Threshing Floor Tabernacle

And dear to me the loud “Amen,”
Which echoes through the blest abode—
Which swells, and sinks, then swells again,
Dies on the walls — but lives with God!

Prayer affects places, times, occasions, and circumstances.  It has to do with God and with everything that is related to God.  It has an intimate and special relationship to His house.  A church should be a  sacred place, set apart from all unhallowed and secular uses, for the worship of God.  As worship is prayer, the house of God is a place set apart for worship.  It is no common place, It is where God dwells, where He meets with His people, and where He delights in the worship of His saints.

Prayer is always proper in the house of God.  When prayer is a stranger there, it ceases to be God’s house at all.  Our Lord put particular emphasis on what the church is to be, when He cast out the buyers and sellers in the temple.  He repeated the words from Isaiah: “It is written, My house shall be called the house of prayer” (Matt. 21:13). He makes prayer preeminent above all else in the house of God.  Those who sidetrack prayer or seek to minimize it pervert the church of God and make it something less than it is ordained to be.

[E.M. Bounds on PRAYER]