Isaiah 56:7: “For my house will be called a house of prayer for all the people.”

Luke 2:37: “And she (Anna) never left the temple, serving God night and day with fastings and prayers.”

When someone subscribes to our website they give us their e-mail address. I love to look at these addresses and view the creative expressions people come up with for their address. The other day I noticed one had the word Ihop. I had to write this person to see if they were talking about a pancake house (International House of Pancakes) or a house of prayer (International House of Prayer), it was a house of prayer. This got me to thinking, however, just what a house of prayer really is? Isaiah 56:7 tells us that God wants his house to be called a house of prayer for all the people.

Hebrews 11:6 tells us that it is impossible to please God without faith.  Faith is at the very root of pleasing God.  In Luke 7:9 we find that Jesus marveled at the faith of the Centurion.  When we see the word marvel we think of awe or amazement. Indeed this word in the Greek ethaumasin does carry that idea, but when we drill down a little further and we find that ethaumasin represents a joyful or wonderful feeling.  The word used in the Aramaic is dama which is similar to the word zamar in Hebrew which is a word for praise but in its Semitic root it has the idea of pruning. It is looking beyond all of one’s faults and seeing that something which is special or different and rejoicing in that.  When we look and marveling at the Grand Canyon, we have a feeling of joy at something beautiful while overlooking the fact that it is also a very dangerous and treacherous place to travel. It wasn’t that Jesus was shocked or taken by surprise at the faith of the Centurion, it was that His heart was warmed and made joyful at his faith. I am sure as s Roman Centurion he had done a lot of things in his life that he would not be proud of but Jesus only saw His faith and it pleased Him.  That marvelous feelings we get when we see God’s beauty in nature is the same marvelous feeling God gets when he sees that simple childlike faith in us. He zamar(s), prunes or cuts away all those things which we would be ashamed of and just focuses on our faith and finds delight and joy in that.

So we can please God with our faith, but what about serving Him. How do we serve him?  Is being a missionary serving him, full time Christian work, or going to church, paying tithes?  I suppose so but I think the Bible gives us a better understanding of what it is to serve God. In Luke 2:37 we learn that Anna served God in the temple with fastings and prayer.

Fasting is going without food, right? Well, not really. Going without food is just an expression of fasting. The Aramaic word used here is tsom which is identical to the Hebrew word tsom. The word in Greek used here for fasting is nesteials. The Septuagint uses this Greek word nesteials for the Hebrew word tsom. All three words means fasting. I could not drill down very far with the Greek word nesteials other than fasting.  But the Aramaic word tsom and its Hebrew equivalent tsom does offer some insight.  In its Semitic form the Aramaic and Hebrew words tsom has the idea of submitting the very necessities of one’s life to receive some knowledge.  In ancient times it was used for a soldier who would give up his life to be recognized by one of his gods and receive the knowledge of the Gods.  In this context it means to submit to the Divine Will in order to bring about a transformation through the revelation of His hidden knowledge. That is the very essence of fasting. That is why going without food, the very basic necessity of life, is one of the most common expressions fasting.  But there are other ways to fast. I believe it was Mike Bickel, the founder of the International House of Prayer, who speaks of a fasted life style. I am not too sure of what  he means by this but I am led to understand that it involves denying yourself the things of this world, the things that feed the flesh as well as fleshly desires in order to submit to the Divine Will. I believe when Mike Bickel speaks of a fasted life style he is giving an excellent definition of the Aramaic and Hebrew word tsom. Anna lived a fasted life style. She lived in the temple denying herself of the things of the flesh to pursue the Divine Will of God. This was called a service to God.

Then she prayed. The word in the Greek used for prayer here is de esesin which really means petition. The word used in my Aramaic Bible is tselutha. The Septuagint uses de esesin for the Hebrew word thapol in Isaiah 56:7 which is translated as prayer, but this prayer in the Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew are not only prayers of petition but also intercessory prayers, prayers of petition for others and not oneself. Anna lived in the temple living a life of fleshly denial and praying in intercession for others day and night. That is called a service to God. It was not being a prophetess that was called her service, it was her fasting and prayer. The root word for prayer in Hebrew as it is in Aramaic is palal which has a numerical value of 140.  The mind or heart of God  has a numerical value of 140. The Gematria indicates that prayer is speaking out verbally the heart of God.  Is that not what you are doing when you pray a prayer of intercession?

What then is this house of prayer that we are reading about in Isaiah 56:7? The word house is byith which means not only a physical place of dwelling but a spiritual place of dwelling. It could be a tent, a palace, a tabernacle or a house. It could also be the spirit, the heart, or the mind where are desires dwell. With that thought in mind we could translate the house of prayer as a place where the heart of God dwells. It is a place that one enters and expresses the heart of God verbally. That is one way to translate the words byith tepilah (house of prayer).

But soft, if faith pleases God, and it takes faith to enter the heart of God, it would follow that when we enter the heart of God our faith has made His heart joyful and thus we enter His joy. Yet it is that joy which comes from our faith, so really it is our faith that is ultimately responsible for the joy of the Lord that we feel. When the Centurion expressed his faith it created a joy in the heart of Jesus such that the healing power came out of Jesus, but Jesus made it clear that it was the Centurion’s faith that activated this power.  The combination of faith – pleasing God and prayer – proclaiming the heart of God created a house of prayer that brought about the healing of the Centurion’s servant.