<p>6:6&nbsp;<em>But you, when you pray, enter into your room and shut your door, pray to your Father who is unseen-&nbsp;</em>The Lord taught the intensity of the life He required by taking Old Testament passages which refer to the crisis of the last days, and applying them to the daily life of His people. Take Is. 26:20, which speaks of how in the final tribulation, God&rsquo;s people will shut the doors around them and pray. The Lord applies this to the daily, regular prayer of His people- we are to pray in secret, in our room, with doors closed (Mt. 6:6)- clearly an allusion to the Isaiah passage. In the time of Elisha we read that when a problem arose, the people concerned went indoors and shut the door. Going inside and shutting the door is associated with prayer, both by the Lord (Mt. 6:6) and Elisha himself (2 Kings 4:33). The other instances of shutting the door don&rsquo;t involve prayer, but they involve obediently doing something in faith- the woman shut the door upon her sons and poured out the oil in faith; she shut the door upon her sick son (2 Kings 4:5,21). Perhaps the implication is that what she did in faith and hope was read by God as prayer, even though she didn&rsquo;t apparently verbalize anything.&nbsp; The widow woman shut the door and started to pour out the oil into the vessels (2 Kings 4:5); the way the Lord alludes to this implies that she prayed before she started pouring, and yet she was sure already that it would happen (Mt. 6:6). This should inspire a spirit of soberness in our prayers.</p>
<p><em>And your Father who sees in secret shall reward you-&nbsp;</em>We should be saying and expressing things to God which are our most intense, essential, personal feelings. We cannot, therefore, easily use trite, stock phrases in our personal prayers. Note the grammatically needless repetition of the personal pronoun in Mt. 6:6: &quot;You, when&nbsp;<em>you</em>&nbsp;pray, enter into&nbsp;<em>your&nbsp;</em>closet, and when&nbsp;<em>you&nbsp;</em>have shut&nbsp;<em>your&nbsp;</em>door, pray to&nbsp;<em>your&nbsp;</em>Father, which is in secret; and&nbsp;<em>your</em> Father who sees in secret shall reward&nbsp;<em>you</em>&nbsp;openly&quot;. Likewise when reading the Psalms, especially 71, note how many times David addresses God with the personal pronoun: thee, thy, thou&hellip; it really is a personal relationship.</p>