“He that dwells in the Secret Place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
Psalm 91: 1
The word for “Secret Place” in Psalm ninety-one is “cether,” which means: covering, shelter, hiding, secret, or secret place.
Listen to the words of Jesus regarding prayer:
“But 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., And when you pray, do not use vain repetitions as the heathen do. For they think that they will ne heard for their many words. Therefore, do not be like them. For your Father knows the things you have need of before you ask Him.”
Matthew 6: 6-8
The Lord God designed prayer, and therefore, if we are to truly pray and be effective in our prayer life, we must do it His way. The inheritance of every believer is the Secret Place, and it is there He calls us to come in prayer to truly meet with Him and enter into sweet, holy communion with Him.
The truth is we were created for such communion, and it is critical to our life. When we fell, we lost this communion, and we were banned and blocked from entering the Secret Place to meet with Him. But now, through His blood and the finished work of the Cross, we have been given away.
So, how do we enter the Secret Place to meet with Him?
- We Must Come through the Finished Work of the Cross
There is only one way into the Secret Place- through the Cross, that is the finished work of the Cross.
“Jesus said to him, I am the way and the truth and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me.”
John 14: 6
John G. Lake said-
Christ, the power of God, can change your life. He can make a new creature out of you. Old things will pass away and all things will become new (2 Corinthians 5:17). Old things are passed away. That is the power of the cross. All things are become new. That is the power of being raised in newness of life in Him (Romans 6:4).
When Jesus declared, ‘It is finished!” on the Cross, our salvation was purchased now, all we have to do is come and in faith, believe it what He did on the Cross and receive it in our lives.
The early Church understood the power of the Cross and that it was only through the Cross that people were changed. The message of the Cross offended many and caused others to stumble. Lake explained:
“Wherever they went they were telling that the cross of the Nazarene is the center of religion. It is the secret of authority and government. It is the inspiration of true culture to human life. Men laughed. They stumbled over it. Men were against it emotionally, morally, and intellectually.”
The only way to come and know Him is through the finished work of the Cross, which is either a way to life or a stumbling block. We need the Holy Spirit to open our eyes to see what Jesus did on the Cross. The Cross stiff offends today and causes many to stumble, as Lake explained:
“Men are still intellectually tripped by it. They revolt against it. The cross is still bearing a stigma.”
When Jesus declared on the Cross, ‘It is finished!’ the veil blocking access to the Holy of Holies was torn, allowing us to come through the power of His blood. The Holy Spirit comes to make known to us the Cross and what it means in our lives. As we receive that revelation and who we are as a consequence of the Cross, we are given access to the Holy of Holies. Entrance into the Holy of Holies is only by the blood of Jesus! Lakes explained:
“Jesus of Nazareth did His work in the world, shed His tears over mankind, labored in the Spirit for their salvation, died on the cross and shed His blood. But Jesus my Lord, bless God came forth out of the tomb, a living, glorified, regnant sovereign of earth and heaven, with all power and authority within His hand. Hallelujah! Jesus of Nazareth was my Lord in the days of His humiliation, but Jesus the Christ at the eternal Throne is the divine manifestation of the overcoming of God. The ultimate of all perfection, the final manifestation of all that is God-like. Hallelujah.
- We Must Receive Jesus the Living Word
“So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”
Romans 10: 17
Jesus is the Living Word! His Word is established in Heaven and is forever settled, and it needs to be settled in our hearts. You can’t separate the Word from Him, and as believers, we are to be identified because we believe the Word.
Lake explained:
“For the Church of God and Christian faith to become strong and to be built up in God, it is necessary to get a good foundation. It is a greater problem with most builders to get the old rubbish out of the way than to do the building. If we will look at our own lives, we will observe this: that the things that have been rooted and grounded in our hearts- some traditions of the fathers, some of it misconception of the meaning of the Word of God; much of our teaching is fragmented- these form the greatest obstacles to the engrafting of the living Word of God.”
We must humble ourselves before the Word, and bring all our thoughts, opinions, and feelings into obedience to Him, the Living Word. Lake added-
“Every one of us who have progressed in God have found the difficulty was not in believing the Word of God, but the difficulty was to get away from things that were settled in our hearts as facts, though untrue.”
