Are you Naked?
GOT YA! Didn’t I!
What a question. What a thought. Scary thought, huh? Nakedness is not something most of us, myself included, think about very often. So what do I mean when I ask you, and myself, “Are you naked?” Let’s hear what one of my favorite authors, John Eldredge, has to say about it:
The deeper reason we fear our own glory is that once we let others see it, they will have seen the truest us, and that is nakedness indeed. We can repent of our sin. We can work on our “issues.” But there is nothing to be “done” about our glory. It’s so naked. It’s just there — the truest us. It is an awkward thing to shimmer when everyone else around you is not, to walk in your glory with an unveiled face when everyone else is veiling his.
For a woman to be truly feminine and beautiful is to invite suspicion, jealousy, misunderstanding. A friend confided in me, “When you walk into a room, every woman looks at you to see — are you prettier than they are? Are you a threat?” And that is why living from your glory is the only loving thing to do. You cannot love another person from a false self. You cannot love another while you are still hiding. You cannot love another unless you offer her your heart. It takes courage to live from your heart. My friend Jenny said just the other day, “I desperately want to be who I am. I don’t want the glory that I marvel at in others anymore. I want to be that glory which God set in me.”
Finally, our deepest fear of all . . . we will need to live from it. To admit we do have a new heart and a glory from God, to begin to let it be unveiled and embrace it as true — that means the next thing God will do is ask us to live from it. Come out of the boat. Take the throne. Be what he meant us to be. And that feels risky . . . really risky. But it is also exciting. It is coming fully alive. My friend Morgan declared, “It’s a risk worth taking.”
(Waking the Dead, 87–88)
So, the nakedness I’m talking about is the openness and honesty with ourselves, with each other, and with God that is needed to be the people God can use to make an authentic difference in this world we live in. ”They were naked and not ashamed.” Every single person on this planet has a glory from God that we desperately need. It is that “Imago Dei.” Our original glory. The problem is that we have an enemy who Is afraid of what we could be and do if we discovered our true glory. If you truly believed you were a son or daughter of the Most High God, how would that change the way you see yourself, and others, and GOD?
How many layers of “clothes” do I wear to keep you from seeing my “nakedness?” How many do you wear? Have you looked in the mirror lately? Not that one in the bathroom or on the visor of your car! The mirror of God’s word. The part that reminds you that you have a glory, that it is a glory that God placed in you from before the foundation of the world, and that it is needed. I need it, the church needs it, the world desperately needs it. YOU need it! You and I need to come alive and live from our true hearts. The glorious hearts that God created in you and me. The remnant left in us from before the Fall. Our true selves.
I know what the Bible teaches about the heart being deceitful and wicked. I’ve read that part. I’ve also read the part where God gave us a new heart and a new spirit. So that we could return to the place where we were “naked and not ashamed.” Where we talk to God and know He is listening. And when He talks to us we hear. And, if you get to that place, where you can really believe that God is there, He’s listening, and He cares; then you will understand a little of what I am trying to get across here. It’s the relationship with God that gives an authentic glory to your life that no one and no thing can take away.
It’s not easy to be naked. It’s even harder to not be ashamed.
I just want to make one more point, then I’m gone for now. Going to go for a walk and get ready for Celebrate Recovery tonight. That’s part of what un-employed bloggers do!
Here’s the point. Don’t worry about being seen as naked. God already does. He knows us BC and AC. Before clothes and after clothes. It’s His opinion that counts. Ask Him what He thinks about your clothes. Maybe, just maybe, you need to take something off. Anything that hides your true glory from the rest of us who desperately need what your glory is.
The glory of the One and Only.
You were made to thrive!
Harv
