Hide and Seek — Morning Devotions

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Transcript

One of the games that many children enjoy is hide and seek. And most of us know this game. You hear the squeals and laughter as the adults and kids play this old game, hide and seek. I’ve played this with my grandchildren. I enjoy it as much as they do. So, you know how it works. The adult hides and waits for the child to find them and on and on it goes, this lovely game. Very simple, yet it’s a game of fun at the same time.

But I was thinking, did you know that this game actually becomes a bit more serious in adult life, and I mean by that that many people play hide and seek with God. They think that they can hide from him, get away from God and ignore him.

Well, the truth is simply that we cannot hide from God. It’s impossible to run away from God. And the Psalmist in the Old Testament, I think, understood this when he wrote Psalm 139. These were the words:

Where could I go to escape from your spirit or from your sight? He said if I were to climb up to the highest heavens, you’d be there. If I were to dig down to the world of the dead, you would also be there. Or suppose he said, I’ll hide in the dark until night comes to cover me over, but you see me in the dark because daylight and dark are all the same to you. These are verses from Psalm 139.

Now they actually remind me that God is everywhere all the time. It’s simple, isn’t it?

So hiding from God is impossible because he sees everything that’s going on. God is in charge of the universe.

There’s really no little corner for you or me to hide, and our attempts to hide from him are just as futile as the little two-year-old who covers her eyes as she says, You can’t see me anymore.

I recall the book, a very good book called Rebel with a Cause written by Franklin Graham. Franklin Graham is the son of the evangelist Billy Graham, and in his teenage years, Franklin Graham rejected his family, his religious beliefs, the beliefs of his father. He was rebellious by nature. He wanted really nothing to do with his famous father, so his parents had many sleepless nights worried about their son. He tried, in fact, to run away from God.

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If you read the story, you’ll find that at age 22, Franklin Graham one day, as he read John’s Gospel, realised he’d better stop running, and he accepted Jesus Christ into his life, and then he was ordained into the Christian ministry in 1982, and he’s had a tremendous impact around the world just as his father had. So Franklin Graham was one of many people who, I guess, found the hard way that you cannot hide from God.

Now what a classic thing this is. From the very first book of the Bible in Genesis, we read of Adam and Eve. God created our first parents, and God called out to them one day in this beautiful garden, Where are you? Where are you? And Adam said, Well, I was naked when I heard you walking through the garden. I was frightened and I hid.

Here were Adam and Eve who had rebelled, and they couldn’t hide from God. God saw them.

And then there’s other examples. I think of Saul, who was the first king of Israel. We’d read this remarkable verse. It’s easy to miss this out in 1 Samuel 10:22. It says Saul is hiding behind the supplies. Here you have the crowds looking for their new king. And where was he? He was hiding.

An atheist was lecturing at a university, and he wrote on the chalk board God is nowhere. And after his lecture, a Christian student, went to the board and separated the letters W and H out of the word nowhere, and that left the words God is now here.

Again, very simple, but how true it is. God is here now, and he’s now here. God knows us. He’s with us. And if you have a Bible at Psalm 139, and you’ll see there that God is with us geographically in the sense of the world, but also God is there and in the metaphoric sense too, God is with us in life. Hebrews says the Lord has promised that He will not leave us or desert us when you feel I guess furthest from God – it’s usually in the rough times that we feel this way.

Paul said, I am convinced that neither death or life or anything actually can separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus, our Lord.

Let’s Pray

Heavenly Father, we do say we have tried to hide from you at times. Lord, we know how silly it is and futile, for you know us and yet you love us. We thank You in Jesus’ name. Amen.

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