Private or Public?

Matthew 6:4,6,18 “Your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you.”

Whether it’s giving, praying or fasting, three times in Matthew 6 we read the same refrain. Whereas others with wrong motives may give/pray/fast in public to impress those around them, it is those disciplines carried out in private before the Audience of One which the Lord promises to reward.

Character is what we are in the dark, when nobody’s there to impress. That’s the real you. We can fake it and impress others, and sometimes even manage to deceive ourselves, but ultimately we’ll show our true colours. As Jesus said to the Pharisees: “You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34).

Private victories precede public ones – not the other way round – just as you can’t harvest a crop before you plant it. Gethsemane preceded Golgotha, just as the cross we bear precedes the crown we will wear.

As Rick Warren has pointed out: “In ministry, private purity is the source of public power.” William Wilberforce knew how costly it would be to give his whole life over to seeking the abolition of slavery. He fought a fierce internal battle in secret with the Lord before accepting that his calling was to champion the liberty of the oppressed as a Parliamentarian. He wrote in his journal in 1788: “My walk is a public one. My business is in the world; and I must mix in the assemblies of men, or quit the post which Providence seems to have assigned me.”

Most of us have a thick mask on for the public sphere. How far removed is the public from the private you? Don’t be tempted to concentrate on improving the public; work first on the private – then the public will take care of itself.

Lord, I choose to seek your approval alone today. Amen!