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June 2004 Table of Contents
In Spirit And Truth
Secrets of the Secret Place
(and the Life of Prayer)
By Steve Phifer
Worship Arts Pastor
Word of Life International Church
Springfield, VA
stphifer@aol.com
Worship Arts Resources
 But you, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. Matthew 6:6 NKJV
Rejoice always, pray without ceasing, in everything give thanks; for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus for you. 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 NKJV
Some columns are written to leaders and others are for those we try to lead. This one is for all of us. We all need to pray. Some of us need to pray more, others need to pray more regularly and others need to make a new start at the whole enterprise.
The words of Jesus and Paul challenge us and stir our hearts. Jesus says, "The Father is in the Secret Place of Prayer." Paul adds, "Pray without ceasing." But how? Where do we find the Secret Place? How do we even attempt a life built around prayer?
These words have challenged believers since Jesus spoke them and Paul wrote them.
I just finished a doctoral thesis on this topic and I want to share some of the things I discovered in this rewarding study with the readers of The Communicator.
A Biblical Overview
I believe Jesus' teaching on prayer in the Secret Place is the heart of the Sermon on the Mount. And, to me, the Sermon on the Mount is the constitution of the Kingdom of God. Jesus spoke of believers who, when they were sued for a shirt would surrender a cloak as well. They would go two miles when only one was demanded and would turn the other cheek when struck hard in the face. Private prayer, The Secret Place, is the furnace that would forge such lives of steel. This is not the power-mongering prayer of the religious leaders of the day or the market place praying of the hypocrites or the theatrical giving of alms, but this is Secret place prayer, where no one hears or sees but the Father in Heaven.
Paul has the authority to instruct us in the Life of Prayer. He was a man of continual prayer. He was schooled in Jewish prayer and, when he became a Christian, found a new, more intense and effective form of prayer when he learned to pray in/by the Holy Spirit. We see in the book of Acts the crises of his life. We see him praying in jail at midnight, aboard ship in a storm, and in public ministry with great power and effect. In his letters to the churches we get a glimpse of his private prayer life: with understanding and with the spirit, without ceasing, with great revelation, and with an expectation of signs and wonders. His powerful public life sprang from a power private life of prayer.
Jesus brought a new era of relationship with God because he brought an understandable revelation of God the Father, a real forgiveness of sin through the cross and a real helper in the Holy Spirit. He said that worship, which includes prayer, would not be in ceremony and tradition alone. These can be performed outwardly with no sincere action of the heart. New Covenant worship, on the other hand, would be done in spirit and in truth. This spirituality is internal before it is external. This is an inner spirituality of integrity, honesty and humility formed by the Word of God, the truth that sets us free, and empowered by the Holy Spirit. This cannot be faked for God Himself is the object and He cannot be fooled. Now, to the eight secrets I discovered.
The Secrets of the Secret Place
1. Solitude: Get alone with God
Being alone with God bars any possibility of performance praying. If another person can hear our words, this affects the way we pray. The first secret of the Secret Place is to be absolutely alone with the Father. Find a time, a chair, a room, a corner, a couch in your home and let every body know of your time and place, your persona appointment with Abba Father. Most likely your family will be happy to help you pray more!
2. Silence: Quiet your spirit before God
Silence is the searchlight of the soul. The voice of the Lord is heard in the human spirit when we quiet our souls. Noise is the enemy of the Secret Place. I avoid music with word associations as background. If I am an inwardly singing, I am not being silence. Our culture hates silence and our souls have been shaped in its image. But our spirit was created in the image of God and craves the silence of creation wherein is heard the voice of God.
Together, these two secrets imply a schedule, set times of prayer each day. From age to age in the history of worship these times ranged from twice daily to up to seven times a day. The biblical and historical minimum seems to be twice daily: morning and evening. The idea is to frame each day in prayer. My thesis project attempted this schedule and, predictably, found it almost impossible. Yet, in our busy lives, events that are not scheduled tend not to happen. One of the advantages of attempting morning and evening prayer was the chance to do one if the other was missed. The people in my study group ending up praying more often than when they attempted one prayer time each day.
3. Scripture: Recite the Word of God
Prayer is so much more than asking God for things. Crisis praying doesn't have to be taught; it is an automatic impulse born in the emergency before us. Daily private prayer, however, must be learned. It is a spiritual exercise for the inner person, done daily in obedience to prepare us for the crisis. Praying the Scriptures has a vital role in this strengthening discipline. Many of us hold to traditions formed in the modern age, (from the 17th to the 20th centuries) and we have not learned to pray the Scriptures. But Jesus and His disciples prayed the Psalms and other passages as a matter of course. This was the normal practice of devoted Christians until the second wave of the Reformation, the 1600's, when the Puritans and other like-minded groups reformed the Reformation. Because recited prayers were so terribly abused in the Medieval church, the whole concept was thrown out. Today we need to reclaim this powerful discipline.
In the ancient church, the leaders formed an axiom: Lex Orandi, Lex Credendi, est—"The Rule of Prayer is the Rule of Faith." In other words, what we pray reveals and forms what we believe. Great theology (right beliefs about God) springs from great doxology (proper praise of God). Another truth from the ancient church was lectio divina—the prayerful reading of the Scripture in which one hears the voice of God in the spoken words of Scripture. Today we also need to rehearse the revelation in Scripture of who God is and what He has promised. This is not "vain" repetition, but a purposeful rehearsal of truth so that it can go deep enough into us to set us free.
