The band The Bo Deans has a song called "Naked". The song is about being raw and honest in a relationship with another human. One line says "You stand naked, I stand naked before you".
Standing naked before another human is one thing, standing naked before God is another. We have a tendancy to hide before God. In the garden of eden Adam and Eve were afraid before God because of their sin and they hid. After that God gave them clothes to hide their nakedness and they left the garden.
Standing naked before God is freightening because we wonder about what that encounter will be like. Perhaps we hide because we wonder if we will be loved and accepted. Perhaps we hide because in all our human interactions we hold something of our true selves back and so we enter into our relationship with God holding some of ourselves back.
God calls us into ever deepening levels of self disclosure and surrendering all of ourselves. We must risk nakedness and rawness if we are to grow in our intimacy with God.
The desert seasons in our lives have a way of stripping those things we use to hide before God.
What do you use as "clothing" to hide before God? What preconcieved notions about God keep you from the intimacy you long for? What do you need to let go of?
I have found each stripping of these to be very hard and yet they are essential to an ever deepening encounter with God.
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