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Shh…Want to hear a secret?

By Stephanie Kardia

Nothing snaps our attention quicker than a whisper or holds our
breath faster than a secret. We want to know! A movie produced in 2006 by Rhonda Byrne called The Secret has caught the attention of many in America, including talk show hosts Larry King, Ellen DeGeneres, and Oprah Winfrey. Aired initially only by pay-per-view through streaming video on the Internet (at the price of a year’s subscription to the Quarterly), The Secret purportedly reveals “the secret to unlimited joy, health, money, relationships, love, youth: everything you have ever wanted.”

Rhonda Byrne’s secret is that our feelings and thoughts attract real events. If we want something badly enough — we’ll get it.

We can be thankful that The Secret is a pack of lies. Imagine being able to have anything just by desiring it — then remember some of what you have desired over the years. Even our best motives and judgment may be stained with sin and corrupted by weakness: Our desires may be sincere, but sincerely wrong. Like Peter, who wanted Jesus to avoid the cross, we often do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men (Matthew 16:33).

Furthermore, if our thoughts could attract good, they would also
attract evil. Then the child who slammed the door in anger at the
moment the earthquake struck would wonder, “Did I make it happen?”

But no matter how eager or hurried we are, we cannot make the light turn green.

Closer to home, sometimes we Christians imagine prayer “attracts” real events. We may think prayer is a God-given power, that if said with sufficient faith — or repetition or confidence or sincerity or just the right words — will cause the result we want. But we have no such power. Our Father answers prayer according to His will, not our will; with His strength, not our own; for our good, not our indulgence.

The Spirit of God has revealed a secret to us, which has been hidden from this world. Here’s the chapter and book which tells all: 1 Corinthians 2. God’s secret is His plan to give us a better future than we can imagine, through the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Read all about it, then whisper it to a friend. She wants to know!