The spirit of prayer should rule our spirits and our conduct. The spirit of the prayer-chamber must control our lives or the closest hour will be dull and sapless. Always praying in spirit; always acting in the spirit of praying; these make our praying strong. The spirit of every moment is that which imparts strength to the closet communion. It is what we are out of the closet which gives victory or brings defeat to the closet. If the spirit of the world prevails in our non-closet hours, the spirit of the world will prevail in our closet hours, and that will be a vain and idle farce.
We must live for God out of the closet if we would meet God in the closet. We must bless God by praying lives if we would have God’s blessing in the closet. We must do God’s will in our lives if we would have God’s ear in the closet. We must listen to God’s voice in public if we would have God listen to our voice in private. God must have our hearts out of the closet, if we would have God’s presence in the closet. If we would have God in the closet, God must have us out of the closet. There is no way of praying to God, but by living to God. The closet is not a confessional, simply, but the hour of holy communion and high and sweet intercourse and of intense intercession.
Men would pray better if they lived better. They would get more from God if they lived more obedient and well pleasing to God. We would have more strength and time for the Divine work of intercession if we did not have to expend so much strength and time settling up old scores and paying our delinquent taxes. Our spiritual liabilities are so greatly in excess of our spiritual assets that our closet time is spent in taking out a decree of bankruptcy instead of being the time of great spiritual wealth for us and for others. Our closets are too much like the sign, “Closed for Repairs.”
John said of primitive Christian praying, “Whatsoever we ask we receive of Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things which are pleasing in His sight.” We should note what illimitable grounds were covered, what illimitable gifts were received by their strong praying: “Whatsoever”—how comprehensive the range and reception of mighty praying; how suggestive the reasons for the ability to pray and to have prayers answered. Obedience, but more than mere obedience, doing the things which please God well. They went to their closets made strong by their strict obedience and loving fidelity to God in their conduct. Their lives were not only true and obedient, but they were thinking about things above obedience, searching for and doing things to make God glad. These can come with eager step and radiant countenance to meet their Father in the closet, not simply to be forgiven, but to be approved and to receive.
It makes much difference whether we come to God as a criminal or a child; to be pardoned or to be approved; to settle scores or to be embraced; for punishment or for favour. Our praying to be strong must be buttressed by holy living. The name of Christ must be honoured by our lives before it will honour our intercessions. The life of faith perfects the prayer of faith.
Our lives not only give colour to our praying, but they give body to it as well. Bad living makes bad praying. We pray feebly because we live feebly. The stream of praying cannot rise higher than the fountain of living. The closet force is made up of the energy which flows from the confluent streams of living. The feebleness of living throws its faintness into closet homes. We cannot talk to God strongly when we have not lived for God strongly. The closet cannot be made holy to God when the life has not been holy to God. The Word of God emphasises our conduct as giving value to our praying. “Then shalt thou call and the Lord shalt answer, Thou shalt cry and He shall say, Here I am. If thou take away from the midst of thee the yoke, the putting forth the finger, and speaking vanity.”