Dealing with Hidden Errors

UV 1431/10,000 Dealing with Hidden Errors

Teach me, and I will hold my tongue: and cause me to understand wherein I have erred.

Job 6 v 24


God has the first word and the last word and in between He lets us do the talking. But we should still our voices and be silent in His presence every day so that He teaches us. Who is a better teacher than the Lord? He knows our beginning, our ending, the turns and twists, the ups and downs of our lives, our eternal destiny, our desires, our abilities, our weaknesses and our circumstances. Silence per se is not golden but silence and submission in the presence of the Lord is golden. We need to meditate again and again on the teachings of the Lord. Each round of meditation should help us turn the teachings into principles, the principles into practice and the practice into legacy.


It is an act of humility, reverence and obedience when we stop the ceaseless chatter from our tongues and lie still in the presence of the Lord. Scripture says, “Be still and know that I am God.” In stillness and silence, we will hear the Lord speaking to us. He will quicken our dormant understanding so that we see as clear as daylight our hidden or secret faults. To err is human, to overcome is divine. The Lord will lead us into an accurate diagnosis of what afflicts us in spirit, mind and body such that we can seek the appropriate remedy. He can read us like we can read a book. He knows our every thought. Every time something either positive or negative happens in our lives, we should ask ourselves, “ What do I learn from this? How can I carry forward the positive, replicate and multiply it? How can I deplete the negative, reduce and eradicate it?”

We are blind to our own inner faults and become aware only when the fault-lines deepen, slide heavily and cause a massive quake. Our little or big compromises can keep us from appropriating the promises of God and prevent us from fulfilling our promise to God to remain faithful. The Spirit of God will make us realize our hidden sins, unconfessed sins, secret errors and bring it into the light of His grace. He will teach us how to overcome these and to be victorious. David though he knew God personally and was a man after God’s own heart did not realize he had committed a great sin in committing adultery with Bathsheba and having her husband Uriah sent to the frontlines of battle so that he was killed. He married her thereafter thinking there is no blame or reproach now since her husband was no more. But the Lord sent the prophet Nathan to warn him and make him heed the voice of God and repent. David took pride that he was the king of a great number of people and he ordered a census or head count so that he would know the exact number of people he was leading. Nowadays, that would be a legitimate exercise for a national leader but it was an error of judgement for David as God saw his reliance or dependence shifting from the grace that had shifted him from being a mere shepherd to being the king. His error was his confidence in the strength of numbers. Similarly, when the Lord blesses us, our confidence should not shift to the blessings He has given us. This is the reason the Lord tests if our faith outlasts a famine of blessings. Our flesh is weak and our spirit is willing. If our spirit is willing to heed the Holy Spirit, we can identify our weaknesses before they emerge as temptations and turn into follies. Our spirit should be sensitive to the image of ourselves that we see reflected when we look into the Word of God. We need to conform to the image of God and ask God for the grace to fill the gap between our present image and His perfection.

Prateep V Philip