By: Francis Judge
There is a hidden place that is secret to those who do not care to make the effort to find it, a place of divine strategy and counsel. It is not a place that is only for the elite few who have performed the correct rituals or paid the requisite sum, but a place where those who know the Lord and are deeply engaged by him live.
So says Psalm 25:14:
The secret counsel of the Lord
is for those who fear him,
and he reveals his covenant to them.
(Psalm 25:14, CSB)
The ‘secret counsel’ David speaks of here is translated by the ESV as ‘the friendship of the Lord’ and as ‘the Lord confides in’, in the NIV. So, there seems to be a challenge in expressing the Hebrew of this verse adequately and all of these translations should probably be taken together in trying to grasp the fullness of what the Holy Spirit was trying to record for us through David.
The ‘secret’ counsel of the Lord is wrapped up with the revelation of the covenant. This does not mean that the covenant of the Lord is inaccessible except in secret, because David tells us who has access to this counsel, or strategy: ‘those who fear him’, or those who revere him and love him (as Deuteronomy 6:5 puts it).
Rather, this secret, special counsel, or strategy. It is for those who have met the Lord and have pressed into his awesomeness. They find what cannot be found casually; the ‘secret counsel’, or ‘the friendship of the Lord’, where he ‘confides’ in them the depth of his covenant.
Again, for believers especially, the revelation of the covenant feels like something that is already accessible and is not hidden. Well, that is both true and false. The terms and conditions, and the promises of the covenant are on public display. But, as history has amply demonstrated, they are not accepted or received by everyone. It is one thing to know about something, but something wholly different to experience it; and when thinking back after experiencing it, it is almost as if the experience were something hidden.
For those who make the effort to know and grow in the friendship and fear of the Lord, there is a seat at the Lord’s table. Not to advise but to be exposed to his plans and purposes, or, you might say, to know his mind and to think his thoughts after him. This is secret in the sense of intimacy rather than elitism. Though, it seems that there are only a few of us who take these words as an invitation to know him better.
Many of us are looking for our unique value proposition, that thing that identifies us as valuable and worthwhile. For David, this was having discovered the confidence that came from a knowledge of the Lord which led him to the kind of awestruck reverence that is called ‘the fear of the Lord’. This fear continues to expose those who have it to the hidden counsel and strategies of the Lord. So then, why do so few seem to know the Lord this way? Possibly because we are not prepared to live as David describes in the rest of Psalm 25. Yet, this intimacy is still available to all who will take the time and make the effort.