The Secret Life
What is the identity of this US President in the picture above?
The secret president’s name is Abraham Lincoln, built with duplo legos by the Senti boys, Johnny, Elisha and Peter
On the topic of secrets, I believe we are called to live a secret life before God:
The Secret Life
What we do in secret matters
The secret life of righteousness in Christ for the Father by the Spirit:
One of God the Father’s favorite ways to show His love for us, I think, is in the little gifts He gives us. When my wife was in college she ran out of shampoo and had no money for anymore. She prayed and in a couple days she won a contest at the college, not knowing what the prize would be. You can imagine how pleasantly surprised she was when she found out it was, yes, you guessed it, shampoo. How many stories I could tell just like that; they are too many to count. And we could always explain them away, but it becomes too uncanny to do so after a while. Some very personal Being is looking out for us. We just know it.
But it isn’t usually the big things in which He does it, though we’ve seen Him heal and cast out demons and change lives, like He’s changed our own (and that usually over a period of years.) Rather, it is usually in the little secret things He does for us that we see His ongoing love.
And then let me suggest that He loves it when we do the same for Him. What do I mean? When we do little things, that no one else sees but Him, we show that 1- we believe He exists and 2- we believe that He rewards those who seek Him. (See Hebrews 11:6 in the Bible; try the New International Version.)
Jesus reminds us to give to those in need as anomynously as possible so that only the the Father knows. He suggests that for prayer and fasting too. (See Matthew 6:1-18 in the Bible; check out the New Living Translation version) And we can do lots of little things like that. We can live a whole life like that for His glory.
Other folks might not understand us, they might wonder, well, what are we doing then? We might not look very important to others, but we will be special to God.
Living in Bellingham I’ve heard some criticism of Lynden, where I grew up, but I would suggest there are a lot of older Dutch folks in Lynden who give to the needy, sometimes nearly all they have, for the sake of Christ and the poor, but most folks would never know it. Some of them are older widows and I’ve heard it whispered by some of the deacons in some of those churches. But other folks would see them and might even judge them as hypocrites. But God sees what they’re doing and blesses them for it with the blessing of an intimacy with Him that is like secret lovers giving each other gifts. How cool is that!
Let’s do that in our own ways too and not live our lives worrying about what others think or even our own feeble estimation of ourselves but believe what God thinks- He loves us! He shows it all the time. I hope we have eyes to see it and we can bless His heart right back! How? By secretly serving others. By being faithful in those little ways that only He sees, but we know He wants us to do.
What does that secret life look like for you?