Reason # 2 to engage in prayer

Here is reason #2 for why we should pray privately each day, according to Thomas Brooks:

Christ Engaged in Secret Prayer.
"Consider, next, that when Christ was on earth, he did much exercise himself in secret prayer; he was often with God alone, as you may see in many well-known Scriptures: Matt. 14:23...Mark 1:35...Mark 6:46...Luke 5:16...Luke 6:12...Luke 21:37...Luke 22:39-45...John 6:15-17.

"Thus you see, by all these famous instances, that Christ was frequent in private prayer. Oh, that we would daily propound to ourselves this noble pattern for our imitation, and make it our business, our work, our heaven, to write after this blessed copy that Christ hath set us, viz. to be much with God alone. Certainly Christianity is nothing else but an imitation of the divine nature, a reducing of a man's self to the image of God, in which he was created 'in righteousness and true holiness'. A Christian's whole life should be nothing but a visible representation of Christ."

Brooks then follows this with the question: "But why was our Lord Jesus so much in private prayer? Why was he so often with God alone?"

To which he gives six answers:

1. "First, It was to put a very high honour and value upon private prayer."
2. "Secondly, He was much in private prayer, he was often with God alone, that He might not be seen of men, and that He might avoid all shows and appearances of ostentation and popular applause."
3. "Thirdly, To avoid interruptions in the duty [of prayer]."
4. "Fourthly, To set us such a blessed pattern and gracious example that we should never please nor content ourselves with public prayers only, nor with family prayers only, but that we should also apply ourselves to secret prayer, to closet prayer."
5. "Fifthly, That He might approve Himself to our understandings and consciences to be a most just and faithful High Priest (Heb. 2:17; John 17)."
6. "Sixthly, Christ was much in private prayer to convince us that His Father hears and observes our private prayers, and bottles up all our secret tears, and that He is not a stranger to our closet desires, wrestlings, breathings, hungerings, and thirstings."

Tune in tomorrow!