Article: Spiritual Growth through Personal & Private Prayer | JACOB VARGHESE

We live in a very fast, noisy, and restless age. In the midst of all that, of all the privileges the people of God enjoy, perhaps the greatest is the privilege of prayer: personal communication with God. To be able to go directly and privately into the presence of the Lord is an honor beyond description.
House. As he quietly prayed to the Lord, he was interrupted by President Johnson, who said, “Speak up,”
Bill Moyers was
on President Lyndon Johnson’s staff. One day, he was asked to say the blessing over a meal in the White
Bill, I can’t hear what you are saying.” Moyers replied, “I wasn’t speaking to you, Mr. President.” That is
the essence of prayer. It is not about impressing men; it is about communing with the Lord.
We must distinguish as believers’ private
prayers from public prayers. Private prayer means to pray alone.
This is considered very important to Christians, as it is a time when they can personally connect with God.
Private worship gives Christians a chance to spend time alone with God. Prayer, meditation, Bible study
and singing hymns may all be done at home. We cannot be a believer, if we do not have a private and
personal prayer life. We need to give adequate attention to the difference between these two forms of
prayer. We do not encounter the difficulties which many people have in regard to public prayer. Many
find it difficult to pray when other people are listening but find it very easy and natural to have the proper
communion with their God in their own private devotions.
When you privately pray to God, you can work through serious decisions in your life. God always listens and often provides the specific answers and
guidance.
Do you want a pattern for your prayer life? Do you want to effectively change your life and increase the effectiveness of your prayer life and your impact? A few examples are given below for your meditation from the many seen in the Bible.
Jesus’ Prayer: We see about the private, personal prayers of Jesus in the gospels. Mark 1:35 says “Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed.” This verse, so early in Jesus’ public ministry, gives the first of many examples of personal private prayer in his life (the parallel version is Luke 4:42). He goes off early in the day, before anyone else is awake to notice him, to a lonely place for prayerful communion with his Father. Coming from his own experience of private personal prayer, Jesus teaches his disciples to do the same. Jesus exposed some of the problems in prayer that were rampant in His day.
Prayer had become nothing more than a ritual. So, Jesus told His people to go into a private place to pray. In Matthew 6:5-6 we read, “And when you pray, you must not be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and at the street corners, that they may be seen by men. Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward. But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you.” There are things that need to be said in prayer that do not need to be said around others. Real prayer is private and personal. When we pray in private, we can have liberty to declare our hearts to the Lord. We can pray about personal, private matters. We can call out names in our private time of prayer. We can be who we really are, for, in private prayer, there is no one to impress. Such prayer of communion with God provides important spiritual sustenance to living out the Christian pilgrimage. Within such private prayer, one can gain a sensitivity to the movements of the Holy Spirit, thereby becoming alert to the ways in which God is leading one to a particular vocation, ministry, or other task. We are told that “your Father who sees you secretly will reward you openly.” That means Real prayer is powerful. When we pray to the Lord out of a sincere desire to have communion with Him, He will honor our faith and our humility and will answer in

