Where shall I go from Your Spirit? Or where shall I flee from Your presence? If I ascend to heaven, You are there! If I make my bed in Sheol, You are there! (Verses 7-8)
"Am I a God at hand," declares the Lord, "and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?'' declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 23
What's your secret? The thing no one knows you did or are doing? It's interesting to me the things people hide for fear that if discovered the shame will destroy them and relationships they've formed. Sometimes, that's true. If we are hiding sin because we want to keep on doing the thing that feeds our soul instead of allowing God in there to satisfy whatever it is we medicate. Addictions are huge secrets people keep. No light means no accountability. But what about other things? I know of a divorced father who never told his children that he'd been married before the mother who left the family. Made the mom promise not to disclose the previous marriage to them. Finding out about it years later when they were grown, the girls were much more upset by the fact that there was this secret than they were about his past. I have spoken with a man molested when he was a child--a thing he'd never felt free to share with anyone until I told him about my father's arrest. The man had struggled for years with the event and couldn't talk about it for fear others would shame him--make it look like he'd somehow been responsible for the thing done to him. Secrets like his create addicts. It's difficult to look at a person and to discover what's hidden from view. The happy-go-lucky woman I know who has very dark thoughts. A rich neighbor who wishes she'd never married her husband. A suicide in the family. Heartbreak over a relationship which ended years ago but still drives the social drinking of another. We have no idea what's in another person's heart most of the time.
Where do you hide? In all the wrong places? That is very easy to do in this world where a lot of wrong things are actually legislated into "rights." For any secret place you want to go to medicate or deny your behavior, there are scores of opportunities to obfuscate the pain. Hide in relationships, in work, at the bar, under the covers, with busyness, with hobbies...and everywhere we go the secret goes with us. Creating shame. And many times, what we're hiding wouldn't be the shock to others we might think. But as long as the enemy can make us think it's too horrendous to share with anyone, he wins.
Where can you go? Ah. All the blathering, noisy earfuls that Satan screams at us about the hidden things in our lives would have us believe we would be left with no one to love us if they only knew the real story. So we live over it. I did this with the pedophilia of my father for a while. It's difficult to not take on the shame of someone so close. For the first couple of years the crime he committed against children was unspeakable for me. I literally couldn't say what he'd done. I'd loved and trusted my father, so the heaviness of what he was, not just what he'd done, poured into my soul like viscous muddy water. Making it hard to breathe. Like I was drowning. But I had three kids and a husband. Needed to plod onward. Couldn't really talk about it, anyway. I needed to rethink my life in light of the new knowledge. It took me several busy years to realize shame had made a place in me, directing my actions in the wrong direction. I tear up thinking even now about how soul-cleansing it would have been for me to be still in the first moments of realization and know God. Not to rush around like my hair was on fire, lit by the awful realization of Daddy's sins. Not try to fix a broken man that only God could redeem. Not move forward one miserable step after the other chanting, "It will be okay." But to sit with my God in the pit of those circumstances and allow Him to meet me there. I didn't do that. I ran from Him because I was mad at my God, too.
But, you know what? I couldn't run away from this God Who relentlessly pursues me. Who loves me to the moon and back, literally. My God is a God Who is at hand, not far away. His love never fails. And we have no secrets from Him. If we are a child of God, secrets are inappropriate in our family. For one thing, they are stupid. Try hiding something from a Father Who knows all of the hiding places in the entire universe! In the spaces between heaven and hell, there is the Spirit of God. The same Spirit, Who in the beginning hovered over the waters in the moments after the Word, Jesus, spoke the nascent Earth into being, hovers over the vast creation of the Godhead even now. Knows just as clearly what goes on in hell as He does what goes on in heaven and on Earth. And this God is near. I've found myself in a miserable hell of my own making, and, oh, man, the joy of finally turning to say, "You are here!" I was filthy and covered in shame. The secrets of my heart squeezed into submission by the serpent that could have destroyed my life. But, no! I couldn't get to God. I was too ruined for Him. That's what shame says, anyway. With Jesus came light...on secrets...healing shame. And I didn't die. Like I thought I would. But lived to tell of the wonder of my God's love.
No more secrets. Open, honest, transparent. No more lies. No more manipulation, wondering what others will think if they know the real me. Free of the crippling power of shame. Loved from head to toe by a God Whose eyes wander to and fro watching out for my life. If I toy with hell, even, and happen to fall in, He is there. Because I belong to Him. When I go to heaven, He will be there. Because I belong to Him. And while I live here on Earth, He will be here. And at all points in between.
