Hiding from God

Hiding from God

“And they heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” Genesis 3:8 (NKJV)

Have you ever watched children playing hide and seek?  They cover their eyes and believe that others can’t see them.  It’s quite the same thing people do to hide their sins from God.  We’ve all done it; if no one else can see us, we think we are safe.

I remember as a teen, I wanted to try smoking because it seemed so glamourous in movies and magazines.  My friends and I would find places to hide so no one would catch us.  However, God saw you doing it and knew the results in years to come.  Numbers 32:23 tells us, “Our sins will find us out.”

I remember feeling ashamed of what I was doing. I read this statement one day and it really says it like it is, “Sin leads to shame. Shame leads to hiding.”  When we feel shame about what we did, we try to hide.  Did you know you can’t hide from God?  Psalm 69:5 tells us what God thinks about it, “O God, You know my foolishness; and my sins are not hidden from You.”  It appears that we cannot hide anything we do or say.

I read this little story that was written by a pastor many years ago. “I was driving down the street one night and saw one of our young girls from church with a boy in a car and they were sitting so close together that they could have put several others in the seat with them.  Brother, it would have taken them a long time to get loosed from that clinch.  It is not right, neither is it Holy to set her body in those positions until she is married and has a license to do it. She looked around and saw my car (which had our church name on it) and she ducked down in the seat.  You know why? She was afraid for the preacher to see her. But long before I drove down that street, God was watching what she was doing and she could not hide it from God.”

In the book of Jeremiah, 16:17, God’s Words tell us, “For My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from My face, nor is their iniquity hidden from My eyes.” We don’t always think about what we say about someone. When we say something about another’s character and pass it on, we may not realize we are downgrading or damaging one of God’s beloved children.  When I think of it that way, I want to hide, but God already heard what I said. God forgive me!

There are those who seem to be angry and anti-social and we wonder why.  They are probably not angry with you, but maybe they are angry with themselves.  “Can anyone hide himself in secret places, so I shall not see him?" says the LORD; "Do I not fill heaven and earth?" says the LORD.” (Jeremiah 23:2)   I have found myself over the years being grouchy and short with others when they haven’t done anything to me, but it’s me who is upset with myself.

There will come a day when everything is so evil on this earth that those who have refused to accept the Son of God as their Savior are facing a horrid death.  They cry out in Revelation 6:15-17, “And the kings of the earth, the great men, the rich men, the commanders, the mighty men, every slave and every free man, hid themselves in the caves and in the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, "Fall on us and hide us from the face of Him who sits on the throne and from the wrath of the Lamb! For the great day of His wrath has come, and who is able to stand?"