Hiddenness: God's Chosen Path For Change

"God does some of His most important work in hiddenness…and when it lifts, you realize something good was growing all along." - Lindsay Schott

Hiding is fun, right?

Hidden things can be fun, but hidden things can be frustrating too. Hide and seek is fun with your kids. But hide and seek with your keys in the morning is not. Hiding presents is fun, hiding ourselves from others because of shame is painful. Hiddenness is a complicated experience for us because most of the time, hiddenness is associated with frustration, guilt or shame. But God hides things for good reasons and gets beautiful results. In fact, hiddenness is God’s chosen path for change.

Hiddenness is the gap between who you want to be and what you want to do—and what is actually happening. It’s the season of being benched, passed over, delayed, or forgotten despite your prayers and best efforts. Hiddenness is one of the most disorienting seasons of the Christian life. 

Think about a time in your life, where you felt stuck, side tracked, passed over or forgotten. Sometimes we wrongly interpret those times as an accident or punishment but  scripture shows us hiddenness is God’s chosen path for change. God consistently uses hiddenness with His people; let’s explore His pattern in the Scripture, His purpose in using it and how we can respond personally. 

God’s Pattern 

Throughout the Bible God repeats the pattern of calling - hiddenness - unexpected fulfillment. 

Joseph was called in dreams and hidden in slavery and prison before rising in Egypt. Moses fled to the wilderness for forty years before the burning bush. David was anointed king but spent decades hunted. Even Jesus lived thirty hidden years before three public ones. Other Biblical characters may be popping in your head right now like Abraham, Hannah or the Apostle Paul.

I’ve experienced this pattern. Around the age of 18 my youth pastor affirmed my gift of teaching and told me to pursue it. I took him seriously and became a communications major in college. After graduation, I worked in youth ministry with my husband and began trying to teach the girls. I attempted to pull together events where I could teach and they all fell apart. All these canceled events made me pause and ask “Why isn’t this working?!” At that same time I was being asked to lead worship a lot. So I took note in the next year of which one God gave me more opportunities with.  In one year I was asked to lead worship at least a dozen times. I was asked to teach once, at a prayer meeting, for 5 minutes. I took this as God’s hint. I spent the next 15 years leading worship and serving in different settings in my local church but never teaching. I still longed to teach the Bible; I wrestled with God for years. I didn’t understand why He was hiding me. I felt confused and passed over.

You may resonate with this. You may have something you feel passionate about, something you’re even gifted by God in but He seems to be holding you back. You may desire a good thing like a good group of friends, a family, a child to return to the Lord but it seems like He’s ignoring your prayers. You may be bursting with creative ideas, great solutions to problems, a desire to help but right now it feels like all your potential is just being wasted. You might be giving up on that thing. You may have already stopped praying for it. Maybe you feel lost. 

Can I encourage you with words I needed then? It’s not an accident and it’s not punishment, it’s hiddenness. And hiddenness is God’s chosen path for change. He’s not doing it because He doesn’t love you or see you, He’s doing it because He loves you and knows everything about you. He has reasons for what He’s doing. There is a purpose in your hiddenness. Let’s look at God’s purposes together. 

God’s Purpose 

If we know there’s a purpose in difficulty it will help us endure it. For example, if I know I’m going to have a picnic by an alpine lake, I’ll endure a grueling hike to get there. God has purpose when He hides us. Let’s look at just a few of His reasons from the Bible to help us trust God in hidden seasons. 

Proverbs 25:2 says, “It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter (ESV).” This proverb highlights a principal that God hides things; humans search matters out. God’s purpose in hiding is to get people to seek.

Seeking is an active word. It requires action and some tenacity. Seeking hints that you have some humility that you don’t know or have everything already - you’ve got to go find it. And that humility changes how we treat others. Seeking shapes us - this is why God hides us. Hidden seasons grow humility, tenacity and compassion in us. 

Humility 

Hiddenness is the seedbed for humility. Being hidden instantly forces us away from the acknowledgment and approval of other humans. In hiding, we have the liberty of dealing with the only person who we know can see us: God. Behind the scenes we have a chance to struggle through our motives: why do I want to do what I’m doing? Why do I want people to approve of me? Why can’t I do what I want now? Why is God making me wait? 

