Lesson 11: Pray to Your Father Who is in Secret, part 2
We ended our previous lesson with the words that every thought or petition we breathe out will be simple, hearty, childlike trust in the Father. This is how He teaches us to pray. He brings us into the Father’s living presence. What we pray there must profit. Let us listen carefully to hear what the Lord has to say to us.
First, “pray to your Father who is in secret.” God is a God who hides Himself to the carnal eye. As long as in our worship of God we are chiefly occupied with our own thoughts and exercises, we shall not meet Him who is a Spirit, the unseen one. But to the man who withdraws himself from all that is of the world and man, and prepares to wait upon God alone, the Father will reveal Himself. As he forsakes and gives up and shuts out the world, and the life of the world, and surrenders himself to be led of Christ into the secret of God’s presence, the light of the Father’s love will rise upon him. The secrecy of the inner chamber and the closed door, the entire separation from all around us, is an image of, and so a help to, that inner spiritual sanctuary, the secret of God’s tabernacle, within the veil, where our spirit truly comes into contact with the Invisible one. And so we are taught, at the very outset of our search after the secret of effectual prayer, to remember that it is in the inner chamber, where we are alone with the Father, that we shall learn to pray correctly.
The Father is in secret. In these words Jesus teaches us where He is waiting for us, where He is always to be found. Christians often complain that private prayer is not what it should be. They feel weak and sinful, the heart is cold and dark; it is as if they have so little to pray, and in that little faith or joy. They are discouraged and kept from prayer by the thought that they cannot come to the Father as they ought or as they wish. Child of God, listen to your Teacher. He tells you that when you go to private prayer your first thought must be: The Father is in secret, the Father waits me there. Just because your heart is cold and prayerless, get into the presence of the loving Father. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on you. Do not be thinking of how little you have to bring God, but of how much He wants to give you. Just place yourself before, and look up into His face; think of His love, His wonderful, tender, compassionate love.
Just tell Him how sinful and cold and dark all is: it is the Father’s loving heart that will give light and warmth to yours. 0h do what Jesus says: Just shut the door, and pray to your Father, who is in secret. Is it not wonderful? to be able to go alone with God, the infinite God. And then to look up and say: My Father!
Prayer: Oh Lord, hear me as I pray that You would everywhere bless the closets of Your believing people. Let Your wonderful revelation of a Father’s tenderness free all young Christians from every thought of secret prayer as a duty or a burden, and lead them to regard it as the highest privilege of their life, a joy and a blessing. Bring back all who are discouraged, because they cannot find anything to bring You in prayer. Give them to understand that they have only to come with their emptiness to Him who has all to give, and delights to do it. Not, what they have to bring the Father, but what the Father waits to give them, be their one thought.