In my latest book, 3 Keys to Answered Prayer, I tell about an intense 3½ year battle of faith for my health and my life. In this battle I arrived at one final obstacle that I could not see any way through, around or over.
The breakthrough came in finding the secret place with God of which the Psalmists speaks in Psalm 91:1. He wrote,
“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High, shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
It Is Just You and God in the Secret Place
The secret place is that place of personal intimacy between just you and God. It is like the 42-year marriage I have with Susan. We know things about each other that no one else knows. We have an intimacy and closeness into which no one else can intrude. We have our own secret place.
In the secret place with God, it is you and Him alone. Jacob found his secret place with God at a time of great distress when he heard that Esau was coming to meet him with 400 men. He sent everyone away, and Genesis 32:24 says, “Jacob was left alone, and a man wrestled with him there until daybreak.” The succeeding verses reveal that this was none other than God Himself with whom Jacob was wrestling.
But notice, it was just Jacob and God. No one else is involved. This is not about Abraham or Isaac or even Esau. This was between Jacob and God, and them alone. Jacob found his own “secret place” with God that night, and both his name and destiny were changed.
How I Found the Secret Place
My final obstacle to faith for healing was tied to the fact that many of the faith-building books I was reading had been written by people who had died of sickness or who had gone through sicknesses from which they were not healed. Having studied revival movements in church history, I knew, for example, that John G. Lake, whose books had greatly helped me, had died of a stroke at the age of 64.
I also knew that Jack Coe, one of the great healing evangelists of the 1950s, had died of polio at the age of 38. Smith Wigglesworth, whose writings were also faith- building, had endured a painful ordeal with kidney stones. He did not receive healing for the condition and finally passed them through his urinary tract in a painful and grueling process that took over two years. Neither did his daughter ever receive healing from deafness.
Realities like these raised the question in my mind: “If these people of such great faith were not healed, who am I to think that I will be healed by God?” I struggled with this!
The breakthrough came when I found my own secret place with God. In that secret place with God, I cried out, “Oh God, I don’t know why John G. Lake died of a stroke nor why Smith Wigglesworth was not healed of kidney stones or why his daughter was never healed of deafness. I don’t know why healing evangelists like Jack Coe died of polio and Kathryn Kuhlman died of heart failure. But Lord, I don’t have to know! That is between You and them! This is between You and me. I am here in Your presence with Your promises. This is not about anyone else. This is about You and me and the promises You have made.”
As I fellowshipped with God around His Word, I found a faith that was not tied to anyone else’s experience. My faith became rooted in my relationship with Him as never before. I found my own secret place with God and healing for body and soul.
In the Secret Place, We Come to Know Him
Although it was a very trying 3½ years, and I would never want to go through it again, I would not take for the lessons I learned. The work that God did in my heart during that time was priceless. In the secret place I found with Him, it didn’t matter what had happened to this one or that one; it was now just God and me and His Word and promises.
In the secret place, I came to know the Lord in a way I had not known Him before, This is God’s desire for each of us, for in John 17:3 Jesus prays to His Father that His followers “may know You, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom You have sent.” The word “know” in this passage is the Greek word ginosko, and it refers to a knowing that is not merely intellectual but is rooted in an intimate relationship between the knower and the object known.
This same word, ginosko, is used of the intimate, physical relationship between a husband and wife. For example, it is the word used by the Septuagint translators in Genesis 4:1a (ESV), which says, “Now Adam knew (ginosko) his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain.” It is also the word used in Matthew 1:24-25 where we are told that Joseph did not “know” Mary until she had brought forth the Lord Jesus.
This is the same word used by Paul in Philippians 3:10 where he says that his burning passion in life is to “know” (ginosko) Christ. Paul wanted more than anything else to know Christ and live in that secret place with Him.
How about you? Have you found your own secret place with God? In that secret place, we find a faith that is not shaken by other’s opinions and experiences. In that secret place, we abide under the protection of the Almighty and are nourished by His own life. {eoa}
Dr. Eddie Hyatt‘s latest book, 3 Keys to Answered Prayer, is available from Amazon in both paperback and Kindle. To learn more about his vision for another Great Awakening in America and around the world, visit his website at eddiehyatt.com.
Curt Landry 
Michael L. Brown 
Rabbi Eric Tokajer 
