The Ingredients of Closet Prayer — Al Whittinghill

Where we've been hearing some wonderful things, I just want to say that that deep inner stirring that we're feeling, and I say we, is a very thrilling thing because God is giving us a hunger and a thirst for righteousness that he intends to fill.

But God gives a burden and we must give the discharge. God gives conviction and we've got to give the response. God moves on us and we need to say, be it unto us according to your word. We must act on the word that we hear, and I pray that this morning you will purpose by the grace of God to act on all that he's saying to you.

I wonder if you would dare to receive these truths we've been hearing in your heart and say, Lord, let it be unto me according to your word. The theme of our conference is in everything by prayer, in everything by prayer.

Prayer as the Essential Practice of Christian Life

The Bible also says to pray without ceasing. It says, watch in prayer and continue in the same with thanksgiving. In everything, give thanks. Men ought always to pray and not to faint. I will therefore, says the apostle, that men pray everywhere.

So the scriptures are full of superlatives about prayer in everything for all things, and there's nothing else that will take the place of prayer in the Christian life except for prayer. Nothing, absolutely nothing will fill that place in your heart and life that God intends to occupy.

Dwight Moody said once behind every work of God, there's prayer. You can trace it to prayer. John Wesley said that God has chosen in his sovereignty to limit his workings on Earth to our prayers. God rests his predetermined will and purpose on the faithful heart cries of the church according to his will and through his name.

And we must be faithful to pray. He says, whatsoever you ask anything you ask. You can demand as you do. You tell me what to do. Isaiah, he even says, Thus saith the Lord concerning the works of my hands, command he me.

He is longing for us to not tell him to do what he doesn't want to do, but in faith notify him that we have come by grace to see his heart and say, do it. He's waiting for the church to agree with him to work together with him in prayer.

And there is absolutely nothing outside the reach of prayer, except for what's outside the will of God. God says everything in his plans and purposes are well within our reach of prayer. Now, before we go to our text this morning, I just want to say the key to everything in my life and yours as a Christian is knowing God, knowing him intimately.

Intimacy With God as the Foundation of Prayer

And this means not just academically or being able to process the truths of God and repeat them, but knowing him and his feeling, his character and his person and and the intimacy that comes when you spend time with him.

Intimacy takes time. And without intimacy, excuse me, without time, you'll never develop intimacy in a marriage when time disappears together. Intimacy grows distant and the wife and you begin to feel perhaps awkward at certain times of trying to communicate.

You don't know where you're coming from. We need a cultivated consecration with the Lord. And so the law of all fruit bearing across the street and around the world is an intimate love relationship with Christ intimacy with him.

Matthew 6 and the Private Life With God

Now, I want to go to Matthew chapter six for our text and deal with what we've been talking about this morning. I believe the Lord has put these messages together. There was not any serious effort at all to coordinate these messages.

We always trust the Lord to put them together. And I did not know that Ian was going to speak on how to have a quiet time this morning. I knew he wanted to this weekend, but I didn't know the timing of it.

And I'm delighted that Gary shared about God recovering in him his closet time. He had devotions in an inconsistent way. He had read many books, but God a year ago recovered his time in the closet. And that's a wonderful thing.

Now, in the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew five, six and seven, we find a bottomless well. But in chapter five, you contrast verse 16 when it says, let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorify your father in heaven.

Contrast that verse 16 before men, the public testimony and witness of a Christian. That's what chapter five is about. It deals with relationships and attitudes that are experienced in public and out.

Contrast that verse 16, your light shine before men so that they can see with chapter six, verse one, take heed that you do not your arms before men so that they can see. You see, there's two aspects here.

One is a testimony that's the fruit of a holy life in public. And the other in chapter six is the root of a holy life in public. And if the root dies, the fruit will cease eventually. There's no question about it.

In chapter five, you see public display, whereas in chapter six, you see private devotion. And I believe that's a wonderful order right in the middle of these chapters, chapters five and seven. God puts the spinal cord of it all.

And it's the private life with God. Public is in chapter five and public is in chapter seven. But right in the middle, running right down through the middle of our lives must be private, intimate and alone with God.

