Transcription
There is a version of you that your circumstances have never met. A version that does not panic in crisis, that does not bow to sickness, that does not crumble under pressure, that does not run to the world before running to the father, that does not face the enemy with uncertainty, but with the settled unshakable authority of a spirit that has been developed into the dominant force God always intended it to be. Kenyon called him the hidden man of the heart. And the reason most believers never walk in that version of themselves is not sin. It is not a lack of salvation. It is not insufficient prayer or inadequate theology. It is neglect. The hidden man of the heart, the real you, the eternal inward man who was recreated at the new birth and received the very nature and life of God, has been sitting inside most believers since the day they were saved, carrying everything they have been searching for, holding everything heaven deposited in them at salvation, waiting for the one thing that will bring him from potential to power development. Kenyon wrote, "Because our spirits are undeveloped, we are powerless. We face a crisis and we panic. We face sickness and we run to the world before we run to the father." He was not writing about unbelievers. He was writing about bornagain bible carrying church attending believers whose inner man has never been developed past the point of new birth, who received the life of God at salvation, and then proceeded to live as though that life was a theological fact rather than a practical reality. And the question this teaching is going to answer is not what the hidden man is or what he carries. The question is why? Why, after 2,000 years of the gospel, after millions of bornagain believers, does the average Christian still walk through their daily life with an undeveloped inner man? Why does the hidden man of the heart remain hidden not just from the world, but from the believer who carries him? The answer is found in five specific reasons. Five obstacles that look like Christianity, feel like spiritual growth, and produce none of the inner man development that Kenyon identified as the key to everything. Today, we are going to name them, drawn directly from E.W. Kenyon's The Hidden Man of the Heart and in his presence. And by the time we finish, you will understand not just what has been keeping your inner man undeveloped, but exactly what to do about it. Starting today, 1 Peter 3:4. But let it be the hidden man of the heart in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
The hidden man of the heart, the real you, the eternal inward man who received the nature and life of God at the new birth. Not your mind, not your emotions, not your body, your spirit. And Kenyon writes, "Man is a spirit. He has a soul and he lives in a body. Spirit first, soul second, body third. The real you is the inward man. And the believer who has never understood this will always default to living from the outside in, governed by senses, driven by emotions, led by reasoning faculties, while the hidden man sits silent and undeveloped inside them." That is the condition Kenyon was describing. And it is the condition that the five reasons we are about to cover have been producing generation after generation in the body of Christ. Let us name them and let us break them. The hidden man develops the same way every living thing develops through feeding, through exercise, through consistent deliberate daily attention. Kenyon wrote, "You can develop spirit life until you dominate circumstances. until you dominate, not manage, not cope with, dominate. That believer who does not panic in crisis, who does not bow to sickness, who does not crumble under pressure, is not special. They are not more gifted or more anointed than you. They simply developed the hidden man, while most of the church did not. And here are the five reasons why.
Reason number one, most believers have never been taught that the hidden man exists. This sounds too simple to be the real answer, but Kenyon identified it as foundational. He writes in the hidden man of the heart that the church as a whole is unfamiliar with the recreated spirit and unfamiliarity begins with a failure of teaching. Most believers sitting in churches every Sunday have never once heard a thorough, practical, sustained teaching on the nature of their recreated spirit. They have heard about the soul. They have heard about the body. They have heard about spiritual gifts and prayer and worship and evangelism. But the hidden man of the heart, the real you, the eternal inward man who received the nature and life of God at the new birth, has largely remained unadressed. And you cannot develop what you do not know you have. You cannot access what you have never been shown exists. A believer who does not know they are primarily a spirit being, who has never understood that their spirit was recreated at the new birth and that everything God deposited in them for their Christian life is sitting in that recreated spirit, will spend their entire walk with God living from the soul and the body, from the mind and the emotions and the senses, while the hidden man, full of everything they have been searching for, sits silent and undeveloped inside them. The solution begins with the teaching, with the moment a believer finally understands that the most important part of them is the part they cannot see. That the inner man is the real man and that every resource heaven has provided is accessed through that inner man, not around it.
