Got A Secret?

Got a Secret?

In Lake Wales, Florida, there is a tranquil spot called Bok Tower Gardens. When I was little, my dad would take us there for a quiet walk among the beautiful flowers as the tower soaring above us serenaded us with glorious songs of carillon bells. We always brought peanuts because the trees were home to a large number of very friendly squirrels.

In Genesis chapter three, verse eight, we read about another daddy walking with his children.

"Then the man and his wife heard the sound of the LORD God as he was walking in the garden in the cool of the day..."

Can you image the Father, Elohim, the creator of the universe, the one who breathed life into your soul, strolling down the path every evening to walk and talk with you, maybe even feed the squirrels with you? That is God's plan.

His desire is to be known by you.

Oh, to live in the garden! Maybe you could stop by the river and sit on the bank with your toes hanging in the water. Maybe you could skip a few stones with the God who created them. However, the verse continues.

"...and they hid from the LORD God among the trees of the garden."

Oh, how I wish I could tell you that Adam and Eve were enjoying a playful game of hide-and-seek with their heavenly daddy. How I wish I could tell you that they were not crouching behind the trees experiencing for the first time a feeling of shame, embarrassment and fear. How I wish I could tell you they did not choose to go their own way, to do what was right in their own eyes, but instead followed the LORD all of the days of their lives. But that is not what happened.

The Fall

Sin

Hiding

Fear

An Attempted Cover-up

An Attempt to Shift Blame

Broken Relationships

Loneliness

Dallas Willard writes about a 2-and-a-half-year-old girl in her backyard who one day discovered the secret to making mud (which she called "warm chocolate"). Her grandmother had been reading and was facing away from the action, but after cleaning up what was to her a mess, she told little Larissa not to make any more chocolate and turned her chair around so as to be facing her granddaughter.

The little girl soon resumed her "warm chocolate" routine, with one request posed as sweetly as a 2-and-a-half-year-old can make it: "Don't look at me, Nana. Okay?" Nana (being a little co-dependent) of course agreed.

Larissa continued to manufacture warm chocolate. Three times she said, as she continued her work, "Don't look at me, Nana. Okay?"

Then Willard writes: "Thus the tender soul of a little child shows us how necessary it is to us that we be unobserved in our wrong."

Any time we choose to do wrong or to withhold doing right, we choose hiddenness as well. It may be that out of all the prayers that are ever spoken, the most common one—the quietest one; the one that we least acknowledge making—is simply this: Don't look at me, God.

It was the very first prayer spoken after the Fall. God came to walk in the garden, to be with the man and the woman, and called, "Where are you?"

"I heard you in the garden, and I was afraid," Adam answered, "so I hid." Don't look at me, God.

John Ortberg, God Is Closer Than You Think (Zondervan, 2005), p. 40-41

I praise God that forgiveness comes through the sacrifice and resurrection of Jesus. If you have trusted Jesus as your Lord and Savior, there is no need to hide anymore.

So here's the question I'm really trying to get us to think about today.

Do you have a secret? Are you doing something, thinking something, planning something, or maybe dreaming something, that you would not want anyone else to know about, least of all your heavenly Father. Well, God already knows.

The impulse to hide, to keep it a secret is a big red flag. It is conviction.

Instead of hiding like Adam and Eve, try stepping out from behind the bushes like David.

Search me, O God, and know my heart;
test me and know my anxious thought.
See if there is any offensive way in me,
and lead me in the way everlasting.
Psalm 139:23-24

As a child of God, are saved from your sin; there is no reason to hide. You are redeemed; there is no reason to fear or cover-up or shift the blame. Your relationship with God is restored; there is no reason to be lonely.

Finally, let me leave you with a reminder from the God who loves you spoken by Michael W. Smith.