Part 1
It is this going into our closet and shutting the door; it is this that is wanted, SECRET PRAYER. This is the main spring 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 we can find time for, I may say, 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 yet 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 standing 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, if so being, 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 and sapless for lack of secret prayer and communion with God.
What saints we often appear before people? O, 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, that He sees us, and knows us thoroughly. If evil is lurking within, we instinctively feel that God is searching us: for evil shall not dwell with Him (Psa. 5:44For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. (Psalm 5:4)).
Ah, it is a searching spot alone in the presence of God. Little wonder so many beg to be excused from spending much time there. But, beloved, it is the lack of spending time there that is the secret of so much of the lifelessness and the carnality that abounds.
What we want to see is a great revolution in the praying habits of God’s people. We cannot pray by proxy—that is, another doing it for us—no more than our bodies can thrive by another taking food for us. There must be individual closet work. The prayer meeting will not suffice us, blessed privilege though it be.
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. We do not speak at random. Anyone who does a little in coming and going among saints will have discovered this by experience.
That God has His praying ones we believe—yea, we rejoice to know. He is never without faithful ones—remnant though they be, who cry day and night unto Him. Yet the terrible downward current of these last days is carrying the many before it: yea, the many even of God’s people: and the great enemy of souls could not have hit upon a more deadly device for making merchandise of the saints, than by stopping the supplies at the throne of grace.
When closet prayer languishes, “the whole head is sick, and the whole heart faint.” The lack of secret prayer betrays a lack of heavenly appetite. It implies a positive absence of desire for the presence of God.
(To be continued)