Prayers

The Secret Place Of Prayer

by dumi nkomo
05/10/22
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WHY PRAYER?

Prayer is a mystery. Many people engage in prayer on a daily basis unveiling the hidden statutes of God. There are those who have come to understand prayer better than others and it would seem they are doing better in their walk with God. One preacher said, “Prayer is revelation, such that if you miss it you may spend the greater part of your life praying amiss and get frustrated at it.”

It therefore means we need to understand prayer at the level where we can make a mark on the world and live a fruitful life. I want to define prayer this way: 

“Prayer is the hand that moves the Hand that moves the universe”

As such if I want to be effective in my praying I must develop the art of moving God’s Hand to move situations on my behalf. I must be able to enable God to come down and intervene in my issues here on earth. Somebody said, “God is illegal on earth but we can give Him permission to come down as we pray.” It is like me telling my older brother that I am being bullied for him to be able to intervene on my behalf. As long as I don’t tell him I may suffer in silence. So prayer is a critical subject in the 21^st Century.

Prayer is a love story. The simple definition of prayer is that it is talking to God. You talk to Him, He talks back to you. It is relational period! The way I commune with my wife is unique and the intimacy we have developed is because of years of communication. In the same way my relationship with God has developed because of the hours I have invested in prayer. God has strategicallychosen to establish and utilize prayer as part of His sovereign plan for us.

In 1999, August 21 to be exact, God came looking for me He found me at a place where I had decided to end my life. That morning, He hijacked my plans and started me on a journey I have come to cherish. I was never one given to prayer, I had always been a recluse and most of my conversations were held in my head. I could hardly spend time in conversation with anyone and as such there was a lot of learning that I needed to do.

My brother and I would rent out movies and would spend the day seated in front of the television. One day my father had enough. He said to us, “I don’t want to see you watching my TV anymore.” My brother made sure to watch TV when he was at work, I returned to my recluse life, the bedroom being a place of refuge for me. It was in such times that I would bare my heart and soul to God. He seemed to understand me well. I remember we had a mosquito infestation in the room, but when I turned to prayer all that buzzing would be suspended. They would congregate on the ceiling and silently wait for the hour of prayer to run out. 

It was in the seven months when my prayer life changed. I took Dad’s instruction literally and didn’t watch TV one bit. If I wasn’t reading, I was praying. I would pray for anything and anyone. I would pour myself into prayer and fasting, doing it at home or at the church I was fellowshipping at then. I remember that my favorite times were those I would talk to God. He seemed to be the only One who had time to listen to me. 

Why am I saying all this? I am showing you a love story that developed between my Father and me. I always felt refreshed whenever I talked to him. In 2002 I began to journal my conversations with Him. He would open His Heart and share things that rocked my boat. At times He would wake me up at two o'clock in the morning and we would commune till sunrise. Even when I started working, I was never drained by those hours spent with the LORD. In fact you’d assume I had slept the whole night. 

I remember my prayer walks with Him. Taking long walks became the in thing for me. I always carried a notebook in case He had something to share with me. When you are in love with someone, you always want to talk to and or listen to them. This is how it was with Dad and me, a walk of communion, something I looked forward to on a daily basis.

In the Book of Genesis we find similar love stories in several places. In Genesis 3 we see God coming down in the cool of day to look for His favorite couple. On this particular day the conversation took a rather wrong turn, as Adam and His wife hid from God. From the inference there, we can safely assume that these two had a set appointment with God where they would commune intimately.

In Genesis chapter 5 we read through a list of the genealogy of man. Resting at verse 24 we find an exciting relation between God and man

“And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.”

Their walk was based on the intimate relationship they enjoyed. Bible scholars have intimated that Enoch was a holy and pure man and his purity was the cause why God decided to take the relationship to heaven. Saints, an intimate communion with God is not developed in the eyes of man but in the secret place. 

Time would fail me to tell of the Best Friendship that Abraham enjoyed with God. Scripture says of Abraham in James 2v23 that

“… He was called the friend of God.”

God could not afford to hide things from Abraham and it is not often in Scripture where we find God entertaining man like He did Abraham (Genesis 18v17-33). 

Moses was another who had a special communion relationship with God. We read in Exodus 33v11 

“So the LORD spoke to Moses face to face, as a man speaks to his friend.”

Prayer has to be about relationship. And that relationship my friend is cultivated in secret. The best way to develop that relationship is when you set aside time each day just to commune with God. I used to struggle with telling people how to pray till I discovered that the best way to pray is to start praying.

I never used to know how to pray till I came across a book by Tommy Tenney entitled Prayers of a God Chaser. That book inspired my prayer life up till today. In it Tommy Tenney teaches on different types of prayer and stirs in the reader the hunger to pursue God on their own. From the day I laid my hands on the book, I decided to be a God chaser. I have reached the heights of prayer that I aspire for, but in my own way I have managed to crawl into the closet of prayer where I still am a student of prayer.