Hide and Abide

By Melanie McJannet

“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” Psalm 91:1

When I was a little girl, I didn’t yet know Jesus. But I knew God. I didn’t know His name or His ways, but I somehow knew He was there.

I used to run around the yard with what I believed was a horse. It was a paper bag wrapped around a broomstick, with a horse’s face drawn in marker and yarn tied for a mane. I rode it everywhere. When I took walks with my mom and dad down the country road, that broomstick came too.

Whenever we drove somewhere, I would look out the window and imagine my horse galloping beside the car, mile after mile. Wind in its mane, hooves pounding the earth, always keeping pace. I remember thinking, If Heaven is real, then when I get there, I want God to give me a white horse with wings. What I didn’t know then was that Scripture says Jesus returns on one. But I know now.

Years later, I gave my life to Christ at 23, and everything changed. I wanted to serve Him. I wanted to build the Kingdom. I wanted to do something for God.

So I went. I became a missionary. I served pastors. I built churches. I poured out years of time and strength and heart into ministry.

I remember one missions trip in particular: preparing two army trucks in Holland, painting and refitting them, then driving all the way to Zambia through Greece, Turkey, and across the Sahara Desert. Hours and hours kneeling on the padded bench that we built in the back of that truck, watching untouched earth move past, thinking, How did I get here? How is this my life? How is God this real?

Those were amazing years.

And yet, I was still working from knowledge of what serving God was supposed to look like. Doing the things Christians do. Doing ministry because ministry was good. But calling is not the same thing as good works, and I didn’t know that yet.

“And He went up on the mountain and called to Him those He Himself wanted. And they came to Him. Then He appointed twelve, that they might be with Him and that He might send them out to preach.” Mark 3:13–14

Most of my walk with Jesus had already been shaped in the quiet place: the floor of my office, the bedroom, the closet. I had known Him there. I had heard Him there. But what I had not yet learned was that being with Him was not meant to be a moment I entered and exited. It was meant to be the way I lived. Abiding was not meant to be a place I visited. It was meant to be home.

Then COVID came. The world stopped. And so did I.

My team wanted to shift our ministry online: Zoom church, home worship, digital discipleship, podcasts, livestreams. They said, We need to keep momentum. We need to stay visible. But all I heard in my spirit was, Sit down. Say nothing. Do nothing.

It was not a suggestion. It was a command. And it felt like a rebuke. Like being pulled off the field. Like being benched.

I didn’t understand yet that it was God drawing me into the secret place.

Everything got quiet. And in the quiet, God brought the horses back.

There were horses for lease just down the road. And when the door opened, I stepped through it. Days turned into seasons. Seasons into years.

For nearly twenty years of ministry, I believed that the part of me that loved horses was a distraction, something that would pull me away from ministry, away from purpose, away from what mattered. I didn’t realize that this was a religious mindset, one that taught me to distrust my own joy.

But God does not waste what He plants.

The desire was His. The love was His. The delight was His.

Horses were not calling me away. They were calling me home.

They were the green pasture prepared for me. The place where my soul was restored. The place where striving loosened its grip. The place where I remembered how to simply be with God.

Galloping across open fields, wind in my hair, breath in rhythm, the earth moving beneath us, I found the Presence in a way I never had inside ministry walls. Not because I was hearing grand revelations, but because God had given me something that had been in my heart since I was a child.

A place where I didn’t reach for Him. I simply was with Him. Not working, not performing, not producing, not ministering. Just abiding.

“Abide in Me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in Me.” John 15:4

And this is where I began to understand: the scroll written about our lives is not revealed through effort, or ministry positions, or being busy for God, or doing what looks holy to others. It is revealed only in abiding. In the hidden place, the quiet place, the set-apart place. The place where you know His voice.

“Then I said, Behold, I have come to do Your will, O God, as it is written of me in the scroll of the book.” Hebrews 10:7

This is where identity becomes something you remember.

This is where purpose begins rising like something that was always inside you.

This is where calling stops being something you chase and becomes something that calls your name.

Some of you reading this have poured out and served faithfully. You have done good things, helpful things, church things, ministry things. But deep down, you know there is something more. Not louder, not bigger, not more public. But truer.

There is a scroll with your name on it. You will not read it by striving. You will not find it through comparison. You cannot borrow someone else’s.

You must hide and abide.

Withdraw. Be still. Listen.

The One who wrote your story is the One who will reveal it.

Your calling is not found in motion, but in communion. Identity does not come from a role, but from relationship. Purpose does not come from working for Him, but walking with Him.

The scroll opens in the secret place. Go there. He is waiting.

When Jesus said, Abide in Me, He was not assigning a task. He was revealing how you were made to live. When you were born again, God placed His Spirit within you: a spirit that recognizes Him, responds to Him, and knows His voice even when your mind does not.

“He who is joined to the Lord is one spirit with Him.” 1 Corinthians 6:17

Your spirit was designed for communion with God. It is where you hear Him, not through effort or pressure, but through union. The flesh cannot produce that communion. The mind cannot force it. Emotion cannot sustain it. But the spirit, awakened and made new, is already aligned to Him.

“Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?” Amos 3:3

This is why the secret place matters. When everything else grows quiet, when striving releases its grip, when you stop trying to prove that you belong, the spirit becomes clear again. The noise fades, and what has always been true rises to the surface.

“Before I formed you in the womb, I knew you. Before you were born, I set you apart.” Jeremiah 1:5

You were known before you served Him. You were chosen before you obeyed Him. You were loved before you recognized Him.

Calling does not begin with doing. It begins with being.

Abiding is not inactivity. It is alignment. It is the quiet returning of your spirit to the One who breathed life into it.

There comes a moment in every believer’s life when God no longer asks us to work for Him, but to be with Him. Not because He does not delight in our service, but because service without union eventually dries the bones.

This is the cry you hear now: a drawing, a leaning, a pull deep in your chest. It is your spirit responding to the Spirit of God. He is calling you back to the place where love was the first language you knew. The place where you did not reach for Him. You simply found yourself already held.

“O My dove, in the clefts of the rock, in the secret place of the steep pathway, let Me see your face, let Me hear your voice; for your voice is sweet, and your face is lovely.” Song of Solomon 2:14

He is not asking you to impress Him. He is asking you to come close enough that He can look at you again. Close enough that He can speak to you in the language your spirit remembers. Close enough that the world fades, and the only reality that remains is that you belong to Him.

The secret place is not a hiding from responsibility, calling, or purpose. It is a hiding into Him, so that when you rise, you rise with Him.

So before you ask what you are meant to build, who you are meant to reach, or what assignment you are meant to carry, come away. Return to the place where your name was first spoken. Not the name the world uses. Not the name history remembers. But the name He wrote in the scroll before the world began.

The scroll opens where the heart bows. The scroll reveals where striving ends. The scroll unfolds where love is the air you breathe.

Hide. Abide. Belong.

He is not merely waiting.

He is calling.

“Because he has set his love upon Me, therefore I will deliver him; I will set him on high, because he has known My name. He shall call upon Me, and I will answer him; I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him and honor him. With long life I will satisfy him, and show him My salvation.” Psalm 91:14–16

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