In all four Gospel accounts, Jesus enters the temple in Jerusalem with fiery zeal for His Father's house. "My house, Jesus pointedly said, shall be a house of prayer for all nations!" As a church, we want to come into alignment and agreement with Jesus' heart for his Father's house. For us that place is THE ALTAR. Throughout the Bible, the altar was the place where the human and divine interacted, the place where heaven and earth intersected, where offerings and sacrifices were made, prayers and intercession were prayed, praise was lifted and God's presence burned with holy fire among his people. The principal in the heart of God was for the altar in his house (tabernacle, temple and now PEOPLE) to perpetually burn with the holy fire morning, noon and night (Leviticus 6:13).
All of this points us to Jesus who is the praying, walking, talking, teaching, training, healing, loving, forgiving and saving Temple-Man or as John's Gospel puts it, "The Word became flesh and made his dwelling (tabernacled) among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the one and only Son, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth." Jesus is the one in and through whom heaven and earth overlap! He is the once and for all sacrifice who has, through his blood, defeated sin and satan; destroyed the enemy’s stranglehold of fear over humanity; disarmed his power over the earth and ushered in God's eternal kingdom. Jesus is the resurrected King of Kings who has triumphed over death itself.
Because of the GREAT redemptive and reconciling work of Christ, the church is called to become God's house and temple! We're being built together to become a dwelling in which God lives by his Spirit. This new temple is built on the foundation of Christ and held together by his powerful word. Christ is the altar that sanctifies. Christ is the one who makes our prayer and praise acceptable to the Father. Christ is the one who, by his Spirit, calls us to himself, cleanses us of our sin, connects us to the Father, consumes us with his love, invites us into eternal communion with himself and commissions us to embody and express his redemptive purposes in the world. Christ is the one through whom we have access to God, authority to pray and anointing to live in the fullness of his Spirit.
Through his blood and by his Spirit Jesus has made ALL OF GOD'S PEOPLE a kingdom of priests who are welcomed in to the very presence of God, to minister to him with psalms, hymns, spiritual songs, thanksgiving and adoration and to partner with him through intercession and prayer to release his will and purposes over all the earth. All of God's people are invited to take their place at the altar! To share in communion with Jesus and release his life-giving dominion over all creation. Even now Jesus lives to intercede for us!
In light of all these glorious truths, we humbly and fervently seek to posture ourselves regularly before the altar at God's throne in passionate worship, word-saturated, Spirit-soaked and faith-filled prayers that pour forth with confidence, boldness and expectancy morning, noon and night. All of this for the sake of partnering with the Father and the Son in the power of the Holy Spirit to see the knowledge and aroma of Christ fill the whole earth.
There are very few things, in fact perhaps only ONE THING, that the Bible says to do without ceasing, for all people and in every situation...PRAYING! We believe mixing worship with the word AND prayer is the three-corded strand that cannot be broken! It fuels consistency in communion with God and releases breakthrough in the life of the one praying and the person(s), place(s) and thing(s) that one is praying for.
(see John 1:14, Hebrews 9:26, Colossians 2:11-15, Hebrews 2:14-18, Matthew 23:19, Hebrews 10:19-25, John 14:6, 2 Corinthians 5:14-21, Matthew 28:18-20, Romans 8:28-35, Ephesians 2:19-22, 1 Peter 2:4-5)
