Pursuing Our Destiny, Part 12–The Discipline of Secrecy

But when you pray, go into your room and shut the door and pray to your Father who is in secret.  And your Father who sees in secret will reward you (Mt. 6:6, ESV).

 Jesus practiced what he preached.  If you’ll check out the times in the gospels where Jesus is praying, you’ll find that he’s almost always alone, and often he’s gone to some place no one else knows about.  He made a practice of not “tooting his own horn” like so many religious leaders of his day did with regularity.

It is out of Jesus’ teaching and practice that we get the discipline of secrecy.  It’s not commonly recognized as a spiritual discipline, but those engaged with the disciplines through the centuries have affirmed it as necessary for our formation in Christ.  What does this discipline look like; what does it mean?  I like the definition that Adele Ahlberg Calhoun gives in “The Spiritual Disciplines Handbook”: Secrecy is practicing the spirit of Christ reflected in hiddenness, anonymity, lack of display, and holding of confidences.

To look at it another way, it’s  serving God in the opposite way of the Pharisees.  Do you remember what Jesus said about them?  They do all their deeds to be seen by others.  For they make their phylacteries broad and their fringes long, and they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called “rabbi” by others. (Mt. 23:5-7, ESV)  The discipline of secrecy calls us to do our service for Christ in ways that draw attention to him and away from ourselves.

One writer sees this discipline as “keeping things from common knowledge or view. Giving up credit or praise. Choosing not to let our good deeds and qualities be known to others.”  He goes on to say that “secrecy allows you to do acts of love, kindness, sacrifice and service for others in the name of Jesus Christ without taking credit for it. You do things but nobody gets to know about it except God. Your reward is in heaven.”

Many of us are addicted to praise, affirmation, and acceptance.  We want people to see what we do because we “need” their approval.  Once we go down that road, we continually have to feed the monster we’ve created.  Ultimately, it will destroy us and leave us with no eternal rewards.  Like the Pharisees, we’ll already have received our reward, and it will leave us empty and unfulfilled.

The secrecy discipline also applies to our praying.  There is value in taking our needs and requests only to God and trusting him to hear, answer, and meet our needs.  We so often tell others more than we tell God, and our faith isn’t strengthened when others come to our aid.  Telling God alone and then waiting for God alone to meet the need will strengthen us and increase our faith.  There is value in staying in the prayer closet and keeping what happens in the closet between us and God while we wait on him!

Let me close my thinking with some words from Dallas Willard.  Secrecy at its best teaches love and humility before God and others.  And that love and humility encourages us to see our associates in the best possible light, even to the point of our hoping they will do better and appear better than us.  It actually becomes possible for us to “do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than ourselves. (Philippians 2:3)

How might God want us to practice the spiritual discipline of secrecy this week?  — Pastor John Strain blogs weekly on Freedom Fighter and is available for pulpit supply

Daily Bible Reading: Psalm 72-73; Acts 26

Quote of the day: The…duty rests on you, not to take up with mere surface reading. You must have your whole mind in it. For what use were your minds given but for this ? Be sure there is depth enough for the deepest mind. Go, then, and ask the Spirit to enlighten you fully. Do not be content with mere babe’s meat, but with meat for strong men, as the Lord grant. Robert Murray M’Cheyne

Verse to Memorize: I cry out to the Lord with my whole heart; Hear me, O Lord! I will keep your statutes. I cry out to You; save me and I will keep your testimonies. Psalm 119:145-146