such a way that will demonstrate the fact that we have been with Him. We should pray when the Spirit prompts us to pray; when we feel like praying; when nothing can satisfy the soul but prayer. True prayer is a very private matter and is not intended for the eyes and ears of others. It is intended only for the ears of God.
David’s Prayer: David often shows us the type of prayer he prayed to his God while he was in distress. He even does that concerning the confession of his sins. Although in our public prayers we also ask for the forgiveness of our sins, we cannot deal as specifically with sins as we must do in our private prayers. 2 Samuel 7:18-29 is not only known as ‘King David’s Prayer,” it is also known as ‘David’s Prayer of Thanksgiving.’ In these verses, he humbly thanks God for his goodness. Then King David went in and sat before the Lord, and he said: “Who am I, Sovereign Lord, and what is my family, that you have brought me this far? And as if this were not enough in your sight, Sovereign Lord, you have also spoken about the future of the house of your servant—and this decree, Sovereign Lord, is for a mere human! “What more can David say to you? For you know your servant, Sovereign Lord. For the sake of your word and according to your will, you have done this great thing and made it known to your servant. “How great you are, Sovereign Lord! There is no one like you, and there is no God but you, as we have heard with our own ears. And who is like your people Israel—the one nation on earth that God went out to redeem as a people for himself, and to make a name for himself, and to perform great and awesome wonders by driving out nations and their gods from before your people, whom you redeemed from Egypt? You have established your people Israel as your very own forever, and you, Lord, have become their God. “And now, Lord God, keep forever the promise you have made concerning your servant and his house. Do as you promised, so that your name will be great forever. Then people will say, ‘The Lord Almighty is God over Israel!’ And the house of your servant David will be established in your sight. “Lord Almighty, God of Israel, you have revealed this to your servant, saying, ‘I will build a house for you.’ So your servant has found courage to pray this prayer to you. Sovereign Lord, you are God! Your covenant is trustworthy, and you have promised these good things to your servant. Now be pleased to bless the house of your servant, that it may continue forever in your sight; for you, Sovereign Lord, have spoken, and with your blessing the house of your servant will be blessed forever.”
Daniel’s Prayer: We read in the Bible that “three times a day he got down on his knees and prayed, giving thanks to his God, just as he had done before”. He got on his knees and prayed, a sign of reverence and humility. He made a courageous commitment to continue seeking God through prayer three times each day. Daniel was not merely praying for his comfort and protection in the darkness. His concern was to pray for God’s people and God’s kingdom. It is right and fitting that we take our concerns before the Lord in the darkness, but we should not get so swept up in our suffering that we forget the wider needs of God’s people. It is appropriate for us to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” but we must also remember to pray, “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
Jabez’s Prayer: “Jabez cried out to the God of Israel, “Oh that You would bless me and enlarge my territory! Let your hand be with me, and keep me from harm so that I will be free from pain.” And God granted his request.” When searching for God’s direction, we can turn to the prayer of Jabez. In it, we find an example of faithful prayer in action. With Jabez, we must not read his prayer as a request for personal blessing, but as a cry for God to bless him as a part of God’s covenant people. To pray like Jabez is to submit our lives to God as a blank canvas. Jabez prayed for God to be with him. He also prayed God would protect him from being a Jabez! “That he would keep him from evil, the evil of sin, the evil of trouble, and

all the evil designs of his enemies, that they might not hurt him, nor grieve him, nor make him a Jabez indeed, a man of sorrow.”
Hanna’s Prayer: “In her deep anguish Hannah prayed to the Lord, weeping bitterly. And she made a vow, saying, “Lord Almighty, if you will only look on your servant’s misery and remember me, and not forget your servant but give her a son, then I will give him to the Lord for all the days of his life, and no razor will ever be used on his head… So, in the course of time Hannah became pregnant and gave birth to a son. She named him Samuel, saying, “Because I asked the Lord for him.” Not only is Hannah’s prayer a testimony of God’s handiwork in her own life, but it is also a foreshadowing of His actions in the lives of the prophet Samuel. Hannah, like several prominent women in the Bible, was barren and unable to conceive a child for a long time after marrying. Hannah’s barrenness had caused her humiliation and shame, but God has delivered her from all that. Notice that Hannah’s rejoicing is in the Lord, not in Samuel; in other words, she praises the Giver as more important than the gift. We read like this, then Hannah prayed and said: “My heart rejoices in the Lord; in the Lord my horn is lifted high. My mouth boasts over my enemies, for I delight in your deliverance. “There is no one holy like the Lord; there is no one besides you; there is no Rock like our God.
Private prayer is not only for the purpose of making true confession of our sins, though this is a very important item, but it is also for the purpose of intercession in a way that is not always proper in public prayers. When we come to our God alone, we mention each member of the family. We can there not only pray for God’s blessing on each one, but we can go into detail. We can also plead with our God on His covenant promises in these private prayers. This private prayer is very important for the healthy spiritual life of God’s people. After all, they have to live on that communion with Him. The prayer-life of the individual believer determines his spiritual growth. James says ‘you have not because you ask not’. Private, personal prayer is, therefore, the most natural thing in the world for the child of God. The true believer prays while he works. He prays all the time. His whole life is a prayer. About private, personal prayer we do not feel embarrassed. One does not have to be fluent of speech to pray properly this private prayer before his God. If the prayer-life of a believer is healthy, his spiritual life will grow, and if it is not healthy, his spiritual life finally withers and dies.

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