At times we can be found as Christians living before God as young children playing hide and seek with their parents: if we can’t see them, they can’t see us.

How often we are aware of something in our heart that we know we need to bring to light, to reveal, to confess and repent of, but we cover our eyes and believe that if we’re not looking at it, God isn’t either. “If it were a big deal,” we reason, “God would bring it up.”

So we choose to turn away, to ignore, to minimize, to push what we don’t want seen behind whatever it is we do. At times God mercifully comes anyway and, like a good father, brings up and brings out those things that we didn’t want to look at or hear about.

But, also like a good father, sometimes he mercifully doesn’t. Instead, he’ll wait for us to bring up what he’s known is there all along. In fact, as we grow and mature, this expectation becomes one of our primary responsibilities.

It’s one thing to be shown your heart. It’s another to ask to be shown your heart. “Search me, oh God, and know my heart!…And see if there be any grievous way in me…” (Psalm 139). See, show me, if there is any wicked way in me.

It’s one thing for us to come to God and see what he will do. It’s another for us to come and seek what God will do—to seek to know his will, to seek to do his will, to seek for his will to be done.

“Ask and it will be given to you” (Matthew 7:7) includes the things we ask and want to be left unseen; “You have not, because you ask not” (James 4:2) includes the things God is wanting and waiting for you to see.