Two images came to me as I was thinking about my longing for greater intimacy with God:

The first is of a small child playing “pee-a-boo.” He hides his face behind his hands and thinks that the adult playing with him cannot see him because he cannot see the adult. That is like my way of relating to God. I had lived my life acting as though God cannot see me and know me in every detail and to the fullest depth because I have chosen to try and keep parts of my thoughts and feelings private and to myself. What an immature, obviously impossible and unsuccessful ploy! All it has accomplished is to keep me from seeing God – not prevented God from seeing me.

The second image is that of Adam after his sin – cowering behind his wilting fig leaves and huddling in the bushes. Thinking that he is successfully evading God’s sight and knowledge. And when God asks, “Where are you?” – he answers, “I was afraid because I was naked and I hid myself.” As if his Creator did not know what Adam looked like and where he was – even better than he knew himself. It is God who is pursuing intimacy and man who is evading it. And that is me – I am Adam – hiding in the bushes with my pathetic loincloth of leaves.

So here I am – hiding my face with my hands and my nakedness with leaves – fooling myself into thinking that I am so clever in keeping out of Gods sight - and yet yearning for HIM to truly accept me and love me. Like playing hide-and-seek and wishing that I’d get found really soon because I am so tired of waiting.

Deep down I think I know that the only way to attain true intimacy is to allow myself to be fully known – and that is the scary part. Everyone who I have trusted before has not been trustworthy. I have “good reasons” for defending myself, hiding and not trusting anyone. I feel like I’ve been screwed by parents, family, friends, school-mates, teachers, church, pastors, scout leaders, co-workers, bosses, government, and the universe in general. I don’t feel safe being transparent and vulnerable. It is so freaking hard to let down my guard. I don’t know how to do it! And yet that is what I feel like I must do – expose my nakedness, show my face, stop trying to hide. Even though I believe that God already knows me inside out, it feels like I have to do something more to make myself totally open to Him. And that seems like a pre-requisite to intimacy.

It seems impossible.

God help me…
lee

This is a process Lee. One that is fraught with personal shame, fear and paranoia until recovery details emerge to empower us. Our perspective has been attacked, demoralized and parts of it unrecognizably destroyed to be rebuilt when we are ready. Letting our guards down is more a matter of creating such internal affirmation that we no longer need the height, breadth and depth of such defenses. First we consider out internal process, allowing those negative emotional burdens to fade under recovery reasoning, as you are doing here. A city protected by walls against an invading army would be terrified to see their walls simply collapse, as was the case in Jericho. Instead, we fortify ourselves until we can live and prosper in the "wilderness" as Abraham and Sarah, no walls, little external support, only trust in Our Loving Heavenly Father and ourselves.

Yep, we are hiding in the bush, pretending to be invisible to humans and God. The fundamental difference between you and Adam is that you have not sinned against God. Adam hid to make secret his wrongdoing. You are a precious, wonderful innocent child to our God, and He wants to reach out to you, to bring you into the "crook of His arm", to carefully attend to you while you mourn, to wipe the tears from your eyes and to rest his cheek on yours in comfort and safety.

Perhaps Lee, do not pursue intimacy, but carefully set boundaries that protect you, and then advance those boundaries as you are able. Instead, as the Weekend of Recovery teaches, spend time in safety and support of your hurt self, playing, listening and nurturing the parts of the whole that have been treated with criminal disdain.

When you are ready, and it may not be now, you will no longer need the walls. Think about boundaries, there are walls of stone and bricks and of concrete, there are fences of barbed wire, solid wood barriers and picket fences. Finally there are the white wire fences around plants, curbs and plastic landscape barriers that are flush with the ground. These are the stages you could define as you step down from your fortress Lee.

This is a process.

Sam

BRAVO BRAVO , well said and written . Opening ourselves up to God or should I say Surrendering ourselves to God and his good and perfect will is so hard to do. Even though he knows us inside and out not only that he created us so to think he does not know all of us through and through is is not only something to grasp but it is hard to have the faith to believe that .

It is our faith in this eternal ever present God and how we view God that takes us to higher and higher levels. When God is exalted to the place he belongs which is above Everything in our lives than we can truly get an idea of Just how Great our God is .

Getting to the point where we can trust him unlike man but really trusting him as our Father , we must first learn how to be sons but sense our relationship with our earthly fathers has been skewed either by our fatherlessness or lack of a present father our or perpetrators who ruined our scope of trusting on a real intimate level it is hard to open ourselves up even to God for fear of rejection or fear of what ever else we can cower behind instead of exposing ourselves up to God.

God is waiting for us to surrender Everything to him he is waiting for us to empty ourselves so he can fill us with all that he is and all that he has for us .

Everything we think we need to hold on to for fear of loss he replaces with something that will not only benefit us but others and most importantly he gets the glory for all he has done .

It is all about exposing all of our brokenness and exposing everything that is done in the dark and bring into the light so God can show his true perfection in us through us so the this dying world can see through us that God reigns and god is everything he says he is .

We are made perfect because of our weakness we look at it as our brokenness and weakness is a bad thing when in reality it is our weakness that is made perfect

"For my power is made perfect in weakness
Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me".

Believe it or not everything we struggle with are the very things that will lead us to freedom when we release them unto God so he can turn these very things into a strength through his power and might . He can do what we are powerless to do when we surrender all the things that are our weakness all the fears all the sins in our lives .

When we do let him do this and allow him in he will clean up our lives in such a way that it could only be God that could of helped us achieve this perfection . He gets the glory we get the blessings and the dying world gets to see God on display through us letting them no that they can let go and let God they can be vulnerable they can also bring there brokenness out into the open .

Like i said it took another person to expose their own struggles of being molested it was their transparency that allowed me to see Gods glory on display and let me realize it is possible to achieve victory over my abuse .

This is the first step is to admit that we are powerless and that this higher power God can and will help us achieve what we are powerless to achieve

Blessings
Lee

Great post and a very important topic...I think you know what you should do better than anyone bro..

August 24, 2012

In an illustration of a tree stump, Job saw a revelation of the resurrection. He envisioned a decaying tree stump with old roots suddenly reviving at the "scent of water" (Job 14:9). Out of the apparent deadness came tender shoots. New life sprang forth from seeming death.

Then Job asked the question of all ages: "If mortals die, can they live again? This thought would give me hope, and through my struggle I would eagerly wait for release" (v. 14). Job received the revelation that in death the physical body simply waits for its renewal to come. In the resurrection day, at the "scent of water," our dead, lifeless bodies will be quickened by the power of the Holy Spirit and made immortal like Jesus.

Need encouragement? "So, my dear brothers and sisters, be strong and steady, always enthusiastic about the Lord's work, for you know that nothing you do for the Lord is ever useless" (1 Corinthians 15:58). The resurrection is coming!
Larry Stockstill