It is this going into our closet and shutting the door ; it is this that is wanted, brethren—secret prayer. This is the mainspring of everything. And yet we make excuses, and say we cannot find time. But the truth is, if we cannot find time for secret prayer, it matters little to the Lord whether we find time for public service or not. Is it not the case that too often we can find time for everything except this getting into our closet and shutting the door in order to be alone with God? We can find time to talk with our brethren, and the minutes fly past unheeded until they become hours ; and we do not feel it a burden. Yet when we find we should be getting into our closet to be alone with God for a season, there are ever so many difficulties s t an din g right in the way. Ten thousand foes arise to keep us from that hallowed spot, "thy closet." It would seem as if Satan cares not how we are employed, so that we seek not
our Father's face ; for well the great tempter knows if he can but intercept the communications between us and our God, he has us at his mercy. Yes, we can find time for everything but this slipping away to wrestle with God in prayer.
We find time, it may be, even to preach the gospel and minister to the saints while our own souls are barren for lack of secret prayer and communion with God! W h at saints we often appear before people! Oh, the subtlety of this Adam nature! When we go into our closet and shut the door, no one sees us, no one hears us, but God. It is not the place to make a fair show. No one is present before whom to make a little display of our devotion. No one is there to behold our zeal for the Lord. No one is there but God; and we know we dare not attempt to make Him believe we are different from what we really are. We feel that He is looking through us, and that He sees and knows us thoroughly.
If evil is lurking within, we instinctively feel that God is searching us ; for evil cannot dwell with Him (Psa. 5 :4). Ah, it is a searching spot—alone in the presence of God. Little wonder so many beg to be excused from it. But, beloved, it is the lack of it that is the secret of much of the lifelessness and carnality which abound. The prayer meeting will not suffice us, blessed privilege though it be. "Thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, a n d when thou hast shut thy door, pray" (Matt. 6:6). How many there may be who have gradually left off secret prayer, until communion with God has been as effectively severed as if for them there were no God at all!
That God has His praying ones, we believe—yea, we rejoice to know. He is never without faithful ones who cry day and night to Him. Yet the terrible downward current of these last days is carrying the many of God's people before it; and the great enemy of souls could not have hit upon a more deadly device for making merchandise of the saints than by stopping their intercourse with the throne of grace.
The lack of secret prayer implies a positive absence of desire for th e presence of God. Such fall an easy prey to temptation. Satan gets an advantage over them easily.
If a brother is not at the prayer meeting for a time or two, you can speak to him about it and exhort him. His absence is a thing you can see. But if he is absenting himself from the closet, that is a thing beyond your observation. You only feel, when you come in contact with him, that something is sapping his spiritual life ; and who can estimate the eternal loss that follows the neglect of secret prayer!
"I missed prayer for a time," said one who had tasted of heavenly joys, "and then I missed it oftener; and things went on this way until, somehow, everything slipped through my fingers, and I found myself in the world again." How different it is with those who watch with jealous care that the Lord has always His portion, whoever else may have to want theirs. Their going out, their coming in, their whole manner of life, declare that they have been where the heavenly dew has been falling. Their Father, who saw them in secret,
is rewarding them openly. They carry about with them, although all unconscious of it, the serenity of the secret place where they have been communing with God as friend with friend. Where this is wanting, it is little wonder that saints get as worldly as the very worldling. Little wonder the plainest precepts of the Word of God are brought to bear on them in vain.
It is an Abraham in sweet communion with God that knows the fate of Sodom, long before the dwellers in that city are dreaming of danger. And it is the same Abraham who hastens and rises early in the morning to do the thing the Lord had commanded, although that thing be the severing of nature's tenderest tie (Gen. 22).
Men of communion are men of obedience. It is men delighting to be near the king who are ready to hazard their lives to fetch him a drink from Bethlehem's well (1 Chron. 11:18). And it is men of prayer who have moved the arm of Omnipotence in all
ages, while they who seemed to have least need to pray have been the very ones to whom the closet has been dearest. Our great Example was a man of prayer. We read of Him rising a great while before day and departing into a solitary place to pray (Mark 1:35). Let us follow Him whithersoever He goeth. If He needed the aids of heavenly power to help Him in the evil hour, how much more do we? Then let no uncertain sound be given in this all-important matter. Let secret prayer be urged on God's people as one of the great essentials of spiritual life, without which our grandest services will be barren and fruitless in the eyes of Him who looks on the heart.
Beloved brethren, let each one of us ask himself the question, Am I delighting in the secret place, to plead with the Lord, to renew my strength, to have power with God and prevail? If not, let us confess our neglect. God will forgive, and renew our spiritual energy.