Unshackled Moments ~ August 17 ~ God Shares His Secrets With Losers

You have the right to remain silent. If you give up the right to remain silent anything you say may be used against you, although your secrets will not only make you sick but will always be used against you if and when they come out. That's why I don't keep secrets. I don't repeat things told to me in confidence, but that's not what I mean. Maybe I should say I'll keep your secrets; I just won't keep mine. I don't think that there is anything about my past that someone besides God doesn't know. I've just found it better and less miserable and worrisome not to attempt to hide the past or live in shame of who I used to be.

But while I have turned the light on and opened my closet door to the world on some things, social media and friends know even more about me, there are thoughts and feelings and things about me that only four or five people in the world know. Leah is the one person who knows more about me, including my past, and my thoughts and feelings and struggles than any other, because she is the one person who has had the least restrictive access to the intimate and private places of my heart and mind for over five years. Hiding the past is not a good idea, but putting every intimate part of the thinking and feeling process that makes you who you are out in public for the world to see is also not a good idea. Intimacy is a gift not to be opened and shared without restraint and without showing some wisdom in choosing who  you share yourself with.

Instinctively we know this most of the times. There are things that our friends know, and then there are things only our best friend knows. To be trusted with the most intimate knowledge of me means something, and while there is basically nothing of my past that I don't reveal if I believe it will help another, there are things about me that I restrict access to through relationships. While not everyone protects their heart and far too many people put their diaries on the porch for the public riffle through these days, there are still things even those open book people hide within their hearts, often even from themselves.

But here is what is so amazing. Those hidden things that we have within us, those secrets of thought, feeling and fear, God knows them all. The ones we hide from ourselves? He sees them as clearly as we can see a Harvest moon on a clear night in the country. He knows what we've done and why, who we really are in every possible circumstance, what motivates us, exactly how much we can and can't be trusted, our every weakness to the precise point of knowing exactly why  and when we will break and fail. He knows to exactly what extent our love is really more disguised self interest and just how unfaithful we are to Him in our hearts. And knowing what we can't even see about ourselves, He chose us for intimacy.

God doesn't  have secrets, but He does have things that are not yet revealed. He puts enough of Himself out there for the world to see for people to get a glimpse and a small understanding of who He is,  but He doesn't put His most intimate heart in the hands of just everyone and anyone. He reserves so much of who He is and things that not everyone in the world can see for His friends. That's what Jesus said in John 15:15 - No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. And in Jeremiah 33:3 the Lord told Jeremiah to call to Me, and I will answer you, and show you great and mighty things, which you do not know.

God reveals Himself to those He is close to and has relationships with, to those He calls and who call on Him, to those whom He classifies as friends that follow Him. But who are those people? They are us. He is a friend of sinners and losers and failures and unfaithful and untrustworthy people. He chooses the broken and morally bankrupt to trust with understanding who He is and the intimate knowledge of His heart and reveals Himself to sinners. It's not the high and mighty and the super religious that inspire God to intimacy but the fragile and the lowly who may never understand why Jesus loves them so much but will be glad that He does.

If you want to know and understand who God is, to see the secrets of His heart, you don't have to get perfect or ultra-disciplined or more enlightened than the next person. You simply have to keep getting closer and closer to Him, to say yes when He calls you to come. It doesn't matter what you've done and how unworthy you know you are inside. You have no secrets from Hi. He sees and understands everything about you, inside and out. And still He says come. I want you to know who I am.



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