When was the last time that you had a private conversation with someone, just between you and them? There are certain times when the things that we speak about don’t need to be heard by others because others just don’t need to know about it.
When we pray to God, we are praying to Him, not to others. Our conversations with God in our prayers are between us and Him. Jesus taught that when we pray, do it in secret.
Matthew 6:5-6 “And when thou prayest, thou shalt not be as the hypocrites are: for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of men. Verily I say unto you, They have their reward.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.”
If something is secret, it is being, or kept, hidden. It is private, or confidential; concealed. That is how Jesus taught that our prayers should be, but some people use prayer to give themselves an appearance of righteousness or holiness in the sight of others. The Pharisees, specifically, Jesus rebuked because they loved to pray out in the public, but they did it not because they wanted to spend time in prayer with God. They did it to be seen. They did it to receive praise from others, which is just vanity. We need to seek the praise that comes from God.
God is a rewarder of those who seek Him. When you come seeking God in your private prayers, God will hear you, and reward you openly, but for some people, that isn’t good enough. They want others to admire them, and laud them with praise. But you need to remember, it is the praise from God that matters, not of men. People could hate you to the point of extreme anger, but if God is pleased with you that is all that matters.
There is a time and place for prayer in the church, of course, as that is a part of our worship and admiration to the Lord, but when it is our personal prayer time with God, our conversations with Him should be kept between Him and us.
Many times when Jesus prayed, He went up into a mountain by Himself, or went a distance away from His disciples and prayed to the Father. Before Jesus was led away to be crucified, Jesus commanded His discples to sit a little distance away while He prayed in Matthew 26. As Jesus should be our example and model for everything that we do, we should follow this example that He set when we have our prayers with God.
We may not always have a “closet” to lift up our prayers to God in, but we can always find someplace to petition Him without letting others know it, even if it is just a prayer that we lift up in our minds.
In Christ,
Andrew
Teufer Lake King James Bible Church 