Soul Scientist

  Psalm 51:6 CEB And yes, you want truth in the most hidden places; you teach me wisdom in the most secret space.

A routine annual mammogram uncovered the hidden tumor of breast cancer growing inside of me. Similarly, a daily set aside time for confession to my Good God can uncover hidden sins growing inside of me. The treatments for the cancer in my body or the sin in my soul are neither easy nor enjoyable. They’re just flat out painful. Yet I know such treatments are necessary and irreplaceable in bringing health and wholeness to me, in body and in soul. (see Psalm chapter 51 and Romans 8:28).

I also know these treatments of confession and for cancer can bring hope, freedom, and courage to move forward in trusting my Good God with all parts of me. For here in these treatments for body and soul, I can see wholeness slowly steadily growing in my life. A wholeness that helps me choose obedience in the big and small parts of life, in the known and the secret spaces. As importantly, this wholeness can help me recognize my deep need for repentance in the hidden and unknown choices. That need for repentance is especially evident when I feel small or unknown (which is far more often than I’d like to admit).

I recognize that these slow steady steps of submission and being still for the necessary treatments aren’t just changing my perspective. They’re changing me in mind, heart, soul, and strength (see Romans 12:1-2). And change in the hidden and secret places is essential for health and wholeness, body and soul. Such change is necessary, especially when my own selfish self is satisfied without any change.

Change in the secret spaces is required for the changes needed for shalom to prevail in my body and soul.

Self-imposed lies prevent me receiving what I really need for life.

I desperately need those essential life-giving and life-changing elements of the growth of grace, the mending from mercy, the freedom of faith, and the help of hope found only at the Feet of Jesus in worship and wonder. These good gifts are what I receive at His Feet from His Heart for me. These good gifts are to then go out from me to others in desperate need of His love.

My Good God doesn’t ignore the hidden or small.

He’s not surprised by the big or unknown. There’s never been anything hidden, small, big, or unknown to Him (see Psalm 69:5). Even the dark is as light to Him, in all days for all ways, in all times for all peoples (see Psalm 139:12). (And that all peoples includes me and you, too, no matter how much we might try to hide the darkness of our secret sins in our secret spaces.)

My Good God doesn’t merely pick and choose places of obedience and repentance for me. He purposes and claims me as His own righteousness. He doesn’t do any of this through my merit; He does it by Christ’s suffering for me (see 2 Corinthians 5:21). He did this with Abraham, Moses, David, Paul, and Stephen years ago. He’s doing with many others today. Thus, God’s cloud of witnesses grows every day (see Hebrews 12:1-3).

With all of this in mind, may I ask you a few questions?

Have you received your role in the cloud of witnesses ready to rely on God’s love?

Are you willing and waiting for God to do a mighty work through you?

Are you standing firm in faith for our Almighty God (see Ephesians 6:6-10)?

Are you staying positioned in God’s permanent promises?

Whether you can say “yes” or “no” to any or all of those questions, this Scripture gives the right perspective to all of us for all of this in Ephesians 2:4-9 ESV But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved— and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ, the gift of God,not a result of works, so that no one may boast.

(If you’re like me, you need another re-read through (or three) on those verses. So, please stop now to savor the fullness of our Savior’s love and mercies resonating in those verses. Lamentations 3:22-23 are other excellent verses to satisfy every moment and to savor every morning.)

Saved, raised, seated.

God’s working, not mine.

God’s will, not mine.

God’s worship, not mine.

God’s way, not mine.

Only God could and did all of that (and so much more!) for me and for you.

God did that all based on Himself. For nothing we could do – be it our merits or machinations, our abilities or achievements, our talents or triumphs, our prosperity or pursuing. Nothing of our own making can ever earn or deserve anything but sin’s payment of death and hell.

Saved, raised, seated.

God did it in His power with His purpose for His people.

That we, as His people, might glorify Him in the big and small and the known and unknown. And the unknown includes that which we’d never choose but that which can change us forever into the Image of God. (I never wanted cancer or chronic illness. But I’d never trade them for what I’ve learned about the Goodness of God in them.)

He doesn’t just use the big or the small with us.

He uses the known and the unknown.

He uses the enjoyable and the easy, the difficult and the do-able, the waiting and the wondering, the soaring and the suffering, the hoping and the hurts.

Saved, raised, seated.

God chooses to use us in all circumstances, conversations, and challenges, all trials, temptations, and tests, all suffering, struggles, and successes.

Nothing is wasted with God.

And that perspective is what gets me out of bed and into hope on the hardest of days and the longest of nights. Because I know this is true:

What He gives to me is best.

What I receive from Him is for good.

What I return to Him can be for His glory.

Saved, raised, seated.

God did it all for me, not that I might have it all.

Rather God did it all, so that in it all, He might receive all glory, honor, praise, adoration, and worship from all people, including you and me.

For in the dust of today, I can see glorious glimpses of my Good God crowned with honor, praise, adoration, and worship as He uncovers the known, unknown, big, and small.

God’s always working in the world in and around me. And He’s doing the same for you today, too. In your knowns and unknowns. In your big and small. In your overwhelming and over-the-top. In all of you, including those secret spaces.

Now is always a good time to pause and wonder at His working and return praise to Him. Only He deserves all the praise from all peoples for all times, including those circumstances and challenges, trials and tribulations we haven’t asked for, much less understand.

If our Good God has brought other Bible verses to your heart and mind while reading this post, please share them with all of us in the comments section. Thank you!

Written by and copyrighted to Beth Madison, Ph.D., 2024.