Ultimate Security: Finding a Refuge in Difficult Times (11 page)

Conditions for Total Security

We need to take note of the conditions for coming into the total security of which the psalmist speaks.

Dwelling in the “Secret Place”

In the
New International Version
, Psalm 91:1 reads,
“He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High….”
In the King James Version and the
New King James Version
, the word
“shelter”
is translated
“secret place.”
I believe
“secret place”
is an excellent translation, because the root meaning of the Hebrew word is “a secret.” Therefore, I prefer to read the verse in this way: “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty.”

“Dwells”
speaks of someone who has a continuing position in God, rather than someone who merely runs into the secret place in a time of crisis. The psalm therefore depicts someone whose dwelling—whose permanent, abiding situation—is in the secret place of the Most High.

The Hebrew word translated
“rest”
is frequently used of spending the night. Therefore, the psalm would suggest that, during the hours of darkness, we will have a place of complete protection.

Making a Bold Personal Confession

A second condition for security is found in Psalm 91:2:
“I will say of the L
ord
, ‘He is my refuge and my fortress….’”
The psalmist declared what he believed about God. So, this second essential condition is making a bold, personal confession of one’s faith in God and one’s relationship to Him.

As we noted earlier in this book, we must not merely believe in our hearts, but we must also say with our mouths what we believe.
“Let the redeemed of the
Lord
say so, whom He has redeemed from the hand of the enemy”
(Psalm 107:2 nkjv). Redemption is not effective until we speak it, making it effective by our own personal confession.

We must not merely believe in our hearts,
but we must also say with our mouths what we believe.

Having understood the conditions that must be met, let us now consider the various forms of trouble against which protection is promised in Psalm 91:
“the fowler’s snare,” “the deadly pestilence,” “the terror of night,” “the arrow that flies by day,” “the pestilence that stalks in the darkness,”
and
“the plague that destroys at midday.”
Then, we are guaranteed protection against anything that lays men low:
“A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.”

My Experiences with God’s Protection

To confirm what I have been saying about the secret place of the Most High, I want to briefly present some of my own experiences. I personally witnessed this protection of total security as a British soldier in the desert of North Africa during World War II. One day, when the German forces were raining down bombs on our area, I was sitting calmly in the middle of the desert—watching the bombs fall in a ring all around me. Not a single bomb came near me. While I was sitting there, these words came to me so clearly:
“A thousand may fall at your side, ten thousand at your right hand, but it will not come near you.”
It was clear to me that God was my personal Refuge and Fortress.

During the birth of the State of Israel in 1948, I was living in Jerusalem with my first wife, Lydia, and the eight girls we had adopted. At that time, we witnessed many of the perils that are described in Psalm 91. Because of the conflict between the Jews and the surrounding Arab nations, there was a desperate shortage of food and water among the whole Jewish population. Yet, in a sovereign way, God continually provided us with sufficient food and water.

When the war actually broke out in Jerusalem, there was continual danger from artillery shelling and sniper fire in the streets. One day, our eldest daughter, Tikva, was crossing the street, and a person walking beside her was shot down. The person right next to her in the street perished, but she was protected.

Because the house in Jerusalem where we were living was less than a quarter of a mile from the front line of the battle, we lived for about six weeks in the laundry room below the basement. When we emerged, we discovered that over one hundred fifty window panes in our house had been broken by bullets. On another occasion, a bullet ricocheted into a room of our house where we were sitting. The bullet just slithered down Lydia’s leg, but it did her no harm.

When I teach about “the secret place of the Most High,” I am not offering just a theory. His “hiding place” is something I have experienced and proved.

17

THE DOOR TO THE SECRET PLACE

Let us continue to examine the ways in which we discover God’s security for us when we meet His conditions. In considering “the secret place of the Most High,” which we discussed in the previous chapter, a question arises: How can we enter into the secret place of the Most High and make our dwelling there?

Obviously, a secret place is hidden. It is not advertised. There is no sign hanging out front telling us that this is the secret place. (If there were such a sign, it would not be a secret place anymore!) So, this secret place must be searched for and found.

Finding the Secret Place

There are some beautiful words in the book of Job that I believe relate to finding this secret place. Job asked,
“But where can wisdom be found?”
(Job 28:12). Please remember what we learned earlier: It is the wisdom of God’s Word that offers us total security. (See Proverbs 1:33.)

Job pondered just where God had hidden the secret place of wisdom:
“The deep says, ‘It is not in me’; the sea says, ‘It is not with me’”
(Job 28:14). The secret place is not hidden somewhere in the depths of the sea. In addition, no animal, bird, or beast knows the way to it:

It is hidden from the eyes of every living thing, concealed even from the birds of the air. Destruction and Death say, “Only a rumor of it has reached our ears.” God understands the way to it and he alone knows where it dwells. (Job 28:21–23)

Most of us are familiar with stories of old castles with secret doors that opened to hidden passageways. Usually, this secret door was covered by something like a tapestry or a large portrait. Behind this covering, there was generally some little device that had to be pressed for the door to swing open, revealing the secret passage. To me, this is a picture of the entrance to the secret place of God. It is covered by a picture that we would not normally associate with it. I believe that covering is the cross of Jesus.

The Cross Opens the Way

At first, when we see the cross, we recoil from it. We don’t like it, and we don’t want it. But behind the cross is the door to this secret place. The cross of Jesus is the way to the secret place that no animal can find, no bird can see, and the whole of natural creation does not know about. This is because it is found in the spiritual realm, not in the natural realm.

