Anonymous: Jesus hidden years and yours

In seasons of hiddenness our sense of value is disrupted, stripped of what "others" affirmed us to be. In this season God intends to give us an unshakable identity in Him, that no amount of adoration nor rejection can alter.

Jesus appears to have walked unstressed and unhurried. His peaceful pace seems to imply that he measured himself not by where he was going and how fast he could get there but by whom he was following and how closely they walked together.

Jesus’ true strength was not revealed in his ability to teach and lead the multitudes. It was manifested in his willingness to make himself nothing, to suffer, and to die. I had enough strength to exhaust myself studying, mentoring, and teaching, but I did not possess sufficient strength to be nothing.

In these early anonymous seasons, God graciously grants us the opportunity to wrestle with our appetites before other lives are at stake, to struggle with our passions privately before moral collapse affects the innocent publicly.

Patience grows well in such soil. She is the ally of a soul that makes God its primary pursuit,

Like a short spoon in a tall glass, people’s attention simply cannot reach the bottom of our profound longing to be valued. Only God can reach that place because he is the One who created that place.

When our ways are not God’s ways—though it may be unspeakably uncomfortable—we must wrestle with the discrepancy between what we think God should do and what he actually does and allow that struggle to edit our tidy, but tame, image of God. If we wrestle with these questions with the lamp of God’s Word by our side, an increasingly accurate portrait of God will emerge from our faith struggle, a portrait that is strong enough to trust in, good enough to wait for, and wild enough to never be contained in a box.

In moments when I am tempted to treat this gift called time as though it were some unfortunate filler, I hear a gentle whisper from God in my soul: “Child, I am the God who wastes no man’s time. To me, every course in your life is main.

The Father’s work in us does not sleep—though in spiritual winters he retracts all advertisement. And when he does so, he is purifying our faith, strengthening our character, conserving our energy, and preparing us for the future. The sleepy days of winter hide us so that seductive days of summer will not ruin us.

I feel that trials do not prepare us for what’s to come as much as they reveal what we’ve done with our lives up to this point.

When those pauses extend beyond what we can comprehend or explain (say, for instance, three days), we often spiral into selfdoubt or second-guessing. But in anonymous seasons we must hold tightly to the truth that no doubt strengthened Jesus throughout his hidden years: Father God is neither care-less nor cause-less with how he spends our lives. When he calls a soul simultaneously to greatness and obscurity, the fruit—if we wait for it—can change the world.

But in anonymous seasons we must hold tightly to the truth that no doubt strengthened Jesus throughout his hidden years: Father God is neither care-less nor cause-less with how he spends our lives. When he calls a soul simultaneously to greatness and obscurity, the fruit—if we wait for it—can change the world.

No. Our desire to “be like Jesus” contains several exemption clauses, not the least of which are Jesus’ hidden years, desert experiences, temptations, tortures, and crucifixion.

Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the desert. —Matthew 4:1 The sky ripped open, the Holy Spirit took the form of a dove and rested upon Jesus, God thundered his unfailing love from the heavens, and then he ushered his beloved Son into . . . the desert? What? “I love you, Son. Enjoy . . . the desert”? Generally speaking, this series of events makes us a little uncomfortable. Can following God’s Spirit lead us straight into a desert? Would obedience deposit us in a wasteland? Could God’s loving will direct us to wander about in barren places? Evidently. From Jesus’ example, this appears to be true. We just do not talk about it often. Our earthbound hearts prefer to consider how following God leads us into happiness or health or wealth. “God led me into a desert! (hallelujah)” is just not the stuff T-shirts are made of. Even so, did not Jesus’ three decades of hiddenness already qualify as a desert experience? Yes. But in that desert of anonymity Jesus made peace with God’s timing and concluded that Father God’s companionship in his life was enough. From Jesus’ perspective, his hidden years were good years: neither wasted nor unwanted. Therefore, we find no evidence of resistance when the Holy Spirit directs Jesus into another type of desert. Matthew simply states that Jesus was “led” there.