Behind the shut door
Jesus, on secret prayer
In Jesus' day there were people who loved to pray where the praying could be admired — standing on the corners, lengthening their phrases, performing devotion for an audience. Jesus has a withering verdict for the whole show: they have received their reward already. The applause was the point, and the applause was the payment, in full, and there will be no other.
Then he points to a different door. When you pray, he says, go into your inner room, shut the door, and pray to your Father who is in secret. The shut door is the whole instruction. It seals out the audience. There is no one left to perform for — no one to be impressed, no one keeping score, no reputation to protect or polish. Just you and a Father who is, himself, in secret.
And that, Jesus says, is exactly where the reward lives. Your Father who sees in secret will reward you. The hidden prayer, witnessed by no one but God, is the prayer that has nothing left in it but God. Strip away the audience and you find out whether you wanted him, or only wanted to be seen wanting him.
“But you, when you pray, enter into your inner chamber, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.”
— Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount — Matthew 6:6 (WEB)
Cultivate a hidden prayer life behind a shut door, where there is no audience left to impress and nothing in the prayer but God himself.
“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”
Much of our praying is quietly performed — fueled by an audience, real or imagined — so that behind a shut door, with no one watching, the life goes thin. The interior work is to seek the secret place deliberately, letting the absence of any audience reveal and purify your motive, until your prayer has nothing left in it but the Father who sees in secret.
This week, build in prayer that no one will ever know about — unseen, unmentioned, behind a literal or figurative shut door. When you notice the wish to be observed praying, shut the door tighter and pray to the Father alone.
There is a quieter vanity that is glad to pray, so long as someone is near enough to admire it — and it will swell your public devotion while the private life starves unseen. But the shut door strips prayer down to you and the Father with nothing to gain but him, and a faith forged where no one applauds can never be exposed as performance.
Secret prayer is the great test of whether our faith is real or performed. It is easy to pray well when others can hear; the audience supplies a motive willpower alone never could. But behind a shut door, with no one watching, the performance has no fuel, and we find out what is actually there. Many a public pray-er has a thin and silent private life, because the prayer was always partly for the crowd.
The shut door is a gift, not a deprivation. It strips prayer down to its essence — you and the Father, with nothing to gain but him. There is a rest available in that secret place that the corner-prayer never tastes: the rest of being fully seen by the One who matters and needing no one else to see at all. Behind the shut door, you find out whether you came for God, or for the audience.
- Is my prayer life thinner in secret than it is in public?
- When I pray, am I aware of an audience, even an imagined one?
- What in my praying would change if no one could ever see it?
Father who sees in secret, take me behind the shut door where there is no one to impress and nothing left but you. Purify my prayer of its hidden audience, and let me rest in the shadow of the Almighty, seen by you alone. Amen.