What Is the Secret Place Like?

God wants to meet with us in the secret place of prayer.

What is that secret place like? How can we recognize it? Let’s begin to look at its qualities.

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The Place Where God’s Presence Is Revealed and Manifested

Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross gives us access to the presence of God, and prayer is the place where that access occurs.

To pray is to recognize we have a divine appointment where we can speak face-to-face with a holy God. Because we cannot talk with an absent God, it is necessary for us to know that He is present, and He hears and responds to us.

No matter where we go, God is with us.

Through the fire and the storm, in tribulations and persecutions, through loneliness and fear, He is always with us, because He has promised to be there.

Jesus gave us His word that He would be with us “even unto the end of the world” (Matthew 28:20 KJV).

True prayer, therefore, includes a consciousness of being in the presence of God Almighty. To be in God’s presence, you need to set all your affection on Him; this means fixing your attention and thoughts on Him, focusing completely on His person. When we do this, eternity is pulled into the realm of time.

So, He [Jesus] Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.

Now it happened on a certain day, as He was teaching, that there were Pharisees and teachers of the law sitting by, who had come out of every town of Galilee, Judea, and Jerusalem. And the power of the Lord was present to heal them. (Luke 5:16–17)

Every day, Jesus made sure He was in communication with the Father and filled with His presence.

This is why, after He would return from the place of prayer, He would radiate power.

When the multitudes approached Him seeking healing and deliverance, Jesus only had to declare the word, and supernatural breakthrough occurred.

After spending time in the presence of God, Jesus didn’t need to pray for people, because the atmosphere He carried—which He had built with His Father—produced instant miracles, signs, and wonders.

The Father saw Jesus’s prayers in the secret place and rewarded Him publicly.

When we are fully aware of God’s presence and spend time in fellowship with Him in the secret place, then wherever we go, we will carry the atmosphere of His presence; we will radiate His life, liberty, power, and glory.

What Is the Secret Place Like?

The Place Where We Come to Know God

Because God’s presence is manifested to us in the secret place of prayer, it is there where we come to know the Father.

“This is eternal life, that they may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom You have sent” (John 17:3).

As we pray, God reveals Himself to us, and we are attracted to Him in an ever-greater way. He places us under His care as His special treasure and as part of His very heart.

God wants us to see Him as He is; He longs to establish an intimate relationship with us, and for us to become one with Him as He is one with His Son Jesus. And prayer is the place where we can see God as He really is and receive His life.

What Is the Secret Place Like?

The Place Where We Appropriate the Power of God

In the book of Acts, every time Christians got together to pray, the power of God manifested. This indicates to us that the church should never lack power.

The enemy attacks the prayer life of churches and individual believers because he doesn’t want them to have access to God’s supernatural power and grace.

Power is our inheritance as children of God, but we can only use it legally, in a spiritual sense, through prayer that is part of an intimate relationship with the Father.

What Is the Secret Place Like?

The Place Where We Participate in Spiritual Activity

The Spirit of God is continually active on the earth.

When you pray, you become a participant in what He is currently creating and doing in the world.

Sadly, much of the church today doesn’t know how to pray; consequently, spiritual darkness has become thick on the earth.

This generation lacks the spiritual depth that a life of prayer produces. The depth of our prayer life will determine the depth of our message.

When a person’s spirit is empty, they produce empty words.

When a person’s spirit is burning with the Holy Spirit, they release God’s power through anointed words and generate spiritual activity.

What Is the Secret Place Like?

The Place Where We Obtain Spiritual Authority

Spiritual authority belongs to all children of God by inheritance through Jesus. (See, for example, Luke 10:19.)

However, as is the case with spiritual power, our use of spiritual authority is legal only while we maintain a relationship with our heavenly Father.

And a significant way in which God imparts His authority to us is through prayer.

For this reason, whenever our prayer life begins to diminish—in our individual lives or as the corporate church—our spiritual authority is weakened.

Today, we live in extreme times in which the enemy is doing everything he can to diminish the power of the church.

Therefore, every day, we need a greater level of spiritual authority, and for this we must “pray without ceasing” (1 Thessalonians 5:17).

Before giving us power, God wants us to have a relationship with Him.

What Is the Secret Place Like?

The Secret Place Is…

The Place Where We Submit to the Lordship of Christ

The secret place of prayer is where we surrender our will to God so the Lord can accomplish His will in us.

