I have been praying “Lord, teach me to pray” for the past few months.<\/p>\n\n\n
And as a result, my prayer life is growing more consistent. And that’s progress.<\/p>\n\n\n
But, I am also feeling a gnawing conviction that I am experiencing just the tip of the iceberg so far. I know my prayer life falls far short of the ideal.<\/p>\n\n\n
And it would be one thing if it were just for me personally, but now as the pastor of a church, I feel the burden all the more.<\/p>\n\n\n
Here’s the incident that keeps nagging at my spirit: when Jesus clears the moneychangers out of the temple, his words are as follows: “It is written that my Father’s house shall be a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves.” (Matt 21:22)<\/p>\n\n\n
Now, on the bright side, my church is definitely not a den of robbers. So we have that going for us.<\/p>\n\n\n
But is it a “house of prayer”?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Sure, we pray several times throughout the service each Sunday morning. And we keep a prayer list with requests going out by text messages throughout the week. Prayer is not absent, but I don’t know that anyone would describe us as “a house of prayer”.<\/p>\n\n\n
The American church in general has always elevated preaching far above prayer in importance.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
Is that the reason the American church is in the state it is?\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
I guess the question I have is what would it take on our part for Jesus to give us a thumbs up and certify us as a ‘House of Prayer’?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I have been praying “Lord, teach me to pray” for the past few months. And as a result, my prayer life is growing more consistent. And that’s progress. But, I am also feeling a gnawing conviction that I am experiencing just the tip of the iceberg so far. I know my prayer life falls far […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7821","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7821","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7821"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7821\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7822,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7821\/revisions\/7822"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7821"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7821"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7821"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}