The Secret Place of God
And Paul said that while he was in jail, some preachers were trying to cause more trouble for him. They were probably jealous of Paul and were trying to get rid of him. And these were Christians!! Pastors!!!
And Paul went on to say that just as he suffered for Christ, sometimes the Christians at Philippi would likewise also be called to suffer at the hands of another. He wrote…
… it has been granted to you on behalf of Christ not only to believe in him, but also to suffer for him, since you are going through the same struggle you saw I had, and now hear that I still have. (Philippians 1:29,30) (NIV)
Our lives are not always going to be pleasant.
That would be Heaven. But as long as we are on the earth, we have an enemy, the devil, who tries his hardest to make our lives difficult. Sometimes we will go through struggles. Sometimes we have to deal with difficult people and we will suffer at the hands of another.
Before I continue, I need to emphasize two very important points.
First, some people feel like God is pleased when they suffer, and they invent ways to make life harder for themselves. But that’s not God’s will at all. We should never try to make ourselves suffer.
And second, it is not a sign of weakness to want to get out of your suffering. It doesn’t mean you’re a weak Christian. Remember, Paul pleaded 3 times with Jesus to take away his suffering, and he told slaves that if there was any way they could get out of being a slave, to get out!! (See 1 Corinthians 7:21)
If you can get away from a person who causes you to suffer, get away. But this article is for those times when you can’t get away.
Paul spent a great deal of time in jail. He was chained to a wall and he couldn’t get away. But while his body was in jail, he made sure that his spirit was not. No one can jail your spirit unless you allow them to.
Paul did not fight them when they forced his hands into chains. He didn’t kick them when they clamped the shackles on his feet. He didn’t yell at them when they slammed the heavy iron gates shut and left him in the darkness. Just like Jesus was silent when they led him to the cross Paul allowed men to imprison his body. But when it came to the spirit, that’s where Paul drew the line.
You are your spirit. Your spirit lives in a body right now, but that body will grow old and die. You spirit will move on; your spirit will live for all eternity. Guard your spirit; don’t ever let anyone imprison or hurt your spirit.
If you've ever seen an oyster, you know there's nothing pretty about them. Their shell is rough, gnarly; their body is just a slimy blob of muscle. But there’s a treasure hidden inside their nasty bodies- it’s a beautiful pearl.
Poor oysters, they try to guard their treasures; they clamp their shells so very tight. But it’s no use – humans know about the treasure and have hunted them for years.
You might see your body as flabby or wrinkled or imperfect in some way. But it doesn’t matter, because your body is not the real you. You have a treasure inside – it’s your spirit.
And you may not even know what a treasure your spirit is. But God knows, and the devil knows. The devil is like an oyster hunter who has been trying for years to destroy your spirit.
Paul found a way to guard his spirit. He never found a way to guard his body; he was eventually beheaded by the Roman government, but he did find a way to guard his spirit.
It’s very hard to do, but Paul tells us his secret, his way of waiting out those difficult times of suffering. He says:
I consider everything a loss because of the surpassing worth of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them garbage, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God on the basis of faith.
I want to know Christ – yes, to know the power of his resurrection and participation in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, attaining to the resurrection from the dead.
Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already arrived at my goal, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. Brothers and sisters, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead, I press on toward the goal to win the prize for which God has called me heavenward in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:7-14) (NIV)
How did Paul survive the suffering? How did he guard his heart? He pressed in harder for Jesus, and the Kingdom of God.
He pressed in harder for Jesus. In his jail cell, in his cold damp dungeon, hands in chains, feet in shackles, Paul pressed in harder for Jesus. He said, “I’m going to forget what is behind”…
I’m going to forget what happened yesterday
Forget what they said
Forget what they did
I’m going to forget about these chains and shackles and
I’m just going to press in to know Jesus more.
People who make wine take grape juice, pour it into a bottle, cork it and carry it into the wine cellar where it bubbles and festers and then finally, it’s done. And it’s much better tasting after it ferments in the wine cellar for a while- not so bitter, it’s smooth and sweet now. I’ve heard that the best wines are the wines that spend the most time in the wine cellar.
When we’re baby Christians, we’re like grape juice, just poured into wine bottles; we’re still on the bitter side. We need to ferment for a while; we need to spend time in the wine cellar.
When Paul was pressing in to take hold of Jesus, he was like wine spending time in the wine cellar. The Bible doesn’t use the term wine cellar; it gives other names for this place that Paul found:
Isaiah 45:3 calls it a secret place: “I will give you hidden treasures, riches stored in secret places.” (NIV)
Psalm 32:7 calls it a hiding place: “You are my hiding place; you will protect me from trouble and surround me with songs of deliverance.” (NIV)
Colossians 3:3 says, “you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God.” (NIV)
Isaiah 4 says:
Then the Lord will create … over those who assemble there a cloud of smoke by day and a glow of flaming fire by night; over everything the glory will be a canopy. It will be a shelter and shade from the heat of the day, and a refuge and hiding place from the storm and rain. (Isaiah 4:5-6) (NIV)
It’s this hiding place, this secret place, this canopy of glory, this refuge for our spirits, where Paul would go to commune with God. His spirit communing with the Spirit of God.