It is also where the greater spiritual struggles take place for believers, because it’s easier to say, “Jesus is my Provider” than it is to say, “Jesus is my Lord and the Owner of my life.”

While He was on earth, Jesus submitted to the lordship of the Father.

For example, when He knew it was time for Him to suffer death on the cross, He prayed, “Father, if it is Your will, take this cup away from Me; nevertheless, not My will, but Yours, be done” (Luke 22:42).

If we want to operate in heavenly authority, we, too, need to be people of prayer who live in complete obedience to the Father.

And every day, we must surrender our will to the lordship of Jesus Christ, because total submission is not something that is accomplished instantly; it is a surrender that happens progressively.

What Is the Secret Place Like?

The Place of the Sufferings of Christ

That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and the fellowship of His sufferings, being conformed to His death. (Philippians 3:10)

Prayer is the place of fellowship with the sufferings of Christ because it requires obedience and self-denial.

Jesus told His disciples, “Watch and pray, lest you enter into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Mark 14:38).

Our flesh is weak; therefore, most of the time, it doesn’t want to pray.

Yet if we want to see people’s lives transformed for Christ, we have to voluntarily submit our spirits to God and pray, regardless of what we “feel” like doing.

It was after Christ had suffered on the cross physically, emotionally, and spiritually that God released His resurrection power and raised Him from the dead.

In a similar way, God has to work in us before He can work through us and make us good stewards of His grace.

If, as we pray, we allow God to show us the sin that has become rooted in our lives, and to lead us to repentance and forgiveness so that our sin is taken away, then we will know Christ and we will resemble Him in His suffering.

Jesus was without sin, yet He took our sin on the cross.

He endured all suffering to please the Father, to be united with His purposes, and to do His will on earth. The question is, are we willing to do the same?

What Is the Secret Place Like?

The Place Where the Keys of the Kingdom Are Activated

And I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. (Matthew 16:19)

The Hebrew words translated “bind” and “loose” were legal terms commonly used by rabbis, who interpreted the law and declared what was prohibited (“bound”) and what was permitted (“loosed”).

Jesus used the Hebrew expression of “binding and loosing” to communicate to Peter—and all believers—that He gives us spiritual authority on earth.

That is why, when we pray, we declare and decree; in other words, we pass “laws” or “regulations” concerning what is allowed and not allowed according to the will of God because we have the authority to do it.

And that authority is ratified in heaven because it originates in Christ and is part of His work on earth. (See, for example, Matthew 16:17–19; Luke 4:18.)

Thus, we can say that we declare to be legal on earth what is legal in heaven, and we declare to be illegal on earth what is illegal in heaven.

Christ will ratify in heaven what we do on earth in His name and in accordance with His Word.

What Is the Secret Place Like?

The Place Where We Expand Our Territory

The secret place of prayer is also where we expand the capacity of our spirit and the size of our spiritual territory.

Paul understood about spiritual spheres of influence, saying, “We, however, will not boast beyond measure, but within the limits of the sphere which God appointed us—a sphere which especially includes you” (2 Corinthians 10:13).

As your prayer life grows, your territories (domains of ministry and influence) will expand; but as your territories expand, your prayer life must also increase.

It is not enough to gain a territory; it is important to maintain it. That is why we can never stop praying.

You cannot be complacent about prayer—you must pray until you obtain a breakthrough.

Jesus used to pray all night, and by dawn, He had won territories that had been controlled by the enemy.

His prayer was not casual; He was committed to dwelling in the presence of the Father, and this commitment yielded supernatural results.

Additionally, in the book of Acts, we see that each time Jesus’s disciples prayed, the Spirit of God descended powerfully, and lives were transformed.

Likewise, we need to pray in such a way that God’s Spirit moves, bringing great change.

What Is the Secret Place Like?

The Place Where We Obtain the Favor of God

For You, O Lord, will bless the righteous; with favor You will surround him as with a shield. (Psalm 5:12)

Favor comes as a result of our communion and close relationship with our heavenly Father.

His favor in our lives is seen in the manifestation of His power that allows us access to what we otherwise would not have.

The favor of God brings us blessings, protection, provision—and much more.

Enter the Secret Place

In the secret place, we develop an eternal, close relationship with the Lord that makes us continual carriers of His supernatural presence.

Let us enter that secret place! I assure you that when we do, we will be ready to be God’s faithful remnant—the bride of Christ who ministers in His name to the world and awaits His second coming.