Anonymous: Jesus' hidden years...and yours

by Alicia Britt Chole

You’ll be encouraged to know that it isn’t a matter of the terrain; it’s a matter of the company. You’ll come to understand and embrace the anonymous and hidden times as God’s time of developing an unshakeable identity, disciplined imagination, and submission-based authority. It is a must read for anyone who takes the path to maturity in Christ seriously.”

Trees celebrate the moment, temporary though it is. In the spring, their new growth sings of hope. Their lush greenery offers peace in the summer. In the fall, their colorful collages inspire creativity. And in their emptiness, trees grace the winter with silent elegance.

What the plenty of summer hides, the nakedness of winter reveals: infrastructure. Fullness often distracts from foundations. But in the stillness of winter, the trees’ true strength is unveiled.

Stripped of decoration, the tree trunks become prominent.

In winter, are the trees bare? Yes. In winter, are the trees barren? No. Life still is. Life does not sleep—though in winter she retracts all advertisement. And when she does so, she is conserving and preparing for the future.

Seasonally, we too are stripped of visible fruit. Our giftings are hidden; our abilities are underestimated. When previous successes fade and current efforts falter, we can easily mistake our fruitlessness for failure.

Abundance may make us feel more productive, but perhaps emptiness has greater power to strengthen our souls.

undistracted by our giftings, we can focus upon our character.

With gratitude, we simply abide. Like a tree planted by living water, we focus upon our primary responsibility: remaining in him. In winter are we bare? Yes. In winter are we barren? No. True life still is.

The Father’s work in us does not sleep—though in spiritual winters he retracts all advertisement. And when he does so, he is purifying our faith, strengthening our character, conserving our energy, and preparing us for the future. The sleepy days of winter hide us so that seductive days of summer will not ruin us.

over time we begin to wonder if spring will ever awaken it again.

“I have so much more to give and be.”

But there is One who can see the beauty of that covered, smothered flower: God himself. And, mysteriously, his delight in that beauty is not diminished by its leafy camouflage. Neither would his pleasure be amplified by the flower’s visibility. Good news indeed for the hidden.

obedience to this God who appreciates the visible and invisible equally has led many truly great souls into long seasons of anonymity. Some emerged from obscurity into eminence. Others remained relatively ...

As much as 90 percent is submerged in the unseen. Because of their enormous mass, with that proportion, icebergs are virtually indestructible. 10% visible + 90% unseen = an indestructible life

Of the Gospels’ eighty-nine total chapters, only four offer any information about Jesus’ life before the beginning of his public ministry.

Over 90 percent of his earthly life is submerged in the unseen.

“I want to walk like Jesus walked and live like Jesus lived!” is generally not equated in our hearts with, “I want to live 90 percent of my life in absolute obscurity!”

we are not saying, “I want to subject my body, spirit, and mind to an extended wilderness experience,” or, “I want to be brutally beaten, suffer excruciating pain, and be murdered at the hands of mocking sinners.”

But Jesus’ character and authority are not isolated entities. They are not disconnected commodities we can purchase at a discount.

Well, for starters, he embraced a life of hiddenness. As we will soon see, Jesus’ hidden years empowered him to live an eternally fruitful life.

hid•den \hi-d n\ adjective 1 : being out of sight or not readily apparent : CONCEALED 2 : OBSCURE, UNEXPLAINED, UNDISCLOSED1

Why? Why would Father God wrap the glory of heaven in plain paper, announce the birth of his precious Gift with a full angelic choir, and then hide this priceless package for three decades?

Because we naturally grant more weight to the visible than the invisible, it is easy for us to underestimate the vital importance of the three undocumented decades preceding Jesus’ three celebrated years of public ministry.

it is critical that we not mistake unseen for unimportant.

Life commences in the dark warmth of the womb. God knits us together there with infinitely creative hands concealing from our curiosity his most mysterious act of creation. Unseen? Yes. Unimportant? Not remotely. These months in the womb are quite literally formative. When this hidden phase of development is prematurely interrupted, the results can be tragic.

