When I was eighteen years old and a senior in high school, I was committed to the hospital psych ward. I remember weeping on my bed back at home as I grabbed my hair and pulled on it as I cried out loud, “I want to die. I just want to die.” The emotional pain was ever so deep as past regrets, broken dreams, an unstable family life, and deep loneliness haunted me.
I walked into that hospital thinking, I don’t belong here, even though I was self-harming, had self-hatred, and was self-destructive. I did not have the words back then, but there was spiritual darkness that hovered over that place and I wanted nothing else than to get out of there. After my short yet dark, heavy, and scary stay at the hospital, I was on my way home on Highway 10 from St. Cloud to Little Falls, and I remember looking out the window and talking to God (Jesus). I was at ground zero, and I needed the Lord to come into my life fully; I needed Him to transform me. In a roundabout way, I said, “Jesus, if you really are that God that changes lives, you need to come into mine.” He did. Slowly but surely the Lord healed (and is healing) my heart, identity, trauma, and pain.
Months went by and I soon graduated from high school. I left for basic training with the Air National Guard and then started Crown college in 2003. I walked into that Christian college with very little knowledge of the Bible, but my heart knew the Lord.
A few weeks into college, my roommate said she was going to go do devotions. I didn’t know what she meant by that, so I asked her, “What are devotions?” She then went on to tell me it is when you spend time with God. I knew about spending time with God; I just didn’t know there was a name for it. Many people call their time with Jesus devotions (like my roommate did), or they might call it their quiet time; I call it the Secret Place.
Some of you may be in the same spot I was—you didn’t have the vocabulary of the Secret Place or, in my case back in college, the word devotions. Sometimes we know something, but we just don’t have the terminology for it, and that’s okay! Now you have a phrase—the Secret Place—for something you may have known about all along.
My Secret Place time in college started off with a lot of crying, questioning, and deep sorrow. When it was nice outside, I would go to this one oak tree on campus that had an opening in its trunk. I would pray my prayers on a piece of paper and hide the paper in the trunk of the tree. It always brought comfort when I did that. I was so broken in college, and I only truly felt like myself with Jesus and I guess you could say that old oak tree. My time with the Lord and the things I did with Him only flourished as I matured in my faith.
My Secret Place time grew from crying out to the Lord to paging through the Bible. Paging through the Bible led to reading the Bible. Reading the Bible developed to questioning things in the Bible. Questions brought me to studying the Bible. Studying the Bible grew to discovering revelation. Revelation resulted in me being consumed with the Lord. Being consumed with Jesus showed me all the different ways to spend time with God. Discovering the different ways to spend time with the Lord cultivated a life with Jesus. That cultivation taught me what the Secret Place was, at its depth.
Although part of the Secret Place is that “quiet time in the mornings with the Lord,” it is so much more than that. The Secret Place at its core is a life that remains in the hiddenness of Jesus. To remain in the Lord, you spend quality time with Him and you bring Him with you everywhere you go. To be hidden in Jesus means you are communing and tapping into His love and truth beyond anyone or anything else.
There are primarily two ways to spend time with God: tangible ways and nontangible ways. Tangible ways are more concrete methods to spend time with the Lord, which can consist of reading the Bible, studying the Bible (there is a difference), and journaling or saying prayers. These would also be good examples of how to spend quality time with the Lord. Then there will be nontangible ways to spend time with Jesus. These are less concrete forms of spending time with God, such as bringing Him with you as you are going to work, running errands, going to school, or just doing life.
The most significant part of spending time with Jesus as you do these tangible and nontangible things is conversing with Him. It’s connecting with Him. It’s talking to Him and having Him talk to you back. It’s an inner relationship that can manifest wherever, whenever, at any time of the day or night.
I once heard a pastor say to a group of people, “I want you all to say that you love Jesus out loud.” So the audience said out loud, “I love you, Jesus.” Then the pastor said, “Now I want you to say, ‘I love you, Jesus,’ but I want you to say it to yourself, in your inner core.” He gave some time for everyone to do this. After they said that they loved Jesus silently within themselves, he then responded, “That is the Secret Place.” What I imagine he meant by that remark was the inner dialogue they just had with the Lord (by saying they loved Jesus silently to themselves) was an example of what it means to enter into the Secret Place in their inner being.
My beloved, you can tap into the Secret Place at any time. You just need yourself, the Lord, and relationship. If you have a healthy relationship with your mom or dad, a stable walk with your siblings, and a good connection with a friend, what do you do with them all? You visit! You have fellowship! You share your heart and they share theirs.
Friends, that’s what we can and want to do with the Lord. We want conversation with Him in the inner depth of our being no matter where we are. As we do this, we are entering the Secret Place. However, we do not just want to enter in; we want to stay there. If you have not yet started talking to Jesus, do it, then don’t stop. The Secret Place is the best place to be and next month I will elaborate with the benefits of dwelling there.
He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High
Shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty. Psalm 91:1 (NKJV)
