It’s a question my wife asks me sometimes when I am in her physical presence but I am somewhere else in my spirit. I believe God asked a similar question to Adam and Eve after they sinned in the Garden of Eden.
Genesis 3:9 Then the Lord God called to the man, “Where are you?”
Can you really physically hide from the all knowing, all seeing, omnipresent, eternal God? Was God really asking a physical question? David words it this way.
Psalm 139:7 Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
8 If I ascend to heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in Sheol, behold, You are there.
9 If I take the wings of the dawn,
If I dwell in the remotest part of the sea,
10 Even there Your hand will lead me,
And Your right hand will lay hold of me.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will overwhelm me,
And the light around me will be night,”
12 Even the darkness is not dark to You,
And the night is as bright as the day.
Darkness and light are alike to You.
I believe the question God was asking was a spiritual one. The fig leaf was an outward sign of their attempt at spiritual hiding. They were hiding their naked, sinful souls from each other and from God. They were avoiding the truth about their situation and they were avoiding real life. God ask the question because He refuses to leave them or us in that condition.
By crouching down in fear from our own insecurity we doubt that God really loves us. We compromise His plan and our spiritual well being by refusing to receive His perfect love for us. It just seems to painful to endure. We are more comfortable clinging to the lies of satan as he helps us fashion our fig leaves.
After we receive Jesus as savior, we have to burn our fig leaves and stop hiding and avoiding. We can’t experience life as God intends for us while we hide behind our fig leaves. Maybe you don’t even realize you have a closet full of fig leaves that you hide behind. Maybe you have been wearing them so long you don’t even know you have them on. Suffering is the fig leaf detector that God uses to show us the areas of our lives where we are hiding and avoiding.
Many of our fig leaves look great on the outside because we have utilized the design skills of our enemy by listening to his lies. Mal-attachment to kids that we call love, a workaholic leaf that we call providing for our family, the people pleasing leaf that we call empathy, the tough leaf that covers the scared little boy inside. There are also the less attractive leaves of addictions and self-medication as well as the life isn’t fair leaf that help us numb out and avoid dealing with the pain of admitting that we are not in process of becoming who God has called us to be. We avoid because we know the journey God is calling us to will involve the pain of letting our lies die so that who we really are can resurrect from the tomb of our false self.
Like Adam and Eve before us, we will have to trade in our fig leaves for the righteous covering of the sacrifice. In the Garden, God killed an animal and covered Adam and Eve with the skins. This was a picture of Jesus being killed for us and covering us with His righteousness. Relentless meditation on the perfect love of God and standing against the lies of the enemy is the way to drive the fear out of our souls that is causing us to cling to fig leaves instead of God. Satan wants us to avoid the pain of real soul transformation. He convinces us that the path of the fig leaf is the less painful one when in fact, it is the path that destroys us.
So where are you? Are you walking with God in the cool of the evening or are you crouched down in your garden, wearing a fig leaf and avoiding God and who He has gifted you to be. Are you experiencing life to the full?
John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy; I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.