So a plant’s birth begins with its burial. The gardener commits a generally unremarkable seed to the silence of the soil, where it sits in stillness and lightlessness, hidden by the smothering dirt. Just when it appears as though death is imminent, its seeming decay reveals new life. The seed becomes less and yet more of its former self, and in that transformation takes hold of the darkness and reaches for the sun. All that is to come rests greatly upon the plant’s ability to tightly and sightlessly develop roots in unseen places.

God’s unanticipated move of hiding Jesus granted him protected, undisturbed room to be and become. From God’s perspective, anonymous seasons are sacred spaces. They are quite literally formative; to be rested in, not rushed through—and most definitely never to be regretted.

Unapplauded, but not unproductive: hidden years are the surprising birthplace of true spiritual greatness.

He simply inclined my heart in the direction of what I needed to study. That inclination led me to restudy passages from the Bible that describe the temptation of Jesus.

“I feel that trials do not prepare us for what’s to come as much as they reveal what we’ve done with our lives up to this point.”

Had she tried to outrun the pain, or had she given herself permission to grieve and let the tears wash her wounds? The choices of her yesterdays were revealed through the window of her responses to her current trial.

trials tell us less about our future than they do about our past. Why? Because the decisions we make in difficult places today are greatly the product of decisions we made in the unseen places of our yesterdays.

today’s decisions foreshadow tomorrow’s challenges and reflect yesterday’s choices.

Kevin’s past choices have clustered over the years and created momentum toward healthier living. So is poor Doug doomed to eventually look like Great (and I do mean “great” in every sense of the word) Uncle Alfred?

the decisions they currently are facing reflect the choices they previously have made.

“I feel that trials do not prepare us for what’s to come as much as they reveal what we’ve done with our lives up to this point.”

Each day is in some way shaped by the days preceding it and in turn has an effect upon the days following it.

By examining the decisions Jesus made in chapter 30 of his life, we gain insight into Father God’s formative work in Jesus during chapters 1 through 29! His baptism and wilderness experience hold significance, not only for his present and future, but also for his past. Because the strongest influences on the decisions Jesus made in the desert were the choices he had been making before the desert. In hidden places over hidden years, Jesus’ choices clustered and created momentum that is revealed through the decisions he made in his public ministry.

Jesus’ first three decades were mostly unrecorded, but they were not uneventful. By examining the first decisions and experiences of Jesus in his celebrated, public ministry we will begin to recognize the riches Father God planted in him (and seeks...

Personally, my struggle has more often been in living for the future. As a young adult, my gaze was always set toward the next step or season or degree or plan or place

I first had to start valuing each day as something more than just a boring prelude to the exciting future.

Chinese banquets are more like journeys than meals. The experience that night unfolded slowly over several hours as course after course of what ultimately became a twelvecourse meal was presented at our large, round, rotating table.

Every course—in presentation, in taste, in texture—bore the marks of a master chef. Then the obvious occurred to me: the reason no course looked like a filler was because, from the master chef’s perspective, no course was a filler. To him, every course was main.

While I spent my energy reminiscing about and regretting the past, or daydreaming about and dreading the future, the course before me grew cold, and I wondered why it did not taste as good as it should.

“Child, I am the God who wastes no man’s time. To me, every course in your life is main.”

Main is not behind us. Nor is main way out ahead of us. To our God, this course—call it transition, further studies, unexpected illness, financial crisis, grief, or a desert—is as full of potential as any course ever has been and any course ever will be. Every course—and certainly every day—is a gift from God. (Enjoy it while it’s hot.)

probably receive a collection of less than favorable adjectives including small, insignificant, scorned, and spiritually suspect.

And they took offense at him.

Jesus grew up as a relatively un-celebrated boy from an unroyal family in the un-respected town of an un-liked region. Bad news if you are planning on running for office; good news if your job description is embracing hiddenness. Frustrating if you crave notoriety; freeing if you value learning without paparazzi.