With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray, 14

And the first thing the Lord teaches His disciples is that they must have a secret place for prayer; every one must have some solitary spot where he can be alone with his God.
Every teacher must have a schoolroom.  We have learnt to know and accept Jesus as our only teacher in the school of prayer.  He has already taught us at Samaria that worship is no longer confined to times and places; that worship, spiritual true worship, is a thing of the spirit and the life; the whole man must in his whole life be worship in spirit and truth.  And yet He wants each one to choose for himself the fixed spot where He can daily meet him.
That inner chamber, that solitary place, is Jesus’ schoolroom.  That spot may be anywhere; that spot may change from day to day if we have to change our abode; but that secret place there must be, with the quiet time in which the pupil places himself in the Master’s presence, to be by Him prepared to worship the Father.  There alone, but there most surely, Jesus comes to us to teach us to pray. A teacher is always anxious that his schoolroom should be bright and attractive, filled with the light and air of heaven, a place where pupils long to come, and love to stay.  In His first words on prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus seeks to set the inner chamber before us in its most attractive light.  If we listen carefully, we soon notice what the chief thing is He has to tell us of our tarrying there.  Three times He uses the name of Father:
‘Pray to thy Father;’ ‘Thy Father shall recompense thee;’ ‘Your Father knoweth what things ye have need of.’  The first thing in closet-prayer is:  I must meet my Father.  The light that shines in the closet must be: the light of the Father’s countenance. The fresh air from heaven with which Jesus would have it filled, the atmosphere in which I am to breathe and pray, is:  God’s Father-love, God’s infinite Fatherliness.  Thus each thought or petition we breathe out will be simple, hearty, childlike trust in the Father.  This is how the Master teaches us to pray:  He brings us into the Father’s living presence.  What we pray there must avail.  Let us listen carefully to hear what the Lord has to say to us.

This post continues what is intended to be a series of excerpts from With Christ in the School of Prayer, by Andrew Murray. I thank the Christian Classics Ethereal Library for making this public domain work available. To see their post of the book, go here. The previous post is here. As usual in this blog, long quotations are in this color.