secret Santa or secret Satan?

This morning I read this challenge from Oswald.

 
. . whatever you do, do all to the glory of God — 1 Corinthians 10:31

 

In the Scriptures, the great miracle of the incarnation slips into the ordinary life of a child; the great miracle of the transfiguration fades into the demon-possessed valley below; the glory of the resurrection descends into a breakfast on the seashore. This is not an anticlimax, but a great revelation of God.

 

We have a tendency to look for wonder in our experience, and we mistake heroic actions for real heroes. It’s one thing to go through a crisis grandly, yet quite another to go through every day glorifying God when there is no witness, no limelight, and no one paying even the remotest attention to us. If we are not looking for halos, we at least want something that will make people say, “What a wonderful man of prayer he is!” or, “What a great woman of devotion she is!” If you are properly devoted to the Lord Jesus, you have reached the lofty height where no one would ever notice you personally. All that is noticed is the power of God coming through you all the time.

 

We want to be able to say, “Oh, I have had a wonderful call from God!” But to do even the most humbling tasks to the glory of God takes the Almighty God Incarnate working in us. To be utterly unnoticeable requires God’s Spirit in us making us absolutely humanly His. The true test of a saint’s life is not successfulness but faithfulness on the human level of life. We tend to set up success in Christian work as our purpose, but our purpose should be to display the glory of God in human life, to live a life “hidden with Christ in God” in our everyday human conditions (Colossians 3:3). Our human relationships are the very conditions in which the ideal life of God should be exhibited.

If I tell you that I have a secret, the assumption in our society is that this is bad news. If I have a secret that is about to be exposed, the assumption is that I am about to be embarrassed.

 

This says two very powerful things about us.

(1) We more often than not have secret sin that goes unconfessed. So much so that if someone articulated that we were going to gather together because someone had discovered a secret about you, you would dread going to this meeting. What is it that they know? How did they find it out? What will everyone do when they find out? We keep secrets more often than not because we know we are wrong. We know that people are depraved. We know it because we know it about ourselves.

(2) More often than not, even Christians fail to follow Jesus’ advice in doing good works for the sake of God and not merely for approval. We do not have nearly as many good secrets as we do bad secrets. The only things we tend to keep secret are bad things. We tend to speak loudly and often about good things we do and have done. Most of us could benefit from having more secret service. It would do us well to intentionally do some things for the sake of service to God and our neighbor in ways that cannot afford us credit. But we do not seek to do good in secret. We seek to do bad in secret.

 

We should have more secrets. Christian secrets. Good works of service that only God sees. We should demonstrate our belief and faith in God more by serving in ways that present themselves. Simply doing the task at hand will often go overlooked. By most. But God sees all. Place faith in Him Who knows and rewards those who earnestly seek Him, believing He rewards those who do so

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