Secret and Sacred Prayer

What I have been advocating for in the work of prayer is that we would commune with God. That we would open ourselves up to him to till our hearts and water our souls.

We come to a place of understanding the great need of praying in private and praying in public. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote that we need each other to speak God’s Word to us. And that we ought to be leery of anyone who cannot be contented with being alone or with being with others. We need the private and public dynamic of relationships to help us flourish.

It is imperative that we seek the face of God in secret. That we cultivate the habit of praying when we rise, walk, drive, work, eat, and lie down.

It is just as imperative for us to seek God’s face together. It was not uncommon for Israel to call for solemn assemblies wherein they would pray together. The sweetest times of my Christian life have been circled up with two or three people and praying for each other’s needs and simply asking God to reveal more of himself to us.

It is unfortunate that prayer meetings at churches are the least attended times. This betrays our self-confidence and false security. This also displays a lack of earnestness in wanting God’s face to shine on us.

My prayer is that Christ’s Church would experience a fresh outpouring of God’s grace for the work ahead. A brief survey of church history shows that these outpourings did not happen apart from prayer. The question then, is: Do we really want more of God? And we ought not to be too quick to answer in the affirmative…if our lives, privately and publicly, don’t support that.