Day 36
MAKE MINE A HOUSE OF PRAYER!
· JESUS CHALLENGES US TO “MAKE HIS HOUSE A HOUSE OF PRAYER”
GOD’S WORD: On reaching Jerusalem, Jesus entered the temple area and began driving out those who were buying and selling there. He overturned the tables of the money changers and the benches of those selling doves, and would not allow anyone to carry merchandise through the temple courts. And as he taught them, he said, “Is it not written: “My house will be called a house of prayer for all nations’? But you have made it ‘a den of robbers.’” (Mark 11:15-17, NIV)
REFLECTION-DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. What were the Jewish leaders doing to “commercialize” religion around the Temple square in Jerusalem?
2. What might be some ways that Christian churches also get caught up in the temptation to compete for their market share and begin to look like a “commercial center” rather than a “House of Prayer”?
3. How strongly does Jesus feel about his followers becoming involved in “marketing religion”?
4. How can we most effectively help make the body of Christ, especially our congregation, “a house of prayer for all nations”?
· JESUS IDENTIFIES TWO KINDS OF PEOPLE THAT “COME TO HIS HOUSE”
GOD’S WORD: To some who were confident of their own righteousness and looked down on everybody else, Jesus told this parable: “Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other men—robbers, evildoers, adulterers—or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.’
“But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, ‘God, have mercy on me, a sinner.’
“I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted.” (Luke 18:9-14, NIV)
REFLECTION-DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. What has been my experience with religious folks who are “confident of their righteousness and look down on everybody else”?
2. How is it that religious people can get caught up in advertising “their own righteousness”?
3. What do I know about “Pharisees” within the Jewish religious community of Jesus’ day?
4. What do I know about “Roman Tax Collectors”” within the Jewish religious community of Jesus’ day?
5. What was the unique “approach in prayer” of the Pharisee in the Temple?
6. What was the unique “approach in prayer” of the Tax Collector in the Temple?
7. On the basis of “pure religious performance,” who likely conformed most faithfully to the observable behaviors of the faith of Judaism, the Pharisee or the Tax Collector?
8. Who “went home justified before the Lord” and why, the Pharisee or the Tax Collector?
· JESUS “NEEDED HIS FRIENDS” TO SUPPORT HIM IN THE GARDEN
GOD’S WORD: Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.”
Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
Then he returned to his disciples and found them sleeping. “Could you men not keep watch with me for one hour?” he asked Peter. “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the body is weak.” (Matthew 26:36-41, NIV)
REFLECTION-DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. Where was the special “House of Prayer” for Jesus in this narrative?
2. Why did Jesus need his closest friends to stay very close to Him during his last “night of prayer”?
3. How did the closest friends of Jesus really “let him down” in Gethsemane?
4. When were times I faced a “Gethsemane-kind of experience” in my walk of faith?
5. Were there times when other faithful Christ-followers “drew near to support me” during Gethsemane-times?
6. When have I felt “most alone in the garden of prayer” and how did I survive?
7. How does “the spirit’s being willing and the flesh’s being weak” relate to our common need to band together as a “House of Prayer” for each other?
8. How can I help make our congregation a more spiritual “House of Prayer for all people”?
· JESUS PROMISES TO “GIVE A BOND OF SECURITY” TO COLLECTIVE PRAYERS
GOD’S WORD: “I tell you the truth, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.
“Again, I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything you ask for, it will be done for you by my Father in heaven. For where two or three come together in my name, there am I with them.” (Matthew 18:18-20, NIV)
REFLECTION-DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. What does it mean to “bind ourselves together on earth” with a common prayer concern? .
2. What does it mean to “loose things together on earth” with a common prayer concern?
3. How does heaven join us in our “binding and loosing” together in prayer?
4. What does it mean for “two or three to agree on earth about anything they ask” in prayer?
5. What does heaven promise when even “two or three” become a House of Prayer in the Lord?
· JESUS’ EARLIEST COMMUNITY WAS A POWERFUL “HOUSE OF PRAYER”
GOD’S WORD: On their release, Peter and John went back to their own people and reported all that the chief priests and elders had said to them. When they heard this, they raised their voices together in prayer to God. “Sovereign Lord,” they said, “you made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and everything in them. You spoke by the Holy Spirit through the mouth of your servant, our father David: “‘Why do the nations rage and the peoples plot in vain? The kings of the earth take their stand and the rulers gather together against the Lord and against his Anointed One. ’
Indeed Herod and Pontius Pilate met together with the Gentiles and the people of Israel in this city to conspire against your holy servant Jesus, whom you anointed. They did what your power and will had decided beforehand should happen. Now, Lord, consider their threats and enable your servants to speak your word with great boldness. Stretch out your hand to heal and perform miraculous signs and wonders through the name of your holy servant Jesus.”
After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken. And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God boldly. (Acts 4:26-31, NIV)
REFLECTION QUESTIONS:
1. What was the reason and setting for this wonderful “Prayer Meeting” in the Jerusalem congregation?
2. What would it take for us to hold “an equally earth-shaking Prayer Meeting” like this one in Jerusalem?
3. When and how can I begin to help really build a “House of Prayer” to the Lord in our community of faith?