For the sake of the message, today’s entry is high risk transparency around personal Aha’s from this aging believer.
The challenge of growing older may be avoidance of the pitfalls of accumulated regret, untruth and the pet demons often coddled throughout one’s life? I now feel that pressure as I observe my own life and the lives of those whom I do not desire to emulate as I age. Daily it seems that I discover the seeds in me which may have once been the source of the root of despair often obvious among others my age or older?
These may be the actual thieves that Christ spoke of in Matthew 21: 13a, which unnecessarily invade our “house of prayer.” “It is written, My house shall be called a house of prayer.” In this temple scene, Jesus discloses a side of himself both in the language and in His actions shortly afterward, as He turned over the tables in the temple.
Lost opportunity or perceived opportunities that were actually not the will of God for one’s life at all, may over time extract an unnecessary toil on one’s life because of the thief of greed. Our temple tables are turned over as malicious thoughts then follow this thief of greed, passing quietly into one’s fleshy sanctuary, when in reality the perceived opportunities were not lost at all, but simply deferred blessings from God, as one’s life is actually used to facilitate ministry to others. If our thoughts are not corrected, misery can flood the life of that one, particularly as the emotional guards once naturally in position during youth are eroded by a slowing metabolism and a weakened body. Then, Misery’s partner in crime, Loneliness joins the “den of thieves” and in a predictable and self fulfilling fashion, creates true aloneness, as others now avoid the presence of that miserable saint.
“It is written” was also the strong language used by Jesus earlier in the wilderness, as He did battle against satan, there “tempted in all ways as we, yet without sin.” (Heb. 4:15).
He, being fully man, and not unlike ourselves, was battling to protect His own temple from life’s thieves. There Jesus, in a battle that left Him in need of the care of angels, withstood the temptations of life that in typical sinners, open the heart’s door to the thieves that eventually impair one’s effectual prayer and ultimately their life destiny.
Was a greater message present that day than just the need to clean up a “church” that had become a marketplace for spiritual wares? Absolutely! We are the temple of the Holy Ghost, our powerful parakletos, our companion, who prays through us the will of God, making “intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered.” Romans 8:26.
We are the temple of the Holy Ghost, Houses of Prayer, and we must “lay aside every weight, and the sin that does so easily beset us…,” (Hebrews 12:1), thieves that slip into our temples, causing us to suffer loss of life and legacy that could otherwise be won through effectual, fervent prayer.
A House of Prayer, my goal as I enter my own Red Zone…my last twenty yards, twenty years of life, the Lord willing.