Book: With Christ in the School of Prayer
Chapter 3 – “Pray to thy Father, Which is in Secret”; or Alone with God

Main Passage:
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret, and thy Father which seeth in secret shall recompense thee. – MATTHEW 6:6

After Jesus had called His first disciples, He gave them their first public teaching in the Sermon on the Mount. There He explained the Kingdom of God – its laws and its life – to them. In that Kingdom, God is not only King, but Father. He not only gives all, but is Himself all. In the knowledge and fellowship of Him alone is its blessedness. Hence it came as a matter of course that the revelation of prayer and the prayer-life was a part of His teaching concerning the New Kingdom He came to establish.

Anyone who knows me pretty well knows that I love to talk about the Kingdom of God! Murray has two profound observations about the Kingdom of God (reign and rule):
1. Even though God is King, he is still our Father. (a very important tension to maintain)
2. Prayer plays an essential role in the coming of his Kingdom.

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.

I can be so guilty of being full of myself! I find that, at times, I allow myself to be distracted by my own thoughts and worries of life during times of corporate worship, or in private reading and meditation of the scriptures, or just praying to God. My worries are primarily related to the fleshly-worldly-visible things in life. During these times of distraction, I miss out on encountering God, who is a Spirit. I suspect that when my eyes are on locked on what is seen, I miss out in meeting with the One who is unseen!

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, pitying 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.

So many times I have come to God completely void of energy and life; so weighed down with problems and sin! Murray’s quote got me thinking about something: In a sense, we can consider prayer as a kind of offering to God. Sometimes, in our dark times, we don’t feel like we have any prayers to give. What else could we possibly give him? Perhaps we should redefine our understanding of prayer. Could it be that the very heart of prayer is not the offering of our words, but rather the offering of our entire self to God?

Our Lord teaches us that because God meets us in secret with infinite Fatherliness and Faithfulness, we should meet Him with childlike simplicity of faith and be confident that our prayer does bring down a blessing.

I think Andrew Murray is touching the essence of faith with this quote. In other words, Faith is resting in the Faithfulness of God.

To be alone in secret with the Father: this be your highest joy. To be assured that the Father will openly reward the secret prayer so that it cannot remain unblessed should be your strength day by day. And to know that the Father knows that you need what you ask should be your liberty to bring every need in the assurance that your God will supply it according to His riches in glory in Christ Jesus.