Now, Robert Murray McChain, you've heard him referred to as being affected by Andrew Murray. He also died at the age of twenty nine, excuse me, by David Brainerd. He also died at the age of twenty nine and affected many, many people.

But he said this. He said, what a man is on his knees before God, that's what he is and nothing more. That's what I am. That's what you are. When I come before God, that's who I am. Now, in Matthew, chapter six, we go to our message for this last session this morning, the ingredients of closet prayer.

The Personal Nature of Closet Prayer

The ingredients of closet prayer, the ingredients must be of God or the cake won't rise. You can throw in man's ingredients. You know, God's cakes are different than ours in man's cakes. You got to have leaven or they won't rise in God's cake.

She got to leave the leaven out or it'll stay on the ground. It's got to be without leaven, sincere and pure and right. Be wearing of leaven and all hypocrisy in the life and chapter six deals with leaven and hypocrisy and is saying what you are in private.

That's what you really are. Now, let me then, before we read this together, part of these verses say real prayer is personal. It's a family time, father and children together and to truly pray as father.

God intends for us to pray. You must be born into his family. You must be born by the spirit of God into his royal bloodline through the blood of Christ, cleansed by his blood bodies washed in pure water.

That's what it says over in Hebrews, chapter 10. Just listen to this as it talks about the way into the throne room of God, the throne of grace before which were to come boldly. It says in Hebrews 10, 19, having therefore brothers boldness to enter into the most holy.

That means the throne room of God, by the blood of Jesus Christ, by a new and living way which he has consecrated for us through the veil that that barrier that's temporary in the Old Testament in the Holy of Holies through the veil.

That is to say, his own flesh. We have a high priest over the house of God. Let us draw near then with a true, sincere heart in a full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, meaning with blood and our bodies washed with pure water.

Hold fast the profession of our faith. Prayer is personal, and so a right relationship with God is the strength of prayer. It is the foundation of all growth in prayer. Of course, in prayer, you'll find a more right relationship with God.

It's an amazing cycle. Indeed, that keeps growing and we have an open door policy with our Lord to the throne room of God. He says, Come anytime you welcome. Come boldly to the throne of grace. You can find grace and obtain help and anything you need in a time when you need it, which is all the time as you pray without ceasing and come.

Your father longs to spend quality time with you. He longs to. He yearns to. He wants to spend time. There's no reluctance on his part this morning. If there's any problems in prayer, it's all on my part.

It's all on my part, and it can be resolved because it's the will of God. And so you can see these things through. He yearns for intimacy with you, and I urge you to let that birth hope in you to let that birth a new beginning in you to say, Lord, from this day on, my life will be different.

The angels are amazed that we can come before God with such an open door policy. They look and they must marvel that we're welcomed into the throne room of God. The only thing that amazes them more than we can come all the time is surely the fact that we don't do it.

They see us trying to put the square peg of our life into a round hole of God's will, and it won't work until he knocks off the rough edges in prayer. He's got to work in our lives. God longs for us to take the privilege of prayer.

And one day we're going to marvel at our neglect of this great, great privilege and responsibility. Our theme verse says, be anxious for nothing or be careful for nothing. But it really carries with it this.

Don't be distracted by anything. Don't be distracted. But but in everything by prayer and supplication with Thanksgiving, make your requests known to God. I'm thinking of those verses before we read Matthew six.

Intercession in an Apostate Age

I will get there in Isaiah fifty nine. When it says God is is looking in a day of apostasy, he's looking out through that nation and he says he says he looked and he saw that there was no man. Isaiah fifty nine sixteen.

He wondered that there was no intercessor. The word wonder means to be astonished. God looked and he was astonished that in the light of the times there was no one to stand in the gap in the book of Ezekiel chapter twenty two verse thirty.

God says, I sought for a man among them, someone to stand in that gap, that breach between the visible and the invisible. I was looking for a man to take up the hedge to to fill in the gaps between God's will and and man's rebellion and to be an intercessor.

But I found none. One is a search and the other is a sob. God says I found none. He's surprised in another place in Isaiah. It says in sixty three five of Isaiah, God says, I looked and there was no one to help.

