2nd post in series on The Lord’s Prayer

“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.  And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” (Matthew 6:6)

What’s it like in the secret, hidden places that no one sees, no one knows?  What are your secret thoughts; your hidden hurts, your silent cries?  Who knows those things about you?  Who hears the cries of your heart?   Who do you let into those secret places?

Today has been one of those days that for whatever reason, my heart has been heavy.  I haven’t even fully known why.  Yet, it’s been a day that I have felt the Father drawing me to a quiet place with Him.  Assuring me that His Presence is found in secret.  He sees me in the secret place.  I can cry my eyes out.  I can lay all the heaviness at His feet and know that He sees the deepest places of my heart, the places that I don’t even fully understand.  He rewards me with His presence.  He pours out His love.

In this passage of scripture, as Jesus is instructing the disciples how to pray, he is demonstrating an intimate relationship with the Father.  He is saying, “it’s not about religion, it’s about relationship.”  Intimacy is not developed in large crowds, but in the secret place, behind closed doors.  God’s Presence is found in secret, He sees what is in secret, and He rewards those who meet Him in that place.

If we truly desire to experience the presence of God, we must let Him into the secret places of our hearts.   He wants us open to Him so that He can speak truth to our innermost places.  “Behold, you delight in truth in the inward being, and you teach me wisdom in the secret heart” (Psalm 51:6).   The Lord sees you in secret.  He knows your hurts, your struggles, and your hidden sins.  He knows your loneliness and despair.  He wants you to trust Him with all of it.  He desires your fellowship.  “You have set our iniquities before you, our secret sins in the light of your presence” (Psalm 90:8).   His Presence brings light to our darkness.  He sets our sins before him and shines his light on them.  Do you need His light to shine into some dark and heavy places in your heart?

In His Presence, we find our reward.  “And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”  How will the Father who sees in secret reward us?   Jesus told the disciples in Luke 8:10, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God.”  What a privilege to be one of the ones that God trusts with His secrets!  God rewards those who seek after intimacy with Him by revealing the secrets of His kingdom.   Those whose desire is for the Lord, meet him in the secret place and trust Him with their secrets and intimacy with Him grows.  He then reveals His secrets to us; those whom He is intimately acquainted with; to those who love Him and obey Him.  “The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law” (Deuteronomy 29:29).

“But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory. But, as it is written, “What no eye has seen, nor ear heard,
nor the heart of man imagined,
what God has prepared for those who love him”—

 these things God has revealed to us through the Spirit. For the Spirit searches everything, even the depths of God. For who knows a person’s thoughts except the spirit of that person, which is in him? So also no one comprehends the thoughts of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God. And we impart this in words not taught by human wisdom but taught by the Spirit, interpreting spiritual truths to those who are spiritual.

 The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual person judges all things, but is himself to be judged by no one. “For who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?” But we have the mind of Christ.”  (1 Corinthians 2:7-16)

Wow!  When we enter into an intimate relationship with God through Jesus Christ, He gives us His very Spirit.  He gives us the mind of Christ.  Through His Spirit, He reveals truth and gives understanding to things that we would never be able to comprehend without His Spirit.   He imparts and trusts us with His secret and hidden wisdom.  Those things He only reveals to those who meet Him in the secret place. “The one true sign of discipleship is intimate oneness with Him- a knowledge of Jesus that nothing can shake.”1

“But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.  And your Father who sees in secret will reward you.”