Facebook note on Tuesday, 14 December 2010 at 19:03
"Nothing in ALL creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered (open) and laid bare before the eyes of Him to whom we must give account." (Hebrews 4:13)
In the world of serving and worshipping THE OTHER gods of dead letter religion, this is a frightening verse! And not only this one, but all of the verses that talk about our being fully exposed to God!
Prior to knowing Christ AS MY LIFE, I would see verses like this and react just like Adam. Rather than risk exposing my nakedness before God, I would instead try to hide from Him, and then like Adam, try to make something with my own hands, and in my own power to try and cover my nakedness! In my case, the "fig leaf" would be in my trying to do something (usually religious) FOR God to try and gain His acceptance or approval!
Dead letter performance based religion sees more than God, and so "it" also has no other choice than to serve and worship what it sees!
Religion covers up the spiritual nakedness of people, and then tries to appease Him by attempting to follow the law. Religion always sees God as being separate from the body, as "the God up there!"
“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love THE OTHER, or you will be devoted to the one and despise THE OTHER. You cannot serve both God and money." (Or God and {fill in the blank} anything else for that matter!) (Mathew 6:24)
“If ye come to me with a cloak over your soul, just to this extent ye hinder me from fully OPENING MY HEART to you! I am neither disturbed by your imperfections, or am I impressed with your piety. People look on the outward, but I am ONLY concerned with your heart; for I know whenever I can occupy the heart, all will be working toward perfection in the outer man. And so I bypass the outer man temporarily, and when I come to you, I come via the very citadel of thy soul-not as an intruder from the outside.” (Come Away my Beloved)
As the All “IN” All He knows ALL! And there is no substitute “fig leaf” available to the believer who longs for everything God has for him or her, other than FULL EXPOSURE!
After Adam goes into hiding, God says something that seems kind of strange. The God of the universe, who just created all there is and all there ever will be in 7 days, asks Adam where he is at.
But the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?” (Genesis 3:9)
Because God looks only on our hearts, what He was really asking is, “Where is your heart right now Adam, what or who is at the center of your life? Adam, I long for you to see your nakedness, and it is ok! I am here only to remove your sense of estrangement and separation from me, and to clothe you ”IN” my Grace! You have been deceived, I hold nothing against you, I love you with an unconditional love!”
“How often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but… YOU WERE NOT WILLING.” (Matthew 23:37)
Dead religion would rather cover up spiritual nakedness than allow the Spirit to bring everything into the open, and to FULL EXPOSURE! The same Spirit who is at this moment…THE ONE who is at work within us, willing and doing of His good pleasure. (Phil. 2:13)
Where I used to cringe when I read passages like the one above, I now see it as an OPEN INVITATION from a loving God who has an OPEN DOOR policy to every “whosoever” that comes to Him, and just exactly as they are!
There is no fear of embarrassment or retribution, just a loving Father who knows everything there is to know about us, extending a loving hand in order to FULLY CLOTHE us with Himself! Clothed in His Righteousness alone through Grace alone, and accepted in the Beloved, without any religious strings attached.
So now when the sense of feeling separated seems more real than the God who called us by His marvelous Grace, we simply RELEASE what it is we are trying to cover ourselves with, REST ”IN” His Love, and wait to RECEIVE His Life, and in whatever form that might be!
Darkness and Light are the same “IN” His Light!
But even in darkness I cannot hide from you. To you the night shines as bright as day. DARKNESS AND NIGHT ARE THE SAME TO YOU! (Psalm 139:12)
And so is seeing us naked or fully clothed, and His love does not waver either way!
When we willingly allow the Spirit, THE ONE who searches all things… even the deepest things of our hearts, to fully expose what is at the center of our lives, He will without reservation or condemnation move into that place where we finally see Him as our ONLY LIFE!
And the nakedness we once feared will hold no more power in the Light of His ALL POWERFUL Grace!
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My footnote - Chris Welch
The pain of exposure comes from shame. As long as we're hovering around in a false inbetween world as Christians...not because Christ is not our internal reality....but because we have been fooled into believing He isn't...we can still "feel quite lost" in our feelings. Depression hangs like a cloud over this muddled existence.
Just as Abraham twice sold his own wife down the drain effectively by being unwilling to admit the full truth that Sarah was indeed his actual wife, and not just some half-sister relation....which was also true, so Christians who are not yet fully identified with the truth of their new identity since the Cross, are unhappy with defining what a Christian is. When in the glare of unbelief they sort of cough embarrassedly and imply that their Christian status is a mere human belief in a particular chosen religion. "Particular chosen religion" my BACKSIDE! If we are born again,
we have died, and our only status in our spirit centre is us fused in ONE LUMP with Him. Not two peas rattling around in a pod!
So this muddled half in half out state.....which is the opposite state of Christ which is always an unequivocal YEA and AMEN with absolutely no Yealettes and Half- so's....but full on
yelps of YEA and WOOHOO! Which is why no man can say
JESUS IS LORD
but by the Holy Spirit.
It's a walking miracle . It's a phrase that is supernaturally induced!
Well the half in half out state is like an open landing strip with a flag up to the original "child of Darkness"....the spirit of Error. So Christians in this state are feeling
the Devil's depression.
He is the spirit of Wrath. God's wrath is over his head continuously....but he loves to keep you thinking that this is God's wrath floating big time over your personal head. Your own personal cloud.
If Jesus has sorted our own personal cloud for us....this is called "taking the log out of our own eye". ie the recognition that I can never ever be independent. So if i refuse to come clean on what God says about me since the Cross....that I am in Christ. that my life is absolutely hidden/interleaved/interwoven with Him.....sure, I'll default back into my delusional state of being a god in my own right, totally self-empowered. The removal of the log....which none of us choose willingly....is this huge realisation that without Christ we literally are nothing. The log never did denote a particularly serious activity of ours, like drink or drugs or theft or murder, or sharp twisted anger, or sex addiction.....or whatever
no...these things brought us to our knees to discover the real one true log:
The Genesis 3 lie that I should for one instant walk around as a god. The Greeks called it Ego, or arrogance. But it was far more spiritually empowered than that.
It was the devil masquerading as us.
So having this delusion ripped off us, sure, leaves us very free to take out tiny splinters from other's eyes. Why? Because the splinters are just surface stuff. The real roots are spiritual, and this was dealt a complete final deathblow at the Cross.
Other believers and unbelievers pick up on our nakedness. You see they are used to a life of figleaves, so when we walk around clothed in Christ, without figleaves, this is more than a little disturbing. because we simply are not playing the game.
Part of our role as mature believers is to actually be that catalyst which proves beyond any shadow of doubt THAT THERE IS NO MIDDLE POSITION. That figleaves HAVE HOLES IN!
That either we are in Christ or in truth we are still uncovered. That this "middle position" everyone tries to adopt, choosing good from evil as an independent being....
IS FIGLEAVES with CHILL HOLES!!!
The act of removing figleaves, although they are of no practical use whatever, fills us with such terror, that people react very violently to Christians who are naked...even though naked Christians are also naked in their demonstration of love, and heart, and passion. But all the others can "see" is the doomladen moment of their figleaves being pulled off. And hearsay tells terribly bad stories about those who try to live without figleaves.
This is up until the Internal Word means more and is bigger than the silly need for figleaves.
Jesus in us as us, means a good deal more than any activity or attitude that we formerly employed in our survival.
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