Secrets

Daniel 12:4 “But you, Daniel, keep these words secret and seal the book until the time of the end. Many will roam about, and knowledge will increase.” 

God told Daniel a secret.  It was a pretty mind-blowing one, too.  He told him about the end of days and all that would happen.  He gave him a window into the future.  It must have been a humbling experience to have God tell him stuff like that.  And it isn’t just that God told him stuff like that – God told ONLY him stuff like that.  It was a secret from God’s heart to his.

Do you yearn for that kind of relationship with God?  Do you pursue Him in prayer like Daniel did?  Are you putting yourself in a position to have God tell you a secret?

Here’s the thing about secrets: they usually come in the form of a whisper.  Therefore you can’t hear them if there is a bunch of noise around.  You can’t hear a secret whispered in your ear if you are talking.  You can’t hear God’s secret if life’s noise is drowning out His voice.  You can’t hear His secret if you don’t stop talking.  I believe that God speaks to His people.  I believe He has a secret for you.  But you will never hear it unless you put yourself in a quiet place and listen.

When you hear from God

Daniel 2:17-20  17 Then Daniel went to his house and told his friends Hananiah, Mishael, and Azariah about the matter, 18 urging them to ask the God of heaven for mercy concerning this mystery, so Daniel and his friends would not be killed with the rest of Babylon’s wise men. 19 The mystery was then revealed to Daniel in a vision at night, and Daniel praised the God of heaven 20 and declared: May the name of God be praised forever and ever, for wisdom and power belong to Him. 

God speaks.  But it isn’t always easy to hear Him, is it?  It isn’t always easy to know what direction He is leading us.  So we keep on praying, keep on asking, keep on seeking.  It can be tiring and requires patience.  Then it comes, that still small voice.  Or maybe He gives us a dream or a vision.  It is a glorious thing to hear from our God, a marvelous feeling to hear His direction.

So what do you do when you hear from God?  What is your response?  There are some obvious answers like “obey His instructions” or “have peace in my situation.”  But there is a response that should come before all that.  It was Daniel’s response and we can learn from it.  You see, Daniel declared, “May the name of God be praised.”   His first response was to praise God and bring glory to Him.  He made it known that the wisdom he was about to share was from the Lord, not him.

This is the proper response to hearing from God: praise Him.  Thank Him for loving you and for speaking to you.  Give Him glory and honor.  Doing so will keep you heart in the right place, a place of surrender to Him.  And as you walk out a surrendered heart, you are setting yourself up for hearing from Him over and over again.

God left that part out

1 Samuel 15:10-12   10 Then the word of the LORD came to Samuel: 11 “I am grieved that I have made Saul king, because he has turned away from me and has not carried out my instructions.” Samuel was troubled, and he cried out to the LORD all that night.  12 Early in the morning Samuel got up and went to meet Saul, but he was told, “Saul has gone to Carmel. There he has set up a monument in his own honor and has turned and gone on down to Gilgal.”

Have you ever wondered out why God leaves out some of the details?  We may spend hours with Him as He speaks to us, affirms us, and unfolds His promises for us.  We leave our time together feeling refreshed and even on a bit of a spiritual high.  “I can’t believe God just charted the waters for me!”  I hope you know what I am talking about, that mountaintop experience.  It is unparalleled with anything else I have ever experienced.  It is time with my Savior.

Then it happens – the mundane.  My next step doesn’t seem to line up with what He just told me.  But I am certain I heard Him right.  What’s going on?  Apparently it happened to Samuel, too.  Yes, Samuel.   He was one of the most anointed, greatest prophets ever and he had to stop and ask for directions immediately after a mountaintop experience.  Does this seem strange to anyone else besides me?  Samuel had just spent all night with the Lord crying out to Him.  God spoke directly to him; I bet it was even an audible voice.  God tells Samuel to give a message to Saul.  So he gets up the next morning and goes to see Saul, but Saul isn’t there.  Now for many of us, we would probably start to question if we heard God right.  “Oh, good.  I’m off the hook.  Saul isn’t here so I don’t have to deliver the message now.  I must have heard God wrong.”  No, no, no, no, no.  That isn’t the case at all.  You just have to find Saul.

I don’t really get why God didn’t just tell Samuel that Saul had gone to Carmel.  But I also don’t think it unspiritual that Samuel asked for directions.  Some might say, “why didn’t he just ask God where Saul was?”  Well, I don’t know.  All I know is that he didn’t.  He asked some people.  Through those people, he found Saul and delivered the message from the Lord.  It was just a speed bump and it didn’t stop him; it just slowed him down.

Speed bumps seem to stop us, though.  We treat them more like stop signs than detours.  Friends, we need to face the fact that God isn’t always going to tell us everything.  In fact, He rarely tells us everything.  But when we show up to a place of obedience and the situation doesn’t look right, that doesn’t mean we should shrug off what He told us to do.  We might just need to ask for directions.  Samuel didn’t seem to get hung up on having to be practical and I don’t think we should either.