Find Breathing Room By Abiding In The Secret Place With God

This will conclude the series we have been doing called Breathing room, where we have spoken regarding how to protect margin in our lives and give God space to grow the seed of His Word in the good soil of our hearts.

In part 1, I talked about the spirit of python. I believe it is a demonic spirit that wants to squeeze life out of us. Then in part 2, I spoke about having a margin in your life by having a day off and a margin in our morality by not doing things that put us to close to the life we were delivered from. In this concluding part, I shall address the secret place with God.

Potempkin Village

The phrase ‘Potempkin village’ was coined after Russian nobleman Grigori Potempkin. He was supposed to colonize Crimea but failed to due to financial issues. In 1787, Queen Catherine The Great came to visit and in order to hide his failure from her, he created fake villages with happy people and farm animals. Once the queen passed a village, they would move the entire village and its people further down the road to complete the facade but it was all a fraud. That is how the phrase Potempkin village is used today to describe an elaborate facade that is designed to hide and undesirable reality. This occurs when someone is more concerned about their reputation than their character. Today, this happens due to the great pressure that exists to put up a good front and be likeable.

When you come to church, there is a great pressure to change as well. A church environment can often be a place where people pretend to be perfect, and when new arrivals see this, they feel pressured to fit in with their new crowd. What this leads to is people trying to quickly conform on the outside when they are not transformed on the inside.

Heal Don’t Hide

Similarly to when you ‘clean’ your house or room in a matter of seconds, you don’t actually clean it, you just hide things. Many who come to church fall into the same category because instead of healing from things in our past, we just managed to hide them better when we came to church. Sadly, the best actors are not in Hollywood; they are in churches because there is such a pressure to perform and appear good on the outside at the expense of being changed on the inside.

I want to challenge you not to live a life where you sacrifice your inner life for the illusion of momentum and a changed life.

The Bible says God dwells in the secret place, in our hearts but that is the place we neglect first, and cram with junk instead of building the secret place as a sacred place.

The Secret Place In The Old Testament

We see the contrast of two personas and what they hid in the secret place in Rahab and Achan. Rahab was a temple prostitute in Jericho, while Achan was a soldier in God’s army. Rahab was doomed to destruction, but she hid the spies of God in her secret place, resulting in the salvation of herself and her family. Achan hid cursed objects from Jericho in his secret place and his promising future was cut off, he was killed and his family was stoned to death.

What are you hiding today? I did not ask if you are hiding because you are; everybody is hiding something and what you are hiding is going to change your life in the next three to five years. What you are hiding today will either become tomorrow’s scandal or success story.

When you see things like that happen it is not about bad luck; it is bad seeds. Those seeds were put into the ground day by day. I want to encourage you to be like Rahab and hide prayer, fasting, Bible reading, church attendance, giving, and holy living in your secret place even when nobody is watching. Just because it is not rewarded immediately does not mean it is forgotten. God knows every good thing you do in secret and in private, and God in Heaven lives in the secret place and will reward.

If you live in the secret place with God, your inner world will be taken care of. If you live in the secret place with God, your roots will be deep and your branches will be high. God wants not only for us to have high branches publicly, but to be deep, mature, anchored, and well-grounded privately.

“That you may walk worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing Him, being fruitful in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God;”

Colossians 1:10

Three Things About The Secret Place

The Walk Is As Important As The Work

Our public life should be rooted in our secret place. Share on X

As Christians, our identity doesn’t come from our work; it comes from our walk with God. In the world, by contrast, the focus is not on your walk but on the results you produce in your work. It is so easy to focus on our work more than our walk.

The Bible connects our walk to our work showing that how you walk with God affects how you work. Our walk is what the public don’t see but it is what those close to us like our family see. If our sermon is not flowing from our lives, it will impress people but there will be no impartation with it.

We can easily get an addiction to the spotlight but an allergy to the altar. Don’t try and be successful everywhere else but ignore your home. Everything about our life should not be about our work but our walk with God.

In order to abide in the secret place, you have to prioritize your walk more than your work. Share on X

“Now if anyone builds on this foundation with gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, and straw, each one’s work will become clear, for the day will declare it because it will be revealed by fire.”

1 Corinthians 3:12-13

Build On Jesus, For Jesus, With Jesus

Paul tells us that our foundation is Jesus. You can build on Jesus, for Jesus but without Jesus. As Christians, you build your life in Christ with two kinds of materials: fireproof or flammable. Gold, silver, and precious stones are found underground, in small quantities and they are expensive. Wood, hay, and straw and found on the ground, in large quantities, and they are relatively inexpensive. There is one more thing that separates these two categories of materials: if you put them through fire, gold, silver, and precious stones become more pure and valuable, while wood, hay, and straw get destroyed.

