I was going through a difficult time recently and a friend jokingly said to me: “Just go to your secret place, there nobody will find you.” Little did she know, that is what I needed to hear. I do have a secret place I like to go to.
To get there, I enter through a white picket gate and follow a path over a river where water lilies grow and dragonflies hover. The path bends to the right and ends in a white pavilion covered in wisteria and glistening in the sun. Surrounded by flowers it beckons me in behind the purple curtain into the very arms of Jesus. He is always there. At times He stands at the entrance, at other times He quietly waits for me inside. But He waits for me expectantly always glad to see me when I enter in.
This is our place, no one else comes here and I can come whenever I want to, wherever I am. People think a secret place is a physical place where people run to, to “get away from it all,” a hiding place or a place where lovers meet. But this is not what I mean by my secret place.
But when you pray, go into your
[most] private room, and, closing the door, pray to your Father, Who is in secret; and your Father, Who sees in secret, will reward you in the open. (Matt 6:6)My secret place is where my spirit communes with the Lord deep in my soul. Rick Renner author of ‘Sparkling Gems from the Greek’ gives some interesting insights into word ‘tameion’, translated as closet in the King James, or private room in the Amplified bible.
During the New Testament times, that inner room or secret place, was the bedroom where husband and wife met to exchange intimacies that only they knew about. In earlier years it used to describe a place where you would hide your most valuable possessions, a secure place where a person would put money or treasure, a safe place for something valuable.
But I like the later idea that it describes a place of intimacy, where secrets are shared only between husband and wife, where no one else may enter. Each one, can bare their heart and share in a relationship so tender. I like that this describes my secret place where I meet Jesus: totally secure, totally safe. This is the secret place where I meet the Lover of my soul, to bare my heart before Him and listen to what His Spirit has to say to me. It is the place where I escape the world, to take part in the mingling of my human spirit with His divine Spirit.
In this secret place we do the daily exchange: my fear for His courage, my pain for His healing, my sorrow for His joy, my anxiety for His peace, my scars for His oil of healing, my ashes for His beauty, my exhaustion for His energy, my sense of being lost with His assurance that I am found, that I am His.
In this secret place I have heard His voice whispering in the silence and felt His arms in the solitude.
It is not a physical place, I can go there anytime by just praying. In doing so, I mentally pull back the curtain of wisteria and I am there in His presence. I don’t have limits to my time there, I can go there whenever I need to, day and night.
All of us have access to a secret place, a “tameion,” in which Jesus waits expectantly. I sometimes use the picture of the garden path to prepare my heart for prayer, as I “walk” in my mind to my “tameion” I think about Who it is I am going to meet there, how much He loves me and that He is waiting to commune with me there. The room is never empty because He promised to “never leave, nor forsake” me (Hebrews 13:5), so I walk, fully expecting to find Him there.
Dear friend, if you are hurting today, afraid, angry, scared, tired or lost, all you have to do is enter through the door of prayer, leave the world behind and go to your secret place and tell the Lover of your soul what is on your heart. He is standing there, waiting for you.
Thank you Lord that I can freely turn to you in prayer whenever I need to. I don’t have to make an appointment, travel a long distance, jump through a number of hoops. I can simply come to You in prayer and share with You everything about my life. Praying is as simple as entering into my secret place.
Do you have a picture in your mind of your secret place? I would love to hear about it. Comment below.
Remember, and Go Find Him Yourself
My secret place is where I am climbing the rungs of a ladder to a mountain-top. I walk across to sit at the edge of the river where it cascades over the edge of the cliff and I gaze into the swirling mists in the valley below and there God opens the ‘misty-curtains’ with a beam of sunshine.
Thank you Lord for my secret place thats so dear to my heart.
I love the sound of your secret places and how Jesus is so real in each of these.
My secret place is a beautiful terraced garden full of blooming azaleas and hydrangeas – there is a pathway into a wooded forest to the right. The pathway leads to a bench overlooking a waterfall where Jesus sits and waits for me. Some days I sit next to Him and talk. Other days I sit silently on the ground in front of him with my head on his lap and I rest in silence or just listen to his voice. Some days, when I am really tired and thirsty, I stand with him facing the waterfall – spray from the waterfall gently wets my face and this I believe this to be the Holy Spirit refreshing me with the living water which flows from the throne of God above.