I'm in the middle of preaching a 6-week series while my senior pastor travels the world. I'll share the highlights of each week's sermon here. But I'll break it down into parts, because who wants to read an entire sermon in one day?
I shared last week that God knows us. He knows everything about us. For people who are struggling with something, this comes as good news, as a salve for their wound. When we feel most alone, God is there. He can see us. When we are most afraid, God is there. He can see us. As we discovered in Psalm 139 last week, God knows everything about us.
But for many, the thought of God seeing us and knowing us is scary. It smacks of Big Brother watching our every move, as if God is someone holding a fly-swatter, waiting for us to make one wrong move, so He can strike us dead.
I would suggest this morning that it is not simply those who are trying to hide something big that fall prey to this trap. It is many people, who have learned, through attendance in the school of hard knocks, that life is easier for us when we keep certain aspects of ourselves hidden from view. We accentuate the positive to distract people from the negative. It’s why we tell people to take a picture of our good side. Too many of us shun having pictures taken altogether for the mistaken belief that we have no good side.
God is watching!?!
Yikes! I’d much rather He didn’t.
When it comes to our growth in faith, many of us stall in our paths right here in the middle because the idea that God knows us has us paralyzed with fear. Because the truth that God knows us is quickly stymied with the notion that God loves us. After all, if He really knows us, how can He possibly love us?
We’re not alone.
A guy by the name of Asaph wrote Psalm 73 and he apparently had some of these same struggles. Here is how he begins his song;
1 Truly God is good to Israel,
to those whose hearts are pure.
2 But as for me, I almost lost my footing.
My feet were slipping, and I was almost gone.
to those whose hearts are pure.
2 But as for me, I almost lost my footing.
My feet were slipping, and I was almost gone.
He accepts that God is good to those who are pure in heart, but since Asaph readily admits he is not pure in heart, how does that help him? Perhaps you have wondered the same?
I'll get to some solutions tomorrow.
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