Shut Your Door # 2

Shut Your Door # 2

"Pray to your Father." God seeks in every way to make His love plain to us, to show us how He wants to bless us. Of all the revelations He has made to us of Himself, no one means quite so much as the name Father. We know something of the fatherhood as we see it in imperfect men, in ourselves if we are fathers. A writer says: "I never an forget the hour when I first became a father. A new feeling swept through my soul and transformed all life and all the world for me. Then a moment later came a vision of God. God is my Father. My new-born love for my newborn child - is a shadow at least, a revelation, of the love of God for me."

It is your Father whom you meet in the private chamber when you enter in and shut the door. No other answer is needed when someone asks you if you believer in prayer. Just say, "God is my Father, and of course I can pray to Him." You cannot conceive of a true father to whom a child cannot come with his questions, his difficulties, his dangers, his sorrows, his sins. If God is your Father, there is nothing you cannot bring to Him.

Think, too, Who God is. Earthly fathers are limited in their knowledge, in their vision, in their power to help. But God is without limitation. He is almighty. He is not little, like you. It is sweet to sit down beside a human friend who is rich in character, in sympathy, in wisdom, in love, in power to help, and to know that he is your friend. Some of us know by experience, what it is to have such a person to whom we can go with our weaknesses, our hard questions, our inexperiences, and to know that all this friend is, and all he has - he will put at our disposal. But how little the strongest human friend has power to do for us! He is only human like ourselves.

Then think of the immeasurable greatness, power, wisdom, and love of this Father, with whom you come into communion in the private chamber when you have shut the door. When Tennyson was once asked his thoughts about prayer, he answered, "it is the opening of the sluice-gate between God and my soul." Behind the sluice-gate is the great reservoir with its pent-up volumes of water. Below it are the fields and gardens to be irrigated, the homes to be supplied with water. The opening of the sluice-gate lets the floods in to do their blessed work of renewal and refreshing. Prayer is the sluice-gate between God and your soul. You lift the gate when you pray to your Father- and infinite floods of divine goodness and blessing - of life - pour into your heart.

Our thought of prayer is too often pitiably small, even paltry. Within our reach are vast tides of blessing, and we take only a taste. Many people seek but the lower and lesser things in prayer, and lose altogether the far more glorious things that are possible to their quest. What did you ask for this morning when you entered into your private chamber and shut the door upon your Father and you, and prayed? Did you ask for large things, or only for trifles? For all the fullness of God, or only for bread and clothes and some earthly conveniences/ For earth's tawdriness, or heaven's eternal things?

A writer defines religion, as friendship with God. If this is a true definition, what then is prayer? When you visit your friend and are welcomed, and you sit together for an hour or for an evening, do you spend the time in making requests, asking favors of each other? Do you devote the hour to telling your friend about your troubles, your hard work, your disappointments, your pinching needs, and asking him to help you? Rather, if you have learned the true way to be a friend, you scarcely even refer to your worries, anxieties, and losses. You would spend the hour, rather, in sweet companionship, in communion together on subjects dear to you both! There might not be a single request for help in all the hour you are together. There might be moments of silence, too, when not a word would be spoken, and these might be the sweetest moments of all.

Our prayer should be friendship's communion with God. It should not be all requests, or cries for help. When we enter our private chamber and shut the door and pray to our Father, it should be as when two friends sit together an commune in confidence and love.

"When you pray, go into your private room, shut your door, and pray to your Father who is in secret." But someone says, "It would be impossible with all the duties that are required of us, in our busy days to spend large portions of time in the private chamber, even with God." There is a way to live in which in a sense - we shall be always in our private chamber, with the door shut, in communion with our Father.

This must have been what Paul meant when he said, "Pray without ceasing." There never was a more strenuous Christian worker than Paul. He certainly was not on his knees "without ceasing." But we can learn to be in our private chamber with God, through all our busiest days. That is, we can commune with Him while we are at our work and literally shut our door to pray to our Father. Jesus prayed that way. His days were all days of prayer. He was in communion with His Father when He was working in His carpenter's shop, when He was teaching by the seaside, when He was performing miracles of healing in people's homes or upon the streets, when He was walking about the country. There really never was a moment when he was not in the private chamber, with the door shut, praying to His Father.

It is said of Francesca, that though she never wearied in her religious services, yet if during her prayers she was called away by some domestic duty, she would cheerfully close her book, saying that when a wife and mother was needed, she must leave her God at the altar, to find Him in the duties of her home. There come times in every life when formal prayer is not the duty. Yet we may be really in communion with God, while we are doing our plainest tasks. We must make all of life prayer, in the private chamber with God.

We must make time for prayer. There is no other place, where we can get strength. The work we do without prayer - is poor work. The busy day that does not begin with prayer - is a day without divine blessing. The sorrow that does not go to God - remains uncomforted. The joy that is not sanctified by prayer - is not perfect. The preacher who does not enter into his private chamber and shut the door, with only God and himself within,k may preach eloquently - but his preaching will not win souls, will not comfort sorrow, will not edify saints, will not lead men into holy service.

~J. R. Miller~

(The End)