Overturn the 'Tables'

Week 3- Day 4

“…do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price; therefore glorify God in your body.” 1 Cor. 6:19,20

“And Jesus entered the temple and drove out all those who were buying and selling in the temple, and overturned the tables of the money changers and the seats of those who were selling doves.  And He said to them, ‘It is written,“My house shall be called a house of prayer; but you are making it a robbers’ den.”’  Matthew 21:12,13

       

Holy Spirit, come in and radically MOVE in our hearts and minds and dispositions and turn over the ‘tables’, so to speak, where we have misused this temple and have lost Your priorities for our lives. 

       Come in and overturn the ‘tables’ and our ‘seats’ where we have gotten comfortable in the wrong position.  Come and set us aright.  We invite You to come and rearranged 'the furniture’: how we have arranged our lives and our goals in ways which were never Your intention for us, the 'tables and seats' that we may have settled for out of our busy ignorance.  

      Oh, that our temples, our bodies, would be a house of prayer, a blessed holy place. Cleanse us that You may feel at home and not provoked.  Reveal to us ways in which we have become distracted and have given our bodies, our time, and our energy to worthless endeavors and even activities that quench (“dampen, hinder, repress, as in preventing the Holy Spirit from exerting His full influence”) and grieve Your Holy Spirit within us (1 Thess. 5:19, Eph 4:30).  

Oh, for a Holy God, 'the Lord our righteousness’ (Jer. 23:6), to be free within us.  May we live within that holy calling, to lay hold of that for which You have laid hold of us (Phil 3:12).

Oh Lord, we repent, and may we bear fruit in keeping with that repentance.  Matt. 4:17, 3:8

-Spend some of your time in prayer today allowing Him to search your heart and life.

-Allow Him to speak to you about the things that you already know are somewhat out of order and then press deeper to hear things that you may not currently be aware of.

(This is part of a 6 week prayer strategy series. To return to 'watch the ramparts' homepage: click here).