I wondered that there was none to uphold the word wonder means to be astonished. God actually is astonished in case you think that's an Old Testament phenomenon in the gospel of Mark chapter six verse six.

It says Jesus marveled at their unbelief. He was amazed. Now, that's amazing when you think of God being amazed, he marveled. It really means to be astonished with amazement. He was amazed at how slow we could be.

Now, I don't know the depth of that, but I think it's amazing that God could ever be amazed at my unbelief. That's amazing. And brother, he's amazed at your reluctance and my reluctance to pray. And all of that, all of that was before the cross that I just quoted you.

And all of that was before the Bible. All of that was before Pentecost and the church history of blessing and revival. He was amazed. What would he be now? He's astonished. Then he says in Jeremiah chapter two, verse thirty two, he says, my people have forgotten me days without number days without number.

He says, Isaiah 64, verse seven, there is none who calls upon thy name, who stirs up himself to take hold of God. It literally means there is no one who is stirring up his inner man to seize hold of Jehovah in the New Testament.

It says the same thing. There is none who seeks after God. No, not one. Romans three. You see, that means as God wants to be sought after the best saint who has ever lived, that has the most amazing prayer journey you've ever read, has missed it.

As he could have had it, even that is yet imperfect. God has more. There's always more. So God is looking for men here to stand in the gap. Now, in our text in Matthew six, there are several things in this text.

Three times in this chapter, we see that God promises a secret life, open reward, a life in private. He says, I will reward you. He talks about the three ingredients of a real devotional life. We only deal with prayer, but he talks about when you give and when you pray and when you fast, not if, but when he says, when you pray.

When you give and when you fast five times in this chapter, he says this phrase not to be seen of men. Not to be seen of men. You see, it's the life that's the same in private as as it is in public. So I want to give you reading in verse will begin in verse five and will read down through verse eight and part of verse nine.

The Four Ingredients of Closet Prayer

The ingredients of closeted prayer, verse five, and when you pray. You shall not be like the hypocrites are. They love to pray, taking the off of standing in the synagogues and in the corners of the streets so that they can be seen of men.

Verily, I am saying to you, they have their reward, but you, when you pray, enter into your closet and when you have shut your door, pray to your father, which is which is in secret and your father, which see it in secret, shall reward you openly.

But when you pray, do not use vain repetitions or empty words repeated over and over like the nations or heathen do. They think they will be heard for their much speaking, but do not ye therefore be likened to them.

Someone once said they felt that the key verse in the Sermon on the Mount might be that right there. Don't you be like them? Don't be like them for your father knows what things you have need of before you ask him after this manner.

Therefore, pray you, and then he gives us the disciples prayer. We call it the Lord's prayer, but the Lord's prayers in John 17. This is the disciples prayer that he gave to us to pray, and it contains so much in here.

The first ingredient of closet prayer to implement what you've heard Ian preach on and Gary testify about. And last night, a call to the first ingredient you'll find in verses five and six of this Matthew six, and that is secrecy.

Secrecy. All of these begin with an S secrecy. Secret is the key word. I think of this chapter, and it's the beginning of closet prayer. The word secret here is crypto crypto. If you've been in the army and studied codes or if you know about codes, it's crypto means hidden.

If you study cryptographics, I think that's what they call it. It's deciphering that which is hidden, and that's what this means. You see, Jesus did this in. We read this morning in Luke chapter five, how that Jesus had secret places in the mountains.

Luke five, verse 15. Listen to this. So much, the more there went a fame of Jesus and great multitudes came together to hear and that the goal listen to be healed by him of their infirmities. And he withdrew himself to the wilderness and prayed.

And the word is plural wildernesses, which means he did it over and over when the crowds came and the ministry was pressing. Jesus withdrew himself to secret to the eye of father alone. And this kind of prayer closet prayer dies when it's exposed to man's gaze.

Now, I want to say here we've had a long night and a long morning, and I'm certainly not saying this reacting to any of you because I felt the same way last session. Some I felt tiredness creeping over me.

If you are tired, then it won't bother me the least bit if you have to stand up right where you are instead of nodding off. I mean, I mean, I'm not trying to be rude, but if you find yourself nodding and it's a terrible feeling.

