Secrets of the Secret Place - Part 5

Of our Secrets of the Secret Place Course, it's great to have you back here with us. Let's pray. Holy Spirit come, we ask that you would empower every hearer to hear what the Spirit is saying in this hour. We ask in Jesus' name, Amen. Well, I posted on my Twitter page a little while back a statement, I don't pray in order to make life work. I make life work so that I can pray. And I'll let you take that and meditate on it. There's a whole sermon in that statement itself. The most foundational scripture, when we come to the secret place, is the Sermon on the Mount, the words of Christ, Matthew 6. He said in verse 6, You, when you pray, go into your room, and when you have shut your door, pray to your Father who is in the secret place, and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly. When Jesus said to shut your door, I believe he was meaning that we should have a specific place to go to. Now I know that life has many changes, and you can't always get to the same place every day. But for the most part, have a place that is your secret place, and if it's got a door, go ahead and shut the door, and pray to your Father in secret. Now here's some reasons to shut your door. A. To shut out distractions. B. To not be seen by men. C. To have liberty to be yourself with God. You know, it's good just to be able to be yourself with the Lord sometimes. Just kind of let it all out and be your quirky little self behind a shut door. D. To preserve the privacy of your intimacy with God. E. To be instantaneously with your Father. You know, Jesus said, pray to your Father who is in the secret place. He's already there. He's waiting for you. And when you shut your door, you are instantaneously in the presence of your Father who is waiting for you. And then finally, to be rewarded openly by the Father. Now there are some Christians that dread Judgment Day. There's a couple ways to look at Luke 8, 17. Jesus said, for nothing is secret that will not be revealed, nor anything hidden that will not be known and come to light. And we can look at that verse and see it in terms of the negative stuff that will one day come to light. But I like to see that verse in terms of the positive stuff that's been sown in the secret place. Believers with the secret life in God don't see that verse as a threat. They see it as a promise. When I am investing my life into the secret place, I know there's a day coming when every secret thing will be made clear in the presence of Abba. The hours of crying, of calling on God, investing in servanthood, giving alms, fasting, your devotion to purity. The hours you invested in the Word and in praying in the Spirit. There's a day coming when every secret thing will be manifest and I'm counting on it. I know you are too. The primary pursuit of the secret place is the knowledge of God. This is what we're after. We are in pursuit of the superior pleasures of knowing God. Paul said in his prayer in Ephesians 1, he said, Oh, that the Father of glory may give to you the spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Christ. The eyes of your understanding being enlightened. This is what we live for. For the spirit of wisdom and revelation to impart to us through the Word, the revelation of the knowledge of Christ. This is what energizes and satisfies and exhilarates the human heart. Actually, not only the human heart, also the senses of the living creatures. They have eyes everywhere and they stand before the Lord with all of their eyes gazing on the glory of God. Now, eyes for me speak for one thing of mental capacity. Some of the smartest creatures in the universe, all they do is devote themselves to the knowledge of God. It's the wisest thing we'll ever do to give ourselves to gazing on his face and pursuing the knowledge of Christ. Philippians 3, verse 10, Paul says that I may know him and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of his sufferings. Be conformed to his death if by any means I may attain to the resurrection from the dead. Paul wanted to know Christ. And there's two ways we long to know the Lord Jesus. Number one, we want to know him in a spirit of revelation and understanding, to know his personality, his character, who he is. And secondly, we want to know experientially the power of the Lord Jesus Christ. This is what David was saying in Psalm 63, verse 2, when he said, So I have looked for you in the sanctuary to see your power and your glory. The power and the glory of God are the two things that are the primary longing of the human spirit. We want to see his power, that is, the power of his resurrection, the miracle working power of God. And we long to see his glory, the beauty of the face of Christ. And so when we long for his power, we want to see his hand. When we long for his glory, we want to see his face. And you have an insatiable cry to see the face of Christ and to see the manifest hand of Christ manifest in your life in an experiential way. This is what Paul and David