This sermon emphasizes the importance of being a house of prayer, highlighting the contrast between being a den of thieves and a place of communion with God. It encourages individuals to creatively find ways to pray consistently for themselves and to help others do the same, fostering a community dedicated to prayer and spiritual growth. The speaker shares personal experiences and challenges listeners to take practical steps towards becoming houses of prayer and bearing fruit for others to consume.

Okay, house hunting. This is something that, this is one of the things when you get married, I'm talking to men mostly, one of the things that you get married. In America, when you get married, a lot of us can't afford houses. But, one of the things that you get when you get married, they say women are nesters. A nester is somebody who wants to build a nest. So, if you go to your house, if you're married, you know how the wife kind of has to make sure that the house becomes like a nest. Because, you know, you're going to have children there, and the mother kind of has an instinct to build a nest. So, one of the things that after I got married, I've been pointed out a lot of houses, because my wife has a nest in mind. So, she has many different options that she's giving me. Can we make this our nest? Can we make this our nest? So far, I have not found the perfect nest. So, we're still living in an apartment. But, you know, so house hunting is something that has become, something that I've become a little bit more familiar with. So, this is a beautiful option for a nest. Unfortunately, very unaffordable. But, my question for you is this. How many of you would like this for a house? You can be honest. How many of you would love to have this for a house? I would love to have this for a house. This would be a beautiful house to live in. Here's a question for you. When God is house hunting, what does he look for? I'm open to answers. Purity. Sorry? Vacancy. Holiness. Humility. I don't know why it's doing that, but I'll fix it later. Desire. Pricing. That's good. Praise. Is that? Praise. Peace. Honesty. Sorry, I forgot that. It was something that was said there. Reverence. I'm going to call that reverence for God. Yeah. People will fear him. Sincerity. Look, when God is house hunting, God wants a place to live. What you tell me is what you think and how you look at it when you come to God. So when you come to God and you say, God, I want you to live with me. These are the things that you say. This is how I need to be. If God's going to come live with me. Right? What you write down and what you say as you think about, okay, God, I want you to live with me. What you have said to me here are the things that you say, this is what I need to have. Otherwise, God will not live with me. Right? If you don't have humility, the chances are high that God won't live with you. These are the things that based on your what you've been taught in scripture, what the people have, what you've been raised with. These are the things that you look for. And there are so many others we can put in here. But I want to talk about house hunting. And I want to talk about something that is an absolute must. That we must have and what God looks for when he's house hunting. When he looks at his house, he says, this is what I need to have in my house. And it become obvious to you. Now, what I'm not saying that these are wrong. I think that all of these are right to, you know, to different different extents. But there is, believe it or not, something that has not been said in here. That God is looking for her when your house hunting. And that is what I want to establish for us to say, this is something that we must also concentrate on. Not meaning to say that these are to be discounted. Okay, I'm not trying to discount any of these. These are all very, very valid things. But I want to add to it, establish something that I believe that a lot of us often ignore. We may take care of a lot of these. And we may beat ourselves up for a lot of these too. We may say, I'm not. God is not dwelling in me because I'm not sincere enough. God is not dwelling with me because I'm not honest enough. And I keep beating myself up. And that's why I say, okay, so either I'm not honest enough and I know it or I'm trying to be honest, but I feel like, you know, I'm never being honest enough. That's why God's not dealing with me. So I want to address some of those concerns in this talk today. I want to start with a review, though. I wanted to review what we said yesterday. Why did you give up three days and maybe even take vacation? Let that be in the forefront of your mind. You may not believe this, but one of the things I want to change your perspective about is this. You and your time is extremely valuable. That is something that anybody who's working, the company tries to keep driving into you. Your time is very valuable and we want your time to help us. Make money. That's their objective. God has an equally important objective with your time. So our time is extremely valuable and anybody sitting here know this. When you were single, you were able to do a lot of things that you can't do when you were married. When you were 16, there were a lot of things you can't do now that you're in your 20s and on and on, you know, the concept of time and how time can be wasted. And our time can be used very productively. So that is what I'm trying to drive up when I say, if you've given up three days of your life to be here. I'm trying to raise the stakes to say it's up to you also to make it worth it. I'm trying to do my part. The organizers are trying to do their part, but you have to do your part too. You have to be quiet to listen. You have to have ears open to listen and you have to