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Questions on The Practice of Secrecy
By CRCC | June 13, 2006
I had one explicit question that came up last night after the service that I’ll address this morning in the blog. I also had another question given to me verbally about the relationship between acts of service and the practice of secrecy. I’ll address the latter question in two weeks as we move forward in our series on spiritual disciplines: “Living a Life of Promise.” Again, if you have not yet heard the first message in this series, please check it out here, as it provides an important foundation for the whole topic. Also, please know that the whole reason that God desires us to enter into training for Godliness, as Paul says in 1 Timothy 4:7-8, is because there is a life of promise to be found there. God desires that you might experience his grace more and more often. So now, with that, to our question.
In the message I shared a personal illustration of when at a conference luncheon I offered to help in a few different ways with the project that was being presented. It was given by a domestic violence prevention organization in our area and I wanted to offer my assistance in grant-writing or evaluation (which is my business, in partnership with another psychologist). Anyway, after sharing my ideas on this for a little while one of the leaders turned to me and said: “You know what the narcissist did when the choir was warming up? Instead of singing ‘do re me fa so la ti do’ all he did was sing ‘me me me me me.’” I then shared in the message that I didn’t quite get where he was coming from at first; however, after a few seconds I realized that he perceived me as tooting my own horn (or blowing my own trumpet to keep within the framework of last night’s passage, Matthew 6:1-4). So here was the question I received: “Did you think the guy who said that to you was a jerk?”
Being very honest, I would have to say, “yes” I thought he was pretty abrasive in that comment to me. In fact, I struggled with the comment for the rest of the day as I felt very misunderstood. While he took me to be offering good works to help myself get noticed, what Jesus suggests we should not do, I was simply wanting to be of service to something I believed in, and in a pro bono fashion at that. But that’s not the point. Remember the Dallas Willard quote from last night? “We tend to lose our peace joy and purpose when we feel as if we are overlooked or unknown or misunderstood.” That’s exactly where I was! What it says to me is that I’m still at some level quite invested in how others perceive me; I care a lot that I’m perceived as a guy who wouldn’t do something like he was suggesting and was knocked down a peg or two or three because of the misunderstanding.
So what’s the grace God desires me to have? It is the grace of living beyond that, living to have God’s opinion of me be the one opinion on which I base my worth as a person. This is where the training in the practice of secrecy comes into play. It is the tool that allows me to care more and more and more about His thoughts while simultaneously having the thoughts and opinions (and misunderstandings) of others shape my own worth less and less. In that, God is offering nothing less than real freedom from something that tends to plague us, and diminish our joy, on a regular basis!
Thanks for the great question!
Reed
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