{"id":27412,"date":"2026-10-21T17:22:32","date_gmt":"2026-10-21T22:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/?p=27412"},"modified":"2026-10-21T17:22:50","modified_gmt":"2026-10-21T22:22:50","slug":"your-secret-sin-you-think-no-one-else-knows-about-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/your-secret-sin-you-think-no-one-else-knows-about-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Your secret sin: You think no one else knows about it"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve got a secret!\u201d\u00a0 \u2013Popular television game show of the 1960s and 1970s.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Recently, a man I know wrote of the secrets his family was harboring as they struggled to deal with an addictive, out-of-control relative.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou know how the family gets ready to host a guest and the house is clean and in order and nothing out of place?\u00a0 The guest is impressed.\u00a0 He wishes his house could be this neat and organized with nothing out of place.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cBut what he doesn\u2019t know is that there is one room where you have stored all the junk and clutter.\u00a0 If he were to open the door to that room, he would be amazed.\u201d<\/p>\n

That, he said, is how things are\u00a0for a family that\u00a0tries to keep up an image when they are about to come apart.<\/p>\n

They push things back into that private room, whose door they dare not open.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s about family secrets.<\/p>\n

Everyone has them, he said.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

One of our deacon families was hosting an open house.\u00a0 I was amazed at the lack of clutter.\u00a0 They ought to see my house, I thought.\u00a0 But they had no stack of newspapers, no unread or partially read magazines lying around, no stack of books to be donated to the library or returned there.<\/p>\n

When I asked our hostess how she did this, she surprised me.<\/p>\n

\u201cBrother Joe, there is one room you dare not look into.\u00a0 That\u2019s where we dumped all the clutter!\u201d And she laughed.<\/p>\n

Do we do this with the human heart, I wonder. Have one room that holds all the family trash, all the clutter, all the stuff we dare not show the world?<\/p>\n

It is true that everyone has their secrets, things they dare not tell the world. And, I will go so far as to say that\u2019s normal.\u00a0 It\u2019s even probably healthy.<\/p>\n

I do not want to know that you and your spouse had an argument last night.\u00a0 Neither do I need to know about your private lives, the intimacies (or lack thereof) between you.<\/p>\n

Keep it to yourself. It\u2019s all right.<\/p>\n

For months,\u00a0Fran had cared for her ailing husband before death finally claimed him.\u00a0She was literally worn to a frazzle. Their long marriage\u00a0had been difficult, but she had been faithful and had kept\u00a0the family\u00a0secrets. And now that was all gone.\u00a0 That\u2019s why she did something highly questionable.<\/p>\n

Within hours after the funeral, the widow told her children: \u201cNo more secrets.\u201d\u00a0 What followed was her announcement that she felt strongly that she and a family friend had grown close and would someday marry.\u00a0 \u201cI wanted you to know,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019m so tired of keeping secrets.\u201d<\/p>\n

That was one bit of news the family wished she had kept to herself. They were not ready for\u00a0this and could not handle it.<\/p>\n

Some things should be kept secret: What a couple does in the bedroom does not need to be told.\u00a0 What the husband or wife did before marriage (or before coming to Christ) should be left behind.\u00a0 If the couple went through counseling and the garbage came out in the safety of the sessions, they should forgive and forget and go forward.<\/p>\n

No one who reads this should think Joe is calling for complete openness about every detail of our lives.\u00a0 You do not need to know everything I\u2019ve done and I have no use for that information from you.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

But\u00a0many of us maintain\u00a0secret rooms in our spiritual houses which\u00a0need to be cleaned and disinfected and aired out.\u00a0 We\u2019re talking about repentance of sin, and healing and a new holiness.<\/p>\n

A bizarre little incident took place in the days when\u00a0Nehemiah was leading God\u2019s people to rebuild the walls around\u00a0Jerusalem.\u00a0 Throughout their long, hard ordeal, the Israelites were opposed and harassed and undermined by their pagan neighbors, led by Sanballat the Samarian, Tobiah the Ammonite, and Geshem the Arab.\u00a0 (These brutes are active throughout the book of Nehemiah, and\u00a0receive an \u2018A\u2019 for persistence!)\u00a0 Finally, the wall is completed around the city and things are moving forward. That\u2019s when Nehemiah the governor makes a discovery.<\/p>\n

Eliashib, the high priest, who was in charge of the various storerooms in the temple, turned out to be a relative of Tobiah the Ammonite due to the forbidden practice of intermarriage with the pagans.\u00a0 On one occasion, when Nehemiah returned from conferring with his boss, the king of Persia, he \u201cdiscovered the evil that Eliashib had done on behalf of Tobiah.\u201d\u00a0 And what was that?<\/p>\n

He had provided the enemy Tobiah \u201ca room in the courts of God\u2019s house.\u201d (Nehemiah 13:7).<\/p>\n

Get that?\u00a0 The enemy of God\u2019s people was given an apartment in the Temple.\u00a0 It would be hard to think of anything worse.<\/p>\n

Nehemiah says, \u201cI was greatly displeased and threw all of Tobiah\u2019s household possessions out of the room!\u201d\u00a0 But he did not stop there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI ordered that the rooms be purified.\u201d And he did not stop there.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had the articles (instruments of worship) of the house of God restored there, along with the grain offering and frankincense.\u201d<\/p>\n

He threw out the offensive material, had the place fumigated and washed down, and then furnished the room with holiness.<\/p>\n

Sounds like a plan, doesn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Nehemiah adds, \u201cTherefore, I rebuked the officials, saying, \u2018Why has the house of God been neglected?’\u201d (Nehemiah 13:11)<\/p>\n

In this life there are few things more satisfying than knowing your entire life is open to the Lord, that all the rooms are His, that you are completely clean and pure, and you are fully free in Christ.\u00a0 Jesus once said, \u201cThe ruler of this world is coming and he has nothing in me\u201d (John 14:30).<\/p>\n

We must not\u00a0stop until this is the case with each of us.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026to You our hearts are open; nothing here is hidden. You are our heart\u2019s desire\u2026.\u201d\u00a0 <\/em>(\u201cHere for You\u201d by Matt Redman)<\/p>\n

If you are convicted by this, may I suggest you get alone with the Lord and you don’t come out until your heart is fully his and He is Lord over every inch of your life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI\u2019ve got a secret!\u201d\u00a0 \u2013Popular television game show of the 1960s and 1970s. Recently, a man I know wrote of the secrets his family was harboring as they struggled to deal with an addictive, out-of-control relative. \u201cYou know how the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,61,117,28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27412","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lord-jesus","category-obedience","category-sins","category-spiritual-maturity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27412","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27412"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27412\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27414,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27412\/revisions\/27414"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27412"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27412"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/joemckeever.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27412"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}