August 23, 2011
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
Jesus did not say, “Dream about your Father who is in the secret place,” but He said, “. . . pray to your Father who is in the secret place. . . .” Prayer is an effort of the will. After we have entered our secret place and shut the door, the most difficult thing to do is to pray. We cannot seem to get our minds into good working order, and the first thing we have to fight is wandering thoughts. The great battle in private prayer is overcoming this problem of our idle and wandering thinking. We have to learn to discipline our minds and concentrate on willful, deliberate prayer.
We must have a specially selected place for prayer, but once we get there this plague of wandering thoughts begins, as we begin to think to ourselves, “This needs to be done, and I have to do that today.” Jesus says to “shut your door.” Having a secret stillness before God means deliberately shutting the door on our emotions and remembering Him. God is in secret, and He sees us from “the secret place”— He does not see us as other people do, or as we see ourselves. When we truly live in “the secret place,” it becomes impossible for us to doubt God. We become more sure of Him than of anyone or anything else. Enter into “the secret place,” and you will find that God was right in the middle of your everyday circumstances all the time. Get into the habit of dealing with God about everything. Unless you learn to open the door of your life completely and let God in from your first waking moment of each new day, you will be working on the wrong level throughout the day. But if you will swing the door of your life fully open and “pray to your Father who is in the secret place,” every public thing in your life will be marked with the lasting imprint of the presence of God.
________________________________________________
August 23, 2011
Journal Entry for Today-JDV
God, I do not seem to have difficulty finding a private place and praying. Staying focused on You does not seem overly difficult lately either. What is unsettling is the notion that You seem to have abandoned the notion of answering my prayers. Over and over I am offering up prayer after prayer with the same request (s), and it seems the answer is always “wait or ….I have something better in mind”.
And God says…”You are right; I do answer your prayers with those two answers. ..”Wait ….or I have something better in mind”. You are anxious and question my responses to your specific short term requests because you tire of waiting, and want my blessing for your own plans and projects.”
“When you consider the magnitude of the everlasting and the eternal, and faithfully trust Me to meet all your needs in this context, you may begin to understand that right at this moment, you are right where you want and need to be. Rest and be at peace with your prayer requests knowing that I will meet all your needs according to my riches in glory, according to My eternal timetable; providing what is the absolute best for you….. from my perspective.”
“Trust in Me with all your heart and do not rely on your understanding or perspective at all…and I will make your paths straight. Seek first My kingdom, which is Jesus, and I will provide everything else you need or require”.
Click Image for John White's Original Vision For CO2's
