Private Prayer and the Secret Place

Private prayer is the foundation of the spiritual life. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus teaches, "When thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly" (Matthew 6:6). Private prayer is not a religious obligation but an intimate meeting with the Father. In that hidden place, with no audience and no human applause, the soul lays itself bare before God and receives what it can find nowhere else. It is there that Christian identity is forged, that faith grows, that character is transformed, and that the soul draws strength to face everything else. Jesus himself, though he was the Son of God, set the example of a life of withdrawal in prayer. The evangelist Mark reports, "In the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out, and departed into a solitary place, and there prayed" (Mark 1:35). Likewise, before choosing his twelve apostles, "he continued all night in prayer to God" (Luke 6:12). If the Lord felt this need to withdraw and commune with the Father, how much more do we. Public prayer can be tempted toward performance, but prayer in secret reveals the heart's true condition and forges authenticity. To build such a discipline, begin by reserving a fixed time and a quiet place, perhaps keeping a prayer journal. At first, regularity matters more than duration: it is faithfulness in the secret place that produces, over time, a deep and lasting intimacy with God.