Too Ashamed to Face God? He's Already Coming to Find You

Let me ask you the question I think a lot of us are quietly answering “yes” to and would never say out loud.

Are you too ashamed to face God right now?

I’ll go first. There are stretches in my own life where I have gone quiet with God. Not angry. Not doubting, exactly. Just… embarrassed. I did the thing again, or said the thing, or dropped the ball in a way I’m not proud of, and the honest instinct isn’t to run toward God. It’s to keep my distance until I feel a little more presentable. Clean myself up first. Then talk to Him.

Sunday, Kent Keller walked us through Genesis 3, and he put his finger right on that instinct. Because it’s the oldest one there is.

The first thing shame ever did

You know the story. The fruit, the serpent, the bite. But watch what happens the second it’s done.

“They heard the sound of the LORD God walking in the garden in the cool of the day, and the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the LORD God among the trees of the garden.” (Genesis 3:8)

They hid.

That’s it. That’s the very first thing sin produced in a human heart. Not a philosophy. Not an argument. A hiding place. Kent pointed out that the serpent had promised their eyes would open to wisdom… and they opened, alright. To shame. The first move of a guilty heart is to grab some fig leaves and get behind a tree.

Church, we’re still doing it. We just have better fig leaves now.

We hide behind being busy. Behind being fine. Behind the version of ourselves we post and the version we’d never let anyone see. We go quiet in the room where we used to pray. And underneath all of it is the same conviction Adam had: if God really saw me right now, He’d want distance. So I’ll take the distance first, thanks. Save us both the trouble.

The question that changes everything

Here’s where I need you to slow down, because this is the part that undid me.

God comes into the garden. And He speaks first.

“But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” (Genesis 3:9)

Now He’s not lost. He knows exactly where Adam is crouched. Kent said something I can’t stop thinking about: God could have wiped the slate and started over with a brand new pair. He didn’t. He went looking for the two who ran.

Before Adam ever took a step toward God, God took a step toward Adam.

Read that again if you’re too ashamed to face God today. The God you’re hiding from is not standing across the garden with His arms crossed, waiting for you to crawl back cleaned up and rehearsed. He’s the one walking toward the trees. He’s the one calling your name into the exact place you’re most ashamed of.

“Where are you?” isn’t an accusation. It’s an invitation.

What if hiding is the only thing keeping you stuck?

So let me be honest about what we do with that, because I do it too.

We hear that God comes looking, and we still stay behind the tree. Why? I think because we’ve decided our shame is more thorough than His grace. We’ve done the math. We know what we did. And somewhere in there we’ve quietly concluded this one’s too much, even for Him.

Is that true, though? Or is it just the oldest lie wearing a newer coat?

Because the same chapter that shows us the hiding shows us what God does about it. He doesn’t leave them in their fig leaves. He covers them Himself. And right in the middle of the hardest words of the whole passage, He promises that one day someone would come to crush the very thing that sent them running. The rescue got announced in the same breath as the wreckage. That’s not a God keeping His distance. That’s a God already on the move.

Come out from behind the tree

I’m not going to hand you a formula. I don’t have one, and Genesis doesn’t give me one.

But I can tell you the one thing Adam eventually did that broke the spell. He answered. He came out. He told God the truth about where he was.

So where are you? The thing you did last week. The pattern you can’t seem to beat. The prayer you stopped praying because you figured you’d used up your welcome. Whatever’s got you behind the tree today… what if the voice calling your name isn’t the one you’ve been dreading, but the one you’ve actually been waiting for?

Don’t sit in that hiding place alone. Grab someone at Christchurch this Sunday, or send our team a prayer request this week. You don’t have to have it cleaned up first. That was never the deal.

He already knows the worst. And He came looking anyway.

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