The Secret Place

When my youngest daughter was in 3rd grade, she wrote a beautiful little essay called "My Secret Place."  I happened to find it in her schoolbag when the teacher returned the paper to her, with one comment scrawled across the top of the page: Messy!  I wanted to strangle that teacher, and it took me a long time to forgive her.  Perhaps I still haven't done so.

The one-page essay described a place of beauty and of rest, a place that no one else knew about, a place where my daughter would go when she was hurt, a place where peace was restored to her.  To this day, I do not know where that place was; surprisingly, I never asked her because I was more focused on the insensitivity of a teacher who cared nothing for the fact that my daughter had shared her inner secrets so beautifully -- all the teacher could see was "messy" handwriting.  I wonder if she even read the words on the page.

That was 30 years ago; today, I have my own "Secret Place," a place that the world scoffs at and fails to understand, a place that the world writes off  not as "messy," but as "ridiculous."  It was a place that Jesus knew and Himself retreated to when He needed a place of refuge from those who did not understand, or when He needed strength and courage and peace -- it was the "Shadow of the Most High."

He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High

will rest in the shadow of El Shaddai.

I will say of the Lord, "He is my refuge and my fortress,

my God, in whom I trust (Psalm 91).

 

Satan quoted parts of this psalm to Jesus when tempting Him in the wilderness: " For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways; they will lift you up in their hands, so that you will not strike your foot against a stone" (v.11-12).  It is so tempting to take a verse of Scripture out of context and to make that your focus -- in fact, I would even say that it is a temptation straight from hell.  Then, if the principle does not "work" for you, the result is that you "write off" Scripture because it "does not work." 

 

It is a fine line between "dwelling in the secret place of the Most High," trusting in God, and trusting in our own ability to weild Scripture to our own ends and purposes.  The snake handlers of Applachia are not "dwelling under the shadow of His wings" and "resting in God;" they are in fact using Scripture to "tempt the Lord," in the words of Jesus.

 

A great work requires a great and careful training -- How often, by much speaking and self-indulgent sharing with others, a jewel of rare beauty may be robbed of its priceless worth to your soul -- a bud of joy and sweet perfume too rashly forced to premature bloom will lose its purity and fragrance (God Calling + God Calling 2: Jan. 22).

 

The question is, "Where is our focus?"  God wants to share all the secrets of our souls; He wants us to "dwell in the secret place of the Most High."  Then, at the appropriate time, He will work His work through us.  If our focus is on the work itself, we will become exhausted trying to "make it work."  In the case of Jesus, He would actually have become "dead" if He had followed the devil's spin on Scripture and cast Himself down from the pinnacle of the temple because "He has given His angels charge over thee, that thou not cast thy foot against a stone."

 

We cannot "read Scripture" with the eyes of the natural man, the man who dwells apart from the Most High.  We can only be directed by the Voice of God, not our own voice.  And Jesus promised that His sheep would know His Voice and would not follow another.  We come to know His Voice and His command by dwelling with Him, in the "Shadow of the Most High."  The world will call us "messy," and impractical, worthless -- and may even crucify us  -- but those who dwell in the Secret Place will know the truth, be healed, and will be set free from the pressures of the world.

 

Before the Israelites could enter the Promised Land, God had to lead them through the desert for 40 years, until they learned to depend on Him and not on themselves.  He fed them in the wilderness and gave them water from the rock, and Moses even warned them that after they had settled down in Canaan and built houses and multiplied their wealth, that they would say to themselves: "My power and the strength of my hands have produced this wealth for me" (Deut. 8:17).

 

Like Jesus in the wilderness for 40 days, preparing Himself for his great work of establishing the kingdom of His Father on earth, we too must dwell in the secret place of the Most High, trusting God to feed us the manna we need, the Scripture we need, to do His work.