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Fullness often distracts from foundations.
In winter, are the trees bare? Yes. In winter, are the trees barren? No.
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.
Risking inspection, we begin to examine the motivations that support our deeds, the attitudes that influence our words, the dead wood otherwise hidden beneath our busyness.
With gratitude, we simply abide.
The sleepy days of winter hide us so that seductive days of summer will not ruin us.
All of us are acquainted with chapters in life when our visible fruitfulness is pruned back, our previously praiseworthy strengths become dormant, and our abilities are unnoticed by the watching world.
Our desire to “be like Jesus” contains several exemption clauses, not the least of which are Jesus’ hidden years, desert experiences, temptations, tortures, and crucifixion.
Jesus’ character and authority come with Jesus’ life, 90 percent of which was lived in quiet anonymity.
he embraced a life of hiddenness.
we naturally grant more weight to the visible than the invisible,
However, with his life (and with ours), it is critical that we not mistake unseen for unimportant.
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.
“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.”
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.
the decisions they currently are facing reflect the choices they previously have made.
the strongest influences on the decisions Jesus made in the desert were the choices he had been making before the desert.
Before I could even be capable of valuing hidden years, I first had to start valuing each day as something more than just a boring prelude to the exciting future.
I, and perhaps we, have a tendency to think that “main” is out there, not right here.
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.
They felt Galilean Jews were too tolerant of non-Jewish cultures and practices.
During these uncelebrated years, Jesus submitted to a seemingly delayed destiny.
A God-sized mission pulsated in his heart, but he was not free to explain it, proclaim it, or actively pursue it.
What grows in that underestimated gap between God’s calling and others’ perceptions, between our true capabilities and our current realities? Most of us struggle if our dreams are delayed one year, let alone twenty! We find God’s pauses perplexing. They seem to be a waste of our potential. When those pauses extend beyond what we can comprehend or explain (say, for instance, three days), we often spiral into selfdoubt or second-guessing.
Father God is neither care-less nor cause-less with how he spends our lives. When he calls a soul simultaneously to greatness and obscurity, the fruit—if we wait for it—can change the world.
Where is there for you? What does it look like? What do you think it will feel like?
Jesus allowed himself to be thought of as a sinner.
Something in embracing that prolonged season of obscurity enabled him to appear to be less in order to be able to do more.
Hidden years, when heeded, empower a soul to patiently trust God with their press releases. All that waiting actually grants us the strength to wait a little longer and not rush God’s plans for our lives.
On the one hand, I am inundated with messages imploring me to package and market the dream quickly, efficiently, and strategically before it is too late. On the other hand, fear of failure and rejection paralyzes me so that by default I assume a posture of noncooperation with God’s plans.
there is quite a bit of room between self-promotion and utter passivity in our stewardship of God-size dreams.
I liken God’s purposes to a pure but unpredictable river. Impatient self-promotion actively seeks out a speedboat to outrun the current and rush toward the future. Fear of failure stands on the banks cautiously to observe before even getting her feet wet. But perhaps obedience simply wades into the center and lets the current of God’s presence set the pace, be it swift or still.
is not our true aim and aspiration just to be near God?
Jesus appears to have walked unstressed and unhurried. His peaceful pace seems to imply that he measured himself not by where he was going and how fast he could get there but by whom he was following and how closely they walked together.
his first words were neither directional (“Go here”) nor instructional (“Do this”). They were relational: “This is my Son.”
The first element was relational and the second committal.
the first time Jesus heard these words thundered from the heavens, God spoke them before Jesus had ever done anything for which we call him Savior.
God declared his full acceptance and pride over what Jesus had become through his anonymous season.
In hidden years, God is our only consistent audience. Others come and go, but only he always sees.
Anonymous seasons afford us the opportunity to establish God as our souls’ true point of reference if we resist underestimating how he treasures our hiddenness and take the time to decide whose attention and acceptance really matters in our lives.
Can following God’s Spirit lead us straight into a desert? Would obedience deposit us in a wasteland? Could God’s loving will direct us to wander about in barren places?
Jesus made peace with God’s timing and concluded that Father God’s companionship in his life was enough.
desert is actually a descriptor for lonely places and uninhabited regions.
They instruct us to anticipate them, persevere through them, and rest assured that in them we somehow participate in Jesus’ sufferings.
Eternally, perhaps our greatest enemy on earth is losing perspective and beginning to value our fragile surroundings more than God’s faithful friendship in our lives.
For the love of his Father’s close companionship, Jesus followed God’s Spirit straight into the Judean wilderness.
the choices we make in the place of trial today are greatly the fruit of choices we have made in our yesterdays.
His hidden years granted him (and can grant us) the space to make peace with God’s pace.