"Am I a God at hand," declares the Lord, "and not a God far away? Can a man hide himself in secret places so that I cannot see him? Do I not fill heaven and earth?'' declares the Lord.
Jeremiah 23
What's your secret? The thing no one knows you did or are doing? It's interesting to me the things people hide for fear that if discovered the shame will destroy them and relationships they've formed. Sometimes, that's true. If we are hiding sin because we want to keep on doing the thing that feeds our soul instead of allowing God in there to satisfy whatever it is we medicate. Addictions are huge secrets people keep. No light means no accountability. But what about other things? I know of a divorced father who never told his children that he'd been married before the mother who left the family. Made the mom promise not to disclose the previous marriage to them. Finding out about it years later when they were grown, the girls were much more upset by the fact that there was this secret than they were about his past. I have spoken with a man molested when he was a child--a thing he'd never felt free to share with anyone until I told him about my father's arrest. The man had struggled for years with the event and couldn't talk about it for fear others would shame him--make it look like he'd somehow been responsible for the thing done to him. Secrets like his create addicts. It's difficult to look at a person and to discover what's hidden from view. The happy-go-lucky woman I know who has very dark thoughts. A rich neighbor who wishes she'd never married her husband. A suicide in the family. Heartbreak over a relationship which ended years ago but still drives the social drinking of another. We have no idea what's in another person's heart most of the time.
Where do you hide? In all the wrong places? That is very easy to do in this world where a lot of wrong things are actually legislated into "rights." For any secret place you want to go to medicate or deny your behavior, there are scores of opportunities to obfuscate the pain. Hide in relationships, in work, at the bar, under the covers, with busyness, with hobbies...and everywhere we go the secret goes with us. Creating shame. And many times, what we're hiding wouldn't be the shock to others we might think. But as long as the enemy can make us think it's too horrendous to share with anyone, he wins.
Where can you go? Ah. All the blathering, noisy earfuls that Satan screams at us about the hidden things in our lives would have us believe we would be left with no one to love us if they only knew the real story. So we live over it. I did this with the pedophilia of my father for a while. It's difficult to not take on the shame of someone so close. For the first couple of years the crime he committed against children was unspeakable for me. I literally couldn't say what he'd done. I'd loved and trusted my father, so the heaviness of what he was, not just what he'd done, poured into my soul like viscous muddy water. Making it hard to breathe. Like I was drowning. But I had three kids and a husband. Needed to plod onward. Couldn't really talk about it, anyway. I needed to rethink my life in light of the new knowledge. It took me several busy years to realize shame had made a place in me, directing my actions in the wrong direction. I tear up thinking even now about how soul-cleansing it would have been for me to be still in the first moments of realization and know God. Not to rush around like my hair was on fire, lit by the awful realization of Daddy's sins. Not try to fix a broken man that only God could redeem. Not move forward one miserable step after the other chanting, "It will be okay." But to sit with my God in the pit of those circumstances and allow Him to meet me there. I didn't do that. I ran from Him because I was mad at my God, too.
But, you know what? I couldn't run away from this God Who relentlessly pursues me. Who loves me to the moon and back, literally. My God is a God Who is at hand, not far away. His love never fails. And we have no secrets from Him. If we are a child of God, secrets are inappropriate in our family. For one thing, they are stupid. Try hiding something from a Father Who knows all of the hiding places in the entire universe! In the spaces between heaven and hell, there is the Spirit of God. The same Spirit, Who in the beginning hovered over the waters in the moments after the Word, Jesus, spoke the nascent Earth into being, hovers over the vast creation of the Godhead even now. Knows just as clearly what goes on in hell as He does what goes on in heaven and on Earth. And this God is near. I've found myself in a miserable hell of my own making, and, oh, man, the joy of finally turning to say, "You are here!" I was filthy and covered in shame. The secrets of my heart squeezed into submission by the serpent that could have destroyed my life. But, no! I couldn't get to God. I was too ruined for Him. That's what shame says, anyway. With Jesus came light...on secrets...healing shame. And I didn't die. Like I thought I would. But lived to tell of the wonder of my God's love.
No more secrets. Open, honest, transparent. No more lies. No more manipulation, wondering what others will think if they know the real me. Free of the crippling power of shame. Loved from head to toe by a God Whose eyes wander to and fro watching out for my life. If I toy with hell, even, and happen to fall in, He is there. Because I belong to Him. When I go to heaven, He will be there. Because I belong to Him. And while I live here on Earth, He will be here. And at all points in between.
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