Do You Have A Secret Place?

One day Jesus was teaching people about various topics and he brought up the subject of “PRACTICING” a person’s faith, and how some people like to to brag about what they believe. Jesus here is attempting to get people to think about why they feel the need to boast about their faith rather than cultivating a walk with God in the depths of our soul. The pharisees, for one, liked to brag about their own piety when in fact they were just religious, often having very selfish hearts.

Today, people still have the problem of trying to show off how good they are and how close they are to God by carrying big bibles or claiming their translation of the bible is the only real one God accepts. Other people try showing how spiritual they are by quoting lots of scripture verses. They can expound because they want people to believe they are closer to God than the average Christian. It is so easy to “PERFORM” spirituality rather than live spiritually, as God’s Word declares. Many people just can’t seem to get away from moving in pride rather than humility.

Matthew 6:1

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven.”

Many people have asked me over the years how I must love to preach, seeing I have been a pastor for over 40 years. I tell them I don’t, to which they are surprised and ask why, because to them preaching must show spirituality. I tell them I preach and teach because it’s what God gifted me to do after being born again. I usually have to explain that when I got saved the last thing I wanted to do was become a pastor, because I didn’t have a very high opinion of them. Don’t get me wrong, I love sharing God’s Word and what I have learned about God, but not because I love hearing myself talk.

A. W. Tozer, a great man of God that influenced my life greatly in my early walk with God once said “Show me a man who loves to preach and I will show you a man to be afraid of”. Why? Because pride can be the motivator behind their preaching rather than the their love of God and the love of people. Pride can be so easily dressed up to look respectable especially when it comes to the Christian faith.

Dealing with this universal problem so many of us have of showing off, we should develop the spiritual habit and practices of learning to talk to God honestly and freely called prayer. Jesus talks about prayer as having a “SECRET PLACE” in which we go to in order to pray well. In that place Jesus says it is for the purpose of meeting with our Heavenly Father, not for the purpose of performing for others. How often have we heard someone praying in public when the prayer sounds more like a motivational speech than a intimate conversation with God?

Matthew 6:6

But when you pray, go away by yourself, shut the door behind you, and pray to your Father secretly. Then your Father, who knows all secrets, will reward you.

Over the years I have found that preachers have done harm to the body of Christ finding intimacy with God because they have taught their congregations to pray “HORIZONTAL” prayers. In other words, they teach people how to give good speeches to other people to encourage them to do something. Instead of praying from the heart, they write down prayers that sound good to the ear of man, not God. They make prayer about sounding good to man but never touching the heart of God. How this must grieve the heart of God. One of the other things such horizontal prayer does is it motivates people NOT to pray publicly because they feel they can’t speak well in public, thus they don’t pray out with others.

Building our lives in the secret place of prayer builds our relationship and intimacy with God to the point that we are able to express our love for him openly and honestly in front of people, and not for the purpose of showing off to others. Our conversations about God should flow out of real experience with him in our secret place of prayer.

Psalms 91:1

He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High

Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

There are great benefits to developing an honest prayer life, because if we have regular conversations with God in the secret place of prayer our understanding of scripture will move much farther along. Our confidence in the power and presence of God will be much richer and deeper, so that the storms of life will not affect us so negatively as they often do. If we cultivate honest conversation with God in the secret place of prayer we will have no problem praying in public because we will not need to “PERFORM” some eloquent speech to impress people. We will just be talking to Father God, who loves us.

I need to, we need to, regularly have conversations with God that are not anchored in wanting him to fix things in our lives, as much as opening our heart to him. Although there might be many things that need fixing in our lives, our conversations with him need to be anchored in building our relationship with him. Our relationship is developed and gained when we hear his heart and he hears ours.

Scripture talks about Jesus going to solitary places to pray, even after a long day of ministry. Maybe we should consider the same habit.

Questions:

1) Do you regularly pray as much or more than reading your bible? The answer should reveal a need to find the secret place where you and Father God meet regularly.

2) Do you find it hard to be intimate with God in front of people by praying out loud? Maybe you’re trying to be good at speech giving rather than praying.

May today be different because we entered the secret place to talk to Father God.

Pastor Dale