Jesus told us that if we are His disciples, we will abide in His Word (John 8: 31). He further explained that He, the Living Word, is the Vine, and we are the branches. Our spiritual life is dependent upon abiding in Him. Jesus added:
“If you abide in Me, and My Words abide in you, ask what you desire, and it shall be given to you.”
John 15: 7
Our abiding in the Secret Place is our abiding in the Vine, in Him, and His Word abiding in us.
Therefore, we must allow the Holy Spirit to open the Word to us. A holy fear must invade us that we must listen to Him. But remember, everything of the Holy Spirit bears the fruit of the Spirit and aligns with the Word. The enemy and the spirit of religion will always seek to hold people captive by the letter of the Law, an opinion of the Word, and its fruit is always death. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there will always be liberty.
Lake added-
“If there is a question that is not clearly decided according to your vision in the common court of the Gospel, then refer it to the supreme court, which is the words of Jesus, and the words of Jesus will settle anything that is in your mind.”
The foundation of the Secret Place is the Word. It is not experiences, doctrines of men, opinions, or political ideas but the Word. When Jesus returns to the earth, we are told, “His Name is the Word of God” (Revelation 19: 13). The enemy hates the Word and has launched an all out attack on the Word, seeking to deceive people to believe the Word is not true, but simply stories. We see when Jesus the Word came to His hometown, they rejected Him seeing Him as commonplace, and thereby denying the power of the Word. He was to them a person and not the Lord God. In the same way, the enemy wants us to see the Word as a book and not the Living Word of God!
In the Secret Place, the Holy Spirit comes and opens the Word, and you hear it spoken from the Lord’s lips, coming from His heart, and spoken to our hearts. Here, faith arrives, and we stand fully persuaded.
- We must Choose the Secret Place to be Our Abiding Place
The call is to make the Secret Place our permanent residence. Many believers go from experience to experience but never come to the abiding in Him. Why? Because there is a price and commitment to laying down your roots and making your home in the Secret Place of His Presence.
Lake explained:
Beloved, God wants us to come, to stay, and to live in that abiding place which is the Christian’s estate. This is the heavenly place in Christ Jesus. This is the secret place of the most high. Bless God!
Jesus made it clear that we must abide in the vine-
“Remain in Me, and I (will remain) in you. Just as no branch can bear fruit by itself without remaining in the vine, neither can you (bear fruit, producing evidence of your faith) unless you remain in Me.”
John 15: 4 Amplified
Our relationship with Jesus must always be growing and always ‘Now.” It is not where we were yesterday but where we are now. We must continue to grow up and mature in Him. The Secret Place is all about a now relationship with Him where we continue to abide in Him and grow in Him.
- We must be spiritually hungry
As long as we can make it happen or do it by ourselves, we will. But when we come to an end, and we finally understand that we need Him, we become desperate. What we must have must go beyond transient desperation to a deep spiritual hunger. When we get hungry, we recognize our true need is Him, and we must have Him. We gain an ongoing holy desperation for Him.
Jesus said-
“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”
Matthew 5: 6
Lake explained-
“Hunger is a mighty good thing. It is the greatest persuader… There is a certain spirit of desperation that accompanies hunger.”
We need to learn to be content but not satisfied. Our spiritual hunger must grow daily. We must never become stationary. We also find that the Lord puts in us a hunger for more of Him. When we became born again and thus spiritually alive, our spirit being was created needing fellowship with the Lord. It hungers for it.
“I see on the other hand that there must be a tremendous hunger, an overwhelming hunger, for the Lord’s coming in the hearts of men, so that a prayer such as was never prayed in the world before for Christ to come will rise to heaven.”
Hunger should stir such a prayer in our hearts where we must lay hold of Him. Nothing else will satisfy. Like the woman with the issue of blood, nothing will stand in our way.
Lake explained:
“God’s purposes come to pass when your heart and mine gets the real God cry, and the real God prayer comes into our spirit and, the real God yearning gets our nature. Something is going to happen.”
This is the Secret Place! He truly becomes our all and all, and we sell out to have it.
