Matthew 21:13
“He said to them, “It is written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer,’ but you make it a den of robbers.”

Right before Jesus came to the temple in the city of Jerusalem, the people have welcomed Him on a donkey praising Him, knowing that he came in God’s name. When Jesus gets to the temple He saw all who sold and bought in the house of the Lord and drove them out. He overturned their tables and seats and said this statement to them. The temple was a place to worship the Lord and be able to commune with Him directly and they had defiled it and made it a place of personal benefit and selfishness. He became righteously angry over the corruption and defilement of His Father’s house. When I first read this, I saw it as nothing more than Jesus cleansing the temple, but I didn’t look to apply it to my heart or my life. Later on, I felt the Lord asking me to go back and really read and look into this section and examine my heart.

As I continued to read and examine my life and my heart I realized that the Lord was showing me how I was making my life and heart a defiled place before Him. I was ignoring His counsel and looking to only benefit and worry about myself. I was trying to block out what the Lord was asking me to do and I was making my heart a den of robbers. On the outside, I was reading my bible and spending that time with the Lord, but I wasn’t seeking Him with all of my heart and soul and mind and strength. My prayer life has been slim to none and I haven’t been communing with the Lord in the intimate way He has gifted us with. Prayer is such a vital aspect of our Christian walk and it is such a personal and intimate to talk with our Creator. My conversations with the Lord had been all about myself and no praise to Him was lifted up, my heart became not a house of prayer to the Lord, but a den of robbers looking to only satisfy myself. 

When the Lord revealed this to me, He shattered my soul and brought me to complete brokenness before Him. I had to get on my knees and cry out in repentance to Him for my lack of dedication and faith in Him. I have this tendency to live in condemnation and guilt instead of conviction, but I felt the Lord come and engulf me in his presence with absolute love and grace reminding me that He never gets tired of bringing His children back to Him. The comfort of my Father enveloped me in a way that I haven’t felt in so long because I had become hard against what He desired for me to do. As He is reteaching me, I am coming to understand more of the basic foundation of faith and a relationship with Him and He is revealing Himself to me more and more as I dive deeper into His word and in prayer to seek Him. 

“Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” Matthew 7:7

My application is to start fasting and praying more so that I can grow in deeper intimacy with the Lord and learn more of how to depend on Him fully.