These are notes on the sermon, The Secret Place in Christ, preached by Pastor Joseph Prince on Sunday, August 30, 2026, at The Star Performing Arts Centre, Singapore. We hope these sermon notes will be an encouragement to you!
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Since the very beginning, even before man fell in the garden, the church has been God’s dream. His heart was for people from every tribe and every nation to become the many-membered body of Christ, made one with Him.
The church is not merely a building or a place where we gather on Sundays. We are the house of God, the bride of Christ, His beloved, and as Ephesians 5:30 tells us, “members of His body, of His flesh and of His bones.” We have been joined to our Lord Jesus Himself.
Think about what this means for you today. How can Jesus be full of peace, and you remain bound by worry? How can He have all wisdom, and you be left without? Because you are one with Him, all that belongs to Jesus now belongs to you—His peace, His wisdom, His supply.
Perhaps you are facing very real challenges in your life today. Perhaps there is a situation in your family that is weighing on your heart, or a need that seems impossible to meet. Beloved, look to our Lord Jesus and cast your cares on Him. What is impossible with man is possible with God. So don’t give up!
Pastor Prince pointed out that in the video for The Year of Much More shown at the beginning of the year, the sailors caught in the storm only saw land at the very end. He felt that through the video, the Lord had been preparing His people for the wait right from the start. We have crossed the halfway point and are now in the latter part of The Year of Much More, and Pastor Prince exhorted the people to take heart as they get ready to see their promised land and possess the much more.
And how can we possess the “much more”? It begins with knowing who we are in Christ. When the knowledge of our identity in Christ becomes real to us, it affects how we live, walk, and behave as Christians.
So who are we in Christ?
Because of His perfect, finished work that has cleansed us and made us new creations in Him, the Bible calls us a royal priesthood in 1 Peter 2:9. But what does that mean? Under the old covenant, the roles of king and priest were separate; no one could be both, except for one person—Melchizedek. And our Lord Jesus is a King-Priest after the order of Melchizedek. Our Lord Jesus is both King and Priest. And today, because we are in Him and one with Him, the same kingly and priestly anointings that flow in Him flow in us.
As priests, we can draw near to God in worship, prayer, and thanksgiving. We receive from Him and enjoy the privilege of being close to Him. Then, as kings, we can turn to the situations before us and speak with the authority He has given us. As Ecclesiastes 8:4 says, “Where the word of a king is, there is power.”
This means our words carry weight. But so often, we don’t realize the power of our words, and we end up using them against ourselves: speaking out of frustration, complaining about our circumstances, or simply agreeing with every fearful report we hear.
Proverbs 18:21 tells us that death and life are in the power of the tongue. So learn to use your words wisely. Rather than letting the reports and expectations of the world shape what you say, speak in agreement with God’s Word. For example, when God says, “With long life I will satisfy him” (Ps. 91:16), say, “Amen!” And, instead of simply asking the Lord to do something about a situation, we can speak His Word into it with the authority He has given us.
Because we are in Christ, we are in this world, but we are not of this world. And we can choose to live heavenly-minded rather than earthbound and constrained by the ways of the world.
Think of Daniel. Taken captive to Babylon and surrounded by a culture that did not honor the Lord, Daniel “purposed in his heart that he would not defile himself” with the food that the king had commanded them to eat (Dan. 1:8). Daniel and his friends asked to be given vegetables instead, and at the end of ten days, they appeared healthier than all the other young men. When the king examined them later, he also found them ten times better in wisdom and understanding than everyone else in his kingdom (Dan. 1:15, 20).
The point of the story is not that there was something special about the particular diet Daniel and his friends observed. It was the blessing of God upon them.
Daniel and his friends dared to be different. They chose to stand for the Lord and refused to compromise simply because everyone around them was living differently. And what was the result? The Lord set them apart. Likewise, we don’t have to compromise or follow the ways of the world simply because everyone else is doing it. We can stand firm in the Lord and trust in His blessing upon our lives.
And this confidence to live differently begins with knowing who we are.
Consider the story of an eaglet that fell from its nest and grew up among chickens. Surrounded by chickens all its life, the eaglet grew up thinking and living like one, never realizing what it had been created to be.
Then one day, it heard the cry of an eagle from above. As it looked up and saw the eagle soaring through the skies, something deep within it responded, “I belong there.”
The chickens around it told the eaglet otherwise. But as the eaglet responded to the cry from above and began to take flight, it discovered its true identity. It was an eagle, and it had been made to soar above the world.
In the same way, when we recognize who we truly are in Christ, we begin to live differently. We realize that we don’t have to live solely by what we see or feel in the natural. We are one with Christ, and we have been called to live the heavenly life. We are called for greater things. We don’t have to compromise and follow the ways of the world.
This means we can live a life of moral excellence, not by trying to be better in our own strength, but by drawing from Christ who lives in us. And this heavenly-mindedness can touch even the most ordinary parts of our day. As you dress your children, prepare a meal for your family, or go about your daily responsibilities, these seemingly mundane tasks can have a “touch of heaven” when you realize who you are in Christ.
Our Lord Jesus Himself showed us what this can look like. In the upper room, He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands and that He had come from God and was going to God. Yet He stooped down and washed His disciples’ feet (John 13:3–5). Because He was secure in His identity, He could perform the humblest task and still be clothed in glory.
Likewise, knowing who we are in Christ does not make us proud. It frees us to serve others from a place of security in who we are. Whether we are caring for our families, reaching out to someone in need, or simply going about our day, we can do it all with a touch of heaven that is visible to those around us.
So what does it really mean for believers to be in Christ? Psalm 91 gives us a beautiful picture of this:
“He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.”
