PSALM 69:5 – O God, you know my folly; the wrongs I have done are not hidden from you.”

So, let’s imagine this happening come next Lord’s Day. Instead of hearing a call to worship, we get a call to exposure. One by one we line up and each of us stands in front of our brothers and sisters in the Lord. On an excessively big screen for all to see is every thought we had, every word we said, every attitude we harbored, and everything we allowed to come before our eyes in the past month. Who wants to go first? By the way, I won’t be attending services that day! Yes, that would be the ultimate of exposure and humbling to say the least.

We care a lot about people’s opinions of us. Now some may disagree but deep down inside our hearts, we long to be thought well of and accepted by people. We are wired for this by creation. Yet, the fall in the Garden of Eden and the entrance of sin into the human experience brought shame, guilt, and a “masquerading” of our true selves in the presence of people. Oh, we don’t like it. Every true Christian wants to be genuine through and through in all relationships, but that won’t happen till we get to heaven. And what honest child of God hasn’t thought this. . . “If people truly knew me, they would be shocked and avoid me like the plague!” That doesn’t make us hypocrites, but it does reveal the struggle we face in what we want to be and what we are. For a Biblical understanding of this tension, read Romans 7.

Now let’s take that same scenario I described in the previous paragraph which isn’t going to happen, tie it to the scripture of today as to what actually is happening every day of our lives in every waking moment of our lives. Total exposure before the God who is. Nothing hidden from the all-seeing, always seeing God. Complete transparency in His Presence of all we say, think, do, harbor in our hearts, and view with our eyes. And this gaze is what matters most, not what people think of us, but what He knows about us.

So, before we attempt to run and hide over such truth, stop for two reasons. First, there is no hiding place to crawl into – And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account (Hebrews 4:13). We might “hold back” ourselves in our relationships with people out of fear of embarrassment and possible rejection, but there is no holding back before the God who knows us better than ourselves. But now, the second reason not to attempt to hide our true selves from God. Be ready.  This will overwhelm us. This will truly humble us in a particularly good way. Despite what we are, despite what David reveals of God’s omniscience in today’s scripture, God loves us. Yes, He does. Really. It is a steadfast love, an everlasting love, a covenant love, and a glorious love because He sees our folly and loves us anyway! Let that be the strongest of motivators to grow in our human relationships of sincerity and transparency with one another.

PRAYER: “Father, oh I so praise You for a love that knows me through and through and loves me still.”

QUOTE: “The steadfast love is just that – steadfast and will never change in His dealings with us.”

Because of Him,

Pastor Jim