Reason number two, most believers have substituted soul activity for spirit development. This is perhaps the most widespread and least recognized obstacle to developing the hidden man. And Kenyon addresses it with a precision that cuts through every comfortable religious assumption. Most of what passes for spiritual growth in the average church is actually soul activity. It is mental. It is emotional. It is the development of the reasoning faculties and the stirring of the emotions and the training of the will. And none of it, Kenyon says, is the same as developing the recreated spirit. The mind can be educated about God without the spirit being developed in God. The emotions can be stirred in worship without the inner man being strengthened in fellowship. The will can be disciplined into religious routine without the hidden man ever being fed. Kenyon calls this mental ascent and he says it is the greatest counterfeit of real spirit development that exists in the church. Mental ascent knows all the right things. It agrees with the word. It says the right words. It attends the right meetings but it never drops below the level of the mind into the level of the spirit. The word stays in the head. The truth stays intellectual. And the hidden man, who needs the living word as food, the same way the body needs bread, remains unfed. The practical consequence is exactly what Kenyon described. A believer who faces a crisis and panics. Who has all the right theology and none of the inner stability that a developed spirit produces. Who can quote the promises and cannot stand on them when the pressure comes because the promises are in the mind but not in the spirit. And it is the spirit, not the mind, that must be strong enough to lead when everything in the outer world is demanding that the senses take over. The solution is the distinction between feeding the mind and feeding the spirit, between studying about the word and meditating in the word until it becomes alive in the inner man, between knowing truth intellectually and having truth become a reality in the recreated spirit. Most believers have spent years developing their soul and calling it spiritual growth. The hidden man of the heart has been waiting for someone to feed him instead. The reason most believers substitute soul activity for spirit development is because they were never taught the difference. If no one has shown you that the mind and the spirit are distinct, you will assume that more information, more emotion, more religious discipline equals a stronger inner man. It does not. The word must become flesh in you, not information stored in the mind. The word becoming a governing reality in the spirit through meditating on it until it drops from the head into the heart. That is feeding the hidden man slower, quieter, less productive feeling. And it produces something that years of mental activity alone never will. A spirit that leads from the inside that knows what to do before the mind has had time to panic.
Reason number three, most believers are too busy to be still. Kenyon writes in the hidden man of the heart, "Shut yourself in alone with your own spirit where the clamor of the world is shut out." And in his presence, he writes that one cannot spend an hour in conscious communion with the father without carrying away the fragrance that fills the atmosphere. An hour in conscious communion with the world shut out. For most believers, that description is a fantasy. Not because they are unwilling, but because the pace and structure of modern life has made sustained inner stillness almost impossible to maintain. From the moment they wake up to the moment they sleep, the outer world is demanding their attention. The phone, the news, the demands of work, the needs of family, the endless stream of content and information and noise that fills every available moment of the day. And the hidden man of the heart cannot be developed in those conditions. Not because God is limited by noise, but because the inner man speaks on a frequency that requires stillness to access. Kenyon identified this clearly. He said, "The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord. But God cannot light that candle if the winds of the world are constantly blowing through the mind." The development of the inner man requires the creation of conditions in which the inner man can be heard. Conditions that most believers never create because the world has convinced them that busyness is productivity and stillness is wasted time. The result is a generation of believers who are more connected to their phones than to their spirits, who have more information about more things than any generation in history, and less awareness of what their inner man is saying than any generation that came before them. The hidden man is speaking, but the noise is too loud. And because it is too loud every single day, the inner man never gets the sustained, deliberate, consistent attention that development requires. The solution is not complicated, but it is costly. It costs time. It costs the willingness to shut the outer world out, to turn the phone off, to close the door, to sit in silence, and give the hidden man the space and the attention and the nourishment that no amount of busy Christian activity will ever provide.
