The Secret Place

Psalm 91:1

A secret is not common property. The best kept secret is the one that is kept only to oneself. “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty” (Ps. 91:1 NKJV). This secret place is different. Only you and God know of its whereabouts. It cannot be localized by time or space. It is a state of being. And only he who dwells in the secret place can invade it. It is peculiarly and privately his alone.

While this place is private, there is no dearth of such places. God deigns and desires to provide this secret place to every individual who would aspire to such lofty living.

The secret place was an Oriental phrase for the interior room or rooms of the house or tent, reserved for the master or chief whose abode was in the center of the camp. This was a place of honor and greatest safety. This then is a place where none but God can find him, where the enemy cannot reach him. It is a place not seen or known but by the eye of faith. In the words of a simple, uneducated saint, “It’s better felt than telt.”

Being in the secret place is no guarantee against trouble. Rather, we are likely to experience the onslaught of Satan there. But the Psalmist affirms, “Surely He shall deliver you” (Ps. 91:3 NKJV).

Paul epitomizes this lofty life in the words, “Your life is now hidden away with Christ in God” (Col. 3:3). This is not to be confused with some type of a monastic retreat, but more likely is most evident in the lives of those encompassed in a maelstrom of activity. The exercise of prayer is the heart and soul of the secret place, which has been described as, “quietly opening a door and slipping into the very presence of God, there in the stillness to listen to His voice.”

McAfee captures the tenor of this mystical experience in the words:

There is a place of quiet rest,