I remember once I was traveling with this man of God I admired for years and I was traveling with him to a seminary and he was preaching and all these men were looking at me. How did he get to travel with him?

And I was on the front row and I've been praying for these meetings right in the middle of his message. I felt myself nodding off and I said, God help me because because I knew that was a bad testimony.

And and I know how you might feel, but just stand to your feet or smack yourself on the cheek or ask the guy beside you to slap you or something. He might have been waiting for the opportunity. Nevertheless, whatever.

Or ask him to kiss you. That would keep you awake. There you go. Stand to your feet immediately. That's incentive. Keep awake. Secrecy. Secrecy. The word here in these verses says enter in to your closet.

Taimion is the word for closet Taimion, and it's used only four times in the New Testament. This word for closet. It's used in several senses. It's a private family only closet, kind of like some folks have a laundry room.

They never let anybody in because that's what they're really like. And you never let anybody see that because it's just for the family. Well, this is the word for Taimion, a private place where the real things that are a family go on in.

It's it's it's like the roving room of the soul. Well, the word Taimion is also used for a honeymoon chamber where a bride takes his where the bridegroom takes his bride and has a honeymoon. That's a Taimion.

That's a closet. That's a special place for romance. It's a place for reality and a place for romance. It's also used for storehouse where you keep the necessary things such as food or family supplies.

It's also used in the sense of treasure vault, treasure vault where you keep your if you keep gold coins or something where you keep them back in the back and nobody. It's your treasure vault, your Taimion.

And that's really the word Jesus used for the prayer closet. It's connected back with Isaiah when it says in the Old Testament, chapter 26, for the bride to enter into your chambers and hide yourself from the indignation until it's overpassed.

It's the place alone with God. It's like the ark. It's the secret place where you go and you're hidden with God, the hiding place. You are my hiding place. It's secret. But the real sense of this word closet, it's a definite place like Ian spoke of.

I love the way the Lord puts these things together. It's a place that you have. That's a definite place that you've set aside what they used to call trusting place years ago. We got too busy to have one.

John Wesley's mother had 19 children. She was a wealthy woman. I understand it had some help in the home as well, but 13 children of them lived. Nineteen six didn't make it, but but 13 did. And she had regular times with God.

And you know what I've heard she would do? She would throw her apron over her head. That was her secret place. And the children said, when you see mother with the apron over her head, don't mess with her because that's she's not to be bothered.

I mean, they'd be all in trouble if you mess with mom when you took the apron off her head. A secret place. Maybe she started in the frustration that it ended up in romance with the Lord. But it's a secret place.

Your father, which is in secret, he will see in secret. Now, this suggests this word secret to the Hebrew mind, the secret place of the most high, that inner room in the temple or the tabernacle that nobody ever saw, except it's where God was in the outer court was the public worship in the inner court.

The holy place was for priestly worship and service. But in the holiest of all the secret place of the most high, where the throne of God was, where the mercy seat was that we're told to come boldly to by the blood in through the veil into the holiest.

Only God was there. He said, I will meet with you from the mercy seat from between the cherubim, where the blood covers the law. I will meet with you there. That's the secret place. And if you dwell in the secret place of the most high, you will abide under the shadow of the almighty.

That's what the promise is now. Secrecy is an important part of prayer. Then absolutely. I remember that a couple of years ago, as I was just getting into my 40s pretty well, I began to have what people often have, not a crisis, but an evaluation.

You begin to look back at how the last 20 years went so fast and you realize that in the next 20 years will be gone just like that. And I remember some of the best times of my life have been when I've gone away and really gotten quiet.

I remember in seminary when I went away to a place called Glen Rose. I took a jug of water and a loaf of bread and went away for three days seeking God about my marriage situation. I was a single man at the age of 29, and I was saying, Lord, do you want me to be single?

What is it? You know, I still have a desire for a wife, but I'll live with that. But show me. And and I wanted the ministry the Lord had for me, and I wanted to move where he said move if it's overseas or here, whatever.

