HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT!

I awakened very early one morning, about 3:30 a.m., with a phrase running through my head about “hiding in plain sight.” I thought, “That doesn’t make sense,” but then, what does at that time of the morning? The thought wouldn’t go away and so I got up and went to my desk. “I’ll just write this down and then maybe I can go back to sleep.” Well, I wrote down the phrase I didn’t think I understood and as I wrote, it started to make sense to me. And so I kept writing . . . and now I will let you judge whether it makes sense or not.

It is very possible for us to become so familiar with a specific truth about our life as a follower of Christ that our familiarity causes us to lose sight of just how profound that truth is. For example, most of us have been around the truth of God’s love so much that it becomes like a piece of old furniture; we love it, we appreciate it and we take it for granted. It literally gets lost to us in plain view. It is no longer profound but, instead, has become very familiar and not all that appreciated. I call this “hiding in plain sight.”

It is very much a part of the human psyche to feel a need to look for new truth in places that are hard to find and hard to reach. Most of the really valuable truth we will ever come in contact with in our lives is already in plain sight, but sometimes we lose contact with the importance and impact of it.

In its purest form, revival takes place when the people of the church come into contact again with truth they have already embraced but have lost appreciation for. Revival is bringing to life again what was alive once before. Revival is taking something that is “hidden in plain sight” and reestablishing its value in your life.

“Hiding in plain sight” has a downside, however, which the enemy knows and uses against us. Forty years ago, situation comedies on TV were simple and usually very funny. Slowly over the years, several rather risqué concepts were interjected into the situation comedy world. At first it was the idea of men and women living together . . . rather innocent looking, but the idea of a single guy and two single girls living in the same apartment was groundbreaking. The comedic aspects made it more acceptable to the general public. Homosexual situations in comedies were at first laughed about and then the personalities were changed somewhat and made more likable, and finally they became the stars of the show. Now shows are blatant about sex outside of marriage, and homosexuality is portrayed as a star quality and a normal part of life. The agenda has been to slowly introduce change into the system so that the system’s ability to respond to the change is numbed out and the new is then accepted as being right. This is the downside of “hiding in plain sight.”

In the first part of Mark 8, Jesus feeds the crowd of 4000 with just a couple of loaves and fishes. A little later in the chapter (in verses 15-19) the disciples think Jesus is teaching the way He is because He is mad at them for forgetting to bring any bread on this part of the journey. Then Jesus says the following to them: “Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear? And do you not remember?” (verses 17-18).

The word “hardened” that is used in verse 17 means to form a callous, to make tough. It is used here to speak metaphorically of spiritual deafness and blindness. It speaks of seeing a truth and being dead to its importance and value. 

Jesus goes on in Mark 8 and rehearses for the disciples the two great miracles of provision, the feeding of the 4000 and the feeding of the 5000, to “revive” in them the great truth of God’s supernatural ability to perform His miracle provision for us. The disciples had physically participated in these great displays of God’s power and had lost sight of what they meant. They seemed to be unable to make the application of the truth to their daily lives.

My prayer for each of us is that we will never become “hardened” to the truths of God that should be a part of our lives and our walk with Him. I pray that a personal revival happens in you today!

“For thus says the One who is high and lifted up, who inhabits eternity, whose name is Holy: ‘I dwell in the high and holy place, and also with him who is of a contrite and lowly spirit, to revive the spirit of the lowly, and to revive the heart of the contrite'” (Isaiah 57:15, ESV).