I used to love playing peek a boo and hide and seek with my babies and toddlers and each new grandchild that came along. To see the delight on their faces when you cover your face with your hands or something else and say “peek a boo” to them elicits the delightful squeal of laughter and pure joy, or jumping out as they toddled around and saying “gotcha.” All in good fun, everyone laughing and having a good time.

Later when babies become toddlers, they love to play peek a boo or hide and seek. Toddlers think that if they cover their faces we cannot see them. They are hiding plain sight, all the while thinking they are totally hidden from us. Of course, we allow them to think that way by looking for them, saying things like ” where are you?” “I can’t find you.”

I think we Christian’s are carrying that same mentality with us as we go through life. We try very hard at times to hide from God. We are almost like the toddler with their hands over their faces thinking they are hidden when in reality they are not and neither are we. Often times we want to disguise ourselves as someone else thinking that if we look different or act different God won’t know who we are or where we are.

God sees it all. I often wonder if he laughs at our attempts to hide from him or play peek a boo as though trying to distract him. We are so quick to forget that the God who made us, knows us, and is with us at all times. We are never, ever alone. Whatever our choices, whatever we do, wherever we go, he is there.

Some people go to the trouble of changing their names thinking they are hiding away, but you cannot change your DNA. You are who you are, the person knit together by God in your mother’s womb and he knows you more intimately than anyone ever has or ever will.

Often it is shame and regret that motivate us to try to hide. We want to run from who we have been rather than face our reality.
Sin causes us to try to play peek a boo with God to distract him from our actions. Trust me it does not work!

God knows where you are and even if you are hidden in a cave, another state, in a house or where-ever…he knows. Stop trying to hide, stop trying to distract God, your efforts are futile. I was reading the other day in 1 Kings and I came across the story about the king Ahab, the king of Israel. He thought he could escape the death sentence that had been put upon him by God because of his sin and disobedience, and spoken of by a prophet named Micaiah.

Here it is: 1 Kings 22:29-38
“So the king of Israel and Jehoshaphat king of Judah went up to Ramoth-Gilead. 30 The king of Israel said to Jehoshaphat, ” I will enter the battle in disguise, but you wear your royal robes.” So the king of Israel disguised himself and went into battle.
31Now the king of Aram had ordered his thirty-two chariot commanders, “Do not fight with anyone, small or great, except the king of Israel.” 32 When the chariot commanders saw Jehoshaphat, they thought, “Surely this is the king of Israel.” So they turned to attack him, but when Jehoshaphat cried out, 33 the chariot commanders saw that he was not the king of Israel and stopped pursuing him. 34 But someone drew his bow at random and hit the king of Israel between the sections of his armor. The king told his chariot driver, “Wheel around and get me out of the fighting. I’ve been wounded. 35 All-day long the battle raged, and the king was propped up in his chariot facing the Arameans. The blood from his wound ran onto the floor of the chariot, and that evening he died. 36 As the sun was setting, a cry spread through the king died and was brought to Samaria, and they buried him there. 38 They washed the chariot at a pool in Samaria (where prostitutes bathed), and the dogs licked up his blood, as the word of the Lord had declared.

The king thought that if he was disguised during the battle that God could not find him and kill him. But if you look, God did not need to even let the person shooting the arrow know it was the king or even take aim at him. It says in verse 34 “But someone drew his bow at random and hit the king of Israel between the sections of his armor.” This random guy, shooting a random arrow managed not only to hit the king but hit him between the sections of his armor in a place that would kill him. Wow!

We can disguise ourselves, we can play “hide and seek”, or we can try the “peek a boo” game out with God, but it will not matter. He is with us wherever we go and whatever we do. Even if we are the only person on an island in the middle of the ocean, God is with us and whatever he has planned for us will still come to fruition.

Maybe you find yourself in a place of shame and regret. You have been trying to hide from God, not owning your sin. Come to him, he is right there with you waiting for you to surrender the weight of this shame are regret to him. He longs to forgive you, grow you and move you past this place that you are stuck in. God’s word says this: 1 John 1:9 “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.”

Your enemy wants to keep you bound up in shame and regret. If he can keep you where​ he knows you are not being an effective​ witness for Jesus Christ. He can make you a sad miserable Christian whose lamp is just barely shining in this dark world.
Why would you want to stay there? God knows what you did, with whom you did it, how many times you did it. He knows it all. Just come, bend your knee and your pride and cry out to God, His mercy is new every morning, and He is longsuffering and kind. There is nothing to lose and everything to gain.

I am going to leave you with some scriptures to think on.

Psalm 103:10-14 “He has not punished us as we deserve for all our sins, for His mercy toward those who fear and honor him is as great as the height of the heavens above the earth.”

Hebrews 8:12 “For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”

Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrar3es his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”

He is waiting…take off that garment of shame and regret…surrender it to the Lord…He will forgive the sincere heart of repentance. No more trying to hide, no more games of peek a boo, it doesn’t work anyway!