When you are not yet big enough for what you are destined for you have to go into hiding. The time came when Moses could no longer be hidden.

• Now after those days his wife Elizabeth conceived; and she hid herself five months.
• your life is hidden with Christ in God. Colossians 3:3
• the child grew and became strong in spirit and was in the deserts till the day of his manifestation to Israel. Luke 1:80

“God has normally prepared his prophetic vessels in the solitude of some kind of wilderness environment. If he is presently choosing to hide you, find contentment in knowing him and let your roots go down deep into the rich soil of his transcendent kingdom. Then you will be ready to manifest in his perfect time.”                                              -Michael Sullivant, Prophetic Etiquette

“If indeed the spiritual life is essentially a hidden life, how do we protect it in the midst of a very public life?  The two most important ways to protect our hiddenness are solitude and poverty. Both solitude and poverty protect the hiddenness of our lives.” -Henri Nouwen

• Solitude allows us to be alone with God. There we experience that we belong not to people, not even to those who love us and care for us, but to God and God alone.
• Poverty is where we experience our own and other people’s weakness, limitations, and need for support. To be poor is to be without success, without fame, and without power. But there God chooses to show us God’s love.

I am just now on the brink of discovering what has been going on inside of me and all around me. I have never been at this hidden stage or depth of spirit before.  I have spent 13 years practicing monthly solitude, but for the past two years I have been primarily hidden every day.  I have spent most of my adult life without many material resources, but for nearly 2 1/2 years I have been without employment.  I feel like a coal miner trapped under the earth and all passages in and out have been barred.  I am facing the most austere crucible of my life.

If we want to follow Jesus by words and deeds in the service of his Kingdom, we must first of all strive to follow Jesus in his simple, unspectacular, and very ordinary hidden life.