Standing Before God

If the Spirit of God detects anything in you that is wrong, He does not ask you to put it right:

He asks you to accept the light, and He will put it right.

A child of the light confesses instantly and stands bared before God.

--Oswald Chambers:  My Utmost for His Highest

Prayer is simply standing before the Presence of God, just as we are, not hiding our nakedness, but willing for Him to see us exactly as we are.  God saw Adam and Eve's attempt to cover themselves with fig leaves, and He provided for them the skins of animals instead.  The Hebrew account of Genesis 3 -- the fall of man-- begins with these words:  Now the snake was more cunning/ clever than all the living things of the field that God had made.  The Hebrew for "cunning/ clever/ crafty" is aruwm.  After Adam and Eve had sinned, their eyes were opened, and they realized they were naked.  The Hebrew for "naked" is arowm. The deliberate play on words in Hebrew would be equivalent in English as something like "shrewd" and "nude."  Adam and Eve, created in the image and likeness of God, have seen in themselves something like the serpent -- shrewdness.  Now they are afraid of the Light of the World which will expose the very thing they wish to hide.

In every person's life, we move from innocence to something we want to cover up, something we don't want anyone else to discover about us.  We get used to hiding from God and from other people -- but the fig leaves never work very well at all.  As we become more and more filled with what is not God, what is not like God, it is harder and harder for us to be in His Presence.  We stop going to church; we no longer pray, or approach God.  We are out of alignment with Him, and He remains hidden from our eyes.  We are not comfortable in His Presence.  Soon our relationship with Him loses its freshness and authenticity; there is no longer any true encounter.  If we accept this condition as "the way things are," we allow estrangement from God to become our way of life.

There was a time in my life when I could not admit that I was a "sinner."  I wasn't perfect, of course, I had my faults -- but I, (in my own mind) was a lot better than "some people I know."  I went to church; I prayed; I tried to live a responsible life.  I could not see the essential lack in my own life, the parts that were so unlike the image of God, the places where I was damaging myself and others.  Then, one night during a prayer meeting, I saw an image of a twelve-foot wall of crumbling stones with huge words carved into the stones:  Your sins are forgiven!   At that moment, I realized, like David, that my sins were piled up higher than my head, that I was a sinner by nature.

To realize we are "sinners" means that, without the grace and guidance of God, we will never get it right!

We will always choose the wrong thing by nature, like Eve, going after what seems attractive to our eyes, but not knowing the seed of poison hidden within the shiny apple.  We need prayer; we need communion with God on a daily basis; we need wisdom and guidance.  We need our nakedness/ shrewdness to be covered with His loving kindness and strong grace.  We need Him!

Estrangement from God is no way to live.  Even if we feel exposed, we need every day to stand in His light.  As Oswald Chambers says, we don't need to "fix" ourselves; if we stand in His Presence, He will gradually transform us into His likeness.