Healing

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LIVING AMONG THE NAKED


Lately Susan had been feeling very deeply unsatisfied with herself. She didn’t want to admit that she was feeling depressed. The job that used to give her such intense satisfaction seemed a drag these days. She had sacrificed a lot of time and effort building her career and now that she was almost at the pinnacle of power, she often felt empty, worthless and even useless. “What’s wrong with me Lord? Please show me why I cannot be happy or find fulfillment in my life. The Lord spoke to her, “Susan, do you really want me to show you what is wrong with you, can you handle the truth? “Yes Jesus, please show me what is wrong and I will try my best to fix it,” she replied. “The problem with you my beloved Child is that you are walking naked,” The Lord said. “I do not understand what you mean by that statement, please open the eyes of my understanding,” she prayed. She stepped on the gas as she accelerated on the highway.


She reached out and turned on the radio so that it could drown out her confused thoughts. Immediately her attention was arrested by the end of an advertisement for a seminar: “…We invite you to the “Living Hope Center” this afternoon at 1:00pm to listen to our guest speaker Evelyn Walter as she discusses the topic of Living among the Naked.” Had they said “Naked”? With a pounding heart she drove towards the meeting hall and found a place to sit just as the meeting commenced.


The speaker opened her mouth and said, “Beloved, if you have been seeing yourself or others as naked, then I want to let you know that God is showing you the state of sin in which you are living. If you have genuinely cried out to God and asked him to show you what is wrong with you, your family, career, job etc. you are in the beginning process of seeing the revelation unfold. We live in a generation that walks naked, a lot of people today walk in the shameful ways of their sin, their conscience has been seared that most of them do not realize how pathetic they are. In Genesis 2-3, we see that sin caused Adam and Eve to be ashamed of their nakedness. They sought to hide themselves away from God’s presence. This kind of nakedness carries shame and makes one feel like they are on the verge of experiencing great judgment.

The greatest cause of nakedness in the world today is the sin of Idolatry; the sin of Idolatry will strip you naked faster than all other sins combined. The sin of Idolatry will strip you of your dignity and make you an abomination and a stench in the Lord’s nostrils. When the children of Israel worshipped the golden calf in the desert, the Bible said that this sin was so grievous, that it stripped them naked and they became a laughing stock to their enemies. (Exodus 32:25)

We may not literally bow to idols or golden calves but the moment that we exalt anything above the Lordship of Christ in our lives, we have opened the door to Idolatry and once that is done, we are stripped and left to bathe naked in the river of shame. If you fall into a pattern where you habitually exalt a man’s ideas, opinions and desires above the Lord’s you are guilty of idolatry. Because of unmet expectations, Idolatry inevitably leads to disappointment. No one can successfully play at being God for a long time, even the greatest actors cannot sustain the role.

The love of money is the root of evil-it is also one of the foundations for idolatry in the church. We have learned the art of worshipping the gifts instead of the giver. Sexual sin is another cause of nakedness. Engaging in immoral acts of any kind will strip you of all the protective layers and leave you bare and exposed to your enemies. The Bible is full of moving rhetoric examples where God showed his people the disastrous consequences of their adultery. In Hosea 2:2-3 God rebukes his people for their nakedness which was caused by adultery.

We must remember that every time we open the door and let sin rule our lives, we are subjecting ourselves to nakedness. Not only will nakedness bring shame and invoke God’s judgment and wrath, it will also lead to exposure. When you are naked, the protective covering is gone and not only does the enemy laugh at you, he is also able to attack you because there is nothing left to cover you.

Did you also know that nakedness invites the wrath and judgment of God? Jesus succinctly warns us that the naked are not going to enter the kingdom of God. In Revelations 16:15, he says, “Behold, I come like a thief! Blessed is he who stays awake and keeps his clothes with him, so that he may not go naked and be shamefully exposed.” Beloved Children of God, though we live in a generation where people live and walked in a perpetual state of nakedness, we are called to be wash our clothes in the blood of the lamb, and to be dressed in garments of righteousness at all times.

When the speaker concluded her sermon, Susan knew that she had found the answer. She repented of bowing down to a mammon calf; she had put her career, her family, comfort and luxuries in the place of God. Tears of joy coursed down her face as she was liberated from her shame of walking in nakedness. It felt like being washed in a thousand crystal streams of living water. The Savior’s healing hands gently rocked her in his strong arms as he washed away her shame and healed her with crimson tide of his blood.

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