Week 1 June 2026 - REFLECTION ON PRAYER PRACTICES

“But when you pray, go into your room, close the door and pray to your Father, who is unseen. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”        Matthew 6:6 NIV

Is it safe to say that prayer is both a matter of routine and mystery?  I cheat some at breakfast when I borrow from “Daily Meditations for Mealtime” by Charles H. Spurgeon (1834-1892), England’s “Prince of Preachers.”  Today’s selection read, “Lord Jesus, be our holy guest, our morning joy, our evening rest; and with our daily bread impart Thy love and peace to every heart.”  My Amen ensures that my daily egg is sanctified, but as for the “rest,” I still can’t get an image from the Internet out of my head.  It shows a beaver eating cabbage and guarantees a restful disposition if we watch the content  critter eagerly nibbling away.  YouTube abounds in “short prayers” to make God happy and lucky us free of guilt. Perhaps those are a cut above mere perfunctory praying, but why risk relying on strangers who may reveal nothing more than secret laziness?

Jesus primarily taught about prayer in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  His most prominent instructions focused on the motive, the model, and the attitude of prayer.  The Holy Spirit alone will lead us into the secrets of rewarding – and more amazingly still – rewarded prayer practices involving an unseen divine Listener.

My long years of “Splurgeon on Spurgeon” have been supplanted with my addiction to a Scotsman named Alistair Begg.  His TRUTH FOR LIFE book of 365 devotions is in daily use by our richly blessed congregation under the perceptive leadership of our senior pastor.  Alistair Begg preached at Parkside Church in Cleveland, Ohio, for 40 years, and his teaching and speaking ministry continues strongly. I learned from his discourse on You-Tube that praying doesn’t come naturally to him, his first impulse being to reach for the newspaper instead.  As a result, I had Amazon deliver his book PRAY BIG the very next day, making me see the big hint in smaller print, “Learn to Pray Like an Apostle.”  A helpful hint at the bottom of the title page promised, “Helps you feel not just like you should pray, but that you can.”

Can you have a life-changing prayer experience at age 91?  I did, after feeling severe pain in my upper right arm for far too many weeks. Near despair drove me to my knees, but faith’s determination had me rise up to put an end to it. Led by the Holy Spirit, I modeled my radical praying on Christ’s 40-day testing, where Satan did his hellish best to talk Jesus out of His determination to keep His rendez-vous with Calvary.  Our Lord didn’t take the verbal bait by calmly stating repeatedly, “It is written…”  That is precisely how I got out of my ordeal.  Night after night I now sleep soundly and wake up pain-free.  Alistair I frankly admire; my Lord I fiercely adore. Let us all get more and more deeply into His transformative Word and transact with its power in our secluded room, where the unseen Sovereign sees to the gifts of rewarded faith.