Episode Details

Are there parts of you that are hidden away? A secret shame, a private hurt, a lonely fear that resides in the darkness you don’t talk about. Jesus knows about it and he wants to heal it.

Hebrews 4:13, “Nothing in all creation is hidden from God. Everything is naked and exposed before his eyes.” The parts of you that are hidden away in darkness are seen by your loving God. Now, he calls them out of the cave, out of the pit, out of hiding.

You’re not a whole person when parts of you are still hiding. Jesus wants ALL of you. He calls all of that secret shame, all of that private hurt, and all of that lonely fear out of the cave of exiles. In his presence, those parts of you are healed and you are made whole. The cave is not the place for you, my sister. It’s not the place for any part of you. God sees it all now. And guess what, he’s not turning away from you!

Why is it we hide things as if we can fool God? We can hide that shameful part of us from the one who created us – we can look whole – we can appear healed – while there are pieces of us exiled in the cave we don’t talk about.

Jesus stands at the cave and calls every piece of you to come follow him.

This past weekend at retreat, a beautiful soul named Michael shared the pages of her journal with me. She is an extremely talented artist and she paints visual images of scriptures within her journal. One painting she titled “The Cave of Exiles”. At the mouth of a dark cave stands a little sheep, staring into the abyss. Next to this sheep is Jesus, the great Shepherd. He too is staring into the abyss. Jesus stands ready with his staff. Ready to go into the cave and rescue what has been hidden. Ready to capture the pieces that may run and hide. Ready to restore the broken pieces of the sheep and make that precious sheep whole again.

Michael told me that sheep is her. She had hidden away her shame, her fear, her loneliness, the abandonment, the criticism, the failure, the rejection and the trauma. The dark cave held the pieces of her she didn’t know what to do with. The pieces of her that haunted her. She thought she could be fractured like that and live whole – but she was wrong. A piece of her was always exiled in the cave.

So Jesus showed her how he is her Shepherd and he would go into that cave to gather all the exiled parts of her hidden away in darkness. And he would call each one out. “Come, shame. Come, fear. Come, loneliness. Come, abandonment. Come, criticism. Come, failure. You come, rejection. Come, trauma.” Some would come to the call of the Shepherd easily, but one would hide. One would run deeper into the cave, lost with no way out. But Jesus would not leave this exiled broken piece of his sheep in that darkness. He would go into the deepest, darkest parts of the cave and use his staff to find the part that would run the hardest. For her, that was the rejection. Every other hidden part of her had responded to the call of Jesus, but that rejection had hidden and it had hidden her entire life.

She may have looked whole to the rest of the world, but a part of her was still in the Cave of Exiles, wandering, hurting and alone. But Jesus wanted his girl WHOLE!

Using his shepherd’s staff, he would capture that rejection from it’s hiding, call it out of the cave, and restore his sheep to be whole again. The healed rejection would reveal a greater purpose in her story. The hidden rejection would have forever left her unwhole with a piece of her still exiled in the cave.

Colossians 2:10 tells us, “Our own completeness is now found in him. We are completely filled with God as Christ’s fullness overflows within us.” We are not complete when parts of us are still hidden away. Jesus wants his girl whole with nothing left in the cave!

Scripture tells us caves are often where people would hide. David hid in caves while King Saul sought to kill him in a jealous rampage. Years of David’s life was spent h