If…Then - Fit For Purpose
Isaiah 56:7 (NIV) —
‘These I will bring to my holy mountain and give them joy in my house of prayer. Their burnt offerings and sacrifices will be accepted on my altar; for my house will be called a house of prayer for all nations.’
Reset is here! Twice a year as a church we spend extra intentional time pressing into prayer and this week we will be looking at what it means for Gas Street Church to be a House of Prayer.
I love the convenience of online shopping, no rummaging through shelves and clothing racks, no long queues at the tills, no lugging shopping bags across town. The one thing I do not like is receiving faulty products and having to go through a lengthy returns process. Returns processes exist because we sometimes get products that do not serve the purpose for which they were originally designed. Products that are not fit for purpose.
If Gas Street Church is not a House of Prayer, it is not fit for purpose. Just like those faulty products, if we as a church are not fit for purpose, we need to return to the Creator to discover what we were originally intended for.
The Quaker mystic and theologian Howard Thurman says this, 'Prayer is a form of communication between God and man and man and God....I am always impressed by the fact that it is recorded that the only thing that the disciples asked Jesus to teach them how to do was to pray.'*
In this verse in Isaiah, God is clear that his house is to be a house of prayer. A house dedicated to that two-way communication between us and him. As we begin this week, I would encourage you to gather with the church at our various locations and be part of that house of prayer and, as the disciples asked Jesus ' teach us how to pray', would you join me in praying the Lord's prayer....
Prayer - Our Father in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors. And lead us not into temptation but deliver us from the evil one. (Matthew 5:9-13)
* Howard Thurman: Disciplines of the Spirit (1977)