Day 52
Today’s Reading: Luke 8
A friend of mine said, “You’re only as sick as your secrets.” Christianity is not something that works well with secrets.
In fact, in today’s reading we come to an amazing chapter packed with teaching, healing, and miracles. Tucked away in this long chapter is one thing that Jesus taught that particularly stands out to me:
Nothing is hidden that will not become evident, nor anything secret that will not be known and come to light. (Luke 8:17)
Or as The Message paraphrase puts it:
We’re not keeping secrets; we’re telling them. We’re not hiding things; we’re bringing everything out into the open.
Freedom happens when everything is out in the open.
For us older folks . . . we remember growing up with television sets the size of a couch. A little white dot signified the television was warming up. We didn’t have cable; we called it “rabbit ears”—an antenna that sat on top of the set, and if you were tech savvy you put aluminum foil on the antenna to get “better” reception. And because there was no remote, just a loose knob to change channels, when the knob fell off and someone lost it—as always seemed to happen in my house—we had to change channels with pliers.
Televisions have changed. Everything is HD, 4K. You can see everything. Every drop of sweat, every wrinkle in the skin, the spit coming out of a mouth— it’s all there in high definition.
And in today’s reading, Jesus is challenging us to living a life in high def. Though it is not easy, it is the best way. Something liberates others when people go high def.
Living in high def, we have no secrets. Why is living high def the right way? Because . . .
• Secrets don’t work with God
• Secrets always get exposed or get confessed (exposed by others or confessed by you)
The bigger why is because sin grows in the dark. High def puts light on it and stunts its growth. When you put the light on something, you take the legs out from something growing bigger. You expose the lies that incubate in darkness.
Let me challenge you with something: apologizers get exposed, confessors go high def. They tell the secrets before anyone else can. They build trust from vulnerability, not by portraying invincibility.
I have learned this in my marriage and in any healthy relationship. When do I know there is growth in any relationship? When I confess my wrong before my spouse or friend confronts my wrong. I confess before I am confronted. I am convicted before they can get offended. That is a huge win and huge progress. This is putting light on secrets. This is living in hi def.
Jesus warned us that all secrets are going to go public. As a Christian, I choose to make sure I have no secrets in my life, in my Christian walk, and in my marriage. It’s so much easier to be real than to pretend. It takes a lot of work pretending.
I remember Jack Hayford, former pastor of Church on the Way saying, “The holier a man is, the more real he is.” I want to be a real Christian.
A group of new Christians went high def and this is what happened: “Many of those who believed now came and openly confessed what they had done” (Acts 19:18, NIV).
That’s high def, 4K. What did it do when they went honest?
A number who had practiced sorcery brought their scrolls together and burned them publicly. . . . In this way the word of the Lord spread widely and grew in power. (Acts 19:19-20, NIV)
Transparency and confession do more than bring healing: they start a revolution. Openly confessed . . . affects a number of people in the occult to change.
I’m too exhausted pretending. I don’t have that kind of energy to be impressive, but I do have just enough to be real. Do you?