Naked and Exposed: God Sees Us, He Knows Us, He Understands Our Intentions

Heart of Stone

At One Solitary Voice from one week’s post to the next, the words remain as thoughts in my head and in my heart. I remain in conversation with God and in His Word. I spend time reading the words of my favorite authors, and I attend a women’s weekly Bible study as well. My day-to-day experiences influence my writing, but still, when it is time to write a post, I come to the computer empty, not knowing what words will come. This week was one of those weeks, but not because I had not written anything in preparation for what I would post, but because my words had disappeared into cyberspace or wherever those things go when we lose them on the computer.

I am not one of those techies. I do know the basics. Things like autosave have not gone unnoticed, just unused. I understand the simplest way to keep from losing one’s work is to save it, but my not doing that never seemed to be an issue until now. To have quick access to my writing, I leave documents open for days on end on my computer. When the machine takes over and closes something for what I feel is an unnecessary update, I find whatever I have written even if I must reach into the deeper places of my computer to locate it.

When I think about it, the past few weeks have not been normal writing weeks for me, so sitting down to put the final changes on my now-delayed post, nothing surprises me. Finding only these words remaining after searching my computer said something to me. “No creature is hidden from him, but all things are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give an account.” (Hebrews 4:13, CSB). The words I wrote now hidden from my sight, but as for me, I am certainly naked and exposed before God. We all are.

That has me thinking about what God desires of me and what He speaks to me personally about the world in which we currently live. He knows there are things disturbing my peace right now. Events happening in our world today trouble me, the agents of evil everywhere. One cannot help but wonder where this world is headed, but I am not naïve enough to think that God does not see all that I see and more. That happens for those of us choosing to walk in faith and live out our lives according to a biblical worldview. I need not worry, but still I do. I have children and grandchildren, great grandchildren too. I have family and friends. I love them all. I would like none of them to experience the trials and the painful circumstances of life, but I understand God holds us. He remains. He does not let go.

I turn myself then to what it is God asks of me. As naked and exposed creatures made in the image of God, our efforts to hide remain futile. God sees us. He knows us. He understands our intentions. Knowing this should lead us to live truthful and transparent lives before Him. That we should, however, does not mean we do. We are people pleasers, even when we disagree with those we attempt to please. We are happiness seekers moving from one moment to the next even though we all know happiness comes in waves, and it always fades. We search for the elusive pleasures of life. Our searching does not cease, and our emptiness remains until we choose the Author of lasting joy.

I fear there are those who have become so rooted in the world they cannot see God’s purpose for their lives as THE PLAN they should follow. That God sees us, that He knows us, that He understands our intentions should be the motivation each one of us needs to seek His will and to live in accordance with it. All those other incentives out there speak loudly these days. The attempt to discover oneself, to know oneself, and to live out one’s truth even has people telling themselves God’s plan is the one they are following, but I wonder, how often do they truly look upward? How often do any of us do that? Do we walk in faith, trusting God or are we merely telling ourselves that is what we are doing?

Make no mistake, the world is forever ready to consume us and consume us it will if we do not approach God in prayer and in humility, seeking His will for our lives and trusting Him with the details of it. We struggle because we are not honest with ourselves or with God. In reality we all know whether we are walking in faith or have instead chosen to live by the rules of the world. Hiding behind our masks, we put on whatever face works best for us doing whatever pleases us. God sees us. He knows us. He understands our intentions. Why then do we not approach Him with the honesty and openness that leads us to confess our sins, to seek His forgiveness, and to follow His guidance?

We are accountable to God. He ALWAYS delivers on His promises. That should be our motivation to surrender to Him. God gives us every opportunity to find Him in the chaos and the confusion, the deceit and the lies, the sin, and the darkness of the world. He is patient with us, not slow to act. His intentions for us are for good, not for evil. “We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose” (Romans 8:28, emphasis mine), but we must choose Him, and we must seek to become like His Son and our Savior Jesus.

Most of us want all things to work together for good. We cannot, however, manipulate that good to fit some human design. God desires that we live by faith, that we stop submitting our lives to sin and that we walk in complete surrender to Him. True righteousness requires a heart transformation. “I will give them one heart, and a new spirit I will put within them. I will remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my statutes and keep my rules and obey them” (Ezekiel 11:19, ESV). That heart of flesh is the one I want.

Not by our own power nor by our works will any of us change our own hearts or the heart of another. God gave us Jesus who took our disobedience upon himself. “He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to His own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life” (Titus 3:5-7). A truthful pursuit of righteousness begins when we turn from sin and align ourselves with Jesus.

As we continue through this Lenten season, let us remember Jesus made us righteous by the blood he shed for us on the cross. Not one of us is more righteous than anyone else. Let us stop looking into the lives of others and seek to become the person God created us to be. We are all naked and exposed before Him. It does not matter what we see in others, what we think we know about them, what we believe their intentions to be. What matters is God—the One who sees us, the One who knows us, the One who understands our intentions. Let us then live in the world and not be of it—acting, thinking, and behaving as Christ did. Let us focus on our own hearts, and remember God sent His Son to die for the forgiveness of all sins. He gives us the Holy Spirit and His Holy Word to help us now. Let us walk in faith and in the righteousness and perfection of Jesus Christ.