The Secret Place

What made Jesus’s ministry so powerful wasn’t just the signs, wonders, and miracles He performed. It wasn’t just His ability to preach and teach with authority. It wasn’t just His ability to cast out devils and raise the dead. Yes, all those things were extraordinary. Jesus was marvelously endowed with power from the Holy Spirit, but that wasn’t the only thing that fueled His public ministry. Jesus lived and dwelled in the secret place.

Scripture shows us that Jesus often went to a solitary place to pray.

And when He had sent the multitudes away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray.

—Matthew 14:23

Now in the morning, having risen a long while before daylight, He went out and departed to a solitary place, and there He prayed.

—Mark 1:35

He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed.

—Luke 5:16

Now it came to pass in those days that He went out to the mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.

—Luke 6:12

I find it interesting that in Luke 11:1 after the disciples had followed Jesus around for a while and had seen the miracles and signs of His power, they asked Him to teach them how to pray. The disciples recognized that Jesus’s public ministry was marked by intimate prayer, and they wanted to understand what made Jesus’s prayer life different from what they previously had seen and been taught.

When Jesus explained how to pray, He told His disciples:

And when you pray, you shall not be like the hypocrites. For they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the corners of the streets, that they may be seen by men. Assuredly, I say to you, they have their reward. But 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.

—Matthew 6:5–6

One of the most important doors that unlocks deep intimacy with the Holy Spirit is valuing the secret place. This is the foundation for deep communion with God. As its name implies, the secret place is not a public space. It is where no one sees. There are no cheers or applause, no outside voices or opinions. There is only an audience of One.

Why is the secret place so important to the Holy Spirit? Because He wants to exchange His thoughts and His very heart with you from that place. In the secret place, there are no hindrances or distractions because it is only Him and you. In secret places, where no one sees, your true thoughts and heart are revealed because there is no facade, no masks, and no acting. In that place, there is full transparency, and the motives and intent of the heart are exposed.

The deepest part of God wants to touch the deepest part of you. The Spirit of God is attracted to a heart that is laid bare before Him because God is truth, and those who go to Him “must worship in spirit and truth” (John 4:24)!

The sin of the Pharisees wasn’t their piety but their hidden motives and desires to be seen and praised by man. They were enthralled with public affirmations and denounced by Jesus because of their secret intentions. God does not see the way man does. “Man looks on the outward appearance, but [it is God who] looks on the heart” (1 Sam. 16:7, MEV). God sees what is secret because He lives in the realm of the secret.

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