Don't be afraid to share your mistake

A smart man makes a mistake, learns from it, and never makes that mistake again. But a wise man finds a smart man and learns from him how to avoid the mistake altogether. 

(Roy H. Williams)

Count yourself lucky, how happy you must be—you get a fresh start, your slate’s wiped clean. Count yourself lucky—God holds nothing against you and you’re holding nothing back from him. When I kept it all inside, my bones turned to powder, my words became daylong groans. The pressure never let up; all the juices of my life dried up. Then I let it all out; I said, “I’ll come clean about my failures to God.” Suddenly the pressure was gone—my guilt dissolved, my sin disappeared. (Psalm 32:1-5)

I don't want anyone to feel they are alone in their mistakes - heaven knows I have made more than my fair share and I am not finished living yet! We are supposed to learn from those mistakes, though. How many times have you and I made the same mistake on more than one occasion? The likelihood is that we did not learn from it the first time, or in the subsequent times! It would be nice if we made mistakes once, learned everything there was to learn from them, and then never made them again. That isn't reality - we repeat them, not so much because we didn't learn the first lesson, but because there is often more than one lesson to be learned from the mistake!

If I overspend this month, blowing the budget all to kingdom come, I can get back on track next month. What did I learn from my mistake? It is possible to recover from the over-spending with a little 'thrift' the next month? Don't give into those rogue emotions the next time you feel like a shopping spree? Keep better track of your money so it doesn't get away from you? Yes, all of these are possible lessons, but each one of those are individual lessons, aren't they? Guilt over our mistake doesn't always bring all the lessons to be learned to the surface, does it? Sometimes we repeat the mistake because we didn't see the 'other' lesson in the first mistake!

Have you ever observed someone else make the same mistake you were just about to make and then stopped what you were about to do? Why did you stop? You recognized the mistake before you made it because someone else shared how the mistake affected them. Yes, you were acting wisely by learning from their mistake. Why do I read the reviews posted on the online shopping site? I like to see that others were pleased with the quality of the product I am about to purchase. I want to avoid the mistake of purchasing something that will not work, breaks down quickly, or is just plain junk. 

We aren't going to learn from each other if we keep all our mistakes neatly tucked away in some secret compartment. As we confess our mistakes to God, we are also asking him to make our lives an example that others may learn from - so they don't launch headlong into the same mistakes! It is hard enough to admit our mistakes to God, let alone anyone else. There is indeed something to be learned in sharing. It is quite possible that someone who is learning from our mistake may actually help us see more than the one lesson we learned on our own - their perspective gives them a different vantage point to see other lessons we may have never even considered from our vantage point. Just sayin!

A little game of hide and seek

Do you remember that old time game of hide and seek? All the kids in the neighborhood would gather together, then we'd pick someone to be the 'seeker' and all the rest of us would dash hither and yon in hopes of finding that perfect hiding spot so we would go undiscovered until we heard the loud cry of "All come free!" hollered across the yards. The one who had the task of seeking had to explore all the nooks and crannies, under objects, behind them, and even inside of them. We'd scamper up trees, nestle back inside a bushy hedge, or scramble into an empty box beside the house. All of this was in the hopes of not being found by the one doing the seeking. I wonder how many of us think God is the one 'hiding' while we are the ones doing the seeking? We may even be at the point in our lives where we feel like we need to call out, "All come free!", simply because we have been seeking way too long and been totally unable to find what it is we are seeking in him. 

Without faith no one can please God because the one coming to God must believe He exists, and He rewards those who come seeking. (Hebrews 11:6)

God never hides, but there are some principles we can see in scripture that may help us understand why we 'think' he does. If you have ever read through the Song of Solomon, you may have observed this story of two lovers that somehow transitions into one of them seemingly pulling far away or almost 'hiding' from the other. It seems like this 'love story' kind of takes an unexpected turn from this totally close, intimate place of relating to one another, into this place of 'hey, where did you go' kind of scene. I think the thing God was showing us in this story is that he is the groom and we are his bride. In the first stages of our 'relationship' with him, we are madly in love, always together, sensing each other's presence almost continuously. Then we enter into this 'other stage' of our relationship with Jesus in which our 'sense' of his presence is somehow affected - we just know he isn't as close as he was and we wonder where he has gone. 

