you're in trouble pray. In fact this thing called prayer, whatever it is Is so unique. It's not like what we're used to. You know we talk about pray.

We say prayers most of them a lot of them are mental prayers. This thing called praying is so deep that when the Apostle Paul got converted. And he was first Saul of Tarsus this violent persecutor of the church.

True Prayer as Evidence of Conversion

Jesus went to to Ananias and the Lord appeared to Ananias in Damascus and said go to this man this Jew this Church persecutor named Saul of Tarsus and pray for him. And Ananias said you know I know about this man.

This man is trouble with a capital T. And Jesus said as if this was proof that everything had changed. No Ananias you can go for behold.

He prays he prays.

You can go now because he's in that room blind somewhere waiting for you because he actually for the first time in his Religious life is offering a true prayer and because he's praying you can go and not be afraid.

It was as if that was the sign. Whether somebody was the real deal with God behold he prays and That same Apostle Paul when he writes to Timothy, and he wants to encourage him how to do God's work. He says this first of all then I want supplications.

Prayer as the Church’s First Priority

First of all in your church Timothy first of all before anything else. Supplications and prayers and intercessions and Thanksgiving to be made for all men that's first of all it doesn't matter what your tradition is or what American Christianity Says.

The Word of God says first of all then I want supplications because we got to remember Timothy my house shall be called house of prayer. Later on in the same chapter. He says and then I remember Timothy.

Holy Hands and the Prayers of the Saints

I want men everywhere to lift up holy hands without wrath or doubting and I want them to pray. That's the sign of a Christian church. Paul says men Praying with holy hands without wrath or doubt. In fact the book of Revelation says That when the four and twenty four the four and twenty elders fall at the feet of Jesus.

They have these golden bowl bowls, and you know it's in the bowls. This incense that is so fragrant to Christ. It's the prayers of the Saints. I mean what must prayer be to God that he keeps it in bowls in heaven.

Just when you just imagine when you and I kneel or stand or pray seated. And we really open our heart to God somehow those things are kept. They're so precious to God. My house shall be called a House of prayer and we have in the day that we live in a lot of revisionism going on.

The Biblical Pattern for the Church

But it's not coming from Washington. It's coming from the church. We're revising what a church is today. The Bible says and they continue the early church. They continued steadfastly in the Apostles doctrine and in fellowship and in the breaking of bread and in prayers.

Now we've revised that and said if you can get people for one hour on Sunday morning in a building. That's the church. That's not the church we can use every device we want to get people for one hour and keep it early and keep it moving and keep it going.

Because people have important things to do that day. That's not the story of the Christian Church that might be the story of my church or your church, but that's not the church Jesus built and the history of revivals down through the ages have told us that whenever things have grown crass and Commercial and secular and hard and worldly God sends a revival and what's always the sign of the revival behold?

Revival Begins and Continues With Prayer

They pray. The church begins to pray. Moody goes somewhere in England and they begin to pray. Finney goes to upstate New York and they begin to pray the Great Awakening Happens in America and they begin to pray who was the fancy preacher.

Nobody they prayed. Where was the great music all they made great Psalms, but that wasn't the great thing about it. It was they prayed prayer preceded it prayer kept it going and the minute prayer ended the Spirit of God lifted.

Teaching the Next Generation to Pray

And we got back into one of those tougher times for the Church of Jesus Christ. You folks young people who are going to these schools? Let me tell you as someone who went to college as a basketball player on a full scholarship and traveled around the country playing basketball.

Never had the privilege of going to a school like you folks are going to. The greatest thing anybody can learn in this building is how to pray.