Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account. – Hebrews 4:13 (NIV)
Let’s face it, we all hide things from other people. Sometimes it is what we do and other times it can be what we think. Our reasons for hiding things can be varied and at times necessary. However, no matter what it is we are trying to hide, there is always one person who sees and knows everything.
Adam and Eve learnt this the hard way. Their first instinct after disobeying God was to hide from Him. They knew they were in big trouble and thought that God wouldn’t find them. What they didn’t count on was that God already knew what and why they were trying to hide. For Adam and Eve, hiding from God was probably one of the first experiments in futility.
God is all-knowing, and we can’t hide from Him. Even before we do something, God knows that we will do it. We may think that we are keeping whatever it is we don’t want others to know about a secret but where God is concerned there are no secrets. Everything is out in the open and just like Adam and Eve, our attempts to hide it from Him are useless.
The secrets we hide before we have before we become a Christian are also not hidden from God. We may think they are, but they are not. God knew us before we knew Him, and he saw everything we did and say. There are no secrets where God is concerned. There is no hiding the truth from Him. In fact, God even knows the things we are hiding from ourselves. He knows the things we do to cover up what we want to hide. Even if we think our intentions are good and honourable, He knows the real reason why.
In reality, the only person who can hide things from us is God. There are things, God keeps hidden until the right time to expose them comes. We know that whatever God is hiding from us, there is a good reason why he does. He doesn’t use the feeble excuses we come up with when we try to hide something. His reasons for hiding things is for our benefit because He loves us and want us to know what we need to know to make our way in this world. There are things we don’t need to know, things that need to stay hidden from us as the knowledge of what is being hid may pull us down and away from God.
Keeping things hidden from others may have its benefits but hiding from God doesn’t. No-one can hide from God, and this is a lesson we all have to learn. It is a life-long lesson that needs to be learn because we always attempt to hide from God when we do something wrong. Just like Adam and Eve, we think that He won’t find out until we remember that he already has. If you’re trying to hide from God – forget it. Instead go to Him and confess why and/or what you were trying to hide. The result will be far more liberating than you can imagine, and you won’t have to carry the burden of hiding with you for the rest of your life.
Originally published December 2018