were both pointing to. Now the Bible makes a promise to those who pursue the knowledge of God. Hosea 6:3 says, let us pursue the knowledge of the Lord. He will come to us. I love that promise. Hosea says, you go after him. He will visit you. Now, I'd like to direct our attention this evening to Proverbs 2. If you would turn there, please, in your Bibles to Proverbs 2. We're going to look together at the first five verses of Proverbs 2. And this portion is going to get us connected to the word of God. It's going to direct us to the knowledge of God. And the way it happens, the knowledge of God is found through the word of God. Through immersing ourselves in the word of God. I believe, personally, there's only one book you really need in the secret place. Now, if you've got another one you'd like to take, I'm not going to be critical of that. I'm just telling you, there's only one you really need. Take your Bible. And if that's all you've got, that's enough to get on fire for the Lord Jesus. Now, Jesus said that the scriptures, he said, these are they which testify of me. So when you're looking into the word of God, what you're actually doing is you are pressing into the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Jesus said to the spiritual leaders of his day, he said, are you not therefore mistaken? Because you do not know the scriptures nor the power of God. He was saying they didn't know the scriptures. Now, these guys, all they did all their life was study the scripture. But Jesus was basically saying, you don't come to the scriptures to find me. Therefore, you don't know the scripture. Because if you don't come to this book to find Jesus Christ, you will not handle this book properly. Because it's all about a revelation of a man, the man Christ Jesus. And that's why we love this book. That's why we come to the secret place. We want to know Christ. I'm an author, and I know what it's like for someone to get the wrong impression of my writings. I get letters sometimes. And when I read their letters, I say to myself, you don't know me. Because if you knew me, I don't think you'd be writing this letter this way. That's why we come to this book. You will never understand this book until you come to it with one singular cry. Show me the power and the glory of Jesus Christ. Now, let's look at the counsel of Proverbs 2. The first verse. My son, if you receive my words and treasure my commands within you. Now, if you're going to have the knowledge of God, the first thing he says, treasure my commands within you. Now, when I think of treasuring the commands of God, what that means to me is, don't forget the stuff God gives you from his word. I don't know how to say it strongly enough. Do whatever you have to do to remember the stuff he gives you. When he speaks to you out of his word, man, write that thing down, whatever you have to do, put it on your refrigerator, but don't forget and neglect the stuff God's given you. So, what this means for me is, in one word, journal. In other words, write it down. I journal in my computer, however your journal works, but do whatever you have to do to hold on to it. Luke 8, verse 18 is very important to me. Jesus said, Therefore take heed how you hear. Not just hearing with a whatever, but hearing with a heart that says, I want to hold on to what you're speaking to my heart. Jesus says, For whoever has, to him more will be given, and whoever does not have, even what he seems to have, will be taken away from him. So, if you hold on to what God gives you, if he gives you something, you hold on to it, you steward it, you remember it, you meditate in it, you keep it. If you keep what God gives you, Jesus said, you'll get more. But if you don't, the Lord's just like, you know what? I gave you something a while back, and you don't even remember it. You've forgotten it. You didn't even esteem that word I spoke to your life. So, why would I give you more? So, I'm very jealous about this. Lord, help me to always find a way to remember the things you've given. In fact, I even hear the Lord saying in this, that if you relax this thing, and stop really holding and treasuring the things that God gives you, you actually start to lose the stuff you had in your past. Because there's no such thing as staying stationary in the grace of God. You're either moving forward and laying hold of that which he has for you, or you're actually slipping and losing the very things that you once had. Paul... Now, I don't have 2 Timothy 2:13 in your notes, but Paul, he's writing to Timothy, and he says, bring the stuff with you that I left in Troas. And he says, I left a cloak there, I left some books there, but he says, especially the parchments. Paul had this thing about get my parchments for me. Now, back in those days, parchments was the equivalent of a writing pad. That was how people would write down their journalings, their whatever, their letters. And so, Paul's parchments would have been all his pieces, like for us, pieces of paper and notes