“Have no regard for his outward appearance, nor for the maturity of his stature, because I have refused him. For man does not see as God sees; for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord sees into the heart.” -Samuel the Prophet of God
It was spoken that “your Father who sees in secret will reward you openly.” The focus of this teaching was the basics of spiritual living: prayer, fasting, and alms giving (Matthew 6:1-18). However, God is not simply interested in what you do, but why you do it. The Apostle Paul wrote that faith without love is nothing and there is no profit in our works if they are not done in love (1 Cor.13:1-3). God is seeing if what we are doing is to obey His commandments to love Him above all things and others as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:36-40).
Some do works and proclaim faith as hypocrites. They are like actors in a show, strutting and fretting their hour upon the stage, hoping to get something from their audience. However, when all is said and done actors only play pretend and though they may fool the world, they cannot fool God.
Some even try to do good works to fool themselves. They work hard at doing good, hoping to feel like a good person. However, this feeling is meaningless since all have sinned and will probably sin in the future. The rag which they try clean themselves with is already dirty with the filth of their past. No matter how they try to clean themselves, their past dirt is always upon them.
Then where is the “secret place” if even in the isolation of our hearts we deceive ourselves? This is because isolation is not the goal of Spiritual living. The goal of a Spiritual life is one which is in communion with God who sees into the heart. If what we do is about pleasing God, then we must look into the heart of God and see if our hearts are aligned with His. What we need to clean ourselves is not our old tired rag filled with stains we can never wash off. What we need is a clean rag, one which can never get dirty regardless of its use. This is the Grace of God given to us through the Lord Jesus Christ. Spiritual living is about living for Christ and through Him so that we no longer need to play pretend but can learn to live in truth.
This concludes the introduction to Secrets Revealed. This three part series will continue tomorrow with fasting through the Testimony of the Prophet Daniel
