(Clip) The Church Was Birthed In Prayer

But what I want to say to you is that God's work from the very beginning is not like you and I often imagine it. God's work, God's house, the Christian religion is always supposed to have the aroma of prayer. Preaching, yes, but not my house shall be called the house of preaching. Music, yes, but my house shall not be called the house of music. My house shall be called the house of prayer. There were choirs, but it was called the house of prayer. There was the reading of the word, but my house shall be called a house of prayer. So the Bible tells us that when Jesus Christ died and resurrected and went back to heaven and he began his church, which the gates of hell shall not prevail against, he kept the same line running through the formation of the church, which was in his father's house. Have you ever noticed that the Christian church was not born while someone was preaching, but while people were praying? Have you ever noticed that in the second chapter of the book of Acts, when the church was born, they were doing nothing, but just waiting on God and praying, and they were just sitting there. And as they were praying and worshiping and waiting and having heart communion with God and God shaping them and cleaning them out and building faith into them and doing those heart operations that only the Holy Spirit could do, the church was born. The spirit was poured out. My house shall be called house of prayer. In the fourth chapter, Peter and John are arrested and they're slapped around and threatened. Don't you preach anymore in that name? And what do they do? They don't go and protest. They don't go to the Supreme Court. They don't try to get some political leverage. They go back to a prayer meeting. They go back and say, behold the threat. Oh God, look how they're threatening us. But oh God, we lift our voices together to you. Oh God, behold their threats and give your servants boldness that we might preach the name of Jesus in the name of Jesus and the place where they prayed again 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. When 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, Jesus went 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 prayed. 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, 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've got to remember, Timothy, my house shall be called a house of prayer. Later on, in the same chapter, he says, and then, remember, Timothy, 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.