Private Parts
“..For this thing was not done in a corner (private).” Acts 26:26 KJV
I’m sure that you have gotten a bill in the mail or a legal document before that you didn’t fully understand. So you pick up the phone and call. The salesman or collector gave you a word for word description and explanation of the company’s policy and procedure. Now had you turned over to the last page and looked on the back, you would have seen the ever so small, hard to read, light ink, small writing that is exactly what the person on the phone just told you. There in the fine print is where the details of the bill or document are. The fine print is where the “world’s system” gets you every time. So you’ve heard the phrase, “the devil’s in the details”. Let me add to that…. “so is God”.
Only you and God know what you really see or think. Only you and God know what you say or hear. These three gates of the body (eyes, mouth, and ears) are so vital to God. Stephen Taylor is in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the world’s longest tongue at 3.4 inches from the tip of his tongue to lip. Even if your tongue isn’t as long as Stephen’s, its effects can span for thousands of miles. The human eye measures less than one inch in diameter. It is a small organ. However, allowing the covenant of your eyes with God to be broken can cost you big. These small gates have big cities behind them.
The majority of what people know about you comes from their own public opinion that they have formed about you. They see you occasionally and form an analysis. They don’t go home with you. They don’t really know you in the private moments of your life. I’ve often said, “There are 3 people you are: who others think, who you think, and who God knows.” God knows the private person you are. How can we fight the devil? We can’t take literal swords and jab him. Clean living is what rebukes the devil! Certainly, I’m not writing this to cause you to become a legalistic barbarian about your life and become religious about your righteousness (self-righteousness). However, a true and living God is relational to the point that He will readily identify to you what keeps causing your defeat, and usually it’s not public reproach, but private weights that beset you. Think of it this way. For years, prophets, pastors, and such have gotten on the airwaves and internet and talked about how “God is sending revival to the church” or how they have such a burden for God to do this. Point blank and simple, let me say this, Revival comes to our public sector when it gets in our private homes. Revival in your house is what beckons revival in His house. People come to church from a home that sings the praises of foreign Gods and want revival to come.
Long before God gave Abraham his Isaac, he came to Abraham and made a covenant with him. “Every male child among you shall be circumcised”. This was a token of the covenant between God and Abraham. What a private covenant. We must be, according to Colossians 2:11 KJV, “In whom (Christ) also you are circumcised with the circumcision made without hands (human), in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the circumcision of Christ.” Before Abraham received the fullness of the promise he had to be clean in the private areas of his life, and so it is with us.
What we do in the corner and in private matters. What we teach in the private halls of churches is just as important as what comes from the public desk of our pulpits. I can witness to this fact. I have been blessed. But my blessings have come during the “little moments” and the “private times” when I have been sitting alone after a revival or even before, knowing that by his grace, I was forgiven and am a clean man. These little moments with God have been my greatest private blessings.
Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias tells a story about one time that he was at a major university defending the faith. There was a man who had brought his neighbor to the meeting. The neighbor was a prominent female doctor in the city who didn’t go to church and hated religion. The doctor had only agreed to the meeting because it was being held at the university. She never said anything before or after the meeting concerning Dr. Zacharias’ message. Just before the man dropped her off for the night he asked her, “Just tell me in one line what you thought about tonight.” Her response was eye opening. She said, “Very, very powerful, very, very powerful.” I wonder what Dr. Zacharias is like in his private life?
One hour of anointed gospel ministry and defense of the faith and all that was accomplished was hanging on one peg…, “Was it real in his private life?” Wow!
