For the believer who has begun performing for an empty porch.
Jesus is partway through the longest stretch of teaching He ever gave, and He turns to the subject of prayer by talking about doorways.
He describes people who prayed where they'd be seen, standing in the synagogues and on street corners, and He doesn't say their prayers were badly worded. He says they had their reward, which is a harder sentence than it first sounds.
Then He gives the alternative, and it's architectural rather than spiritual. Go in. Shut the door. Pray to a Father who is in secret.
He isn't describing a superior technique. He's removing the audience from the room, because the audience had got into the praying and changed what it was.
You are standing under a porch light at about ten at night with nobody within sight of you, doing something that has begun to feel, in a way you can't quite explain, like a performance.
The door in that instruction was shut on an audience, and there's nothing to perform out there. It is written that the correction down as a matter of architecture, and the Spirit makes the meeting real with nobody watching.
The Audience That Moved Inside
Here's the part Jesus didn't have to explain to His people who hear it and somebody has to explain to us.
You can shut the door and bring the audience in with you. It isn't in the street any more. It's behind your own eyes, watching you pray and awarding marks. Length, seriousness, whether tonight's was better than Tuesday's.
That's the state you are in on the porch. There's nobody there, you're still being watched, and the watcher holds all your own standards and none of your own mercy.
It's the reason a night with a good long prayer leaves you steady and a night when you are too tired leaves you uneasy. Nobody saw either one. Something inside you saw both, and filed them.
That filing is the whole difficulty. A person can leave a congregation, a rota and a building, and carry the assessor out with them in their own chest, where it goes on working with no committee to overrule it.
You can shut the door on the watcher as well as on the street, and that's what the door was for. Scripture's instruction as written sends you to a Father in secret rather than to an inspection, and the Spirit isn't marking what happens out there.
Shut the Door, and Pray to Him
Here's the verse, and it's worth reading for its plainness rather than its poetry.
But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret; and thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly.Matthew 6:6 (KJV)
Enter. Shut. Pray. Three plain verbs about a small room, and the direction of the praying is stated: to thy Father. Not about Him, not in front of anything, and not upward into a general space.
Then the description of God inside the sentence. Thy Father which is in secret, and which seeth in secret. He's already in the small room. A shut door doesn't leave you alone with your own standards. It leaves you with Him.
Those words were first spoken to a crowd on a hillside, most of whom had no private room at all, and they arrive on a porch step without narrowing.
You are shut in with a Father who was already in the room before you got there. The written Word's instruction as written puts Him in the secret place, and the Spirit makes His presence the only company on the porch.
Drive Is Not the Enemy Here
Say something honest about the way you're built, because the easy version of this would ask you to be somebody else.
You finish what you start. You always have. You set a standard and meet it, most of what's good in your life came from that, and people rely on it more than they ever say out loud.
I'm not going to ask you to become a person who doesn't care how a thing is done. That would be a poor trade and it wouldn't last a fortnight anyway.
What I'd ask is narrower. Keep the drive and take the marking away from it. A person can be wholehearted without grading the heart afterwards, and the grading is the only part of this that's hurting you.
You can bring your whole drive to that porch and leave the marking behind. Scripture's instruction as written puts you in front of a Father rather than in front of a standard, and the Spirit carries the prayer rather than assessing it.
I Am Not Setting You a Better Practice
Be plain about the trap in a message like this one, because it's visible from here.
I'm not going to replace your porch with a better arrangement. No suggested length, no posture, no time of night, nothing about what a properly unwatched prayer looks like. Every one of those hands the watcher a fresh scoresheet.
Nor am I telling you the porch is wrong and you should go inside. Jesus said a closet, meaning the ordinary small room a person actually has. Yours has a light over it and a step under it.
What I want gone is the marking. Not the porch. Not the drive.
Turn the Porch Light Off
The turn here is a switch by your own front door, and it takes about four seconds.
The light is for being seen by, which is the entire purpose of a porch light. You put it on without thinking because that's what it's for, and then you stand under it doing something that was never meant to be lit.
Turn it off. Stand on the same step in the dark and say whatever you were going to say. It will feel wrong for about four seconds and then it will feel like relief.
The door Jesus talked about was a way of removing whatever watches. Your version of that door is a switch, and it's been under your hand the whole time.
You can stand in the dark and be entirely seen, because He sees in secret and always did. The written Word's instruction as written promises the Father is already in the unlit place, and the Spirit makes Him present the moment the light goes off.
Declare this over yourself
You are in Christ and Christ is in you, so what follows is not a claim made out of your own authority. It is agreement, said back to God in His own words, while the Holy Spirit carries it. How He orders the rest of it is His to decide, and He answers in His own way and in His own time.
You did not earn the right to say this. It arrived with Christ, who lives in you, and the Spirit carries it back to God as agreement rather than as a demand. What comes next is His to arrange.
Read it out once and let the last line finish.
The door was shut on the audience, and there is nothing to perform out here. Scripture says that I should shut the door and pray to my Father which is in secret, and He is already in the room before I arrive. The Spirit carries the prayer rather than marking it. I am not being watched. The audience I brought indoors has no authority here, and I shut the door on it as well as on the street. I leave the book open and turn the light off.
Stories in these messages are illustrations unless marked as testimony.
This message is free. Nothing here is locked, nothing is for sale, and nothing is being asked of you.
Matthew 6:6
This message is free, and always will be. There is nothing to unlock, nothing to subscribe to, and nothing you owe for having received it.