have a deep desire to say, I've given up three days of my life because these are very important days that I'm trying to do something. I'm trying to set the foundation for 2009 maybe. And so these are critical days because this is going to shape, it could possibly shape how 2009 turns out. And I can't impress on you to take that seriously. You have to do that yourself. I'm trying to appeal to you by saying you've given up three days of your life. Now, it's up to you whether you want to take it seriously or not. And the other point is, how are you going to ensure that you are a success in life? All of us must be successes. God created us. God is a success. He created us in his image. He wants us to be success. Our definition of success might have been incomplete. I'm not saying they were wrong. They may have been incomplete. To finish college, to finish high school, those are important success metrics too in this world. Because you need to survive in this world. And it's getting hard to survive if you don't have a good education. So those are not discounting those success metrics. But there should be a bigger success definition for what our whole life is about. And I gave you these two verses for you to ponder upon. Because these are the verses that have made sense for me. And I would add Romans 8 29 to that. Take these verses down. Meditate on this. Or if you don't agree with it, make your own metrics. But I would suggest take a verse in the Bible. Because that's God's word. Don't take Tiger Woods. Don't take popular culture. Don't take your brain and think, okay, this is what seems right. Try and base it on what we believe to be God's word. I have come across three verses that I said, I have found what I have defined as success. And I'm not saying I may not change it. I just have not found something better than this so far. So even if you have a definition of success, you can be open to changing it. But this is something that I get very excited about. And I get something that says, I can do this for the rest of my life. And 1 John 3 verse 2 and 3 saying, I'm going to fix my hope on being just like Jesus is. So I'm going to purify myself. Which means today I'm going to make use of my time. Which means today I'm going to try and do something that God has given me my gifts for. I'm going to do it. And I talked about that yesterday. That means me writing down something in a word document. It doesn't mean I have to keep on speaking somewhere. It means I'm going to continue to use my gifts. Nobody's going to see that word document, but I'm using my gift. And I can clearly say that I'm being successful because I'm going by these metrics. I don't say that with pride. I say that with humility. But I say I want to know that I'm going somewhere in life. At the end of Paul's life, Paul said in 2 Timothy, the verse you probably know. I have finished the course. Completed it. Done. I knew the course and I completed it. I've kept the faith. I fought the good fight. If Paul could say that, so should we be able to say that too. I knew the fight. I knew the course. I knew the faith and I kept it. I fought it and I didn't lose hope. I didn't give up. I kept going. You should all be able to say that. But you must have a goal in mind first. And Paul describes that goal again in Philippians 3. I forget what leaves behind and I look for a life going upward in Christ Jesus. Use these verses. Use the Bible to define your own definition of success. Write it down. Use that journal. But I appeal to you that knowing where you have to go to for 2009, 2010 is very helpful. Again, you have to do it. I've given you a suggestion. Feel free to steal it. Feel free to copy it. But if you're going to copy it, make it your own and believe it and run after it. If you've got a different one, make it something that you can run after. And we were talking in this series about the last days. What would you do if you had one week left to live? It's a good perspective to always have God. I mean, I might have a week left. What should I do? Jesus had one week left to live. And basically the bottom line that we were talking about from last session was there are donkeys and there are horses. And a lot of us think that we need to have a horse before we can be useful for God. And the kingdom of God, when God, Jesus said, I have one week left to live. He said, let me embody something that's so critical about this new kingdom that I'm establishing. And in this new king, in the old kingdom, the old testaments, King David, everybody rode on chariots, ridden by horses, these beautiful, majestic animals, most valuable in the culture. God, Jesus says, I'm establishing a new kingdom. And in this kingdom, I want anybody. And especially I want the donkeys. The people who don't think they have it all figured out. The people who come in limited colors, the people who have big ears sticking out. You've got all the warped, broken, messy spirituality. God says, I want to ride in. I want to be ridden into the kingdom. I want to be on display. It's the donkeys not on display. Jesus is on display because he has need of you. Tell the master of the donkey, I have need of you. And all our gifts in our life is broken as they are. God has need of it. And he wants to ride into the kingdom. He wants to ride into the city with it. And so in Mark chapter 11, this is what happens when he rides in. Those who were in front and those who followed were shouting, Hosanna. Look what happens. It doesn't matter so much that it was a donkey. The donkey does not become irrelevant because Jesus is riding on it. So get your mind off how messy your gifts might be. The point of using the gift is to carry Jesus in. So that when Jesus is brought in, in sincerity, in humility, in purity, in simplicity, the people will shout, Hosanna. That's what happens in the church. When I come up here and I speak, when I share a word to somebody who's younger than me, if I give them a word of encouragement, if it's not about me, if it's about Jesus and carrying him in, not me in, not making myself look good, then the response would be, Hosanna. Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Blessed is the coming kingdom of our father David. Hosanna in the highest. We can be sure that the praise of God will be there for those of us who stand up and for those of us who use our gifts, even in all of its brokenness. Nobody's commenting about how the donkey's looking. Nobody's asking, why isn't there a horse? Because they see Jesus riding in. Jesus has filled the view. The donkey's no longer that much in sight. And there's a verse in Psalm chapter 22 verse 3. But thou art holy, O you that inhabits the praises of Israel. Israel started praising people. Israel started praising Jesus. The moment Israel started praising Jesus, and whenever there's praise to God that happens, God says, I want to inhabit you now. I want to build a house with you now. If you're going to sing and you sang and you praised God, if you come to church and you say, God, I want to praise you, then God says, okay, I want to praise you. If you're going to praise me, I want to live in this place that's praising you. So God comes after we praise him, which is the initial response to following Jesus. We say, God, I'm so thankful for dying, for you dying for me. I'm so thankful that you saved me from sin and from death. God says, I recognize those prayers and those praises. I want to now inhabit you. I want to set up shop. I want to move in. I want to bring my couches. I want to bring all my utensils. I want to bring everything I bring with me. I want to bring them in and live. I want to inhabit. So when we praise him, we're saying, God, now I want you to move in. And so when they praised him in Mark chapter 11, God says, I want to move in. And in the Old Testament, before there was, we know what the temple of our hearts are. What is the temple of the Holy Spirit now? Ourselves, right? Back then, before Jesus died and rose again and the Holy Spirit was given, the temple was a physical building. So are you following with me? What happens is he comes riding in into Jerusalem. The people start praising him. And right after that, he says, okay, I'm going to come in. I'm going to go to your temple. Because that's where God's going to reside. And he looks around at everything. And we know what he probably saw. Because we're going to read about it in the next verses. What he saw, all these people selling and, you know, making money in the name of God. But he looked at it. It was kind of late. So he said, okay, let me take a few hours to process what I just saw. He had probably already seen it. But he took a few hours to say, let me process what I just saw. He was not very happy with what he saw when he saw in the temple. And on the next way in, when he left Bethany, he became hungry. What is Jesus hungry for in your life? He has found a place of praise. But he's hungry. He's hungry to also have a place to live in. I may be reading too much into the text. But I'm trying to draw a point here. That God doesn't want just our praise. He wants more than that. The praise is the starting point. It's good when we praise him. But we have to keep moving from that. That's the starting point. And he saw the distance of fig tree. And he didn't find anything on it. He found nothing but leaves. Because it was not the season for figs. He said, may no one ever eat fruit from you again. And this is kind of like a, it's a side point to what I'm truly driving at. But I wanted to include this in here for you to understand. If God doesn't see fruit in your life. It is a pretty serious thing. You can come to church every Sunday. You can worship him every Sunday. And you can worship him every Wednesday. But if you do not bear fruit. It's a pretty serious thing. John 15, Jesus says, If you abide in me, you will bear much fruit. If not, you will be thrown away. You will be discarded. He looks for those and they are not bearing fruit. So here is another question for you. Are you bearing fruit? And what is the definition of fruit? I go to my definition of success. That's what it means. So each of you, as you define what success means. You can ask yourself, am I bearing fruit? An apple tree has a definition of success. Is an apple tree supposed to bear beautiful apple leaves? It's a very simple definition of success if you are an apple tree. You have to bear apples. So you know if an apple tree is successful if it's bearing apples. If the apple tree said, my definition of success is to bear leaves. The apple tree will be deluded. Deluded, yeah. The apple tree would have mistaken what its success was. That is why I'm going back to what I said yesterday. Important for you to understand what you're doing here on life. What your path is, what your success is. That's when you know whether you're bearing fruit. Remember guys, these are the last days of Jesus and Jesus is saying, I want to underline certain things that I've said. One of the things he wants to underline is, I want to use a donkey. I don't need to use our horses. I want you to bear fruit in your personal life and for other people to consume. The theme of this conference is maturity and responsibility. Fruitfulness is very important. You might be fighting sin in your own life. But have you given fruit for other people to consume of you? That other people can say, I am encouraged by your life. Every one of you must bear fruit. It's a non-negotiable. There's no, oh maybe some people can do it. All of you must bear fruit. But that's a side note