Hide Till I Die: The Tax You Didn't Know You Were Paying

There's a game every one of us learned as a kid, and most of us never actually stopped playing.

Hide and seek. My kids are experts at it. Tatum climbs under the covers and lies there stiff as a board with the whole outline of her body showing, and when I lift the blanket she looks up genuinely shocked — "How did you know?" Solomon is on another level. He'll be in the hamper. The dryer. Behind pillows shaped like a little body while he's actually in the closet. Pray for your pastor.

Here's what I can't shake, though: we never really quit. We just get good at it. The thing we hide behind stops being a blanket and becomes a career. A smile. An "I'm good, how are you?" And somewhere along the way something flips — we stop wanting to be found.

That's the tension I want to name. A lot of us are tired in a way that sleep doesn't fix, and we can't quite figure out why. I think it comes down to one thing more than we'd like to admit: we're hiding, and hiding has a cost.

Go all the way back to Genesis 3. Adam and Eve do the one thing God told them not to do, and their very first move isn't to come clean — it's to grab fig leaves and hide. Stop and sit with that. The first invention in human history wasn't fire or the wheel. It was a cover-up. Something to keep from being fully seen. And we've been iterating on that invention ever since.

Look around. The struggling marriage that rode to church in silence this morning but posted a beautiful anniversary photo two weeks ago. The debt nobody knows about. The doubt you won't say out loud in your group because you don't want anybody thinking you're not a good Christian. Sometimes it's even the good stuff — the serving, the giving — quietly doing the job of a nicer set of fig leaves.

King David knew this game. A man after God's own heart, and he still ended up in the ditch. Listen to how he describes the stretch he spent covering it up: "When I kept silent, my bones wasted away... my strength was sapped as in the heat of summer" (Psalm 32:3-4). That's the tax. Hiding is like walking your neighborhood in a weight vest. The first block feels fine. A couple miles in, your shoulders are screaming. A weight vest convinces your body you're forty pounds heavier than you actually are. It isn't real — but it sure feels real, and the longer you wear it, the more it hurts.

And here's the cruelest part. When you're hiding, you can't receive love, because down deep you know nobody's actually seeing you. It's like being a catfish. You send out a version of yourself that isn't true, so when the kind words come back, they can't land. "If they knew the real me, they wouldn't say that." You can be surrounded by people and still be completely alone. You cannot receive love if you are not known.

So what's the way out? It's narrower than we'd like, but it's real: to be fully known by God, and truly known by a few. Watch what David does the second he stops hiding: "Then I acknowledged my sin to you... and you forgave the guilt of my sin" (Psalm 32:5). Not months of penance. A moment. Grace comes like a flash of lightning.

But it isn't just you and God alone. James says, "Confess your sins to each other... so that you may be healed." You don't have to be known by everybody. You do have to be known by somebody. A few trusted people who get to see the actual you — not the highlight reel.

Because here's the thing about hide and seek: it's a two-player game. It was never just you. You may be hiding, but God is seeking. The same voice that called out in the garden — "Where are you?" — is calling your name right now. And He didn't come empty-handed. The very first blood ever shed was God making garments to cover two people hiding in their shame. Fast-forward to a cross, where the one man who had nothing to hide was stripped bare in broad daylight, carrying shame that was never His. Jesus was exposed till He died so that you would never have to hide till you die.

So here's the one thing to do with this. This week, pick one person. Not everybody — one. And tell them the true thing you've been carrying alone. That's how the weight vest comes off. That's the first step off the wide road and onto the narrow one — the road that actually leads to the life you're looking for.

We'd love to have you join us on Sunday.