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Showing posts with the label Hiding

Curtains anyone?

Dear brothers and sisters, if another believer is overcome by some sin, you who are godly should gently and humbly help that person back onto the right path. And be careful not to fall into the same temptation yourself. Share each other’s burdens, and in this way obey the law of Christ. If you think you are too important to help someone, you are only fooling yourself. You are not that important. (Galatians 6:1-3) Would you help a friend clean their house after they had surgery? Most likely. Would you prepare a meal for someone after they just brought their newborn baby home from the hospital? Sure. Would you sit by a friend who was deeply saddened after the loss of a loved one? Absolutely. Would you be open to hearing about your friend's greatest struggle? That one may be a little harder to answer, because when you say you are willing to do it, you open yourself up to being a little vulnerable yourself. How can we become vulnerable when someone else is sharing their pain or strugg...

All come free!

Hide or seek - do you remember the game? When we played it as kids, it was usually in the yard and we had to come up with clever hiding places behind shrubs, up on a tree limb, or maybe behind the trash can. The places weren't all that 'concealing', but they worked! We'd hide in the most obscure, hoping not to be found, but when we were, we would then become the seeker. Do you ever remember finding that one spot no one would ever imagine you'd hide and you'd be there until someone called 'all come free'? That spot in my yard was deep inside of this huge cypress tree. We had two of these teardrop shaped trees lining the driveway and they were huge. The inside left you totally obscured from sight, but it came with some risks. Have you any idea what lives inside those branches? Spiders, bees, hornets, just to name a few! The hiding was supreme, but the risks in the hiding were huge! “This is the crisis we’re in: God-light streamed into the world, but men ...

It is time to come out of hiding

Can anyone hide from me in a secret place? Am I not everywhere in all the heavens and earth?” says the  Lord .   ( Jeremiah 23:24   NLT ) As kids, we played that all-time favorite of kids everywhere - hide and seek. Someone would be tagged "it", cover their eyes, and count to 100 while all the others would scurry off into "secret hiding places". The goal was to not be discovered - you wanted the "best" hiding place ever. This might have worked well in those "fun and games" times of our youth, but as we got older, the game of hiding wasn't always followed by someone seeking to uncover our hiding places! Into adulthood, our hiding places just got a little more "sophisticated" and we aren't as much "physically" hiding as it is we are hiding things emotional and a little harder to conceal! Maybe we don't think anyone is trying to uncover those places, but God knows them ALL anyway! He doesn't have to work ha...

Fear ruins relationships

Have you ever experienced the defensive move of just simply hiding yourself from whatever it is you are afraid of?  I have!  In fact, whenever I get good and scared, I usually run and hide!  Maybe not literally, but internally.  I pull in all my "soft spots" and get deeper into my shell so I can minimize the impact of the thing which I fear the most!  The problem with this is the realization of one fear leading to another and then another, and so on.  If you don't believe me, think back to the last time you heard a noise somewhere in the house.  You are all alone - or at least you believe you are!  Then you hear another.  What happens?  Your imagination begins to believe all kinds of things - magnifying your initial fear until your adrenaline is pumping, heart racing, hairs standing on end and perspiration drops beginning to bead on your forehead.  All because your initial fear, although unfounded, became something you gave into. ...