Brokenness: Out of Hiding

Thursday, September 4, 2014

(Click here to here the audio on my Brokenness lesson from Genesis 3 & 4 - Brokenness).
Have you ever tried to hide from God? We see in the creation account in Genesis that from the first sin, man attempted to hide from God. After Adam and Eve rebelled against God’s boundary and ate from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, they felt shame and hid. They experienced brokenness.

¹⁰ He replied, “I heard you walking in the garden, so I hid. I was afraid because I was naked.”

When we sin, God works to restore our relationship with him, not to severe it. But Adam and Eve hid out of shame and fear. Do you ever hide from God?

Our attempts to hide from God are as childish as the two year old who covers his eyes and believes no one can see him. Instead of covering her eyes, my three year old granddaughter Stella does something else to become invisible. She closes the invisible door on you. She says “I’m gonna close the door.” Out of sight…out of mind. My nephew Chase was taking care of Stella at the hospital when her baby brother was about to be born. Stella was playing in the garden right next to a sidewalk and enjoying stacking rocks and moving them around in her play area. A stranger began to approach. Stella looked up and saw him, and then shut the invisible door and continued her play. She couldn’t see him and he couldn’t see her. Stella was hiding.

Hiding is what we do when we want to avoid someone, when we’re afraid, when we’re ashamed, when we know we’ve messed up but we don’t want to face the consequences. Hiding is a result of some kind of brokenness. Do you ever find yourself hiding from God? We sometimes hide from God when we run into hard times and sometimes when life seems to just grand. We make excuses for not reading his word, or having a devotional time, or attending worship services, or serving others. Hiding from God keeps us from His presence.

When we hide, God continues to pursue us. God pursued Adam and Eve and when we do wrong, God still pursues us. He wants us to stop running from him and run TO him so that we can realign ourselves with the healthy order of creation. To be “righteous” and experience “right living” means to be in correct alignment with God, other creatures, and the earth. Adam and Eve had gotten out of alignment with God.  When we do wrong, it’s because we have gotten out of alignment.

How do you know when you are out of alignment?

Something in our mind, body, spirit is just not right when we are out of alignment. Our mind, body, and spirit turn on an axis. The very center of that axis is God.
 

When our mind, body, or spirit is not fully aligned with God, it will show up!  Being out of alignment always shows up! We suffer in some way in our emotional, physical, or spiritual life when we aren’t “line up” with God. When our mind or body or spirit is not lined up, God calls out to us, “Where are you?” He wants us to come out of our brokenness and our hiding, receive his grace and mercy, and re-align our mind, body and spirit. Let’s come out of hiding and run to God. He will not turn us away.