to what I'm really wanting to speak about. I'll talk more about bearing fruit later on. I want that to be a subtle side point for you to always keep in mind. The main point I'm really trying to drive from this is, he came to Jerusalem and he was looking for a house in his temple. And he overturned the money changes and the seats of those who were selling downs. And he would not permit anyone to carry merchandise through the temple. And he began to teach and say to them, is it not written, my house shall be called a house of prayer. For all the nations. But you have made it a robber's den. When God is house hunting, what is he looking for? How do you think this applies to your life? In the temple, if you are the temple of the Holy Spirit, how do you think you can make your heart a robber's den? I was thinking about this. What does it mean to be a robber's den? I was picturing this. God entering my heart. I asked him to come into my heart. And God, Jesus, enters my heart. If you want to just think about it as my house. He's coming to live with me. And he comes in and lives with me. But instead of him coming in and living with me quietly, he comes in and a robber's den. There are all kinds of things or people in my heart that beat Jesus up and steal from Jesus. What do you think it means? What do you think it means for your heart to be a robber's den? There's no right answer or wrong answer. I'm trying to get you to write down or think about what it is in your heart that might make it a robber's den. How do you steal from Jesus? How do you take what is Jesus' and keep it for yourself? And Jesus comes with a whip. It's the only time you see him getting so physically violent is when he comes into what we call the temple of our own hearts. And he finds it to be a den of robbers. In your own heart, what are the things that you might be stealing from God? I want you to think about that. And it's a very simple point I'm trying to make in all of that. The opposite of being a thief, to being a robber's den, to be a den of thieves, is to be a house of prayer. If you want to know what God is looking for, when he's trying to live with you, he's looking for whether you are a person committed to praying to him. The opposite of stealing from God is praying to God. I can say the opposite of stealing from God is giving everything to God. But I've started to see that the opposite of stealing from God is praying to God. I want to repeat that so that you guys understand the difference. Logically, if I were to think, the opposite of stealing from God is to say, no God, that's not mine, that's yours, so you can have it. And that's technically true. But the way we prove it to God that I'm not going to steal from you is I'm going to go to you and say, God, I'm going to pray to you. And I'm going to pray to you for help. I'm going to pray to you because you're my friend. I'm going to pray to you because I want your company. The two options you have are not stealing versus surrendering. Because I've discovered in my own life that surrendering is a passive verb. And so maybe I'm saying there's an active verb associated with surrendering. Are you following me? I want to be crystal clear about this. I want you to understand what I mean by this. I'm not negating that surrender is not important. Surrender is so critical to the life. But how do you know if you've surrendered? By becoming a house of prayer. A person who is truly surrendered is a person who is constantly communing with Jesus. That is the proof of a surrendered life. If I have very little time to talk to Jesus every day, or if Jesus is not somebody I feel the need to commune often with, not by going to a separate room and opening up my Bible and reading with him. Maybe it's in the middle of my workday but my thoughts are on Jesus often. Am I pleasing him? Am I thinking about him? If that is not happening, I feel like what I've learned from this passage here is maybe I'm not surrendered. So I keep going to God and saying God, I'm surrendered. God, I'm surrendered. God, I'm not going to steal for you. I'm surrendered. The proof that you have surrendered to God is that you talk often to him. So let me ask you then. Is your temple a den of robbers or a house of prayer? It's one of the two. I steal from him by not talking to him and not communing with him. Not only by sinning, not only by backsliding. Those are all the fruit of what happens but the real problem is I steal from him by not talking to him. And we all criticize the Israelites in that day for saying how dare you steal money in the name of God. How dare you steal from these poor people and just make it for your own benefit without realizing that in this new temple that God's creating he's saying I still want this new temple which is in each of your hearts to be a temple of prayer. A temple of communion. Very simple point, family. Very simple point. You either become a den of robbers where you will constantly be stealing from God, taking things that belong to God and constantly becoming a thief or you will be somebody who is committed to prayer. We all have busy lives to different extents but we all have the ability to go to God often and tell him I want you. That's prayer. God I desire you. Right after you've just sinned, right before you're about to sin as soon as you can get your wits about you while you're sinning a house of prayer says God I see robbers coming in. I'm going to become a house of prayer again. Often, many times a day this is the house that God is going to say I can move into this because I'm not scared about who's going to be behind my back. If I'm entering this house I don't have to worry whether this is a den of robbers. Because it's a house where we're talking. Each one of us can only answer that question