The Prayer Room

This morning I was back reading through some of the notes I wrote on Facebook back in college before the blog. Today it was one called "Will you keep running?"

Back during the second half of my college career I got involved with a prayer group. We would meet Sunday nights in an on campus apartment for a few hours and seek God together. Once a year during J-term we would do weeks of 24/7 prayer in our on campus prayer room. People would sign up to take an hour at a time and for that hour go to the on campus prayer room and spend the time connecting with God, crying out to him for their own life, the campus, community, country and world. For weeks there was constant prayer being offered to God.

This is one of the things I miss most about college. That place of prayer, that place devoted to prayer. It was a room that freed you from distractions and helped you to focus on God and connect with Him in a variety of ways, art, writing, music. As I read the note I wrote a little over five years ago it hit me just how big of a part of my life that room was during my last two years of college. There was one week I spent more time in prayer than I did doing anything else, including sleep.

As I read what I had written and the comments people had made I began to remember just how incredible those moments were. There were times very early in the morning, that I would be there just in a time of worship to God. There is something about a place like that, a place that has been soaked with prayer, that almost makes it easy to talk to God. And that is what I miss most.

I don't have a place like that anymore. I haven't had it for a while, basically four years. It's not that I haven't prayed in that time, but at times it's been hard. There is something about a place that is devoted to prayer. There is something about going somewhere intentionally to communicate with God.

In Jerusalem, the Temple was that place. In January I began to grasp just how big this place was. It was one of those things that didn't hit me until round two when I got to walk under the streets along the length of the Western Wall. But that's not important. The point was not the size and grandeur of it all, but the fact that it was where God would meet the people.

2 Chronicles 7.12-16 shares of the account when the Temple was dedicated, and the words God spoke to Solomon, "Then the Lord appeared to Solomon at night and said to him, 'I have heard your prayer and have chosen this place for Myself as a house of sacrifice. If I shut up the heavens so that there is no rain, or if I command the locust to devour the land, or if I send pestilence among My people, and My people who are called by My name humble themselves and pray and seek My face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, will forgive their sin and will heal their land. Now My eyes will be open and My ears attentive to the prayer offered in this place. For now I have chosen and consecrated this house that My name may be there forever, and My eyes and My heart will be there perpetually.'"

It is not saying that God only heard prayers offered in the Temple. You do not need to be in a sanctuary or prayer room for God to listen to you, but there is something to be said about having a place dedicated to prayer. In a house there are rooms dedicated to cooking and eating, to living and laundry, to sleep and recreation. What about prayer? In an office building there are rooms set aside for work, breaks, and meetings. What about prayer? Do we have specific places that we have set aside to meet with God?

In college we had a room set aside for prayer, and I miss that. I think the world needs more prayer rooms, and people committed to filling them with heartfelt cries to God and attentive ears to hear from Him.

"I have been young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or his descendants begging bread."

To God alone be the Glory!

Peace be with you