—Psalm 91:1
The psalm is filled with wonderful promises of the Lord’s protection, deliverance, and care. And these promises belong to the one who “dwells in the secret place of the Most High.”
For believers today, this secret place is our Lord Jesus Himself. Because we are in Christ, we are in the secret place of the Most High. And beloved, God did not merely place you under or near Jesus. He did something far greater: He put you in Christ. This tells us just how close God has brought us to Himself and the position we now have in His Son.
Romans 8:17 tells us another wonderful truth about our position in Christ: we are joint heirs with Him. And our inheritance is not something we are waiting to receive one day. Because our Lord Jesus has already died and risen again, today, all that He has is ours.
This is why knowing our position in Him is so important. We need to know what is already ours if we are to possess it.
And this is true even of our righteousness. We are not waiting for some future day to become righteous before God. Through the finished work of our Lord Jesus, we have been made righteous in Christ, and this is how God sees us forever!
So begin to see yourself according to your position in Christ. You are in the secret place, and you are seated with Christ at the Father’s right hand. The more this truth becomes a revelation and a reality in your heart, the more it will begin to affect the way you carry yourself and approach every circumstance in life.
To understand our position in Christ, it is important that we see our Lord Jesus as He is today. Many believers see Jesus primarily as He was during His earthly ministry and stop there, focusing only on His earthly teachings and what it means to follow Him as a disciple.
Now, the four Gospels give us beautiful accounts of our Lord Jesus’ earthly ministry. Everywhere He went, He ministered to the people and revealed the heart of the Father. Every word He spoke was perfect, and there is so much we can receive from His life and teachings.
But today, our Lord Jesus is no longer walking on earth as He did in the Gospels. He has already gone to the cross, died for our sins, and risen from the dead. Today, He is seated at the Father’s right hand, crowned with glory and honor, “far above all principality and power and might and dominion” (Eph. 1:21).
This means that we are not in Christ as He was before the cross. We are in the risen and glorified Christ.
This is also important as we read the Lord’s teachings in the Gospels. You see, when He walked on earth, the cross had not yet happened. He was born under the law (Gal. 4:4), and some of His teachings were spoken to the Jews concerning the kingdom. There were also truths that He had yet to reveal to His disciples. That’s why in the upper room, He told them, “I still have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now” (John 16:12).
Many of the heavenly truths concerning the church and our position in Christ were later revealed to Paul by the risen Christ. So while there are precious truths and principles in our Lord’s earthly teachings that apply to us today, we are to understand them in light of the cross and the church truths given to us by the risen Christ.
We see this emphasized in Paul’s epistles. In Colossians, Paul warned against worldly philosophy and teachings that detracted from Christ. In Galatians, he warned against bringing believers back under the law. We are not to go back under the law or see Jesus only as He was during His earthly ministry, but to recognize Him as He is today and who we are in Him.
Pastor Prince further highlights this point using the story in Genesis 24, where Abraham had sent his trusted servant to find a bride for his beloved son—a picture of the Holy Spirit calling people from around the world to become part of the bride of Christ.
Before the servant left, he asked Abraham what he should do if the woman was unwilling to follow him. Should he take Isaac back to the land Abraham had come from? Abraham answered, “Beware that you do not take my son back there” (Gen. 24:6).
As Pastor Prince was reading this portion of Scripture, he felt God impress this thought upon his heart: “Don’t bring My Son back there.” What the Father meant was that we are not to bring our Lord Jesus back to where He was before the cross, back under the law.
So today, start seeing our Lord Jesus as He is—risen, glorified, and seated at the Father’s right hand—and see yourself in Him.
So what happens when our position in Christ becomes real to us? It changes the way we live, the way we face circumstances in life, the way we pray, and even the way we speak.
When we know that we are seated with Christ in the heavenly places, we no longer have to respond to our circumstances based only on what we see in the natural. We are not helpless. We can draw from our Lord’s supply, His wisdom, and His favor, and walk with confidence and authority in the situations we face.
It will change the way we pray. We will pray and speak from the position God has already given us in Christ. Instead of pleading with God to move on our behalf, we can pray from our position in Christ and what is already ours in Him. Instead of saying, “God, please help me with this. God, please give me that,” we can begin to declare what God has already made ours in Christ.
For example, when praying for our children, we can say, “Father, in Jesus’ name, I thank You. My children are protected all day today. Your angels watch over them.” Or if we are facing sickness in our bodies, instead of simply asking God to heal us, we can speak to the sickness and command it to go in Jesus’ name. This is the authority we have as part of God’s royal priesthood.
And if you have been speaking God’s Word but have not yet seen the manifestation, don’t give up, beloved. When our Lord Jesus taught about speaking to the mulberry tree (Luke 17:6), the word “speak” in the original Greek carries the idea of speaking continually. Don’t allow what you presently see to have the final word. Keep speaking in agreement with what God has said, trusting that He will bring your breakthrough in His perfect time.
In the meantime, keep returning to who you are in Christ. Because knowing your identity in Him is key to possessing the great inheritance that is already yours in Christ. This is why Paul prayed that we would receive:
“The spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of Him, the eyes of your understanding being enlightened; that you may know what is the hope of His calling, what are the riches of the glory of His inheritance in the saints.”
—Ephesians 1:17–18
This week, may the Holy Spirit open your eyes afresh to who you are in Christ. As this becomes a revelation in your heart, may it change the way you live, think, and speak, as well as the way you reach out to those around you.
You are in Christ, and you are in Him forever. All that you need and have is found in Him!
We hope these sermon notes blessed you! If they did, we encourage you to get the sermon and allow the Lord to speak to you personally as you watch or listen to it.
© Copyright JosephPrince.com 2026
These sermon notes were taken by volunteers during the service. They are not a verbatim representation of the sermon.
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