Have you ever entered into prayer with a bad attitude? Have you ever taken anger into your prayer closet and let it loose? I have and after I let it go I felt better for about a minute. I hate to admit it but I’ve done that more than once… in fact very recently! And after I vented I didn’t feel better, just frustrated with my actions on top of my frustration and anger with my circumstances.
1 Tim 2:8 I will therefore that men pray every where, lifting up holy hands, without wrath and doubting.
Paul certainly warned us about taking our wrath into the prayer closet. The word he used is orge, which implies anger, violent passion, or indignation. Yup, that was me last week and I sat there wondering where that all came from and why, when I knew better than to let my wrath explode. Why did I let my “natural” side take over and drown out my “spiritual” side?
There is a natural internal process in plants in which their internal juices begin cause them to swell up when they’re warmed. The same thing happens to us when we get warmed by our passions, desires, or feelings, our anger begins to swell up. That’s when we have two choices: get them under control or let them explode. Paul tells us that we are to guard against letting the latter happen. The word without means making no use of or having no association with. Our natural un-renewed emotions are to have no part in our prayer life. Our wrath depresses and hinders our prayers because its nothing more than an emotional release. Our prayer needs to be much more than that… much deeper than our old soulish nature.
What the Lord showed me is that rather than entering into my prayer closet with a bunch of pent up emotion, I need to take a completely different approach. He took me to our example:
Heb 5:7 Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto him that was able to save him from death, and was heard in that he feared;
Jesus showed us that true prayer is a sacrifice. Before He went to the Cross He offered Himself up as a sacrifice. His prayer was first and foremost “self-sacrifice.” A sacrifice that cleared the way for His sacrifice on the Cross. His prayers were offered up with strong crying and tears but they were not offered up with anger. There is a priceless lesson here for us… we must die in our prayer closet before we can die on the cross. We need to die to our natural side before we approach the Lord in our spirit. The wrath that is the result of our “circumstances” has no place in our prayer closet. The “hot juices” of our human nature will overpower our spirit and the result will be nothing more than venting our emotions inside a six-sided box.
Now I am not saying that we aren’t to take our burdens into our prayer closet. I’m saying that we need to die to them before we lift them up to the Lord. If we can die outside the closet we can’t die inside the closet. Jesus wants to hear our burdens because He is the One who told us to cast our burdens on Him. What we so often forget in the heat of the moment is that He already knows what they are and how we feel. Don’t you think that the Father knew His Son’s burdens and anguish (in the days of His flesh) before He poured them out in the garden?
What we need to remember is that when we enter into our prayer closet and present our supplications (intense, personal, strenuous, persistent prayers), we must first ensure that our heart is right. We need to “die to self” before we offer up our prayers, for only then will we be able to lift them up in power of the Spirit who lives within us. Venting and releasing our emotional anger may make us feel better for a moment but we’ll soon realize that we’re still holding onto our yoke…
Matt 11:28-30 Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. 29 Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 30 For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.
To rest in Christ is to rest in the work He has already completed. And that work includes the answers to the very circumstances that have riled up our natural side. But we will never rest in the natural until we have rested in the spiritual, and we will never rest in the spiritual until we have experienced Death In The Closet.