I will not be unmannerly, but I will be forthright. Intimate encounters are not intended for public display. The coming together of a man and wife is a private celebration of something uniquely shared by the couple in question.
Prayer is intimate in a way that requires privacy.
The Master taught us the way:
“But thou, 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 KJV)
But when thou, not if thou, prayest!
When you pray, close your door.
Shut out the noise, even the good and positive voices that cheer you on, and let your the bubbling froth of stimulation and activity subside.
Bring your heart close and become aware of your bigger, more beautiful self. The man or woman cleansed and clothed with righteousness. And from that foundation of set-apart holiness begin your adventure
TRANSCRIPT
Please note: this transcript is auto-generated so forgive any (or many) errors 😲 – click the timestamps to play that section directly in the audio.
00:00:02.180]
I don’t want to be rude, but I do want to be forthright in this kind of time together talking about prayer and really point out that intimate encounters are really not intended for public display. You know, the coming together of a man and a wife is a private celebration of something uniquely shared by the couple in question. You know, it’s not for the world to ogle and nor is it something that can be replicated. It is something enjoyed and engaged in by those two alone.
00:00:39.560]
Prayer in a similar way is also requires intimacy and requires privacy. You know, the master taught this way in Matthew 6:6, he said, but. But now when that preist enter into thy closet and when you shut your door, pray to your father in secret and your father, who sees in secret will reward you openly, you know. And he says, But when thou preist. Yeah, when not if when you pray, close the door.
00:01:18.290]
Yeah. When you pray, close the door. Shut out the noise. You know, even the good and the positive voices that are cheering you along the way. Even those need to be shut out sometime and let the bubbling froth of all this stimulation and activity that is occurring in our lives, let all of that subside in our bringing our heart close to God and requires that we silence all of the other voices that we become aware of our bigger and more beautiful self, the man and the woman, cleansed and clothed with righteousness.
00:01:56.870]
And from that foundation, from that foundation of holiness. From that foundation of being set apart. Yeah. We begin this adventure of prayer and the adventure begins every time we step into that sacred place. Yeah. You know, I’ve been asked how someone might learn to pray, but there’s really only one effective answer. And I teach prayer a lot. And I’ve written books about prayer. I’ve run courses on prayer, run run workshops on prayer.
00:02:30.230]
But at the end of the day, it all boils down to one thing. How do we learn to pray? We pray prayer is learnt by praying. You know, there’s really is no school or college that can teach you the keys to intimacy. You can’t teach someone how to love or how to be loved. It’s something that happens as we engage in the practise of it. You know, prayer, I say, is not learnt in the school room.
00:02:57.170]
It’s learnt in the upper room. You know, where we’re on our knees crying out to God. That’s where the lessons are distilled into a life of deep, deepening relationship, you know, and then we arrive at this interesting junction when we recognise that prayer is learning. The prayer is learnt in the doing. The spirit of prayer is is taken a hold of in the praying. You know, we arrive at this interesting junction where when we want to become more skilled in prayer, you know, it brings, I guess in a very aptly brings two worlds together, the vast, invisible world of the spirit and the tangible time tyranny of our natural day and our natural life in this world.
00:03:53.000]
You know, to enter eternity requires that we commit our time and our natural space to the actual practise of praying. You know, for me, back in the early days, in my imperfect devotion and my devotion is still very imperfect. You know, this meant being quite vicious with myself in the sense of I cleared my room of all distractions, literally locked the door and told myself I would not be allowed to leave for the next hour, you know, and it soon became apparent to my stubborn, fleshly self that I really meant business.
00:04:33.710]
You know, I was intent to learn this thing, this mystery called prayer. And, you know, rather than face the boredom of just being locked in a room for an hour every day, you know, both my body and soul, it’s kind of aligned themselves and stepped into agreement. And we began to see God according to the instructions that were given in the book of Deuteronomy. Where it says, you shall love the Lord, your God with all your heart, with all your soul and with all your might, and if there’s anything that I can kind of instill into your thinking today, it is this that prayer is whole hearted, whole souled, whole body.
00:05:23.860]
It is an exercise of the entire being. Every part of your being must exert itself in pursuit of this kind of inestimable price that we have been invited to take hold of the treasures of relationship with God. And I promise you, when you approach prayer in this manner, this passionate and unapologetic, emotional. You know, full bodied, full souled, full hearted, intent prayer, when you approach prayer in this manner, it will take on a nature that compels you to continue.
00:06:11.870]
It will no longer be a matter of just pure da’wah like hopefully it wouldn’t just be drudgery, but it would even take it beyond discipline into a place of magnificent delight. Well, thanks for listening. Hopefully it’s been an encouragement to you today, if you want to connect any further, you can do so through my website at Davidleemartin.com. Have a great day.
