It's kind of funny how we try to hide from God. Maybe we aren't trying to actively hide from God - maybe we just push our conscience to the subconscious. Whatever it is, it's kind of funny. For God, it must look like the guy in the picture when we try to hide. It reminds me of when my boys try to hide from me. They will put a blanket over themselves. I can still see the blanket moving. I can still hear them. I still love them.
Personally, I'm sick of trying to hide every time I sin. There is no point - it's hopeless even trying. I have found that the best thing to do is just turn around, ask Jesus for forgiveness and move on. This needs to happen right away - it is urgent. If it doesn't happen right away, I find myself in a downward spiral. My heart becomes desensitized to God's presence. I stop reading the Bible. I get a little calloused and it becomes harder and harder to turn around. The 'weight' of my sin bears down on my soul. Sooner or later something happens that causes me to wake up, but every time I wait I find myself wishing I would have turned around sooner.
Sometimes we wait waaaay too long. The danger with this is that if we wait too long, we risk falling asleep. Our heart becomes hardened - too calloused to sense God, who is Spirit. We become carnal - worldly - unable to see, hear or feel God's presence, even though it drenches us every day like we're standing under a waterfall.
It's interesting that when Jesus talked with the Samaritan woman about her sin (John 4), he touched the most sensitive spot in her life - "Go call your husband." Of course, Jesus knew she had no husband. In fact, he knew that she had five different husbands and that the man she was currently sleeping with was not her husband.
Why did Jesus strip open this woman's inner life like this? Because he knew that the quickest way to the heart is through a wound. I like what John Piper has to say about what happened next:
It's interesting that when Jesus talked with the Samaritan woman about her sin (John 4), he touched the most sensitive spot in her life - "Go call your husband." Of course, Jesus knew she had no husband. In fact, he knew that she had five different husbands and that the man she was currently sleeping with was not her husband.
Why did Jesus strip open this woman's inner life like this? Because he knew that the quickest way to the heart is through a wound. I like what John Piper has to say about what happened next:
Now watch the universal reflex of a person trying to avoid conviction. She has to
admit in v. 19 that Jesus has extraordinary insight ("You're a prophet!"), but instead
of dealing with her guilt she tries to suck Jesus into an academic controversy: "O, so you're a prophet, well, where do you stand on the issue of where people ought to worship?" Verse 20: "Our fathers worshipped on this mountain; and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship."
A trapped animal will chew his own leg off. A trapped sinner will mangle his own mind and rip up the rules of logic and discourse. "Why, yes, as long as we're speaking about my five husbands and my adultery, what is your stance on the issue of where people should worship?" Brothers and sisters, that kind of double-talk and evasive, verbal footwork is very common. And texts like this incline me to think that wherever I hear it someone is hiding something. If your conscience is clean reason can hold sway; if it's not, you will be instinctively irrational.
I don't want to wait anymore. There is no point in hiding. I don't want to become desensitized. I don't want to become calloused. I want to hear God. I want to see God. I want to feel God. But most of all, I want to know Him. We might as well keep the path to God clean and tidy - free from snares and stumbling blocks. If you run into one, throw it in the ditch. Confess it. Quickly! God is waiting with open arms.
