The Secret Prayer

The disciples said, “Lord, teach us to pray.”* (Luke 11:1) It was not that they had never prayed; but when they heard Jesus pray, they felt their need of knowing better how to pray. Those who have been praying for years and have the closest intimacy with God have a desire to know still more about prayer. How little we yet know of God! It is true that He has taught us many glorious things of Himself, and that we are learning more each day, but there is much more to learn.

I am learning of my Savior
Precious lessons every hour,
How the soul which He has ransomed
May be kept by mighty power.

Learning more and more to love Him,
Yielding all into His will;
While a joy beyond all utterance
Through and through my soul doth thrill.

I am learning how to trust Him
With my life and for all things;
And my spirit, filled with glory,
In exceeding gladness sings.

Refrain:

I am learning, I am learning,
Precious truths in Jesus’ Word:
I am learning, I am learning,
Of the lowly Lamb of God.*

“Go forward,”* (Exodus 14:15) was the command of God to Israel, and that should be our Christian ensign. The apostle Paul said, “This one thing I do… [I reach] forth unto those things which are before.”* (Philippians 3:13) Growing in grace and in the knowledge of God is the exhortation of the aggressive Saint Peter. We learn of God by associating with Him in the spirit through prayer and by reading His Word. Devotionally reading the Bible is communicating with God and is therefore prayer in its broader meaning. As two persons between whom there is affinity associate, they get deeper into the heart of each other and know better how to commune with each other. The more we pray, the better we know how to pray. Do not understand me to mean in form of words, but the inward prayer of the heart. There is a secret prayer, and there is a secret in prayer. If you are a fervent whole-hearted Christian, you know more of prayer and can talk with God more intimately now than a few years ago, and you will know more of the secrets of prayer a few years hence if you “Continue in prayer and watch in the same.”* (Colossians 4:2) There are lessons for us to learn, relating to the Christian life. One way to learn them is through prayer. There is a secret pavilion, a secret place of the Most High, and “The secret of the LORD is with them that fear him.”* (Psalm 24:14) The Lord has many secrets in prayer that He is eager to teach our hearts. The longer we live a life of sincere, fervent prayer, the better we shall know how to pray and the sweeter prayer will be to us.

In the secret of His presence,
Oh! such beauties there I see;
In the holy of the holies
There I learn still more of Thee.

Brighter than the rosy morning
Or the ev’ning’s tint of gold,
In the inner court with Jesus
Wondrous things my eyes behold.

It hath never, never entered
Into heart of erring man,
The pure grandeur of His temple,
The perfection of His plan.

But to those who love sincerely
He will graciously unseal
Deepest myst’ries of His kingdom,
Hidden things to them reveal.

Oh! the blessedness of living
In the sacred, holy place,
In the shadow of His presence,
Talking with Him face to face.