Our Glory, Our Secret

I get these daily readings from John Eldredge. And I love them :) I got this one a couple weeks ago that was titled "Nakedness Indeed." And I wanted to read an excerpt from 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.

We have this secret inside of us, each one of us. We are all images of God. And that is an amazing thing. So often we just lose ourselves in our Beloved without looking at ourself, but God is putting us through the fire over and over to purify us and make us like his Son Jesus, our Lover (Ephesians 2:6-10). We are important. The image of God is important. Our very bodies are his temple. (1 Corinthians 6:19) But we so often hide ourselves. Hidden under the daily grind of life, past wounds, years of disregard to our hearts, and a life deadened by service, we find that when we uncover ourselves before God, we feel a nakedness we never knew before. It's a joyful one though and under it there is the impulse to just run and jump into God's embrace. To let God actually enjoy us for who we are, not for anything else. But just us. That's what it is like to jump completely naked into his arms. And it is incredible joyful. It's also scary at the same time. We feel vulnerable in ways we never knew before. Our defenses are completely gone. As Eldredge once wrote, my fig leaf feels so sheer before him. And God not only wants us to live from our heart, our image of him to himself, but also to others. We must live from our glory from God in our heart to others. And this requires a great deal of vulnerability. We have to take risk, but it's worth the risk. In the Garden, we were meant to live naked, uncovered for our glory to be seen. This has as much to do with clothes as it does with our heart and soul, because we were made to live with our hearts uncovered to let our souls reflect God's image to everyone.

In Isaiah 6, Isaiah is in Heaven watching the seraphim fly around Jesus. And as they fly around him, they call out, "Holy, Holy, Holy is the LORD Almighty; the whole earth is full of his glory." (Is 6:3. NIV). But they are not calling to God. They are calling out to each other. They want to tell each other what they see of God's beauty. And share God with one another. Their lives are centered on Jesus and they want to give to one another what they see of Jesus. And that gives them joy. The same should be of our glory to each other. We have a great secret inside of us. We must share it to one another. Because our secret is God's glory inside of us. We are all image bearers.

If you've ever read The Secret Garden as a child you will immediately connect that with our glory being revealed. It's a wonderful book and I highly recommend it :)