You build on Jesus, for Jesus but without Jesus when you do not build from the secret place with God. Do not build your Christian life with things that cost you nothing. When you have built your Christian life in Christ with prayer in the secret place and the fire comes, you come out more precious. Difficulties do not throw you out of the church but anchor you deeper because your life was built for Jesus, on Jesus, with Jesus!

When you are a spiritual toddler, it is okay to live on Sunday to Sunday experiences but God wants to mature us so that we can walk with Him and be fed every single day. Build the secret place so you can walk with God.

We Have To Discover The Win God Has Decided

We don’t decide our win; we discover our win. The world wants you to have a win. In the world, that is trophies, a degree, medals, certificates and so on. Different sports have different requirements to win. What is your win? For some of us, our win is to prove people wrong or to be better than those who looked down on us when we were growing up.

Your win decides your drive. What is your win? Share on X

What would it mean for you to win? Is getting married and having a good job your win? Getting famous and liked on social media, is that your win? Do you impact the world – is that your win? What should your win be as a Christian? Knowing this is important because it will determine the drive and pace of your life.

Winning In The Secret Place

When you do not build the secret place, you cannot know if you are winning or not according to God’s standard. Jesus challenged me about this. He asked me what I saw my win and to compare it to what His win was while He was on earth. Although Jesus never travelled far, didn’t marry or reach the whole world, He was able to say to the Father in John 17:4 that He has glorified Him on the earth and finished the work given Him to do. Jesus won at 33 and didn’t have to do any of the things I thought I had to accomplish. From that day, I set my goal to be to fully please Jesus, not to reach the world. My work will be finish-able but Jesus’ work will continue.

Your win is not to be rich, famous, healthy, educated, happy or to fulfill all your dreams; your win is to be fully pleasing to the Lord. That takes the pressure off. That is why you need to be in the secret place regularly, to check that you are pleasing Him. If your win is to be successful, you don’t need the secret place; the secret place is a distraction. But if your win is to be fully pleasing to Jesus, you need to be in the secret place daily.

For many of us, why we cannot live a life of prayer is our win has been decided by us, instead of decided by God and discovered by us (Hebrews 12:1). It is a race set before us by God, not by ourselves or others. Look unto Jesus.

God decides our win; we discover it. Share on X

When pleasing Jesus is my win in life, I have to pray every day.

Abiding Leads To Abounding

This is about being fruitful in every good work. Fruit is something that is created by a living being. For example, a vineyard produces fruit. An iPhone cannot produce fruit. Only life produces fruit. Machines can produce work but only life produces fruit.

We are human beings, not human doings. We have cycles and life; machines work all the time and require power or energy to function. A machine finds its value in its work. If it is not working, it is worthless. Human beings are not like that. You can have a person who is paralyzed yet they are of as much worth, value and importance as someone who can see, walk, and work. Every human being is a precious in the sight of God. Our worth is not connected to our ability; it is connected to His love.

Fruit Comes From Abiding

That is why the Bible does not say be successful in every good work, in Colossians 1:10 but be fruitful. Fruit comes from abiding. Success comes from working. As Christians, our work should flow from our worship. I am fruitful, not successful because I abide and therefore, I abound. My abounding is directly connected to my abiding. If I am not abounding, all I have to do is abide more. Then I will have fruit, more fruit, much fruit, and the fruit will remain.

I will abound in my health, family, finances, business, and ministry because I abide in Jesus!

“So He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.”

Luke 5:16

Jesus didn’t leave the ministry to go and live in the desert. But He would leave the ministry regularly to be in the secret place with God, in the desert, where He would receive new revelations, assignments, and encouragements, and out of that place, He lived.

God wants us to go deep so we can go wide. I believe every one of us can prioritize spending time with God in our own desert every day or every other day.

Failure To Abide In The Secret Place

If we don’t abide in the secret place, three things will happen:

• We will be dying on the inside.
• Those closest to us will be starved or deprived.
• We grieve the Holy Spirit.

If we don’t experience God’s presence, it is very difficult to be present. When we are always on the go, we are not experiencing His presence that can make us be present with our families.

There is a God who loves you and love requires your fellowship, connection, and communion. God is self-existent. He doesn’t need us but He loves us and cherishes our company. He enjoyed fellowship with us and it has nothing to do with His need but His love for us. Therefore, the first commandment was Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all your heart, mind and strength.

What is most important to God is that you love Him because He loves you. When you love somebody, you make time for them because you love them. Out of that love, our inner world gets filled. Out of that love, we walk, we are fully pleasing to God, and fruitful in every good work. Our walk is as important as our work because we have a secret place. When we spend time in the secret place, we begin to abound because we abide.

Watch The Full Sermon Here: