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 hiding. Hiding what was under attack.

And really, don’t we do the same? We hide what is under attack. The enemy has zeroed in on those weak parts of us, attacking that wound, reminding us of our hurt, stirring up our fears. So, we hide it away. These hidden parts of us leave us fractured and unwhole. We try to continue on with life like it doesn’t matter, but it does matter. As long as a part of us is still in the cave, we are not whole. The shame remains. The fear resides. The abandonment curls up in the darkness. The rejection sits alone in the cave. As far away from that cave as you have tried to go, there’s a part of you still in there. You’ve tried to fill these holes with relationships, with successes, with pretty things, but nothing has worked – at least not for long.

And that is why Jesus stands at your Cave of Exiles with you now. That is why he’s prepared to go in and get every part of you. His girl is hurting, no matter how hard you try to hide it, and he wants you healed and whole.

So hear the voice of the great Shepherd of your soul as he says, “Come, shame. Come, fear. Come, loneliness. Come, abandonment. Come, criticism. Come, failure. You come, rejection. Come, trauma. It’s time for you to be put back together again in healing and wholeness.”

There’s a cave near the Dead Sea called the Cave of Horror. The remains of men, women and children were found there. Exiles hidden away in the darkness. They died while hiding. Pieces of you want to die hiding, but Jesus wants every piece of you healed and living. You see if it just dies, then its wasted and leaves a hole in you. But if it’s called out by Jesus, cared for by the Shepherd, and healed in His presence, then you get to be made whole.

His desire is for no part of you to be exiled. No part of you to die hiding in the cave. For every part of you to come to him, be healed by him, and be fully restored in you. And those healed, no longer hiding, pieces of you become your greatest tools in Kingdom work.

In Luke 15, Jesus tells the Parable of the Lost Sheep. Jesus says the man with 100 sheep would leave the 99 sheep to go find the one that is lost, and he wouldn’t give up until he finds that one. You know that story. But have you ever thought of these words of Jesus as the pieces of you that get lost? If there’s 100 pieces of you, and 1 of those pieces is hiding away in the Cave of Exiles, hurting and alone, he will go after that piece of you to rescue it and heal it and bring it back with the other 99.

Jesus has not given up on a single piece of you, precious girl!

Psalm 147:3, “He heals the brokenhearted and bandages their wounds.”

Let him heal you completely. He’s coming into the cave of everything you’ve exiled and he’s calling it all out. Let him bandage those wounds. Let him make you whole again. Jesus is the only one who can.

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2065 Cave of Exiles