The Room With the Door Shut

But you, when you pray, enter into your inner room, and having shut your door, pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. (Matthew 6:6, WEB)

Jesus tells his followers that when they pray, they should go into their room, shut the door, and pray to the Father who is in secret, and the Father who sees in secret will reward them. There is something fitting about this for a man whose sin has lived in secret, whose worst hours have all happened behind a closed door.

The same privacy that has hidden your worst moments can become the place where you meet God most honestly. He is already in the secret room. He has seen everything that happened there, and he is inviting you to come and talk with him in the very place you thought was only yours. That should be terrifying, and in a way it is, but the same verse that says he sees in secret says he rewards in secret, which means the God who watched you fall is not there to catch you out. He is there to be found. Many men keep God at the level of Sunday and public words, and they never bring him into the private hours where the real battle is fought. Yet that is exactly where he asks to meet you, in the room you would least want him to enter.

Tonight, in whatever room has held your struggle, shut the door and tell him the truth about it, out loud if you can. You are not informing him of anything he does not know, and you do not need to find the right words before you begin. You are letting the secret place become a place of prayer instead of shame, handing over the one room you have kept from him. That is a change he will honor, and it is the beginning of the door being no longer something you hide behind but something you shut in order to pray.