NorthStar Community Daily Devotional

June 5

Scripture focus: So, my friends, this is something like what has taken place with you. When Christ died he took that entire rule-dominated way of life down with him and left it in the tomb, leaving you free to "marry" a resurrection life and bear "offspring" of faith for God. For as long as we lived that old way of life, doing whatever we felt we could get away with, sin was calling most of the shots as the old law code hemmed us in. And this made us all the more rebellious. In the end, all we had to show for it was miscarriages and stillbirths. But now that we're no longer shackled to that domineering mate of sin, and out from under all those oppressive regulations and fine print, we're free to live a new life in the freedom of God. Romans 7:4-6 The Message

When all else fails, we start hiding.

Denial, repression, rationalization – none of them stop. But inevitably neither can they hide the truth. This is when sin goes underground and starts hiding.

I have a principle that I try to live by to the best of my ability. I try to live with nothing hidden. This idea took formation in my brain when I got pregnant for the first time. My husband and I decided that we never wanted to put ourselves in a position of never being tempted to lie to our children. We wanted to live with nothing hidden.

This has been exceedingly liberating. Oftentimes a discussion is quickly cut off by asking the first question, “If I make this decision, am I ok when (not if) my children find out?” If I can say, “Yeah, I wouldn’t blush or hesitate to talk about this decision and subsequent action over with my kids” then I proceed to the next set of questions. But anytime I hesitate, prevaricate, hope my kids don’t notice – I’m in trouble. Bill Thrall and his team at TrueFaced have defined holiness as living with nothing hidden. I like that. Is there anything in your life – no matter how small – that you feel the need to hide from someone? Look, if you think the behavior is acceptable, then there should be no internal urge to keep it hidden. It is that simple.


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