and stuff, of the stuff God had given him over the years. And Paul, he's like, man, that's my personal journal. And if you bring anything, I really need that cloak, it's going to be a cold winter. But if you bring nothing else, make sure you bring the parchments, because Paul had a passion to treasure the things God had given him. Now, a journal is not a diary. It's not, okay, I got up this morning and took the dog for a walk. No. A journal has to do with your spiritual walking God, the things God is giving to you. You want to write those things down. Now, just to be a little personal, here's how I do it, and I'm just going to share this in case it helps anyone. My journal is divided into two categories. First of all, I have a journal that goes by date. So when I get an insight from a scripture, I'll, you know, cut and paste the scripture out of my Bible software. Then I'll write down or type in the insight that the Lord's given me. And then I put that in my journal, date it, and I have a journal that by date has all my entries in it. Then I have a second part of it that are entries by topic. And here's how I do that part of it. I cut or I copy my whole entry and then I paste it into a topical part of my computer. So I have in my system, I have folders A, I have a folder A, a folder B, a folder C for every letter of the alphabet. And then under every letter, I have files for all kinds of different topics. So just to give you an example, in my A folder of my personal journal, here's the file names that I have under A. Abiding in Christ, Abortion, Acceptance, Accountability, Accusation, Addictions, Alcohol, Ambition, America, Angels, Anger, Anointing, Anxiety, Apostasy, Apostolic, Approved of God as He is, Asia, Attributes of God, Author, Finisher, Authority. So I just copied that right out of my computer. That's just what it looks like under A. And I have files like that for every letter of the alphabet. So when I have a journal entry that, let's say, it has something to do with the anointing, I have it under my date, but then I also copy it and paste it right into my anointing file. And let's say it's an entry that has to do with humility, empowering, anointing. I'll put it in my anointing file and I'll copy-paste it into my humility file. So if ever I'm doing research on the topic of the anointing, I always go right to my anointing file and read all my entries that I've collected over the years on the anointing. Then I'm like, okay, humility, I'm going over there too and I'll read my humility file. So I do, now that for me, why do I do that? Because I don't want to forget what he's given me. I want to hold on to it. Why? Because I want more. And I know, if I'm a steward of what he gives me today, I'll give more tomorrow. Now the absolutely best way to get ownership of truth is to teach it. That's the absolute best way. If you want to get something really nailed down in your spirit, find a way to commit yourself to tell somebody else about it. Can you mentor someone? Can you lead a small group? What can you do to write whatever the medium, but teach it and tell it to others? We want to treasure his words. Verse 2 now. Proverbs 2 verse 2. So that you incline your ear to wisdom and apply your heart to understanding. I want to talk now about that expression and applying your heart to understanding, because this is the way to the knowledge of God, as we're going to see in verse 5. When I look at that phrase, applying your heart to understanding, I think of the need for discipline and time management. We did a survey in our class here a couple weeks back, and when I was scrolling through the surveys, it seemed to me that the most common thing that I bumped into in your responses, you were saying consistently the number one challenge, of those in our class here at least, is to intentionally carve out time for the secret place and follow through. Set the time aside and do it. So, this is probably universally our number one challenge. Now, I love spontaneity, but beloved, if you run your secret life on spontaneity, you are going to be frustrated. You must apply your heart. A secret place relationship with Jesus requires discipline. No, you're not the world's weirdest person. Everybody struggles with this one, okay? Discipline, finding the time and staying true to it. Desire will turn, if we take our desire and invest it with discipline. Discipline will eventually become delight. So, get out your calendar and schedule a thing. Write it in. Hopefully, it will be a time of day that is fairly similar. If it's morning now, hopefully it can be every morning, or if it's afternoons, every afternoon, but a measure of consistency I think will be very helpful. Now, a universal principle that applies to everyone in their secret place relationship with God. The secret place requires time. You just can't have a meaningful relationship apart from investing time. That's true in our human relationships and it's true in our relationship with Jesus Christ. And the more time you give