A House of Prayer With Nobody in It

He puts out nine chairs. Nine, because that is everybody, and he has never once put out five.

It started after the accident. His youngest was in the car and walked away from something that people came to look at afterward, and in the week following it he stood in his own courtyard at about four in the morning and told God that this would be a house of prayer. He meant the whole house. All of them. Every week, the way it was in his grandfather's day.

His sons were twenty six and thirty one. They are thirty and thirty five now.

They have been completely clear with him, which is the thing he cannot get round. Not one of them has been cruel about it. The eldest said, once, kindly and in private, that he loves his father and does not believe any of it and would rather not be asked in front of everybody.

He has been asking in front of everybody for four years.

Not directly. He has become extremely skilled at not asking directly. He arranges a dinner and it happens to be a Thursday. He invites somebody who will naturally suggest it. He puts out nine chairs at seven and stands in a room with a book in his hand while people arrive and do not sit down, and then at some point the moment passes and he puts the book on the shelf and pours the tea.

His wife has stopped saying anything about it, which is worse than when she did.

You may be arranging occasions. And the occasions may be perfectly legitimate on their face, and everybody in your house may know exactly what they are, including the people who love you enough not to say.

What is said about Cornelius

Now let me take you to a description of a man, and I want you to notice that the description comes before anything happens.

Luke introduces a Roman officer, and before the story starts he tells you what sort of man he was, in a single sentence, and the sentence has a phrase in it that ought to stop you.

A devout man, and one that feared God with all his house, which gave much alms to the people, and prayed to God alway.Acts 10:2

You are a devout man in your own house tonight, and that sentence was true of you before anybody sat down. Acts 10:2 describes what one man was and not what a household attended, and the Holy Spirit is the one who has made it true of you on every Thursday nobody came.

With all his house

Read the phrase carefully, because there are two ways to hear it and only one of them is available to a man like you.

You have been hearing it as an achievement: he had got his household in order, all of them, and that is the standard.

But look at the sentence. It is a description of Cornelius. Every clause in it is about him. He was devout. He gave. He prayed. And in the middle of that, feared God with all his house, which in the way that is written is a description of how his own devotion ran: not privately, not in a corner, but out in the open in his own household, so that the whole house was inside the atmosphere of it.

It is not a report on a compliance rate. Nothing in that verse tells you what any of those people believed. It tells you what one man was, in front of them.

You are being described by what you are in your own house and not by who sits down in it. Acts 10:2 is where that is written, and the Holy Spirit is the one who takes it off a page about a Roman officer and stands it in a courtyard where nine chairs have been put out.

Now I have to say the hard thing, because this is the landing category and the rule here is absolute: nothing in this article will be exercised over anybody's will.

Your sons are grown men. The eldest told you plainly, kindly, in private, what he wanted, and you have overridden it for four years by a method that lets you tell yourself you have not asked. That is not prayer and it is not covenant. It is pressure with good manners on.

You are released from the job of producing anybody's belief, and it was never given to you. Scripture describes what a man was and stays silent about what his household concluded, and the Spirit of God has been in that courtyard on every Thursday you set out nine chairs.

What the four in the morning was

And let me say something about that night, because I am not going to take it off you.

You stood in a courtyard after your youngest walked away from something people came to look at, and you told God what you wanted for your household. That was a father praying, and it was one of the best hours of your life, and God heard it.

What has happened since is that a prayer turned into a project. And a project has milestones and a project needs cooperation, and once you needed cooperation you started managing men who had already told you no.

The prayer was good. The project is what has to go.

You are standing in a covenant that reaches this house, and it does not reach it through the chairs. Scripture says it in so many words, and that is the plain force of a description that names one man's devotion and leaves the household unreported, and His Spirit is the one who has been carrying it.