Hidden humility receives everything including our desires and hiddenness as all from God. John the Baptist had hidden humility. John spent much of his life obscured in the Judean wilderness. At the peak of his ministry thousands of people came to him, but his ministry started to dwindle once Jesus entered the scene. When some of his disciples asked about this decline influence, John responded “A person cannot receive even one thing unless it is given him from heaven. You yourselves bear me witness, that I said, ‘I am not the Christ, but I have been sent before him.’[…] He must increase, but I must decrease.” (John 3:27–30, ESV)

In humility John received the ministry he was given as from God. He carried it out faithfully when it included thousands of followers and was still faithful as everyone left him for Jesus. That kind of humility is powerful because it’s rooted in God, not applause or human definitions of success. Hiddenness grows humility in us by putting us in the position to wait and receive everything we have as from God. 

So where in your life do you know you need to surrender something and wait to receive from God? Where do you need John’s attitude: Jesus must increase, but I must decrease.

Humility is valuable. Sometimes in an effort to befriend humility in our hiddenness we swerve off into resignation and despair so let’s move onto what God is shaping in our hidden seasons: tenacity.

Tenacity 

Hiddenness tests your motive and reveals how much you really want something. Like a parent who tests a child’s desire before buying a pet, God tests our motives with hiddenness.

When God doesn’t give us what we want instantly it generates a restlessness in us. Then we start asking really important internal questions like: Why do I really want this? Did God actually call me to it? Why isn’t God giving me this in the way I hoped?

Hiddenness has a way of exposing our motives, good and bad. When I wrestled with God for a decade and a half about teaching it exposed bad motives in me - I wanted teaching to give me a sense of significance. But it also affirmed good things - that I really did love His word and despite 15 years of being told “no” I still really wanted to teach.  Hiddenness will test if you really want something or not and the “why” behind what you do. Lesser motives and goals fall away because they can’t endure hiddenness but tenacious, God-given things will stay.

Don’t fold too quickly if God’s hiding you. He may be trying to build some tenacity in you. It’s likely that in hiding, He is purifying, strengthening, and preparing you for  the very thing you think He’s holding back from you. Jesus loves tenacity, an attitude that in faith won’t take “no” for an answer. 

In Matthew 15, A Gentile woman begged Jesus to heal her daughter. When He delayed and even challenged her, she persisted—and He called her faith great! Hiddenness is a chance to test your tenacity and work the muscle of faith. 

Can you trust Him when the circumstances don’t add up? Can you keep doing the next right thing even if you’re not seeing the result you wanted? Can you continue to believe with hope and courage and risk when an opportunity comes along? 

Humility with tenacity is a powerful combination that surrenders in trust to God and also believes big things from God too. Let’s look at the last thing God is shaping in our hiddenness, compassion.

Compassion

Suffering connects us to others. Think of a particular suffering in your life - didn’t you see how God used it to connect you with people you wouldn’t have otherwise known?

Because you’re hidden you’re going to notice people on the side lines - the people on the bench like you. You’re going to feel for those people differently and care about how they’re doing. And hiddenness isn’t a random side track keeping you from where you “should” be - it’s God’s chosen path, remember? There are people on that hidden path He has for you to meet that perhaps you wouldn’t have been able to see before. 

I had a friend who was planning on going on a week long, over-seas mission trip this year. But as the year started she got some serious medical news and it seemed like the mission trip might be off the table. That could have felt like being benched but she took it in faith telling me, “If I was willing to cross the ocean for Jesus, then I can go to a hospital too.” Hiddenness sharpens our compassion because it slows us down and gives us the opportunity to see people we don’t normally see. 

So, who is in your hiddenness? Who are the people in front of you? Can you ask your friends about where they feel hidden and encourage them?

What does this mean for me, personally?

God does some of His most valuable work in hiddenness. Like tulip bulbs that get planted in the dark, wintry soil - God plants extremely important things in our souls in hiddenness; things like humility, tenacity and compassion. And when the hiddenness lifts we find something good has been growing all along.

What could God be shaping in your hiddenness?

It’s not an accident. It’s not a punishment. He loves you.