4. Spirit: Follow the leadership of the Holy Spirit
Prayer grew in form and power under the New Covenant. Under the Old Covenant, Jew prayed with two modes of prayer: (1) the recited Scriptures as prayer, and (2) they simply conversed with God. The New Covenant brings an additional mode of prayer: prayer in/by the Holy Spirit. Your practice of this type of praying varies with your personal experience and theology of the Holy Spirit, but this is more than a denominational distinctive. The Holy Spirit helps believers pray—all of us.
When we are alone with God, and have quieted our souls and rehearsed the revelation of Scripture, the Holy Spirit is ready to lead us as we pray about whatever and whoever He brings to mind. It is good to keep a prayer list and we should be careful to pray for those who are counting on us. But we should also listen for the voice of the Spirit calling us to pray for names and situations not on our list. As the Spirit leads, we can pray passionately from our spirit, weeping for the lost, feeling the pain of the injured and thus sharing in the fellowship of Christ's sufferings. Such praying makes a difference. James said the effectual, fervent prayer of the righteous person has great effect, it "avails much" (James 5:13-18). In addition, such prayer spiritually strengthens the one who is praying (Jude 20).
5. Sincerity: Humility is essential
True prayer and pride are mortal enemies. There is simply no way to fool God. If we speak a lie when we are praying we are not really praying. And the Spirit tells us so. In these cases, prayer will be a process of peeling back layers of deception until we finally speak the truth. In this way the Refiner's Fire and the Launderer's Soap the prophet Malachi writes about, do their work. Humble, soul-deep honesty in prayer cleanses the human spirit (Malachi 3:1-4). In the Secret Place, "God resists the proud and gives grace to the humble." (Read Peter's exhortation in 1 Peter 5:5-7.) Humility is also genuine. There are no mixed motives. According to James 1:5-8, a mixed motive in prayer removes the possibility of answered prayer!
6. Speech: Pray out loud, not just inwardly
While God certainly hears the silent cry of the heart (see the story of Hannah!) in the daily discipline of prayer, we need to speak out loud. That's why we need to be alone with God. Each of us has things to say that only God should hear. Abba Father can take whatever His child needs to say. Perhaps private prayer becomes therapeutic at this point. There is no reason to carry unexpressed pain in our hearts. Get it out! Let Abba Father deal with it! He knows all about it anyway. This is why the Psalms are important to us as prayers. Like the Psalmists, we may need to question God. We may need to complain or lament. While these prayers may not be appropriate for the community of faith, they are vital in the Secret Place! Our inner healing awaits the catharsis of prayer.
7. Song: A key to releasing faith is the prayer song
When Jesus strode into the Temple, whip in hand and a stern rebuke on His lips, the issue was prayer in His Father's House. Not just any prayer, but songs of prayer. The word Isaiah used in the passage Jesus was quoting was tephillah, the Hebrew word for hymn. To Jesus and the disciples, hymns were not old songs in hard bound books. They were songs or chants of prayer, usually the Scriptures themselves. Like our forebears who rode this country on horseback with their Bibles and their hymnals, we need to use great hymns and contemporary songs as prayers and we need to use the Psalms as prayers. Somehow in the plan of God melody and prayer are meant to flow together.
8. Supplicate: Ask, seek, knock
Jesus teaches us to stay with it; to keep praying and never give up. We must be careful why we keep praying. It is not to impress God or to wear Him down. Jesus taught prayer as an exercise based on the sterling character of God. Heathens prayed with much repetition to appease a hostile God. Abba Father already knows what we need. Our prayers are repeated for a different reason, and one not at all "vain". Prayer is spiritual warfare. While we cannot see the warfare at work in the spirit-realm when we are praying, it is happening. There is a record in the Old Testament of twenty-one days elapsing between the answer being sent and the answer being received—twenty-one days of angelic warfare (Daniel 10:12-13).
The fact is, we don't know why answers to prayer are sometimes delayed, but we know what we should be doing: asking, seeking, and knocking with confidence in a God who hears and answers. ‘If my words abide in you," Jesus said, "You shall ask what you will and it shall be done." (John a5:7) When we have God's will ("my words") in a matter, we can confidently keep on asking, seeking and knocking in prayer.
The Life of Prayer
It is time to make a new commitment to prayer. First we need to expand our definition of prayer beyond petition and crisis to relationship and discipline. Next we need to expand our time in prayer from maybe once a day, to morning and evening; to start and end each day in prayer. Finally we need to expand our skill in prayer. We need to learn and practice these eight secrets. I recommend forming your own services of prayer. I use morning and evening services of private worship that I present to the Lord. Just like in public worship, these private services help me pray.
I see four vital ministries of the Holy Spirit available to the believer as a result of effective private worship: (1) The character of Christ is imparted to us in the secret place as it is here the Refiner's Fire purifies and the Launderer's Soap cleanses (Malachi 3:1-3). (2) In the secret place the call of the Father can be heard (Isaiah 6:1-6). (3) Since secret place worship is an exercise in hope, the compassion of Christ is imparted to the worshiper in private worship. "Now hope does not disappoint, because the love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us." (Romans 5:5 NKJV). (4) In private worship, the Word of God dwells in us (Colossians 3:16) and the power of the anointing of the Holy Spirit is acquired (Ephesians 1:15-21; 1 John 2:20, 27). In the secret place, the world is changed because it is here that we are changed.
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