And I went away and it was really hard for me to to be alone with God after about a day and just fasting because I wanted to hear a human voice. I wanted to. But I went away to the secret place and God gave me the outline of really what I'm still experiencing.

I mean, I wrote it all down, just like you heard David talk about. I wrote it down about he said, get ready for a move and a mate in the ministry, not necessarily in that order. You say he's pretty specific.

Yes, God wants to be specific. And and I've looked back at that and it's helped me for years. So naturally, a few years ago when I was turning at this point, I said, I think I'll get alone with God. And so I didn't take any food.

I went out to that place out in Lithuania called the monastery. I would recommend their theology. I love the people out there, but it's a great place to get alone with God. And I'll tell you, as I was there, I had great anticipation of God speaking to me.

I took a lot of all those things that you saw in list of devotional books and folders and all the things that I was expecting God to speak and give me an outline again, like he did of how to have the next 20 years for him.

And I remember I had this great expectation, like some of you have this last night was in my heart. And it's almost as if like God was just saying, here it comes, here it comes. I've been waiting almost a day and nothing can happen.

And I couldn't figure out I wasn't hearing anything. And it was like I was just great, almost like a stenographer waiting for the Lord. I was just it was almost ridiculous. And it was like the Lord said, you want to know how to see your life blessed and changed more than anything else for the next 20 years.

Here it is. Are you ready? Yes, I was ready to write like crazy. I heard him say five words. Get back to the closet. Get back to the closet. Yes, go on, Lord. That's it. What? That's it. I came all the way out here.

Yes, that's it. You had to get quiet long enough. Get back to the closet. You see, secret prayer is the first kind to go when things get busy. Now, unless some of you are feeling pretty good about your devotions, I want to say this kind of prayer I'm not talking about when you get up for 10 minutes or 15 minutes and in the day sometime you you pick up my utmost for his highest or still higher for his highest highest of all for his highest.

You can pick up all the books you want, but this and have some sentimental thoughts about God and get blessed. You know what I'm talking about? How how we feel like we get up and say, Lord, I'm going to read and we and we read a few chapters that have some sentimental thoughts toward God and he blesses us.

That's good. I'm not saying that you shouldn't have that, but that's not this kind of prayer. I'm talking about secret prayer that's unhurried and unflurried. Maybe people would say being in the closet seems like such a waste of time, though, with all there is to do.

You ever said that? I've said that. And you know what? That's the exact reason we're so unproductive because we said that it seems like such a waste of time. I'm I'm more practical than that. We're impotent because our closet seems to us a place of contraction.

I have to do it instead of a place of expansion. Lord's opening up the whole thing to me. We're too busy for the best. And we've left ourselves just going along, counting our blessings and gleefully counting additions to the church instead of entering into Canaan's promises of prayer, multiplying and multiplying and multiplying.

Oswald Chambers again said the central thing in the kingdom of Christ is a personal relationship to Christ himself, not public usefulness to man. It's a relationship to God. The secret of Christianity is Christ in secret intimacy.

I fear, holy brothers in Corinth, says Paul, that by some trickery, some spell casting that the devil would corrupt your pure minds like he did Eve away from that simplicity that's in Christ. I've married you to Christ.

I want to present you as a pure virgin, but you are busy with all that surrounds you and you're not living in that holy watch. Watch and pray, says Jesus, so you don't enter in the temptation so that you can have the reality focused and burned into your retina of mine.

You see, the power of your public life flows out of the fountain of your private life. A stream will never rise above its source, and the source of our praying without ceasing is a time alone with God and secret time alone with God and secret pragmatism and a lust for results and nickels and noses has bred endless energy and activity that's never birthed in the New Testament in the church in our day.

God wants us to wait upon the Lord and seek his counsel. I'll tell you, it's easy to bury your spirituality in the grave of your activities. You can bury it. The reason that men fail in public and disappoint the church.

They fall in public because they failed in private. You can search and you'll find they left their closet and they started thinking it was academics and theology and all. It's not theology that gives power.

It's neology, neology. That's what will give the power to everything we think we know. I'm not minimizing theology after you heard me preach. You may think I don't think it's very important, but I think it's important.

