God Will Hide You
God will Hide YOU!!!
Since starting New Destiny Church in 2010 I have felt like my life has been on display with steroids added to the mix. At our home church CRM now City Cathedral, I was the one who worked behind the scenes in the church and sang on the praise team/choir. When my husband became the youth pastor, I worked with the youth and served our church faithfully, but something happened in 2010. I remember it like it was yesterday, my husband and I were leaving a youth revival that he just preached at with a classmate in our hometown. They wanted my husband to come back to do another revival and he called our Bishop to get permission to go back. Our Bishop said Son no you can’t go, my husband said yes sir, I understand. I thought the call was over because we honored our Bishop and we were not going to go against his will, period. I remember there being a pause that felt like a long pause and our Bishop said, Son, the reason you can’t go is because you will be building a church in your hometown. Imagine my face, my shock, but most of all my fears after hearing my Bishop say those words.
That day my life started to become a life that I did not recognize, a life of unfamiliar territory and a life of being on display in front of so many people knowingly and unknowingly. From 2010-2018 our life was on a fast track and on display for our community and surrounding areas to see. Eventually, we started doing things on social media for the world to see. We did so much in so little time it was crazy. We went from opening up a church to doing women’s & men’s conferences, youth events, leadership workshops, business workshops, marriage workshops, retreats, and non-profit events to profitable events, which allowed us to see so many lives change and continue to change right before our eyes. So much happened in such a little time, but it was preparing us for a shift that we had no idea that was about to happen.
In 2018 we noticed that all of the things we were doing were starting to slow down and those things were no longer the focus of our minds. We both noticed that we were standing in the pain of our ministry and it felt like God had left us. Wait, what? Sidebar, Read my book “You Are the Fragrance”. I go into the details of how we experience betrayal, character assassination and so much more that made us want to quit as leaders, but here’s the thing God warned us about it before it happened. Let me pause and say this is not a pity party, I am just setting the stage for How God will HIDE you. Come on glory…
I remember my husband sitting in the foyer of our church with two other leaders and he said these words. There is a fire about to hit our church, but those that are not supposed to be connected to this ministry will be consumed by this fire. My husband and I both had a dream of us being in a tornado. In his dream, he said we were holding on to something like the movie called Tornado (when the man and the woman were holding on to a pole as the tornado came through) and he heard God say Don’t let go keep holding on. In my dream, we were standing in the eye of a tornado and there were big objects like cars, houses, etc all around us, but we were in the eye of the tornado looking up and it was so clear, I will never forget it. While these objects were moving around us we did not get touched by any of the objects, God was protecting us in the storm (in tears). God was revealing to us that a storm was coming, but don’t quit and just hold on I got you. We had to trust the process of God’s hand during that time.
After my husband had that conversation with some leaders in the foyer, weeks later people were leaving our ministry like flies and not leaving peacefully. Meaning they were leaving and having unhealthy conversations on their way out the door, but God told my husband and me, to be quiet. Again get the book “You Are the Fragrance” for more.
2018-2021 God started hiding us and protecting us even when we did not understand why. Yes we hurt, but he was hiding us.
Let’s Talk about it….God will HIDE YOU!!!
Let’s take a look at Exodus chapter 1, 2 & 3 (read it when you get a chance). It shows us Moses’ mother hiding Moses from Pahoarh so that they would not kill him. The Bible says she hid him for 3 months and then sent him down the river and had Moses’ sister follow Moses. Then we find Pharaoh finding the baby in the river and asking her servants to find someone to nurse him. The powerful part is that Moses’ sisters told Pharaoh’s sister I know someone who can nurse him” and Pharaoh’s sister said, ” I will pay whoever nurses him. OH MY GOD, The power in this is that Moses’s sister takes Moses back to his birth mother and she nurses Moses and she gets paid for doing it. Wait what!!! The power is not that she got paid for doing, she got a chance to take care of her baby boy Moses as she helped develop him before he went back to the palace.
If you know me I am biblically nosy. I started reading Exodus 3 and it shows us how Moses was living in the palace, but he felt like he did not fit in with the palace. This scripture shows us how Moses saw one of Pharaoh’s men beating on the Israelites and Moses killed one of Pharaoh’s men and hid him. After Pharaoh found out Moses killed one of his men, Moses fled and hid from Pharaoh.
After Moses hid for some time, the bible says that he not only experienced God in a way that no man has experienced him by seeing God’s backside, but he also went back to rescue the Israelites. Even when God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against Moses and God’s people. God showed his power and miracles in so many ways.
The moral of this story is….. Can you imagine Moses’ mother saying to herself…. I am so glad I listened to my instinct and hid my son from Pharaoh. If he had killed him the people of Israel would have still been in bondage. Come here, When God chooses to hide you, he is preparing you for a greater purpose. It may seem like everything and everyone is against you, but you must ask yourself this question. Did God harden their heart against you to push you to purpose? The Bible says God hardened Pharaoh’s heart against Moses, but God showed Moses and Pharaoh how powerful he was through all the plagues that hit the land as he protected the Israelites.
Okay, let me stop because as a preacher I can dive and swim in this text. The point I want to show you is that God will hide you for a time to develop you, to grow you, to allow you to heal properly, to allow you to snatch your identity back, and to grow in your faith. This is not a comfortable place to be in because it seems as if the enemy wants you to die spiritually and HE DOES. But I want to encourage you to embrace your hidden moments.
Every time God starts to shift our life it has always been unfamiliar and uncomfortable and each transition was different, but during 2018-2021 we were silent and God was hiding us. During the hiding moment, we downsized to an apartment and built our home. COVID made our church life unfamiliar, but we needed that time to heal as leaders and now I praise him for the hiding moment because now we are leading as healthy leaders. We started a business and that is unrecognizable (sidebar join Lions Den we share every trail and triumph moment with them). God hid us because he knew the plan he had for us and we are now watching our greater purpose be birth out right before our eyes. No, it’s not easy, but baby it’s worth it. Like Moses’s mother, we look back and say Lord we are so glad we trusted your plan and allowed you to hide us, but most of all embraced our hiding moment.
Finally, God’s plans for you are better than any plans you have for yourself. So don’t be afraid of God’s will, even if it’s different from yours. If you are in a season of God hiding you. Learn everything you need to learn while he’s hiding you. Allow him to develop you and allow yourself to learn everything you need to learn before he brings you out of hiding. Believe me when I say your life will be moving fast when you come out of hiding. Ask Moses lol…. He would tell you to embrace this moment because when God starts to use you there is no turning back. He would tell you that everything he learned he had to use to bring the people of Israel towards the promised land. After all, people’s lives are at stake because of what you learned in the hiding moment. God wants to use someone so you may as well let him use your pain for his purpose.
Insider, God gave me this sermon title in June (He’s Hiding You). My husband & I experienced another hiding moment this past May & June, we took the time to learn in that season and read books that would prepare us when we came out of hiding. We took the time to build ourselves, update some things in our business, and train our leaders in our church. In July, God brought us back out of hiding and during this time OMG we have seen God’s hand in such a different way, it has been life-changing to us and those that are connected to us. You know I will share it after I have experienced it all. We are in it so pray that we use everything we learned in hiding for this season in our lives.
If you are in hiding Learn, Listen, and Love you will needed after God brings you out of hiding.
Your sister in Christ, Love & Prosperity
Tonya Harden
“God’s plans for you are better than any plans you have for yourself. So don’t be afraid of God’s will, even if it’s different from yours.” – Greg Laurie
Recent Comments