‘Do we have a secret life?
Yes, most of us have a bad and evil secret side. We don’t disclose this evil
life to anyone. Not even to priests or pastors. But Bible says very clearly
that we need to sanctify our secret life. We need to confess our sins, repent
our sins and reconcile with God.
Mene, mene, tekel, parsin’: This is God’s
warning to everyone, not to King Belshazzar alone.
We indulge in lot of things that God doesn’t
want us to do. This can be an adulterous life, addiction to porn, living a
sinful life without a sense of sin, violation of God’s commandments and refusal
to repent the sins, murder, character assassination etc. etc. Then we keep away
from people and society. We hide somewhere. We remain lonely, like Elijah in a
cave.
We must come out of that dark cave to the
sunlight. We must sanctify our secret life. Yes, sanctification through
confession, repentance and reconciliation. Sadly, we live like modern-day
Cains.
God
asked Cain: “where’s your brother Abel?” God is not questioning Cain alone –
He’s asking us also. Where’s the baby that I had given life in your wife’s
womb? You must ask yourself about the aborted child. It can be your aborted
child or your own father whom you despise or your neighbour with whom you have
an enmity. Your Abel may be your father, neighbour, brother or your own kids.
Rev Fr Nelson Job OCD, one of my favourite
charismatic preachers, vividly explained this recently on a television
programme. Fr Nelson quoted some good examples from Bible to drive home the
importance and necessity for sanctification of our secret life.
1. When you read King David’s story, you come
across an incident. When David was ruling as a “Mr Clean”, Prophet Nathan came
to his palace and told him a story. “There were two
men in a certain town, one rich and the other poor. The rich man had a very large number of sheep and cattle,
but the poor man had nothing except one little ewe
lamb he had bought. He raised it, and it grew up with him and his children. It
shared his food, drank from his cup and even slept in his arms. It was like a
daughter to him.
2. Let’s move to Daniel 5:25: "This is the inscription that was written: mene, mene, tekel, parsin.”
These words were written by a mysterious hand
on the wall of Belshazzar's palace, and interpreted by Daniel as predicting the
doom of the king and his dynasty.
Holy Bible says: Once when King Belshazzar
was giving a banquet to his lords and drinking wine from the golden vessels of
the Temple of Yhwh, a man's hand was seen writing on the wall certain
mysterious words. The king got frightened by the apparition and ordered his
astrologers to explain the inscription; but they were unable to read it. Daniel
was then summoned to the royal palace; and the king promised him costly
presents if he would decipher the inscription.
Daniel read it "Mene, mene, tekel,
parsin" and explained it to mean that God had "numbered" the
kingdom of Belshazzar and brought it to an end; that the king had been weighed
and found wanting; and that his kingdom was divided and given to the Medes and
Persians.
Yes, these words -- Mene, mene, tekel, parsin
– are supposed to sanctify our secret life. These are warning words against
your evil secret life.
3. Come to 2 Kings 20:1: Hezekiah became ill and
was at the point of death. The prophet Isaiah son of Amoz went to him and said,
"This is what the Lord says: Put your house in order, because you are
going to die; you will not recover." Hezekiah then knew that God had come
to know about his secret life. He repented and prayed. Amoz then came back and
said God had extended his life by another 15 years.
When he was able to sanctify his life, God
extended his life span.
4. Fr Nelson narrated an incident. Once a lady,
with foul-smelling wounds came for a charismatic prayer retreat. After the
retreat, she was admitted to the hospital from where she requested him to come
and pray for her. When he went there, he understood her physical condition was
very weak and struggled to sit in the room because of the intense bad odour
from her festering wounds. She gave a long confession that lasted for 20
minutes. She told the priest about many secret deeds that she committed over
several years --- things she had never disclosed so far. She repented. The he
got a message from Jesus that she is being healed. After around 20 days, all
her wounds were healed and she regained normal health.
The message is simple: sanctify your secret
life and God will shower His blessings. But you have committed several sins and still living with these sins.
5. Lets turn to John 4:16:
“Jesus told her (Samaritan woman), “Go, call your husband and come back.” “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus
said to her, “You are right when you say you have no
husband. The fact is, you have had five husbands, and
the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite
true.”
When Jesus revealed her secret life, she
confessed. Jesus gave her a spring of water welling up to
eternal life.
Jesus makes it clear: Sanctify your secret
life.
6. John 8:7 says: “When they kept on
questioning him, he straightened up and said to them, “Let any one of you who
is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her.” People who were about to throw stones at a prostitute were
taken aback. Their hands went down, stones fell.
Jesus
revealed their secret life. They were all big-time sinners. The woman – Mary
Magdalene – repented and turned to God. She became a new creation after the
sanctification of her secret life.
In
short, sanctification is a key process to achieve eternal life. We need to realize
it before it’s too late.