Let us read once more the words of Paul in Colossians 3:

Since, then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God. When Christ, who is your life, appears, then you also will appear with him in glory. (Colossians 3:1–4)

Notice again these key words:
“…your life is now hidden with Christ in God.”
This is not a truth merely for the next world. It is true right now! To be hidden with Christ in God is to dwell in the secret place.

Paul said,
“You died….”
That is the cross. The secret is that, when Jesus died, He did not die only for Himself. He died for us as our Representative. He took our guilt and our condemnation by paying our penalty and dying our death. When we understand this reality and, by faith, receive what Scripture says, we realize that when Jesus died,
we died with Him
. Paul reiterated this truth in Galatians, where he said,
“I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me”
(Galatians 2:20).

Paul was saying to the Colossians, and to us,
“You died….”
When you died with Christ, you passed through death—through the death of Jesus on the cross—into a new realm. Again, this realm is not in the natural world. It is a realm that the senses cannot discern—a realm that we as natural creatures do not perceive. The secret place is a realm in Christ where we are hidden with Christ in God.

The secret place is found in the spiritual realm,
not in the natural realm.

“Hidden with Christ in God”

Pause for a moment to consider the total security that is represented by our being
“hidden with Christ in God.”
In this place of hiddenness, you have, as it were, a double protection: You are in Christ, and you are in God. Therefore, nothing in the entire universe can reach you unless it first comes through God and through Christ.

Our true life is not in this visible world. We are here in the flesh, but we have another kind of life—a different life from a different Source. Our body is just a clay vessel that this life currently inhabits. Paul said our clay vessel may go through many difficulties and pressures; there is no guarantee that we will not face them. But, in that clay vessel is an eternal life—an incorruptible, indestructible life that is so totally identified with God and with Jesus Christ that nothing can ever happen to us unless it is in the will of God and of Christ. (See 2 Corinthians 4:7–10, 16–18.)

This is total security. It is security in the midst of war, famine, pestilence, or earthquake. No matter what comes, we are in Christ—in that secret place of the Most High. We are protected from all harm and all danger. And the door to that secret place of protection, safety, and security is the cross.

18

PROTECTION AGAINST FEAR AND WORRY

We turn now to another area of security that we all need but, alas, do not all experience—
emotional security
. Mental and emotional pressures are increasing due to our contemporary lifestyle. I once read an estimate that, in a normal lifetime, one out of every four persons in the United States will need some kind of psychiatric help. That is a staggering figure. The result is that most psychiatric hospitals today are filled to overflowing.

When a person comes to need psychiatric help, that person has succumbed in some way to mental or emotional pressures. It is estimated that for every person who actually recognizes his need and seeks psychiatric help, there are probably twice as many people who do not recognize their need or seek help, even though, to some degree, they have the same type of problem.

The Remedy

The remedy for mental and emotional pressures could be summed up in one word:
peace
. I refer to peace not in the connotation of the absence of war, but in the sense of personal fulfillment, completeness, and rest.

There are two primary enemies of peace:
fear
and
worry
. Each of them comes in many different forms. For example, we may fear or worry about sickness, or other people’s opinions, or a financial downturn. Fear is like a dagger that is thrust into us, while worry is like a little nagging worm that eats away at us. Yet, in the end, each of these assailants is destructive.

God’s primary protection against fear and worry is
trust
. The prophet Isaiah said,

You [addressing the Lord] will keep in perfect peace him whose mind is steadfast, because he trusts in you. Trust in the Lord forever, for the Lord, the Lord, is the Rock eternal. (Isaiah 26:3–4)

“You will keep in perfect peace”
—that is complete protection against fear and worry.

The above passage also speaks about the area where fear and worry attack—the mind.
“You will keep in perfect peace
him
whose
mind
is steadfast
….”
The way to have a settled, steadfast mind is stated in the next phrase:
“…because he trusts in you.”
Then follows this beautiful exhortation:
“Trust in the
Lord
forever, for the
Lord
, the
Lord
, is the Rock eternal.”

This description of the Lord echoes our earlier study of Hebrews 6:19, where we considered the anchor of the soul that passes out of time into eternity, fastening onto the Lord, the Rock of Ages. The above passage gives yet another picture of the eternal Rock.

Steps to Achieving Trust

As a follow-up to the trust factor that Isaiah introduced to us, let us look at two steps to achieving trust.

1. Be Renewed in the Spirit of Your Mind

The first is to
“be renewed in the spirit of your mind”
(Ephesians 4:23 nasb, nkjv, kjv). Our minds are ultimately motivated, directed, and controlled by spiritual forces. Therefore, to enter into real trust, we must have a Spirit controlling our minds that is different from the spirit that controls the minds of the people of this world.

We must let another Spirit take charge of our minds—reprogramming our thinking and giving us new thought patterns and objectives that are aligned with Christ’s. Paul contrasted the spirit that operates in the people of the world with the kind of spirit that should be operating in a child of God:

God did not give us a spirit of timidity [“fear” nkjv, kjv, or cowardice], but a spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline. (2 Timothy 1:7)

The
“spirit of power, of love and of self-discipline”
to which Paul referred is, of course, the Holy Spirit. He is the Spirit we must invite to control our minds. When the Holy Spirit comes in, He excludes the spirit of timidity, or fear.