to ourselves in the privacy of your own hearts when you're at work, when you're at home late at night. Are you committed to letting yourself be a house of prayer? The first thing God often does when people start to praise him and he says okay I'm going to move in he has to clean house so to speak he has to clean your house up and he says throw away everything you have everything just become a house of prayer first that's the first thing God did as soon as the praise ended he went into the temple and he didn't see what he was looking for as soon as you start to praise him God says okay I'm looking for something next it's critical for us to snap out of our backslidden ways for us to turn back into a life with God it is critical that the first thing God says come and be with church and praise me okay you praise me then God says I'm looking for a temple and I'm looking for a temple to be a house of prayer not a den of robbers so here's my final question to you there's one thing you have to do for yourself to become a house of prayer and I can't control that I can't control whether you will spend time before you go to sleep just talking to God for two minutes I cannot control that I can tell you that it'll be a good thing to do I can tell you it'll be a good thing to do during your lunch break to just check in with Jesus how are we doing so far God it's been four hours since I woke up this morning how am I doing I can't control it I suggest it as a good thing to you but I can't control it but in addition to that there's a reason why God gave us each other God gave us each other because he says I want you guys to help each other too in this and God's given us community and fellowship this is what makes Jesus' life more beautiful to me he had nobody he just had the father and there are some people who God gives exceptional grace when they're all out alone in the middle of nowhere and they're missionary where there are no Christians around them and God gives them special grace for the rest of us God gives us each other he says I'm going to give you your Holy Spirit but I'm also going to give you other members of the body to help you and we squander we squander one of God's best resources which are the other people in this room who you heard yesterday every one of them wants to get better every one of them wants to know God more everybody wants that so here's my question to you part of what I wanted to get out of this retreat and what I wanted to encourage the young people here to do was to come up with tangible decisions that can be acted upon in 2009 enough theory enough concepts enough, oh I need to work on myself you need to do all of that stuff but you also need to work with each other and I'm not going to come up with the solutions here you have to pray about it but you have to come up with how do we CFC young people help each other God wants you to bear fruit and fruit is not about Jesus alone consuming all the fruit he's created fruit for other people to consume it so if you are praying in your own personal life often and you're making your house your heart a house of prayer good for you you are way ahead of many other people good for you I commend you on it and if you wrote on the slip yesterday that you're doing good with God let me commend you for it it's a good thing if you've been good with God I don't want to discount that it's an incredibly important thing to be good with God but the whole point of being good with God is also that I can bear fruit for other people so if I'm bearing fruit and nobody's eating the fruit except me and God there's a problem I want to drive that in God gave us gifts God's given us the ability to bear fruit in our spiritual life so that the people God has put you with can also eat off it this is my question to you how do you bear fruit so that other people can consume that if you are a house of prayer yourself you've got another step to do you need to help other people also become a house of prayer and if you're not a house of prayer it doesn't mean you can't do both right away for 2009 as you end 2008 maybe you have to make two decisions one I'm going to stop stealing from God by talking often to him what is the opposite of stealing English majors what is the opposite of stealing I don't even know not stealing I'll tell you what is the opposite the Christian opposite of stealing what is the Christian opposite of stealing praying talking to him I don't know what the English opposite of stealing is but I know what the Christian opposite of stealing is a house of prayer and each of us have our own hearts of prayer but this is also important I in my own personal life my life started on a definite upward trajectory when a few of us men got together and said we are going to pray every week that's it and we had a two-minute rule of you could not spend more than two minutes talking because we know how we love to share our burdens and it's a complicated scenario well my grandfather did this and my uncles have been doing this and my brother is doing this two minutes what do you want me to pray for you and we had a two-minute rule and I said don't tell me about your cat don't tell me about your grandfather's uncle who's having problems who's 88 years old 98 years old and has probably lived a good life is that really what you want me to pray for you about what do you want me to pray for you about and a few of us men got together there may have been six of us and we committed to praying so we spent two minutes each sharing and then we prayed for an hour we prayed to God for who he was we thanked him for who he was and we prayed for each other that's all we did no special bible studies no big words of God no big sermons, nothing we all have the internet we all can listen to incredible