Smith Wigglesworth- How to Make the Secret Place Your Habitation
When we think about living in a specific place, we can simply own a residence there and occasionally visit, for vacations for example. Then, we could have a place that we have made our primary residence, or we abide there. But that does not mean we are there now and making it our home, that is what we call a habitation.
“Because you have made the Lord, who is my refuge, even the Most High, your dwelling place.”
Psalm 91: 9
The Hebrew for “dwelling place” is “Ma’own,” and it means habitation, or the place where we occupy. Out of our love for Jesus we seek to know more and more, and we long to press into the deeper waters with Him.
Smith Wigglesworth explained:
“There is something more in the believer than words. Words are of little effect without they have a personal manifestation of God.”
We need to be so in love with Him that His Words mean everything to us. When He speaks, everything else fades, and He instantly captures our whole being. Nothing else matters except to hear Him speak.
“Has the Lord as great delight in burnt offerings and sacrifices, as in obeying the voice of the Lord? Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice, and to heed than the fat of rams.”
1 Samuel 15: 22
In Hebrew, the word for obeying and obey, is “shama” meaning to hear, and for heed, “qashab” meaning to be attentive to someone. Think about that for a moment! The Lord takes great desire, delight, pleasure, and longing for us to hear His voice and treasure Him so that we obey Him. When we make Him “my Refuge” and “my God,” and you understand He is the Highest, then every Word He speaks drips with gold and carries absolute weight and authority.
We want to walk where His Words of life penetrate and impact our lives and carry His life through us to bless others. Real believers should be carriers of His life.
Smith explained:
“This is one of those wonderful and divine truths of God which bring to the life, heart affection, which verifies in every condition of life that they are of God. This is one those essential truths that shall give to us a clear discernment of our position in Christ. God wants us all to be so built up in truth, righteousness, and the life of God that every person we come in contact with may know of a truth that we are of God.”
People should recognize that we have something. His life is transforming us and bringing hope to all we meet. So, how desperate are we to know Him? Do we deliberately make Him our habitation, or in other words, is our whole life now built around Him? He is everything, and we must continuously seek and hear His voice.
Smith explained:
“The Word is a live fact to work in the human body living truths, changing it, moving it till the person is a living fact of god’s inheritance, till He is in the body reigning, in the world, over it. In conversation or activity he is a production of God.”
We disciple ourselves to get aside daily and even throughout the day to hear Him through His Word. Smith refused to go anywhere without His Bible and even offered to pay people money if they caught him without a Bible. He understood the need in the Secret Place to allow the Word to have its full course in us. The Word is the authority. Whether we are offended by it, don’t understand it, etc., we know His Word is from everlasting to everlasting.
“You have dealt well with Your servant, O Lord, according to Your Word.”
Psalm 119: 65
We also know:
“Forever, O Lord, Your Word is settled in Heaven.”
Psalm 119: 89
Now, in the Secret Place, we establish His Word in our hearts and let it reign over our minds. We receive the whole Word and refuse none of it.
“The entirety of Your Word is truth”
Psalm 119: 160
As we make the Secret Place our habitation, we recognize His absolute value in our lives, His authority, and the fact that we need Him. No matter what we face, we understand He is Most High or greater. He is the Almighty God, unlimited in resources, unrestricted in ability, and unlimited in knowledge. It is here that we attend to His Word and cry out to Him for ears to hear and eyes to see.
Smith explained:
“This is truth, it is the Word of God, it is God Himself portrayed in Word. You see God in the Word. God can manifest Himself through that Word till we become a living factor of that truth because God is light and in Him is no darkness. God is life. God is revelation. God is manifestation, and God is operation.”
Think back over Creation and how the Lord simply spoke and complex systems, organisms, molecules and elements, all came into existence bound my complex laws, all fulfilling a purpose and being fine-tuned. Yes, complex processes beyond our imagination, all in the heart of Father, called forth by His Word. His Word, filled with creative power and life, produced exactly what He desired.
In the same way, when He speaks His Word, brings the creative solutions we need, produces fruit, and honors Him. Smith explained:
“Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ is born of God.’ What is the outcome of being born of God? God’s life, God’s truth, God’s walk, God’s communion, fellowship, oneness, like-mindedness. All that pertained to holiness, righteousness and truth comes forth out of this new birth unto righteousness.”
He speaks His Words into our life and brings forth the real and perfect us from us. He takes us as we are and so radically transforms us that the perfect person emerges. Smith added:
“Again, it is an impartation of love, an expression of Himself, for God is love. The first breathing or revelation of light of the new creation within the soul is so pure, so unadulterated, so perfect and so righteous that if we go back to when you were first enlightened and had the revelation, when you first believed in your heart, you felt so holy, you felt you loved so much you were in a paradise of wonderment. You had no desire for sin and sin had lost its desire.”
The world seeks love but can never truly find it. What it claims to be love is self-destructive, self-hating, and a desire to run from themselves. They have no security and blame everyone else, thinking that it would all be good if everyone else accepted them.
But as we make Him our habitation, we find real love, and suddenly, we are secure, clean, and alive. It doesn’t matter if no one changes or accepts us; we know we are accepted. We are kept and begin to see the real us, hidden beyond a veil all our lives. Yes, the veil is torn, and we find ourselves broken, facing the real us, perfected in Him. We are free, and we are loved.
Smith said:
“The Holy Ghost is jealous over us this morning. How He longs for us to catch the breath of His Spirit. How He longs for us to be moved in union with Himself that there may not be a thought in Heaven but that the Holy Ghost could breathe through the natural and so chasten it by His divine plan, so that you should have a new faith or a revelation of God. You would be so perfect before Him that there would not be a thing that Satan could say contrary to His child.”
We find we want to dance and sing because we have found love, real love, and for the first time, we can love. We can love ourselves so now we can finally love others. His Word will only produce is true love in our lives because He reveals Him and His heart.
Smith said:
“Oh, beloved, I see through glorious truths a new dawning, assemblies loving one another, all of one accord. Until that time comes, there will be deficiencies. Hear what the Scriptures says: “…every one that loveth him that begat loveth him also that is begotten of him’ (1 John 5: 1), ‘By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another’ (John 13: 35). Love is the secret and center of the divine position. Build upon God.”
The proof of our making the Secret Place our habitation is the divine love. It overflows like a river. We see the deepest longings of the Father for each of us and how He longs that not one of us would perish. Even more than that, He sees the real us hidden underneath all the masks, and He wants to polish us and make us a perfect gem, a blessing to this generation. His love never lowers its standards and settles for our ways, but His love is constant and unchanging and always lifting us into the divine position in Christ.
