Ash Wednesday, March 5

Pray to Your Father

Ash Wednesday

Matthew 6:6 “But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father Who sees in secret will repay you.”

In His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus spoke on a mountaintop in front of “the multitudes.” (Matthew 5:1). The venue was hardly an intimate space, yet Jesus’ words are about the special intimacy of prayer.  And His instructions are the opposite of things He had just mentioned that “hypocrites” do “in order to be seen by men.” (6:5)

Because spirituality is an element of prayer, we ask ourselves, “How does my spirit align with God’s?  In my prayers? In my daily life…?”  Of course, spirituality manifests itself in many public ways: in attitudes and actions of peace and peacemaking, in actions of mercy and love, in long-suffering and faithfulness, in lifestyle, in giving and forgiving. But Jesus is encouraging us to pray because of the confidentiality of prayer. We are not trying to put on airs when we pray, most obviously when we pray in private.

Jesus reveals so much in these verses.

Moments after saying Matthew 6:6, Jesus will teach the “Our Father,” actually a beautiful name for The Lord’s Prayer. But He is preparing the masses to hear that when they pray, they have the intimacy of a relationship with God the Father, which comes, of course, from Him, established by His position as “Creator of everything.”

Scripture says that God is the Father of all; therefore, all can call upon His Name.  But intimacy is missing unless we know God the Father, through God the Son. Jesus said, “He who has seen Me, has seen the Father.…” (John 14:9) Jesus would speak about “praying in His Name.”  (See Mar. 10 devotion.)

What Jesus shares in the verse from Matthew 6:6 is that if we understand and believe in the Father, through the Son, we understand His measure of love for us.  We also understand the permanency of the relationship we have with God. It is extremely secure. He will not walk away even if we tell Him something shocking. Actually, that’s not possible. He knows it all before we tell it.

You should be able to tell your pastor anything.  Trust should be very high. But, of course, your relationship with God should be even more intimate, more trusting.  So share away! Confess that darkest sin and ask God for forgiveness. Expose your weakness and frailties and ask Him for strength. Tell Him you cannot pick up that cross alone and ask for help.

Your prayer room is a safe room, clean room, the sanctuary of the Triune God — constructed, sanctified, and dwelt in by Him. He built it for this intimacy.  Your eternal heavenly Father is there, for you, seeing your purity, through His Son