An apparent paradox
At first glance, the secret place of God appears to create an antinomy, for we are told that God is light and that there is no darkness in Him (1 John 1:5), and that He covers Himself with light as with a garment (Psalm 104:2). Yet we are also told:
He made darkness His secret place; His canopy around Him was dark waters and thick clouds of the skies.” (Psalm 18:11)
We also read in Exodus:
Now all the people witnessed the thunderings, the lightning flashes, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking; and when the people saw it, they trembled and stood afar off. 19 Then they said to Moses, “You speak with us, and we will hear; but let not God speak with us, lest we die.” 20 And Moses said to the people, “Do not fear; for God has come to test you, and that His fear may be before you, so that you may not sin.” 21 So the people stood afar off, but Moses drew near the thick darkness where God was.” (Exodus 20:18–21)
So here we have God dwelling in thick darkness, not just in darkness but in absolute darkness. No wonder the people of Israel were afraid to enter in such an awesome place. For as we all know, in utter darkness, we humans are disorientated and confused. Our self-sufficiency collapses and fear easily takes hold of us. Left alone, we grope for the wall like the blind, and we grope as if we had no eyes; we stumble at noonday as at twilight; we are as dead men in desolate places (Isaiah 59:10). In brief, darkness is not an attractive place for us. We prefer the light, the place where our self-sufficiency resurges, there where we can, by ourselves, control our immediate surroundings.
The importance of knowing God
The person who doesn’t know God will hardly be able to trust in His dependability (see Psalm 9:10), and therefore hardly able to enter in a place of utter darkness as Moses did. This was the case with the children of Israel. They trembled and stood afar off. Amazingly, after all what they had witnessed, they were still ignorant of God’s sufficiency, and their ignorance was engendered by the state of their hearts.
The entrance door
Contrary to us God is not afraid of darkness, for He is as self-sufficient in the dark as He is in the light:
Indeed, the darkness shall not hide from You, but the night shines as the day; the darkness and the light are both alike to You.” (Psalm 139:12)
Faith, genuine faith—from where trust emanates—is the only doorway for whoever wants to enter in God’s secret place, for it is precisely our confidence in God’s capability that will provide us the boldness needed to enter into His hiding place.
Who among you fears the Lord? Who obeys the voice of His Servant? Who walks in darkness and has no light? Let him trust in the name of the Lord and rely upon his God.” (Isaiah 50:10)
David relied upon his God and repeatedly dived into the unknown, and he dived with boldness because he believed God was his lamp and that He was going to enlighten his darkness: “For You are my lamp, O Lord; the Lord shall enlighten my darkness (2 Samuel 22:29). His faith didn’t rest on mere wishes but on what God had told him:
I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will guide you with My eye.” (Psalm 32:8)
David believed God. The rest is history. Later on Paul, following the path of Moses and David, departed from the lukewarm life of self-reliance and entered the realm of darkness:
Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think of anything as being from ourselves, but our sufficiency is from God.” (2 Cor. 3:5)
What I am saying is that the Christian who fears to leave his comfort zone will hardly be able to enter in God’s dwelling, because such a zone is incompatible with His secret place. In other words, to reach God’s dwelling one might have to cross the valley of the shadow of death, so to speak, which is antipodal to any sort of comfort zone. For instance, in the Song of Solomon, the Beloved invites his bride to a place of fellowship (pay attention to the wording):
O my dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the secret places of the cliff, let me see your face, let me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.” (Song of Solomon 2:14)
Here again we have secret places, and they cannot be accessed with ease and self-reliance, for they are situated on the side of a cliff. Therefore faith in God’s assistance and provision is needed to get there.
In the New Testament
Time and again the New Testament testifies of what we have seen so far. For instance, we read:
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.” (Matt. 6:6)
But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face, so that you do not appear to men to be fasting, but to your Father who is in the secret place; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” (Matt. 6:17,18)
To say that the genuine place of fellowship between God and men is rooted in secrecy is to embrace what the Scripture declares. As I quoted earlier: “He made darkness His secret place …” (Psalm 18:11) No wonder there are such scriptures as: “Whatever I tell you in the dark, speak in the light” (Matt. 10:27).
Arulai, one of the early children rescued by Amy Carmichael, founder of “The Donavur Fellowship”, wrote in her Bible when she was an adult: “The man who has no experience in the dark has no secret to communicate in the light.” These words encapsulate quite well one of the neglected aspects of the Christian life, i.e., the bravery of faith, which amounts to a daring departure from self-sufficiency.
I leave you with a poem I wrote some thirty years ago entitled “God of Sinai”.
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