Secret Prayer

SECRET PRAYER
  
Much of what Jesus taught his disciples had to do with being sincere and real. They had grown up under the influence of an external Jewish religion where there was an outward show of pretence in the prancing around of their religious observances, from giving to fasting and praying. Jesus wanted to teach them to become real in the inner faithfulness of their heart towards God, and not to be concerned with the praise of man. 
Matthew 6:1 “Take care! Don’t do your good deeds publicly, to be admired, for then you will lose the reward from your Father in heaven. … When you do a kindness to someone, do it secret, and your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you.

At this particular time of instruction Jesus was especially interested in telling them about the need for this inner quality of the heart in regard to prayer.
Matthew 6:5 “And now about prayer. When you pray, don’t be like the hypocrites who pretend piety by praying publicly on street corners and in the synagogues where everyone can see them. Truly, that is all the reward they will ever get. 
So go into your room and close door behind you and be with the Father in secret, and the Father who sees in secret will reward your going out… for your Father knows what you need before you ask him.

Jesus taught them to do as he did when he would leave the company of others and settle into a place of silent humble stillness where he would capture the truth of who he was in the presence of his loving Father. He would walk out from that place of prayer with a clear understanding of the will of his all-knowing Father. He taught his disciples his process of ‘secret prayer’. He had to close the door on the outer busyness of life and on the many human demands and challenges that acted upon his mind and emotions.

Jesus taught them how to close the door of their minds and emotions to their own outer troubling circumstances and to be with the Father in secret, where they would find his reward of peace and find faith to overcome the world in his strength. 
Jesus said to them. ‘follow me’, and he is also saying the same to us in these Scriptures, about how to follow him into his secret prayer life with his Father.

When Jesus went up onto a mountain to pray, he would not have had a room to go into, and there doesn’t have to be any formal room as such. The word for room (tameion) means an inner chamber. That inner chamber for Jesus was his heart, and that was where he met with his Father. That is also where we meet with our Father, in secret.  When Jesus ‘closed the door behind him’ he was talking about shutting out the soul’s current burdens and perplexing challenges of life. Closing that door was a deliberate decision of his will. 
When Paul wrote about his ‘reaching forward to those things that are ahead’ (Philippians 3:13) he first of all talked about ‘forgetting those things that were behind’ That wasn’t about Paul having amnesia, it was as with Jesus a deliberate act of the will!
Paul was very open in the Scriptures about the mental perplexities and the emotional disappointments he suffered, and he didn’t deny them or suppress them, but he also didn’t obsess about them. He knew the only faithful and intelligent way forward was to put them aside by closing the door of his soul on them while he let his mind occupy a better and more powerful place of the peace filled presence of God which is always there waiting to be occupied by all those who believe. He went on to say ‘…let any of us who think maturely act this way…’(Philippians 3:15)

There are three clearly defined parts to this orderly process of secret prayer that Jesus taught 
‘Go into your room and close the door behind you…’ 
The first part, before going into the room, is to do some ordering of the soul concerning the scrambled array of competing burdens and concerns both past and present that can flood the human mind. We need to diligently check what those things are that we leave outside the door when we close it because they will still be there when we come out of that inner place of being heart to heart with God. And while the Father knows all these hidden things, we need to be clear about them too, so that we can finally surrender them willingly into his hands. This diligence takes a little time, but the Holy Spirit helps us by shining the light where it is needed. 

‘Be with your Father in secret…’
The second part is to open the door of our heart to the flow of love and goodwill of the Father so that when we close the door on the past, he can reorder our soul and energize our heart with faith for the future. This is not a time of discussing our needs with God but purely a time of receiving the flow of his life into ours. That flow of life is the divine energy that created and ordered the Universe through the Logos of his Word, and that energy continues to work creatively upon us. During that time we can echo the words of David ‘My heart is fixed, my heart is ready (Psalm 57:7) as our faith expands in anticipation of God’s will being worked ‘in secret’ into our heart and into our circumstances. 

‘…and the Father who sees in secret will reward your going out for your Father knows what you need before you ask him’.
The third part is to come out of that inner place and into our outer world knowing that our Father has ordered our future and prepared our heart with faith to discern his will for our life concerning those areas of our present circumstances.
We now present these needs that the Holy Spirit gives us witness to, and that he wants us to willingly surrender to the Father. He gives us his faith that these things are being brought into the perfect will of God, and that faith and peace is the reward of the Father. The Bible says that Jesus lives forever to intercede to God on our behalf (Hebrews 7:5). We have surrendered these to the Father and we know Jesus ‘has our back’, as it were. We then give thanks for this and allow his peace to fill our hearts as we go out from there and into the activities of our lives. And now we are assured that we will see in his time what he has done and give more thanks, when our faith becomes our sight.          
Jesus went on to give them a general outline of how they could speak personally and openly to God, both in reverend awe of his greatness but also in the warmth and consolation of his love and goodness. 
He taught them what we call ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ (Matthew 6: 8)

Dear Heavenly Father I respect and honour you as God over all things. I regard your Heavenly Kingdom order as being perfect in every way and I ask that you bring that perfect order more and more into this world so that your will can be done by us here on earth as you devise your perfect will for us from Heaven.
I depend upon you for everything that I have in this earth that sustains my life and keeps me going. Help me to live in the peace of your forgiveness and to show that same forgiveness to others who have done me wrong.
Please keep your hedge of protection from evil around me and my loved ones and strengthen our souls against being tempted and drawn away from your path by wrong desires. May the power of your Heavenly Kingdom be gloriously on display for all to see in this age and for all the ages to come. Amen