to it, the greater your chances of unlocking the joys of the potential of the secret place. You sow to the secret place. You will reap in the Spirit of God. So, somebody says, well, how much time should I spend? Well, that's really hard to answer because everyone's walk is so unique and so different. I'm just going to give it a shot and try to be a little bit general with you. Generally speaking, I'm going to say, you want at least an hour a day. I'm hoping somebody's going like, whoa, an hour. I was doing good if I could find 10 minutes. Well, work your way up. 10, 15, 20. But you will be surprised when you invest into it. You'll be delighted with what will open up in your heart. Now, I think if you can go for two hours, now you're starting to really find something in the secret place. Three hours is awesome. But you say, well, Bob, how are you getting those kinds of numbers? Well, Mark 1:35, Jesus spent some time. It says, In the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, he went down and departed to a solitary place and there he prayed. So the example of our Lord seemed to be more than a 15-minute hit-and-run. It seemed like when it says a long while before daylight, I don't think the Lord wants to put a time on it to say you've got to do this much, you know, so many minutes. It's not a legalistic thing, but it's the invitation to follow Jesus to the secret place and discover the joy of what could be as we give ourselves to it. Now, I'm the kind of person, one of my favorite things to do in life is to kill two birds with one stone. And in America, that expression means if you can accomplish two things in one activity. I'm always trying to kill two birds with one stone. But if you take that mentality into the secret place and are always trying to do something else at the same time, such as, I have my secret place in my car on my way to work, or I have my secret place while I'm working out. Now, I love the fact that you're praying on your way to work, and I love the fact that you're praying while you're working out. Do all that. But if your secret place is all about doing two things at once, you're not going to find the glory of the potential of what Jesus modeled for us and what's available in Christ. Your discipline in the secret place actually starts the evening before. So, evening before, start looking at the clock, know your body, know your scheduling. How does your body work? Are you better with caffeine? Better without caffeine? What time of day? Are you better with a nap? Without a nap? If you have exercise, is it bright? Does it have to be a little bit? You know, the ambiance. My wife, if there are toys scattered all over the floor, she cannot have a quiet time. She just has to get that room cleaned up first. It's got to be orderly. So, whatever you have to do to set it up, it starts the night before. And I want to point out one thing here that is essential for me. Keep a notepad handy to jot down stuff that comes to mind. Because when I'm in the secret place and all of a sudden I think, oh, I've got to mow the lawn, and if I don't write it down, the whole time I'm thinking to myself, okay, how am I going to fit that in? I've got to remember. Oh, I can't forget. So, I just write that thing down and then it's, I know I'll get to it, and now I can focus again. Verse 3, Proverbs 2, verse 3. Yes, if you cry out for discernment and lift up your voice for understanding. This is a reference to having a desperate cry in your heart for the knowledge of Christ. And then verse 4, Proverbs 2, verse 4. If you seek her as silver and search for her as for hidden treasures. To search for treasure, for me, that means study. Now, studying is a different muscle group than reading. So, study. Now, I'm using some tools to help me. I personally am a fan of a cross-reference Bible. I love these little cross-references in the middle column. I find them real helpful. If you've never used a concordance, somebody needs to teach you how to use a concordance. Just don't let it rest until you learn. Now, there's three different ways to do a concordance. You can use a book, a concordance that comes in a book. You can use Bible software in your computer that does the exact same thing. You can do word searches, word studies with Bible software. Or you can go online and find online Bible study helps that you can actually use online. So, whether you're using a book or whether you're using Bible software or you're using online software to help you, find out how to do word searches so that you can pursue ideas in the Word of God, themes and topics, and go deep into the Word of God. So, here's what Proverbs 2 is telling us. He's saying, Journal, be disciplined, cry out for understanding, and study. Verse 5, Then you will understand the fear of the Lord and find the knowledge of God. Lord Jesus, I ask that you would help us to gain the knowledge of Christ. We have to know you, and may you empower us to treasure your words, to come after your face, to know you in your fullness.