Can I tell you a secret? Sharing a secret can be the deadliest mistake you’ll ever make. But you will do so, when you find someone worth dying for. And you may be betrayed. But on a brighter side, a secret can build a bond of love, trust and allegiance.
You might have read earlier posts from my relationship series. In case you’ve forgotten, we are looking at how to love greatly and deeply. Earlier, we learned about Sacrifice and Special Treatment. Today, however, I find it necessary to point out that our topic is more of a chicken-egg scenario. Sharing your secrets with a beloved is a sign that both of you are growing. At the same time, it helps both of you grow. The reason it’s important to state this is that, you cannot force a relationship into growth simply by sharing secrets. We will see why.
“I no longer call you servants, because a master doesn’t confide in his servants. Now you are my friends, since I have told you everything the Father told me.” (John 15:15, NLT)
In the verse above, Jesus told His disciples that they were no more servants but friends. This was a significant growth in His relationship with them. They ceased to be employees (servants) and became colleagues and friends with the Messiah. This means they started from somewhere. They weren’t friends from the start, but servants. Relationships won’t be at their ultimate levels overnight. They grow.
From strangers to acquaintances, a relationship grows. It can grow from knowing about each other and exchanging greetings to actually being friends. Friends can become best friends. No matter how much Jesus loved the disciples at the start of their relationship, He couldn’t force the relationship to grow artificially. He couldn’t have a friendship with them the very day He met them. It had to build over time. Friendship takes time to build. How much more courtship?
A righteous man is cautious in friendship, but the way of the wicked leads them astray. (Proverbs 12:26, NIV)
Since relationships grow, you cannot force or “awaken love until he pleases” (Song 8:4). When you’re too bent on making people very close friends overnight, you aren’t walking in love. You are most likely in need of their association to cover your own feeling of inadequacy and inferiority. When you don’t understand that relationships grow, you try to force and fake growth by adding romance and sex as though that means that you really love each other. So you confuse the bonding of flesh with true friendship between two souls. No! One night stand won’t make it stand. Relationships grow overtime. And they do only when you accept their current level and remain faithful at that level.
The flatterer who loudly praises and glorifies his neighbor, rising early in the morning, it shall be counted as cursing him [for he will be suspected of sinister purposes]. (Proverbs 27:14, AMP)
If you treat a stranger as a best friend, he may become an enemy instead. You need emotional intelligence to identify what a relationship is and what level it’s at. Then you should remain faithful in love despite the level. And it will naturally shoot up to higher dimensions. You don’t love anyone more that Christ loved the disciples, but they didn’t become His friends overnight. Greater love has no man than God’s. Yet His kingdom mysteries aren’t revealed to all. Jesus once told his disciples,
“To you has been given the secret of the kingdom of God, but for those outside everything is in parables” (Mark 4:11, ESV)
Not every and anyone can handle secrets. Not everyone can be a faithful steward of your secrets. Some may misconstrue, misunderstand or even mock you. Others may molest you for their personal gain. Part of your life must be a parable unto those outside.
The secret [of the sweet, satisfying companionship] of the Lord have they who fear (revere and worship) Him, and He will show them His covenant and reveal to them its [deep, inner] meaning. (Psalm 25:14, AMP)
God has a secret place, and so should you. That’s why the tabernacle had three rooms. There was the holy of holies, where the shekinah glory was. To enter that secret place, the priest had to go through the outer and inner court. When he had faithfully come through the ordinances, then he qualified to see what was hidden. Process is important and cannot be skipped.
Today, we all have access into God’s secret place on the ticket of Christ’s blood. But a relationship still needs to be built with the Holy Spirit who ushers us into deeper realms in God.
Do not “artificialize” the growth of your relationship with social media hype, romance, sex, unnecessary giving and sharing of secrets. Perhaps you’ve been through a “broken heart”. Do not think selling a secret will buy you a heart that truly loves you. Do not go begging for love by opening up your intimate areas to just anyone.
“Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before pigs, lest they trample them underfoot and turn to attack you.” (Matthew 7:6, ESV)
Do not think sharing secrets will make someone love you more. It may make them pity you. But pity isn’t the same as love. True love grows. Do not arouse love until he pleases. Love is like a spike of flame. Just keep fanning it and it keeps growing. If you carelessly add too much wood to that little spike, expecting the spike to flame up higher, you may rather quench the little spike. If you’re fortunate, then the spike will still gradually build at its own pace and in its own time.
As Jesus continued working with the disciples as servants, their relationship gradually became a friendship, He found Himself opening them into deeper realms of truth about the kingdom than He would to mere servants. Then, He told them; “we’ve become friends now.” The old style of saying, “Can we be friends?” is fast fading. Friendship is built practically over time, and not wished or asked into existence.
Jesus said the reason He was now a Friend to the disciples instead of just a Master is that He now shares kingdom secrets with them. And so, a relationship’s level of growth can be determined by the degree of freedom we both have to share secret things about ourselves that we would hesitate telling anyone else.
Marriage is the relationship in which the highest level of openness and transparency is expected. For they (Adam and Eve) were both naked and not ashamed. It is the mystery of marriage that converts a stranger into family before whom you can be completely naked (vulnerable). Therefore, if your courtship isn’t gradually opening up realms of your souls unto each other, then you are not growing into marriage.
However, there are some of us that are naturally very secretive and those that are very open naturally. So we still have to know whether it is just our “open nature” that’s sharing secrets or it is actually maturity over time. And we have to know if it is our “closed secretive nature” that is holding us back from sharing more intimate parts of our soul, or the relationship has just failed to grow.
The Bible says there is no fear in love; that perfect love casts out fear. Part of the ministry of love, is to cast fear out of a person gradually to a point of perfect trust. This is how love matures and is perfected. Although God doesn’t expect us to put the trust worthy of Him alone in men, a person should be able to trust his or her spouse enough to rest their head on them. The Bible says of the Proverbs woman,
Her husband trusts her without reserve, and never has reason to regret it. (Proverbs 31:11, MSB)
It is however important to warn that, when you don’t have enough emotional intelligence to identify what level a relationship is on, trusting can be suicidal. As in the case of Sampson, he confused Delilah for a trusted wife when she was just an opportunist. And that cost him his vision and caused him to die prematurely.
When she got him to sleep, his head on her lap, she motioned to a man to cut off the seven braids of his hair. Immediately he began to grow weak. His strength drained from him. (Judges 16:19, MSB)
It is not love to share secrets anyhow – that’s foolishness. It’s not smart at all. But the more a relationship grows, you should find yourself allowing him or her into rooms of your life that no one else or very few ever enter.
Despite your carefulness and intelligence, it is still possible to cast pearls before swine. It is possible you mistake “sell out” friends or beloveds for sold-out soul mates. This is why your highest level of intimacy and most sacred self shouldn’t be exposed in sex until marriage. If your trust has been betrayed in the past, you should forgive yourself then. Don’t consider yourself a fool though your actions might have been foolish.
Give not that which is holy unto the dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under their feet, and turn again and rend you. (Matthew 7:6 KJV)
Have you shared secrets with people who you later realized were not worthy of them? It was their wrong to betray your trust. Pigs will be pigs. Your pearls won’t change them. They won’t see the preciousness of anything. The fact that they trod you underfoot, doesn’t make you less of a treasure. Sampson’s hair grew again when betrayal cut it off. And when He prayed, God’s power and strength was with him once again. Get back up again. God is sending a worthy person. And this time, do not awaken love until he pleases. Do not try to use someone’s love for you to hide your self-pity and self-hate. Embrace yourself or rather be embraced in the great love God has for you. Settle your need for love there. And find your worth in the fact that the King loves you.
Don’t sell your secrets for love. Secrets in the right hand are great tools for loving and caring. In the wrong hands, they are weapons for your destruction. They are reasons to despise and ways to blackmail you. I pray God sends you that “perfect love” that casts out fear and guards your heart with His peace and love. Amen.
I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, that ye stir not up, nor awake my love, until he please. (Song 8:4, KJV)