Everything Revealed
Ecclesiastes 12:14
For God will bring every act to judgment, everything which is hidden, whether it is good or evil.
Last evening a friend and I were walking into a hunting stand in North Texas. We were sneaking along a road just off of a river and I was watching for wild hog tracks in the softened sand. It's hadn't rained in several weeks, but the night before it had poured rain, exposing things in the sand. As I was looking down, something caught my eye I knelt down and brushed some sand away and there lay a beautiful native American arrow head. It had likely laid there for hundreds of years, exposed by the rain. They say that it's after a rain that makes for the best artifact hunting.
While I'm in Texas, back at home in Michigan, it is raining and snowing. Over the next few days it's calling for 8-12 inches of snow. About the time we get home, the snow should be melting again, exposing all of the stuff that has been covered over the last 3-4 months. It's a time to see what has been covered up.
Each season reveals something new to us. Summer reveals the beautiful growth of green plants and flowers that can take your breath away. In the north we long for the summer months. Fall reveals a beautiful change as well. The reds of the maples, the gold of the aspens, the auburns of the oaks standing stark against the towering evergreens, it's all something you have to see to believe. Winter brings the blinding dazzle of bright white snow and fresh air that fills your lungs like no other time of the year. Then comes the beginning of spring, before any new buds or blossoms... brown and revealing.
The seasons of our lives are similar. We go through times like winter where there is no new growth. Periods where there is another snow every few days burying deeper the sins of our minds and hearts. But following every winter is always a spring where those layers of snow melt, revealing the trash of sins that we've been hiding through the cold, dark seasons in our lives that have been holding on to us. And sometimes these times reveal hidden treasures that can only come to light by times of difficult storms, similar to the arrowheads found after centuries of being hidden.
We all go through some periods in life where our minds are harboring sinful thoughts. These season could last days, months or even years. Eventually we have to face the revealing spring. Hidden sins are just as dangerous and damaging to our life as sin that we've acted out. In 1 Corinthians 4:5 Paul wrote, ... "wait until the Lord comes who will both bring to light the things hidden in the darkness and disclose the motives of men's hearts;".
Scripture tells us in 1 Samuel 16:7, "God sees not as man sees, for man looks at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart". No sin, not even a whispered curse or a passing evil thought, is hidden from the view of God. In fact, if we realized that God himself is the only audience for such secret sins, we might be less likely to write them off so lightly and allow the snow to cover them.
If we wait until the veil is pulled back someday and our sins we thought were secret become revealed to others, we will have a huge mess to clean up. However, when we sin in our hearts, if we confessed those sins and turn our heart back to Christ when the spring comes the ground will be clean and there will be no compounded trash to clean up. 1 John 1:9 tells us, "If we confessed our sins He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness".
As a matter of fact, your secret life is the real test of your true character: "As he thinks within himself, so he is" Proverbs 23:7. Do you want to know who you really are? Take a hard look at your private life... especially your innermost thoughts. Those things that nobody else knows. Look hard into the mirror of God's Word, and allow it to reveal and correct the real thoughts and motives of your heart.
If you do this on a continual basis, when the storms of life or the refreshing of spring comes it will only reveal true beauty.
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