At the ripe age of nine, I was a member of a secret club. It was very small, consisting of five third graders. (Or six, depending on who had favor with our ringleader on any given day.) Of course, getting into the secret club was a coup in itself, signaling that you belonged and you had it — whatever “it” was in the third grade.

Best I remember, the main point of the secret club was amazingly simple: to have secrets together. Stuff we only shared with each other. It could be secrets about anything; but the point was, if you weren’t in the club, you couldn’t be privy to the secret of the day.

If you came up with a really good secret, you were the revered one in the group for the duration of that secret. If you let the cat out of the bag, well, you were on probation as far as your reliability and had to prove yourself again, if you wanted to remain in the secret club.

The only thing NOT secret about the club, ironically, was who was in the club. Because it was a matter of pride, you see, to be chosen and considered trustworthy. Absent any glory, where would the joy be?

Turns out my heavenly Father has a secret club, too.

My sixty-something self now finds it amusing that my heavenly Father has created a secret club, because He loves secrets! It’s a very small club — just Him and me, apparently. In fact, it’s so secret, that He — the ringleader — doesn’t even want my left hand to see what my right hand is up to, according to Jesus:

Beware of practicing your righteousness before men to be noticed by them; otherwise you have no reward with your Father who is in heaven. So when you give to the poor, do not sound a trumpet before you, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and in the streets, so that they may be honored by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

But when you give to the poor, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, 4 so that your giving will be in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Matthew 6:1-6

Jesus didn’t stop there, either:

Whenever you fast, do not put on a gloomy face as the hypocrites do, for they neglect their appearance so that they will be noticed by men when they are fasting. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full.

But you, when you fast, anoint your head and wash your face so that your fasting will not be noticed by men, but by your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust destroys, and where thieves do not break in or steal; for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Matthew 6:16-21

Secrets the Father loves

Yep, your heavenly Father loves when you and He share secret stuff — when you do the right thing, the generous thing, the good thing — and no one sees but you and Him. When you do such things, you truly seek only one kind of joy and glory: the joy that comes from being kind, and the glory of knowing you have blessed your Father.

I admit that as a Bible teacher, I had a few minutes of going a little crazy over what seemed conflicting instructions: to do the secret stuff, but also to let your light shine before men, to bring glory to your Father in heaven!

So when to do what? I can only offer one answer, from experience. As you walk with the Lord, your heart will know. The Spirit, alive and ever active within you (however quietly), is quite good at stirring in you to go public or go secret.

There is one place that will always lend itself to an abundance of secrets between you and the Father: at home, with your family.

For me now, home and family is just my husband, and our lives are lived very privately most days.

Home and family: a great place to create secrets with the Father

Every hour of every day presents an opportunity to give secret love and kindness. Hubby knows what I do for him, of course, but what he doesn’t know is what I would have done instead if left to my selfish self. The secret that happens is between the Father and I, who knows my selfish self, and how often in a day I’m on my way to do stuff for me, and instead — inspired by the Father’s Spirit — do something for hubby instead.

While I can’t reveal the exact secrets of the Secret Club I share with the Father, generally speaking they might look like this:

• Abandoning my pet project to go sit awhile with hubby, sharing interest in whatever he’s doing. Yes, even if it’s watching WWE wrestling.
• Upon discovering only one cookie in the jar, offering it to hubby. For certain people — ahem — that could be quite a sacrifice.
• Cooking and eating the food he prefers on occasion, even though it violates all nutritional wisdom and makes me fatter the next day.
• Hunting for some nice thing for hubby instead of myself when I get a rare chance to just shop around for fun. If you love to buy yourself new stuff, that can be a big secret.
• When hubby has aggravated me, I might have chosen to respond with total overlooking, offering a cheerful and generous response. Like the last cookie in the jar. This might be one of the Father’s favorite secrets.

These are just some ideas for loving someone in secret in your daily life. You make quiet choices in the heart, where only God sees, to love on them more than yourself. If you do the secret right, they don’t even know what you gave up because you chose their comfort and joy over yours.

In the world of secrets shared with the Father, there are far more sacred, sacrificial and serious secrets than these. Things like buying the groceries of a stranger, or forgiving the person who doesn’t even know they hurt you, or fasting while you pray for someone’s need. I imagine you have such secretes only shared between you and your heavenly Father.

If you think about it, the Lord does tons of things secretly, without fanfare. He is fond of loving on you through unlikely subjects, such as people are aren’t even saved or barely saved or act like they need saving again. And He does stuff so quietly that sometimes you’re sitting there with only a whisper of an inkling of how some blessing came your way, thinking, “I wonder if that was the Lord.”

How does your “treasure” get stored up in heaven?

Creating and sharing Father-only secrets is part of what it means to store up treasure in heaven. The fact is, there is only one way to send treasure ahead of you to heaven, and that is in the hearts of people who arrive there ahead of you. Or treasure deposited straight into the Father’s heart because you served and loved others in His name and for His sake.

The Father’s Secret Club is you and He being the only ones who know how you love when no one’s looking. The joy of loving like this was unknown to me before I knew Jesus. And frankly, even after I became a Christian, I didn’t love like this at first. It took the Spirit a patient while to teach me how to love others as much, and more than, myself.

It began when the Spirit did one of those stirrings in me one day. I was walking past my husband for the upteenth time to go do some acts of love and generosity for others in our church. It seemed right as a pastor’s wife to be busy serving others in the name of God, our church, and my pastor husband.

A noble endeavor, but noble endeavors lose a lot of their shine if you must tromp on or otherwise withhold a much needed something from one person to go give it to another. Which I was in danger of doing.

The Spirit opened my eyes to a great moment for a secret gift.

That day on my way out the door, I noticed my husband’s countenance. It was almost sad; he looked lonely and alone. He had not objected to my leaving, yet he hadn’t shown the normal enthusiasm for it either. I had ignored that and breezed past him to go do my good deeds.

But in that flash of a moment, I saw — surely because the Spirit gave me better eyes to see — that my husband needed me more. He needed me to make him more important than all my good-deed plans, and give him my undivided attention. To hang with him, be his friend, share a soft drink, a bag of chips and a game of gin rummy. And more: to do it in way that had no hint of him being my mission, my second choice or the object of my pity.

To do it as an act of love for a friend you love very much. Which I did. But as sometimes happens with husbands and wives, I had gotten in the habit of overlooking him, past him, to serve others. Then I remembered something the Spirit had said to me once: that the most important job I have as a woman and wife is to love my husband well. If I fail at this, nothing else matters much. The Spirit also said that if everyone would love just one other person truly well, it would change our world.

All of that raced across my mind in a flash as I stood at the front door, poised to leave. And then, this happened:

“Hey honey, do you think it would be all right if I didn’t go do my good deeds today? I would so love to just hang out with you instead.” His sad countenance turned into pure sunshine.

I might have said and done those things that day, and if I did, it was probably the beginning of getting hooked on the joy that comes with having a secret with the Father. Including the fact that His Spirit makes me a better person and lover than I am without Him.

Between then and now I’ve made lots of secrets shared only with my Father, although there are some folks in heaven now who know them too. The nine-year-old in me still lives and loves being in the secret club.

Thanks for use of Photo Credit on Canva: Olichel–529835