And the Holy Spirit would flood Paul’s spirit, comforting him, strengthening him, healing him, loving him, just holding him. He picked up the pieces of Paul’s broken spirit and just hugged him back together again. That’s why Paul could say, “We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed.” (2 Corinthians 4:8,9) (NIV)
The secret place was Paul’s secret.
Richard Wurmbrand knew this secret place. He was put in prison for preaching the gospel in 1948 in the country of Romania when the communists took over. Later, after he was released, he said this:
In solitary confinement I was the first 2, nearly 3 years. It was in the most beautiful building of Bucharest in the building of the Secretariat of State for Internal Affairs. It is a building before which all foreigners stand and admire it. I can tell you that your White House is a very little building in comparison with ours. And there, beneath the earth, 10 meters beneath the earth, are the cells. There are no windows in the cells. Air enters through a tube. And there were a few desks with a mattress, with a straw mattress. You had but three steps for to walk. Never were we taken out from these cells except for interrogations when prisoners were beaten and tortured. For years I have never seen sun, moon, flowers, snow, stars, no man except the interrogator who beat, but I can say I have seen heaven open, I have seen Jesus Christ, I have seen the angles and we were very happy there. (1966)
Hebrews 12 says that when people sin against us, we are to “shake it off” – to strip off everything that entangles us and keep on running the race that is set before us!!! (NIV)
Shaking it off is not being a Pollyanna who is living in denial. Shaking it off is the only way to survive the pain. And as you forget the pain, shake off the pain, spend time in that secret place, you will begin to shine like a star.
St. Patrick was a shining star. Patrick was born in Scotland in 385 AD. When he was about 16 he was kidnapped and sent to Ireland where he was sold as a slave. For six years he was a slave tending sheep.
The religion in Ireland at the time Patrick lived there as a slave was very evil. Sometimes the people would sacrifice humans to their gods. The leaders of this religion, called druids, held a lot of power over the people.
But it was here, as a slave in Ireland, that Patrick began to cry out to the true God. It’s where Patrick found the secret place of God.
And God spoke to Patrick in dreams and visions. After six years of slavery, he heard a voice telling him that he would soon go home, and that his ship was ready. He ran away from his master and traveled two hundred miles away, where he found a ship headed for Britain.
When he found his parents again, they were so happy to see him and begged him never to leave them again. But he began to have visions and dreams again, and he knew that he had to return to Ireland.
And so he returned to Ireland, not as a slave this time, but as a missionary. The druids, of course, hated Patrick and wanted him killed, so every day he felt could be his last.
But God protected him and he died 40 years later on March 17, St Patrick’s day. During his 40 years in Ireland he performed miracles on a daily basis and converted an entire pagan nation to Christianity!!!
But the druids were always trying to kill him. They hated him because he taught a new religion, a different God. Several times they had him thrown in jail, or put into chains. He was threatened with death and they came close – but they never were able to kill him. Patrick wrote this in St. Patrick’s Confessio:
I bore insults from unbelievers, so that I would hear the hatred directed at me for travelling here. I bore many persecutions, even chains, so that I could give up my freeborn state for the sake of others. If I be worthy, I am ready even to give up my life most willingly here and now for his name.
every day there is the chance that I will be killed, or surrounded, or be taken into slavery, or some other such happening. (McCarthy)
And, there were Christians, back home in Scotland, the leaders of the Christian church, who accused him of a sin that he had committed years earlier, even before he was a Christian. It seems that he confided this sin to a friend who told the church leaders, who made it public. It hurt Patrick very much, but he said this:
This hit me very hard, so much so that it seemed I was about to fall, both here and in eternity. (McCarthy)
Most people would have quit if they had to deal with all the persecutions that Patrick had to deal with every day. But St. Patrick had found the secret place of God.
And it was in that secret place that Patrick was given the strength he needed to forgive. In his Confessio, he wrote that God spoke to him in regard to the friend and the Church leaders who had betrayed him. God had told him, “He who touches you … touches the pupil of my eye.” And that word of encouragement gave him the strength he needed. He said:
For that reason, I give thanks to the one who strengthened me in all things, …and my faith passed the test before God and people…. (and) I pray that God not hold this sin against them. (McCarthy)
That’s forgiveness.
We all have people in our lives that hurt us. Some of them hurt us over and over and over again. It’s very very difficult.
But now we know how to deal with them. We run to our secret place- the arms of our Father. We give him the pieces of our broken spirit and we allow Him to flood us with his comfort, His love, His peace, his healing.
And we are given the strength that we need to forgive and the courage to survive.
References:
“Communist Exploitation of Religion Hearing.” Richard Wurmbrand - Testimony, 6 May 1966, richardwurmbrandbio.info/communist.html.
“Confession: St. Patrick's Confessio.” Translated by McCarthy, Confession | St. Patrick's Confessio, www.confessio.ie/etexts/confessio_english#.
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version, NIV Copyright 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.www.zondervan.com. The “NIV” and “New International Version” are trademarks registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by Biblica, Inc.
Comments
Post a Comment