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Written by Lynne Hammond

A few weeks ago, one particular word began to get hold of me in my prayer closet. It came to me while I was praying a ut the Church and the position she’ll be in when Jesus comes back. As I saw in my spirit how we as believers will become living epistles so full of Jesus that even if people don’t have a Bible they’ll be able to read us and see Him, I noticed I kept hearing this one word.

It was the word develop.

I knew it was a word from the Lord about this day we’re living in. So even though I was familiar with it, I looked it up in the dictionary. It said that develop means to unfold gradually in detail, and gave the example of placing exposed photographic material in chemicals to produce a visible image.

What an old-fashioned example, I thought. Developing photographs?

Millennials today don’t even know what that is. They’re used to visible images appearing instantly. They think snap + upload = picture… right now.

Back in the dinosaur age, when I was growing up, there was no such thing as snap and upload. Until the Polaroid Instamatic camera came along (which, amazingly, produced photographs on the spot, in three minutes), we had to wait anywhere from six days to two weeks to see our pictures. After we filled up an entire roll of film, we had to take it to the drugstore where it was developed by being put through nine different chemical processes.

Each process had to be done in a darkroom with the door shut. Nobody dared opened the door prematurely because that would ruin the pictures. It would expose the film to light before the development process was complete, and the images on the film would be distorted or even destroyed.

That day as I thought about the word develop, I realized that for us as believers to get where we’re headed before Jesus returns, we need to go through much the same process! For the image of Christ that’s been imprinted on our spirit to be fully revealed in us, we have to shut the door on the world and spend time in a kind of darkroom... only our darkroom is called the Secret Place of the Most High!

What is the secret place of the Most High?

It’s our place of intimate fellowship with the Lord. It’s the place where we spend time just being with Him. The place in His presence where we hear from Him and things that were hazy become clear, uncertainty becomes certainty. and closed places open. Where the image of Jesus is projected in us by His Spirit and, as 2 Corinthians 3:18 says:


Notice, according to that verse, being transformed into Jesus’ image isn’t something that happens in an instant. We aren’t transformed all at once the moment we get born again or baptized in the Holy Spirit. Although those

things are important, for the image of Jesus to become visible in us, we must keep beholding Him and going from glory to glory. We must continually press into Him so that His likeness can develop in us.