Your Secret Life

In our house, we have a stack of Reader’s Digests. Recent publications have featured articles that easily grab your attention. A few titles are as follows: “50 secrets your Pilot won’t tell you”, “13 things Car Dealers won’t tell you”, “Doctors confess their fatal mistakes”. We all are quite skeptical of businessman and salesmen in professional fields but are expected to trust them. We question their integrity, yet still must depend upon their services. When we have the opportunity to know what they are doing behind the scenes, we perk up with great interest.

But if we would each be honest, everybody has a secret life. Perhaps there are some skeletons in your closet that you have yet to reckon with. It could be some injustice by someone that you refuse to forgive. Maybe there is some sin that you have attempted to cover, but the guilt still plagues you. Your past haunts you and it’s your secret. In some cases, even your dearest friends and nearest family do not even know about it.

These skeletons are holding you back from truly living. God knows what is in your closet. He knows what has happened in your past and what you will not let go of. He knows what you are going through that no one else knows about. He sees what is going on behind closed doors. He also sees the pure in heart, and those who silently do what is right when know one else notices. He knows your righteous desires and honest motives. The eyes of God are continually beholding both the evil and the good.

What are you doing in secret? In the secret life of King David, he harbored the sin of lust for another man’s wife. He took her for himself and had a child out of wedlock. He tried to keep it a secret and even attempted to cover his sin by murder. But what he did in secret, his son Absalom did openly on the roof top for all of Israel to see. We learn that private sin becomes public scandal. God says, “Be sure your sin will find you out.”

But not everything in secret has to be bad. In fact, the most sacred times of God’s people are experienced in private. Jesus taught that giving, prayer, and fasting are acts of righteousness that must be done in secret. It doesn’t matter who else notices the time we spend in prayer because it is a closet matter. However, this kind of secret life does have direct implications on the effectiveness of public ministry. God the Father promises a public reward for private prayer.

Remember that the quality and content of your secret life will have public consequences. Do you have secret thoughts and desires that are evil and incriminating? The truth will come out in your words and actions. The result of secret sin is spiritual poverty. However, when you develop a Christ-like secret life of prayer, you will possess certain power for living and victory in the Christian life.