God has a secret service and little hidden ones praying. Hyde was a but you can get a book by about him. Get it. They after he died, they examined him in his butt. His heart had moved over from from the agony and the distress of pressure in his prayer closet beside his bed on the hardwood floor.

They found grooves that were there in the hardwood floor where he would pray. And as he would pray, he would be praying like this in his knees and just going like that had worn slots in the hardwood floor beside his bed.

The Apostle James, it is said that he would go. The first pastor of the Church of Jerusalem, the James, he he would go in and he would spend hours on his knees before God alone. And when he died, church history says his knees resembled that of a camel.

Camel knees. Oh, camel knees. What a great name it would be. Let me ask you, do you know this kind of heroic secret prayer, secret prayer? That's the first thing. It must be secret if you want to have a closet life.

That's the first word secrecy. Second word, solitude, solitude, solitude is in verse six. Again, it says, but you when you pray, enter your closet. And when you have shut your door, pray to your father and your father should reward you eight times in one verse.

The Lord Jesus uses the singular pronoun for you. You think he's trying to get something across you individually, singularly by yourself? He says, shut the door. You shut out the door. You lift up your heart.

You lift up your eyes and you open your Bible alone with God's solitude. Love always seeks solitude. You know, love is conspiratorial. I heard someone say once it's always conspiring to get alone with its object.

Love, love always wants to be alone. Somebody says, well, I'm so busy. All of my prayer has to be done on the run. And we justify that. I pray in my car. That's my time alone with God. Well, if you call that solitude on 285, you're crazy, but but that's not what it was talking about in the book of Mark.

Solitude and Deliberate Withdrawal for Prayer

It talks about how the Lord Jesus did it. Mark chapter one, verse 35. Listen to this. It says in the morning, rising up a great while before day, he went out and departed into a solitary place and there he prayed.

He went there because it was secluded and alone. You shut the world out. You shut yourself in. You see, in the holiest fall in the secret place, nobody ever went in there except for the high priest once a year.

And he went alone. If more than one went in, they'd all be dead. It had to be alone. And that's the picture here that we are talking about. Jesus is saying, I want this to be alone. Time exposure of the soul.

All of God's great men have had it. John the Baptist grew up in the wilderness. Moses spent 40 years in the wilderness. David was a shepherd in the wilderness. Saul said, what do you want me to do, Lord?

He says, get alone in the wilderness for three years. He was alone in the wilderness. Joseph went to the prison in solitary confinement. Elijah spent time years by the brook Cherith and alone with God.

God's men have to be alone with him in solitary confinement with God. I remember asking Dr. Stephen Oldford if this is true, because I'd heard it for so long when Dr. Oldford was younger. He's 73 now, but when he was younger, he asked old Vance Havner.

He's got some books up there. You should buy them. They're great books. Anything he writes, buy it. Dr. Havner was a dear friend of mine in Greensboro. And after his wife died, I remember whatever he said, you should listen to it.

Dr. Oldford went to him and he said, he said, Dr. Dr. Havner, can you tell me the secret for a young man like me younger than you? Oh, what's the secret of having a life with God? And old Vance looked at him and said, solitude, young man, solitude, solitude.

That's it. That's the second ingredient. Be still and know that I am God. Your prayer closet will either be the best place for you on Earth or the worst place on Earth. You see, God is known best in silence and he discloses himself.

But you know something about being alone with God? Fear stalks the human heart. In the solitude alone, you know why we don't like quiet. I mean, even Christians, they get in their car and they put it.

Wow. I mean, all the Christian knowing music. And I mean, I love music. I love it. Don't get me, Vince. Don't don't take it. I'm I'm saying I listen to Vince and all these. But I tell you what, how many times do you really have where there's absolutely no noise?

None. We can't stand it because, you know why? Silence makes us face reality. That's really true. Men cover reality with noise. Hearts shrink from being alone with God. Reality is revealed in secret. The Bible says who can dwell with the everlasting burnings?

Who can ascend into the hill of the Lord? He who has clean hands and a pure heart and has not lifted up his soul to vanity or sworn deceitfully with his lips, this one can do it. And only him. You can't get along with God if you're not willing to be searched.