Skip to main content

What If I Don't Want God to Know Me?

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.
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.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Studies on the Go...Genesis

To be honest, I had not heard of Studies On The Go before being offered a review copy by my god friends at Youth Worker. But since I’m always looking out for study ideas, I said yes to this opportunity. Studies On The Go by Laurie Polich-Short has 30 studies. This particular edition is on the book of Genesis. Any book of the Bible can be daunting when you’re trying to interest and impact teenagers. But Genesis increases that difficulty due to the many questions that arise on the topic of creation. On top of that, you have the many stories of questionable characters that we often call heroes of the faith. Each study comes with great questions, not mindless Sunday School questions where every answer is Jesus. They also come with an optional activity to take the lesson a step further and create true impact. Add to that a weekly plan for students to go deeper and you have a winner of a study in one little book. If all the book studies are as well done as this one, I’d ...
Post a Comment
Read more

What Are You Capable Of?

I fancy myself to be just like Batman...without the money, the cave, the vendetta, the car and the cool belt. Other than that, we're pretty much the same guy. Does it help my case that I have a boy wonder? It's my son, but I'd take him over a dude in green tights any day. I've also imagined myself to be similar to Superman...you know, but without the super strength, speed, or that thing he can do with his eyes. Oh, and I'm also not from another planet. But he was a reporter and I like to write, though that hasn't been proven much by my blog. At least, not compared to what I used to write. The first time I write this post, it sounded like an apology. But that's not really the message I want to convey. Yes, I wish I were posting more. I also wish I had super strength or a cool utility belt, but those things aren't happening right now either. Maybe some day . The truth is I have been keeping busy. I'm not sitting back, sipping lemonade. I've never c...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Facebook Maybe

Granted, I'm a pastor. I have Type-A tendencies. Ok, my tendencies border on freakish OCD behavior patterns, but... Few things bother me more than the Facebook 'maybe'. I suppose I could go on and on about the grey areas of our society and the refusal of people to accept absolute standards. I could discuss the great need of people to accept that what is wrong for one person is likely wrong for everyone. I should certainly be concerned about mentioning that someone might have sin in their life. But I don't believe the Facebook 'maybe' is quite sin. Perhaps if I were coming up with new sins, I would add this to the list. But alas... Some might think the Facebook 'maybe' did not exist prior to the Internet, but they would be wrong. When I was in high school and asked a girl out on a date, I would normally be told that if they had no other plans, if nobody else called them, if there was nothing good on television and their hair did not need washing, then per...
5 comments
Read more