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Transcript 900X — Praying in Your Closet
CALLER: I have a question, when Jesus was talking about praying, He says, when you pray in your closet . . .
HC: Yes.
CALLER: Well, something like, when you're alone you should pray . . .
HC: Well, no, the setting is that there are those who display their holiness, their righteousness, on their sleeves so to speak. They want others to see "Look how righteous I am."
And this is even a temptation in our day. Someone is asked to pray, and they think about it, and try to think of floury phrases, beautiful statements, so that as they're praying out loudly and others hear them pray, they will be complimented "Oh, what a beautiful prayer that was" and . . . Well, that's about all the good that prayer did, was to get a compliment, because God is not interested in praying that's there to please man.
Prayer is communication with God. And in order to obviate and get rid of any idea of trying to please man, most of our praying—although there are times of public prayer, the Bible offers some suggestions on that—but ordinarily most of our praying is of very private matter, between me and the Lord.
As a matter of fact, the Bible says, "Pray without ceasing." That means, that any moment in any situation, we can go to the Throne of Grace and pray, and the only one we care about hearing that prayer, really, is God. It's not that we want others to hear it.
CALLER: Thank you.