When you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.[Matthew 6:6]
Jesus did not say, “Dream about your Father who is in the secret place,” but He said, “…pray to your Father who is in the secret place….” Prayer is an effort of the will. After we have entered our secret place and shut the door, the most difficult thing to do is to pray. We cannot seem to get our minds into good working order, and the first thing we have to fight is wandering thoughts. The great battle in private prayer is overcoming this problem of our idle and wandering thinking. We have to learn to discipline our minds and concentrate on willful, deliberate prayer.
We must have a specially selected place for prayer, but once we get there this plague of wandering thoughts begins, as we begin to think to ourselves, “This needs to be done, and I have to do that today.” Jesus says to “shut your door.” Having a secret stillness before God means deliberately shutting the door on our emotions and remembering Him. God is in secret, and He sees us from “the secret place”— He does not see us as other people do, or as we see ourselves. When we truly live in “the secret place,” it becomes impossible for us to doubt God. We become more sure of Him than of anyone or anything else. Enter into “the secret place,” and you will find that God was right in the middle of your everyday circumstances all the time. Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless you learn to open the door of your life completely and let God in from your first waking moment of each new day, you will be working on the wrong level throughout the day. But if you will swing the door of your life fully open and “pray to your Father who is in the secret place,” every public thing in your life will be marked with the lasting imprint of the presence of God.
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WISDOM FROM OSWALD CHAMBERS:
Faith never knows where it is being led, but it loves and knows the One Who is leading.[ My Utmost for His Highest, March 19, 761 L]
____________________________Matthew 6:6 But you, when you pray, go into your room, close the door, and pray to your Father in secret. Your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.
Bible in One Year:
Psalms 113:1 Halleluyah!
Servants of Adonai, give praise!
Give praise to the name of Adonai!
2 Blessed be the name of Adonai
from this moment on and forever!
3 From sunrise until sunset
Adonai’s name is to be praised.
4 Adonai is high above all nations,
his glory above the heavens.
5 Who is like Adonai our God,
seated in the heights,
6 humbling himself to look
on heaven and on earth.
7 He raises the poor from the dust,
lifts the needy from the rubbish heap,
8 in order to give him a place among princes,
among the princes of his people.
9 He causes the childless woman
to live at home happily as a mother of children.
Halleluyah!
114:1 When Isra’el came out of Egypt,
the house of Ya‘akov from a people of foreign speech,
2 Y’hudah became [God’s] sanctuary,
Isra’el his domain.
3 The sea saw this and fled;
the Yarden turned back;
4 the mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like young sheep.
5 Why is it, sea, that you flee?
Why, Yarden, do you turn back?
6 Why, mountains, do you skip like rams;
and you hills like young sheep?
7 Tremble, earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Ya‘akov,
8 who turned the rock into a pool of water,
flint into flowing spring.
115:1 Not to us, Adonai, not to us,
but to your name give glory,
because of your grace and truth.
2 Why should the nations ask,
“Where is their God?”
3 Our God is in heaven;
he does whatever pleases him.
4 Their idols are mere silver and gold,
made by human hands.
5 They have mouths, but they can’t speak;
they have eyes, but they can’t see;
6 they have ears, but they can’t hear;
they have noses, but they can’t smell;
7 they have hands, but they can’t feel;
they have feet, but they can’t walk;
with their throats they can’t make a sound.
8 The people who make them will become like them,
along with everyone who trusts in them.
9 Isra’el, trust in Adonai!
He is their help and shield.
10 House of Aharon, trust in Adonai!
He is their help and shield.
11 You who fear Adonai, trust in Adonai!
He is their help and shield.
12 Adonai has kept us in mind,
and he will bless.
He will bless the house of Isra’el;
he will bless the house of Aharon;
13 he will bless those who fear Adonai,
great and small alike.
14 May Adonai increase your numbers,
both yours and those of your children.
15 May you be blessed by Adonai,
the maker of heaven and earth.
16 Heaven belongs to Adonai,
but the earth he has given to humankind.
17 The dead can’t praise Adonai,
not those who sink down into silence.
18 But we will bless Adonai
from now on and forever.
Halleluyah!
1 Corinthians 6:1 How dare one of you with a complaint against another go to court before pagan judges and not before God’s people? 2 Don’t you know that God’s people are going to judge the universe? If you are going to judge the universe, are you incompetent to judge these minor matters? 3 Don’t you know that we will judge angels, not to mention affairs of everyday life? 4 So if you require judgments about matters of everyday life, why do you put them in front of men who have no standing in the Messianic Community? 5 I say, shame on you! Can it be that there isn’t one person among you wise enough to be able to settle a dispute between brothers? 6 Instead, a brother brings a lawsuit against another brother, and that before unbelievers!
7 Actually, if you are bringing lawsuits against each other, it is already a defeat for you. Why not rather be wronged? Why not rather be cheated? 8 Instead, you yourselves wrong and cheat; and you do it to your own brothers! 9 Don’t you know that unrighteous people will have no share in the Kingdom of God? Don’t delude yourselves — people who engage in sex before marriage, who worship idols, who engage in sex after marriage with someone other than their spouse, who engage in active or passive homosexuality, 10 who steal, who are greedy, who get drunk, who assail people with contemptuous language, who rob — none of them will share in the Kingdom of God. 11 Some of you used to do these things. But you have cleansed yourselves, you have been set apart for God, you have come to be counted righteous through the power of the Lord Yeshua the Messiah and the Spirit of our God.
12 You say, “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but not everything is helpful. “For me, everything is permitted”? Maybe, but as far as I am concerned, I am not going to let anything gain control over me. 13 “Food is meant for the stomach and the stomach for food”? Maybe, but God will put an end to both of them. Anyhow, the body is not meant for sexual immorality but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body. 14 God raised up the Lord, and he will raise us up too by his power.
15 Don’t you know that your bodies are parts of the Messiah? So, am I to take parts of the Messiah and make them parts of a prostitute? Heaven forbid! 16 Don’t you know that a man who joins himself to a prostitute becomes physically one with her? For the Tanakh says, “The two will become one flesh”;[1 Corinthians 6:16 Genesis 2:24] 17 but the person who is joined to the Lord is one spirit. 18 Run from sexual immorality! Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the fornicator sins against his own body. 19 Or don’t you know that your body is a temple for the Ruach HaKodesh who lives inside you, whom you received from God? The fact is, you don’t belong to yourselves; 20 for you were bought at a price. So use your bodies to glorify God.
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