Hide and Seek!…
Psalm 139:7 Where can I go from Your Spirit? Or where can I flee from Your presence?
Psalm 139:8-10 If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
Psalm 139:11-12 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me, And the light around me will be night,” Even the darkness is not dark to You, And the night is as bright as the day. Darkness and light are alike to You.
I played Hide and Seek with God for a lot of years. Now, 36 years later, I shake my head in wonder just thinking about the childish arrogance that believed I was winning my game.
All I had to do was cover my eyes and God disappeared…
Like an imaginary friend, I believed He existed ONLY when I wanted to play. I would become angry when He wouldn’t play. The worst hissy fit came when He wouldn’t play by MY rules and began to show me it wasn’t a game at all.
“Who do you say that I am?” (Matthew 16:15)
It is cute when a baby discovers they have a certain power over these “all-powerful useful people” called parents. The little guy can make the big guy smile, laugh, cry, play, worry… for a short time in life we do have the nuclear button at our beck and call.
And then…
Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 There is an appointed time for everything. And there is a time for every event under heaven.
It’s time to grow up… It is time to learn the hardest truth of every life that has been allowed to breathe…
WE ARE NOT IN CONTROL!
But… learning the truth and living in agreement with the truth are not the same event.
When I was a child, I used to speak like a child, think like a child, reason like a child; (1 Corinthians 13:11)…
Ready or not here I come! Ready or not… life happens!
And thus begins the game of hide and seek. I believe the PRIZE we compete for is… the throne… godship over our world and all who would venture into it. This is what we seek…
What do we hide from?
The ultimate truth… God IS and we are not Him!
Whether we deny or believe, that which is known about God is evident within us; for God made it evident to us. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood through what has been made (Romans 2:19-20)
Fortunately for mankind God IS love and love is patient, love is kind and is not jealous; love does not brag and is not arrogant, does not act unbecomingly; it does not seek its own, is not provoked, does not take into account a wrong suffered, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices with the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. (1 Corinthians 13:4-7)
Relatively speaking, when one is loved like this, who doesn’t begin to BELIEVE that it is ALL about ME and NOT about the LOVER. We begin in a womb that provides the quiet sanctuary for 1 cell me to multiply and become the whole me. I didn’t see anyone doing that FOR me…
In our childish imagination we set out to conquer the noisy, somewhat cold and often hurtful environment we were so rudely pushed into. At all costs we must return to the place where we can keep becoming the whole god – it’s just a matter of time.
I admit, in our imagination, it FEELS like the greatest mission in life. We even carve out weapons of manipulation that give the illusion of power and might. We may even be creative enough to build a kingdom that appears to be sustained by my every whim, everything that is relative to ME.
But… ready or not here comes life! For every bubble built… there is an appointed time for it to burst!
From our childish perspective, anyone who participates in bursting our bubble is our enemy. We are wrong…
The TRUTH is not our enemy. The fact that we are NOT in control is the truth that will set us FREE… You shall know the truth, and the truth will set you free. (John 8:32).
Our bondage comes when we determine to build our “life” upon anything other than the truth.
Thirty six years ago I “found” the TRUTH I was hiding from.
Deuteronomy 6:4-9 “Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one!
The part that took me awhile… the part that I attempted to manipulate… the part that resulted in a useless hissy fit…
The Truth doesn’t play by MY rules… Truth, and the freedom it supplies, must be lived in agreement (unity) with it. I must choose to abdicate my throne and serve the One True King. I must learn to live in unity with His rule.
His rule – His authority as Creator over my life, is the thing I spend my life loving and hating and seeking and hiding from all the days I have on this earth.
My better days are those that I stop hiding and seek Him (He is not hiding!)
Jeremiah 29:13 You will seek Me and find Me when you search for Me with all your heart.
My BEST days are still to come… when I am fully grown and stop playing my childish games…
Jeremiah 29:14 I will be found by you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will restore your fortunes and will gather you from all the nations and from all the places where I have driven you,’ declares the Lord, ‘and I will bring you back to the place from where I sent you into exile.’
Probably awhile to go before I get there…
But until then… If I ascend to heaven, You are there; If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there. If I take the wings of the dawn, If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea, Even there Your hand will lead me, And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
**All Scripture quoted comes from the “Bible Gateway” app and is the NASB version of the Bible