The Door Shut — Alone With God

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you...” Matthew 6: 6.

Man was created for fellowship with God. God made him in His own image and likeness, that he might be fit for this, capable of understanding and enjoying God, entering into His will, and delighting in His glory. Because God is the everywhere-present and All-pervading One, he could have lived in the enjoyment of an unbroken fellowship amidst whatever work he had to do.

Sin robbed us of His fellowship.

Nothing but this fellowship can satisfy the heart of either man or God. It was this Christ who came to restore; to bring back to God His lost creature, and bring back man to all he was created for. Oneness with God is the consummation of all blessedness on Earth as in Heaven. It comes when the promise, so often given, becomes a full experience: “I will never leave you nor forsake you”, and when we can say: The Father is always with me, this oneness with God is meant to be ours all day, whatever our condition or the circumstances that surround us. But its enjoyment depends upon the reality of the oneness in the inner chamber. The power of maintaining close and glad fellowship with God all day will depend entirely upon the intensity with which we seek to secure it in the hour of secret prayer. The one essential thing in the Morning Watch or the Quiet Hour is — Fellowship with God. It is this that our Lord teaches us to be the inner secret of secret prayer: “Shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret” Matthew 6:6.

The first and chief thing is to see that there in secret you have the Father’s presence and attention. Know that He sees and hears you. Of more importance than all your requests, however urgent, of more importance than all your earnestness and effort to pray aright, is this one thing- the childlike, living assurance that your Father sees you, that you have now met Him, and that with His eye on you and yours on Him, you are now enjoying actual oneness with Him.

Christian, there is a terrible danger to which you stand exposed in your inner chamber. You are in danger of substituting Prayer and Bible Study for living fellowship with God, the living interchange of giving Him your love, your heart, and your life, and receiving from Him His love, His life, and His spirit.

Your needs and their expression, with your desire to pray humbly and earnestly and believingly, may so occupy you, that the light of His countenance and the joy of His love cannot enter you.

Your Bible Study may so interest you, and so waken pleasing religious sentiment, that yes, the very word of God may become a substitute for God Himself, the greatest hindrance to fellowship because it keeps the soul occupied instead of leading it to God Himself. And we go out into the day’s work without the power of an abiding fellowship, because in our morning devotions the blessing was not secured. What a difference it would make in the life of many if everything in the closet was subordinate to this one thing: I want to walk with God through the day; my morning hour is the time when my Father enters into a definite engagement with me and I with Him that it shall be so. What strength would be imparted by the consciousness: God has taken charge of me, He is going with me Himself; I am going to do His will in His strength all day; I am ready for all that may come! Yes, what a nobility would come into life if secret prayer were not only an asking for some new sense of comfort, light, or strength, but the giving away of life just for one day into the sure and safe keeping of a Mighty and Faithful God!

Pray to your Father who is in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” Where the secret fellowship with the Father in spirit and in truth is maintained, the public life before men will carry the reward.

The Father who sees in secret takes charge and rewards openly. Separation from men, in solitude with God is the sure, and the only way to live in oneness with men in the power of God’s blessing.