Leviticus (13) Praying for Houses

Over the years, I have been involved with praying for houses that seemed to be strange in some way. My first experience was when my wife and I went to live in a vacant manse while I was working as a trainee pastor over the summer. For the first couple of weeks, my wife seemed really unhappy. When we returned to our regular home for the weekend, the heaviness seemed to lift, but when we returned to the manse, she was in tears within a couple of hours. Some Christian friends advised us to pray for the rooms of the house. We did, and amazingly, the heaviness that my wife had felt just disappeared.

Since then, we have prayed in various houses and seen a difference for the people living there, but I have always been a bit uneasy about the practice, because I could not find scriptures to justify it.

When I was writing about the Decontamination Offering in Leviticus, the penny dropped. The Tabernacle was the site of intense spiritual welfare. If the people of God sinned, the Tabernacle, which was the place God lived, could be contaminated in some way by their presence. They could leave a trace that defiled it. If the defilement was sufficiently severe, God would leave because it had become an unpleasant place for him to be.

In the New Testament age, followers of Jesus are each the temple of the Holy Spirit. This means that the house where a follower of Jesus lives is like the courtyard of the Tabernacle. So if the person falls into sin, the place where they live can be contaminated, just like the house where God lived could be contaminated in the Old Testament season. This means that a spiritually sensitive person entering the house where a person has regularly sinned will often pick up the contamination that has defiled it.

In the New Testament age, a decontamination offering is unnecessary because the presence of the Holy Spirit can cleanse a contaminated room of a building. So, praying for a room in a house to be cleansed by the power of the Holy Spirit makes real sense.

The practice of praying for the cleansing of houses and other buildings is justified by Leviticus.