sermons you guys come to a beautiful church you hear all the word of God you need to hear you don't need to tell them the verses they know the verses and these were people who had were in relationships they shouldn't have been in they were talking to girls who were not Christians these were very real struggles there were addictions in there there were problems with people not finding jobs there were people who had physical conditions they needed to be healed up we had all kinds of things that we needed to pray for but God worked in my own heart and made me want him more as I prayed for my brother more there's an incredible gift power that God can give you a lot of you ask for the Holy Spirit and it's a very complicated topic it's probably something that I don't have as equipped to speak about as the elders do but I'll tell you this I found that the Holy Spirit gave me more grace as I sought to be of help to other people in my limited way and all I did was I was praying for them that's all I was doing for a long time way before I started speaking I decided to let me pray with a group of people for each other and God gave me a burden for each of them and out of that God gave me God said I've got a gift of speaking through which you can also help them but it started by praying with them so I want you to take some time of quiet and some time of personal alone time to prayerfully consider how you can encourage one another to be houses of prayers you've got a CFC building that is a building that can be opened in the evenings if you want a place to meet you've got parks, you've got houses you've got apartments and you've got community you've got people you've got all the resources you need in order to become houses of prayer for each other we must all get out of the backsliding spirit that's within us I really believe I can only speak from my own experience that I really believe that those of us who have a desire to get rid of it ourselves and to help other people around us get out of it can start here we want to be a group of young people who pray there's a conference a week from now there are people spending a lot of money poor people to come to be at this conference I think somebody needs to be praying for them too there are people in this room who if you heard what they wrote yesterday are doing really badly who's praying for them? you might be sitting right next to them right now you may have had a great time talking over breakfast with them this morning but you don't really care to pray for them what are the things that the CFC young people need to do so that God can say I live there I live in that group of young people not only do they praise me but as soon as they praise me I go looking for the temple and I find a temple there where I'm not going to get beat up where I'm not going to get everything stolen from me where people pray to me where people talk to me and you guys are all so creative you guys are making money you guys are so resourceful you guys have got such creative brains one of the things that I feel young people need to do is they need to use their creativity to solve spiritual problems and I'm not trying to say everything can be solved using your human creativity that's not what I mean you know you need to become a house of prayer yourself you maybe have to come up with creative ways in which to do that when I was living when I was working in a place in America there was a Catholic church near me and there was no Protestant church that was open in the middle of the day but I found that many times when I was at work the corporate culture there was so divisive and beat me up so much I needed something in the middle of the day so often I used to go to this Catholic church and when I was in front of praying masses to Mary I would sit at the back and pray to Jesus because I needed something to keep me going for the rest of the day or I would snap at people or I would say something mean or negative to them and I needed help so I became creative I said I'm going to go to that Catholic church I'm going to sit at the back in the last few and I'm going to pray I'm not going to pray to Mary just because I pray and I did that for months right now where I work it's about 15-20 minute walk for me to get to the Catholic church another different Catholic church because that's the only place that's open in the middle of the day where it's quiet so I've sometimes done that walk 15-20 minutes pray for 20 minutes walk another 20 minutes back and grab something to go and eat my food at my desk we've got an hour break we've got to get creative you've got 93 players you've got music CDs you can listen to there are ways you can fill in God's word into your mind in which you can be creative too but also how are you going to be creative to pray to him, to talk to him maybe it's on your drive back from home from work back to home maybe it's your drive into work and here's the other question how can you be creative to sit with one another and get them to pray with you you don't have to be a fancy leader you don't have to be a Christian you just have to say I want to be able to pray consistently and I can't do it alone the reason I got to praying with other people is I read a biography of somebody who said that he prayed for an hour every day and I said that's incredible so I tried to pray for an hour and I honestly fell asleep after 10 minutes every day I couldn't pray for more than 10 minutes and I'd fall asleep I'd get distracted I'd be praying and after 20 minutes I was like actually I spoke only about 2 sentences to God but the first minute was to God the next 19 minutes were all kinds of other things and I said this is not working how do I get to an hour I said I'm going to be creative I'm going to get 6 people I know