Reason number four, most believers have never overcome sin consciousness. Kenyon makes a statement in the hidden man that directly connects sin consciousness to the undevelopment of the inner man. He writes, "There can be no development of faith as long as sin consciousness dominates the human spirit." Sin consciousness is the deep, persistent, quiet sense of unworthiness that tells the believer they are not spiritual enough, consistent enough or righteous enough to expect the hidden man to actually work in their life. It is the inner voice that says, "Who are you to walk in dominion? Who are you to expect your spirit to lead? Look at your failures. Look at your inconsistency. Look at how far you fall short." And the devastating effect of that voice is that it keeps the inner man crouching rather than standing. It keeps the hidden man in a posture of apology rather than authority. A spirit gripped by sin consciousness cannot develop into the dominant force Kenyon describes because development requires boldness. It requires the settled confidence of a son who knows his righteousness in Christ is not dependent on his performance. It requires the ability to approach God as a father and not as a judge. To enter the secret place as a son and not as a guilty supplicant hoping to be tolerated. Most believers have never been thoroughly delivered from sin consciousness. They carry it quietly into every prayer, every confession, every attempt to develop the inner man. And it acts as a ceiling on everything they try to build. The hidden man begins to develop. And then sin consciousness whispers, "You do not deserve this." And the development stops. The solution is what Kenyon calls the righteousness reality. The settled deep spirit level knowing that you are the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. Not because you earned it, because Jesus provided it. 2 Corinthians 5:21. For he hath made him to be sin for us who knew no sin that we might be made the righteousness of God in him. Made, past tense, already done, already established, already legally yours. And the moment that reality moves from a verse you know to a conviction your spirit stands on, sin consciousness loses its grip. The hidden man straightens up and development begins in earnest.
Reason number five. Most believers have tried to develop the hidden man through crisis rather than consistency. This is the final reason and it may be the most practically significant of all. Most believers only give serious attention to their inner man when something goes wrong, when the crisis hits, when the diagnosis arrives, when the financial war goes up, when the relationship collapses. In that moment, they suddenly become very interested in developing their spirit. They pray more. They read more, they attend more, they pursue God with an intensity that their ordinary days never see. And then the crisis passes or they learn to live with it. and the intensity fades and the attention given to the inner man returns to its previous level, which is to say almost none until the next crisis and the cycle repeats. Kenyon understood that this crisis-driven approach to inner man development produces nothing lasting because the hidden man is not developed in moments of emergency intensity. He is developed through the daily consistent undramatic discipline of feeding the spirit, meditating on the word, fellowshipping with the father and giving the inner man the sustained attention that development requires over time. He writes in the hidden man of the heart, "You can develop spirit life until you dominate circumstances." But the key word is develop. Development is not an event. It is a process. It happens incrementally, invisibly, day by day through consistent practice that produces no immediately visible results, but that compounds over time into an inner man so strong, so sensitive, so developed that when the crisis comes, and it always comes, the believer does not scramble. They do not panic. They do not run to the world before they run to the father. They go inward to the hidden man who has been built brick by brick, day by day through a consistency that most believers have never sustained long enough to see the results of.
