Ready Or Not, Here I Come

Ready Or Not, Here I Come

“Can any hide himself in secret places that I shall not see him? saith the Lord. Do not I fill heaven and earth? saith the Lord.”

‭‭Jeremiah‬ ‭23:24‬

Have you ever played the most thrilling childhood game ever? 

It’s called hide and seek or hide-n-seek for short. It’s best when played with just two people but it will work with as many as are interested. A word of caution, the more people that play the game, the crazier it gets. 

In the game of hide and seek, the seeker is the one who tries to find the hiders. He or she counts to a magic number while the hiders run around and try to hide somewhere as quick as possible. You’re given a set amount of time to hide and then the seeker will shout out “ready or not here I come”. Time is not on the side of the hider.

The hiders will hide and hope not to be found and if you’re not found, you continue to the next round. If you’re found, you’re out of the game. The game ends when either the time runs out or all the hiders have been found. These are the basic rules. Usually non of the hiders are winners. It’s an unending cycle of hiding and being sought

In this game in life, we are the hiders and God is the seeker. 

However fun it was as a child, it is a dangerous game to play with God at any age. Keeping secrets, telling lies and hiding things from God is not a good idea, nor is it possible. So why do we do it?

Have you ever knowingly lied to someone and knew it was a lie? Of course you have. Lying in general is almost always premeditated and done purposely. Lying is never an accident.

You attempted to keep the secret from someone else or told them something in hopes they would believe it so they wouldn’t uncover the truth. We’ve all done it. You’ve hidden that lie under another lie or behind another secret or in a darker place. 

Did you ever stop to think - God sees what you’re doing. 

Some lies or secrets make other lies and secrets worse and worse. Our only hope is that as time passes the lie or secret will go away and people will forget about it or the seeker won’t find me. Well everyone except one.  As much as we want the time to expire and to be the winner of the game, we will never win this game. 

God is the ultimate seeker. He will always find you. There are no lies or secrets or hiding places you can keep from God. No amount of excuses or reasons. And yet, we still try. We will move from one lie to another secret to a hiding place. We get caught or our time runs out. 

Pride, guilt and shame are some of the reasons that people will use as an excuse for playing the hider. They are afraid of what will be found when the seeker comes. But there are many more shameful reasons people lie and hide the truth. 

Have you ever played the game and thought about a place to hide ahead of time? Then run as fast as you can to get there and then someone else comes and hides there too. Right as the seeker says those dreaded words “ready or not here I come” - ugh. 

Or Someone else knows your hiding place or your secret or your lie. Now what? You can’t go back there. You can’t leave or else you’ll be found out. 

And even worse, the seeker knows where you’ll go hide and yours is the first place they will look. Running to the worst place to hide is always so uncomfortable. You know ahead of time it was a bad idea. 

So what do you do? 

Confess your sin, your lies, your secret or whatever you’re hiding - and confess it before God, immediately, before times runs out. 

I never enjoyed playing the hider, although I’ve played it many times. I would find some dark place that no one else knew about and hide, trying not to breath hard and being scared to death to be found, especially when the seeker was close. I would sit there in this dark place listening and waiting for the seeker. It was absolutely nerve racking. A horrible feeling. But once the seeker came it was actually relieving. They knew and they found me so I didn’t have to hide anymore. 

God knows our sin, and he also knows our heart. If you’re a Christian saved by the blood of Jesus Christ, you shouldn’t be playing this game. 

But if you do find yourself in a hiding position, get it right with God. You’ve already been forgiven of all your sin, past, present and future - so why even play the game.  Find Jesus, before He finds you.

Remember - read your Bible, go to church, pray and get around people who believe on God.