“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.” Matthew 6:6
Prayer. We all know we should be spending time in prayer. Ask any child raised in church what God wants us to do and I guarantee that prayer will be on the list. And they’re right. Prayer is key to our relationship with God. Do you have a relationship with any person that you’ve never had a conversation with? Of course not. Maybe you’ve never met them face-to-face, but relationship cannot exist without some form of communication. The same is true of our relationship with God. It’s so important that Jesus knew we would need help with it. In this verse, He gave us four steps of prayer.
- Go into your room. That doesn’t mean we can’t pray unless we’re in a room dedicated to that purpose. What this is saying is to separate ourselves from the world. We can be in a crowd and still be praying in our room. If our mind and heart are centered on Him instead of the chaos swirling around us, then we are in our prayer room. It also points out the attitude we should take regarding prayer. We should not be praying in order to impress others. When praying out loud, I sometimes find myself praying at others instead of praying to God. I’m more concerned with how my prayer sounds to those listening than I am about communicating my heart to God. If I were to first go into my room, my prayer would be to God and would hopefully draw others to Him.
- Close the door. Another word for “door” is “entrance.” We need to block the entrance to our minds and hearts so that distractions can’t enter. Again, I’m not saying we have to be locked in a room with no noise, although that can certainly be helpful. But wherever we are and whatever we’re doing, we can choose to guard the entrance to our minds and hearts so the concerns of this world don’t take over, or the lies of the enemy can’t get a foothold. Then the lines of communication with God can be completely open.
- Pray to your Father. Approach Him, bring your praise to Him, as well as your concerns. Acknowledge that you need Him. Listen for His words to you. Bow in obedience to Him asking for His help to obey. Thank Him for all He’s done and is going to do. Revel in the joy and privilege of entering His throne room and being able to have a conversation with the Almighty God of the universe.
- Your Father . . . will reward you. How wonderful is that?! God is saying that when we come to Him in prayer, He’s going to reward our faithfulness. That doesn’t necessarily mean we’ll get whatever we ask for at exactly the time we request it. God loves us too much for that. What it means is that we will be rewarded with a closer relationship with God. He will fill us with His joy and His peace. We may or may not get exactly what we have asked of God, but we will always get what is best for us. And we will grow in our faith in Him and in our love for Him and for others.
Why does God require these steps of us? He hasn’t laid out these steps so He can deny our requests if we don’t follow them. He’s not trying to catch us on a technicality. Rather, he knows it’s for our own good. We need these steps in order to open ourselves up to Him. He’s ready and willing to meet with us at any time. But we have to get distractions out of the way so we can be open to hearing from Him. I encourage all of us to go into our inner rooms and close the doors so we can see the wonders God has prepared for us.