It is at this point that we can either cry out in despair, thinking he has abandoned us and left us to fend for ourselves - thinking perhaps that we didn't matter to him anymore - or we could do exactly what he expects for us to do - seek him out! He hasn't hidden - he has moved a little bit further away so that we will come along with him - seeking new things in him. We might feel abandoned at times, like all we've known has been taken from us, but we need to be called to account for believing those feelings of abandonment. Yes, the feelings are real - but God intended those emotions to drive us into seeking - to get us up and moving again toward something we may not have ever experienced before in him. As it says in our passage today, God rewards those who come seeking. 

Seeking can be done various ways, but at the crux of it is this kind of 'desperation' momentum that drives us on and keeps us looking. As with the hide and seek games of our youth, we know the clock is ticking and we want to find as many of the neighborhood gang as we can before the time is up. We sought them out with gusto - earnest in our seeking. God asks the same of us - be earnest in our seeking. He also asks us to be honest in that seeking. We come believing, but we are also totally honest with him about our disbelief! There will be times we come with more disbelief than we do belief - but that is okay because he wants us as we are, not some fancy, made up 'us' that isn't real. Seek him as you are and don't be surprised if the seeking takes you into places you have explored yet in him. Just sayin!

Getting naked isn't always comfort-inducing!

When God asks us to lay ourselves bare before him, he is actually telling us we need to be totally and completely exposed to him.  At first, this seems a little disconcerting to most of us because we are not used to exposing ourselves! We live life kind of "covered up", don't we?  In fact, there are even some of us who will even struggle to be totally exposed in the safety and security of our own homes!  Why?  It brings us to the level of being left without anything to hide behind and that is uncomfortable for some.  The hardest lesson for us to learn sometimes is the one of trusting God not to laugh at or mistreat our "nakedness" before him.  I don't mean this in a crass sense, but a nakedness of emotions, thought, and even our will.  When we are THAT transparent that he can see beyond all our attempts to hide our true feelings, tumultuous thoughts, and battle of the will, this is the place where we can truly begin to heal from those things which make us want to hide in the first place!

Lay yourself bare, face down to the ground, in humility before the Lord; and He will lift your head so you can stand tall. (James 4:10 VOICE)

The toughest times for me to be "laid bare" before God are those times when I know I have done something wrong - the times when confession and healing is necessary in order for me to move on in my life.  The same may be true for you, as well.  Whatever else we "want to do" in order to avoid the moment of total exposure to him, it won't produce the same effect as when we just "strip bare" before him and let him touch those unraveled emotions shame-ridden feelings of guilt have produced.  There is a second set of instruction to us in this passage - lay yourself bare, face down to the ground, in humility to the Lord.  It takes us getting "bare" before God in order to recognize our healing, but it also takes us being willing to lay down our pride which keeps us in the cycle of continually "trying harder next time" which we all know doesn't work!

The good news:  God doesn't misuse our "nakedness"!  If we have ever been truly transparent with someone here on this earth and found they misused our transparency by sharing those confidences with others, we may be a little "shy" in wanting to bare our all before God.  It takes time to build trust in any relationship, but the first step to trust is to actually be bare enough to find out if you CAN trust that other person.  God's relationship with us begins with trust - we place our trust in the work of his Son on the cross on our behalf.  We place our trust in the statement of fact which says all men are sinners and in need of a Savior.  We place our trust in the sufficiency of Christ's sacrificial death, burial, and resurrection as that which will restore us into a place of fellowship with God -- unhindered by sin, free of guilt, and with a renewed heart.

If our relationship with him begins with trust, then it stands to reason it will continue to grow as we continue to trust him more and more with all we are - even the not so beautiful areas of our lives we want to keep "under wraps"!  It isn't until we "unwrap" a little that we learn he can be trusted with even those things we wanted no one else to ever know about us.  You may not be convinced of that yet, but trust me on this one - if you will just take the first step toward baring yourself, laying down just enough of your prideful self to actually be truthful with him about your struggles, he won't trample on those raw emotions!  In fact, he will bind them up and make them whole again - beyond whatever mask you and I ever tried to hide them behind in the first place!

Think of being "bare" before God as being "divested" of everything we have been trying to hide behind or do for ourselves, but failing miserably at each step of the way.  In essence, we are dismantling all the things we hide behind. We are also discrediting all the things we have used to make ourselves feel better about the things we have hidden behind! This is why it is uncomfortable - we learn our "fixes" never really fixed us!  When we come to this place of honesty with God, we can finally be "fixed" - because what was broken can only be bound up by his tender touch, gracious mercy, and compassionate embrace.  Just sayin!