Now, here is the picture that clarifies everything. A man who only goes to the gym when he needs to lift something heavy will never be strong enough to lift it. He will arrive at the moment of greatest physical demand with muscles that have never been trained for it, and he will fail. Not because the task was impossible, but because the development never happened. The believer who only pursues spirit development when they face a crisis will arrive at the moment of greatest spiritual demand with an inner man that has never been trained for it. They will have all the right theology, all the right confessions, all the right prayers, and none of the inner stability that only comes from development sustained over time in the ordinary days. This is why Kenyan identified consistency as the non-negotiable, not intensity, not devotional heroics. Consistency, the undramatic, unglamorous daily decision to give the hidden man 15 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour of deliberate, focused attention every day. Not just in crisis, especially in the ordinary days when nothing is pressing, when the circumstances are manageable, when the temptation is to coast. Because it is in those ordinary days that the real development happens. Brick by brick, layer by layer, day by day, until the day the crisis comes and the hidden man stands up. Not because you suddenly found the faith, because you built it quietly, consistently in the days when nobody was watching and nothing was urgent. That is the developed spirit Kenyon was describing. That is the hidden man who dominates circumstances rather than being dominated by them. And that is what five specific reasons have been preventing in the lives of most believers. The teaching was missing. The soul was substituted for the spirit. The world was too loud. Sin consciousness kept the inner man crouching and crisis replaced consistency as the motivation for development. Five reasons, all of them addressable, all of them breakable. Starting today, because Kenyon did not write as a diagnostician without a prescription. The prescription is specific. Feed the spirit on the word, not read about it. Meditate on it. Create the conditions of stillness daily. Stand in your righteousness every time sin consciousness speaks. Fellowship with the father in real two-way communion and do it every day, not just in crisis, especially in the ordinary days, because that is where the hidden man is built.
So what does developing the hidden man actually look like as a daily practice? Because Kenyon was never content with diagnosis alone, and neither should we be. The five reasons are clear. The obstacles are named. Now the question is what do you actually do? The first practice is deliberate feeding of the spirit on the word. Not reading the Bible through in a year. Not accumulating scriptural knowledge in the mind. Meditating on the word. Taking one verse, one specific truth and staying with it until it moves from the surface of your thinking into the governing center of your inner man. You speak it out loud. You personalize it. You ask it questions. You let it sit in your spirit. You return to it throughout the day. And over time, that verse stops being information you know and starts being conviction you live from. The hidden man has been fed. And a fed spirit is a strong spirit. Kenyon wrote, "The word of God must become flesh in you, not information about God. The word itself living, active, present, becoming the governing reality of your inner man through the sustained practice of meditation." That is the difference between a believer who knows the promises and a believer whose spirit stands on the promises. The first has information, the second has development.
The second practice is creating deliberate conditions of stillness. Kenyan writes, "Shut yourself in alone with your own spirit where the clamor of the world is shut out." That is a practical instruction, not a spiritual suggestion. You physically create the conditions. You turn the phone off. You close the door. You sit in silence. You give the inner man the environment he needs to be heard. This is where most believers struggle most because stillness feels unproductive. It feels like nothing is happening. The mind wants to fill the space with activity. The flesh wants to scroll, to plan, to process. And the hidden man who speaks on a frequency that requires stillness to access cannot compete with all of that noise. So you choose the stillness deliberately. You guard it. You protect it. You treat it as the most valuable 30 minutes of your day. Because it is. Because the fragrance that Kenyon described, that peace, that authority, that settledness that follows a believer who has been in real communion comes from the stillness, not from the activity.
The third practice is standing daily in your righteousness. Every morning before you do anything else, you declare your standing, not because you feel righteous, because the word says you are righteous. I am the righteousness of God in Christ Jesus. I approach my father as a son. I stand in the presence of God as though sin had never been because of what Jesus provided, not because of what I have done. That declaration is not arrogance. It is the foundation of everything that follows in your inner man development. Because a spirit gripped by sin consciousness cannot develop. And a spirit that stands in righteousness consciousness grows bold, grows strong, grows into the dominant force that Kenyon described.
