Praying in the closet

“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 6v6

Like everything else prayer can be misused and taken advantage of. In our zeal to impress men instead of pleasing God we can be tempted to use prayer as a tool to make others think highly of us.

The Pharisees had a habit of going out in public praying high, pompous prayers so that everyone would think highly of them. Even now people can go to church and when called on to pray try to impress everyone with how “spiritual” they are by how they pray.

Our public praying is important – we cannot negate that, corporate pray is a part of what the church does. Jesus however deals with the heart. When we pray, Jesus says to go into our room, close the door, and talk to our Father, letting Him answer our prayers in a very clear way.

We can even, in a sense, go into our closet when praying in public. Whenever we pray, we need to remember that we are simply talking to our Father. Lets never pray in such a way that we forget Who we are talking to and what we are doing.