my limit is 10 minutes but I'm going to get 6 people and if each of us pray for 10 minutes we've got an hour and I can say I pray for an hour now that's how it started that is how I started to pray to God so that I could spend some time in prayer I said I got my max in 5 minutes but I want to get to an hour let me get 11 people around me so I listen to them praying for 5 minutes because it's you I want to hear what he's going to say so each person takes 5 minutes after 12 people are finished look what we've got and it helped build a discipline in my own life to sit and listen to God and soon that time became 10 minutes of where we were quiet and then we prayed I said before we say anything to God let's be quiet so we can hear what God is trying to tell us maybe God's trying to tell you you're valuable to me maybe God's trying to tell you you're not doing so well but I love you thank you for coming and talking to me you need to hear that also when you pray it's not all about God I need this I need that also you need to hear what God's trying to tell you how much you're loved how much you're desired by him you have to become a house of prayer I don't know if I were living here maybe I could give you other ideas if I was working with you here I could give you maybe we could brainstorm and come up with some ideas you guys live here you guys are living in this culture in this environment I don't know the corporate culture I don't know how many hours people work but it's a non-negotiable you're either going to be a den of thieves or you're going to be a house of prayer and I want 2009 to be where the young people got together regularly and prayed in addition to the young people prayed themselves and some of you I'm sure are praying regularly and now maybe it's time for you to step up and say I'm going to get other people to pray regularly too I've got to 15 minutes praying no problem these other guys can't even get to 5 minutes I'm going to help them each of us have tasks to do in this because nobody was exempt from it and even if a person was praying for 2 minutes don't set your sights too high get together with other people and add them all up together and that's your total prayer time become a house become a person who gets into the habit there's no magic bullet there's no magic portion that you drink like we read in these old fables of all of a sudden you're like suddenly praying and God can kind of do something and touch you and all of a sudden you're praying for hours it's not going to happen that way maybe he'll do it to one or two but for the rest of us for a lot of us it's starting with these little simple things and say I'm going to take his word seriously you will find him in all your heart if you seek him with all of your resources if you seek him using these creative ways saying God I want to bear fruit I want to be a house of prayer I want our community to be a house of prayer you can do incredible things the stalwarts for Jesus the heroes for Jesus in this midst are going to be the people who can creatively come up with ways in which they themselves and other people can worship Jesus better that's who are going to be the heroes in this group who are going to say I want to create an environment where people pray to God better not only myself none of us are free if one of us are chained none of us are free so let's take some time we've got till 10.30 it's about 10 minutes what must we do what must I do alone that's important what must I do is important but also think about what practical thing I can do maybe you're living in this part of town and there are 4 other people who you know go to CFC and maybe you want to do something in that region in that location or maybe you know that everybody comes to church on Sunday at 9.15 we're going to go to the 2nd floor and we're going to pray for half an hour there are all kinds of things you can do believe me or after church after lunch I'm going to ask 3 or 4 young brothers of mine who I'm friends with or anybody who is free to spend 15 minutes in the mother's room praying or wherever there are incredibly creative things you can do with all the resources you have the question is I have my house of prayer my own temple but is there one thing don't write down 50 ideas write down one idea or one thought that you really think you can do to help other people maybe it's one other person maybe it's 5 other people maybe it's something for the whole group write down one thought and you can make it private we're not asking you to turn it in but it may be something maybe at some point you're willing to say guys I'm willing to go out on a limb and be public here about my desire I'm terrible at praying but I want to get good at it who wants to join me who's willing to come Saturday morning who's willing to come Sunday evening my schedule is packed Monday through Saturday but Sunday I want to get together with 5 people anybody's in you'll be surprised how many people may be in you may be surprised how many people get better with God and they don't have big sermons to preach they don't have many memory verses verses they memorize but sure they can talk to God it's for you guys to do so spend a few minutes writing specific things that you can do one specific thing you can do for yourself to make yourself a house of prayer and don't be grand be realistic every morning on my drive in from work I am going to start my little bike and I'm going to start talking to God and it's a 15 minute drive but 5 minutes I'm going to give to God if that's going to be realistic write that down don't say I'm going to spend an hour everyday and you know it's not going to happen write realistic goals that you can achieve to become a house of prayer both for yourself and for other people God bless you