The fourth practice is consistency above intensity. Not dramatic devotional experiences that leave you emotionally moved but spiritually unchanged. Daily quiet consistent feeding. 15 minutes that becomes 30 minutes that becomes an hour. not forced, not performed, but sustained. Because the hidden man develops through consistency the same way a muscle develops through consistent exercise. You do not become strong by lifting heavy weights once a month with great intensity. You become strong by lifting consistently day after day in the quiet undramatic rhythm of a discipline that has been chosen and sustained. That is the development Kenyon was pointing toward. That is the hidden man he was describing. Not the dramatic sudden awakening of a spirit that was always there. The gradual consistent daily building of an inner man who grows stronger with every feeding until the day he stands up in a crisis and leads with a certainty that no circumstance and no enemy can shake. That hidden man is in you right now. He has been there since the day you were born again. waiting for the feeding, waiting for the stillness, waiting for the consistency. Give it to him starting today.
The hidden man does not lose what he has already received. Every time you have meditated on the word, every time you have been in real communion with the father, has deposited something in your inner man that is still there. You do not start over. You simply resume. He has always been there, always been ready, always been more than sufficient for everything you will ever face. The only thing that was ever missing was your consistent daily attention. Give it to him now.
So, here is your challenge. Not a dramatic overhaul, one decision. The decision to give the hidden man of the heart 15 minutes of deliberate, consistent daily attention. Starting tomorrow morning, before the world gets the first word, before the phone is checked, before the day begins, 15 minutes of shutting the outer world out and turning your attention to the inner man. 15 minutes of feeding the spirit on the word, taking one verse, staying with it, speaking it, letting it become alive in your inner man. 15 minutes of real communion with the father, speaking and listening, giving and receiving. 15 minutes of standing in your righteousness and refusing to let sin consciousness keep your spirit crouching. 15 minutes. That is where it starts. And then you do it again the next day and the day after that and the week after that and the month after that. Not because you feel the results immediately because Kenyon said development is a process. It happens day by day, brick by brick, invisibly until the day comes when circumstances that would have made the old you panic find a spirit that has been built strong enough to stand.
That is what you are building. Not a better devotional routine, a stronger inner man, a hidden man who has been fed, developed, and trained until he is ready to lead when everything in the outer world is demanding that the senses take over. And here is what I want you to know about that process. It is not dramatic. It is not spectacular. It does not feel like a breakthrough most of the time. It feels like 15 minutes in the morning before a busy day. It feels like choosing the word over the phone. It feels like sitting in silence when the mind wants to scroll. It feels like speaking your righteousness when the feelings say you are unworthy. It feels ordinary but it is producing something extraordinary. A hidden man who grows stronger every single day. Kenyon wrote toward the end of his life with the clarity that only decades of consistent inner man development can produce. It is the development of the spirit that is going to mean more to your life than any other one thing. Not the education of the soul, not the discipline of the body, not the accumulation of theological knowledge or the attendance at the right services or the performance of the right religious activities. The development of the spirit that is the one thing and it begins with one decision to stop neglecting the hidden man and start giving him the daily consistent deliberate attention he has been waiting for since the day you were born again. He is in you right now. Full of everything God deposited at the new birth. Full of the nature and life of the father. Full of righteousness and authority and wisdom and power. Full of every resource heaven has provided for your Christian walk. Not waiting to be activated by a crisis. Waiting to be developed by consistency.
Type I develop my spirit daily in the comments right now. Not as a wish, as a commitment, as the decision of a believer who has understood what has been keeping their inner man undeveloped and has chosen from this day forward to change it. The hidden man of the heart is not supposed to stay hidden. He is supposed to lead. And when he leads, everything changes. The hidden man does not hold a record of your neglect. He carries inside him everything God deposited at the new birth. And that deposit has not diminished through all the years of neglect. He is still full, still ready, still capable of becoming everything Kenyon described. You are not behind. You are not disqualified. You are simply at the beginning of a commitment the hidden man has been waiting for you to make. Make it today and again tomorrow until the consistency becomes the lifestyle. until the hidden man finally rises to lead. And on that day, the day your circumstances meet the version of you that Kenyon was describing, everything the enemy has been using against you will find no purchase. Because the inner man built in the quiet, ordinary days will stand in the extraordinary ones. Unmovable, unshakable, developed.