Exposing Grace

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Wsz_RCu7iQ

Scripture speaks more often than we might expect about the hidden places of the human person.

One of its most striking metaphors (oddly!) is the kidneys.

In the Old Testament, kidneys are used as an image for the deepest inner workings of a person — the seat of emotion, affection, conscience, and desire: the deepest, most concealed parts of the self.

Psalm 26:2 says, “Test me, Lord, and try me; examine my heart and my mind.” And Psalm 16:7 declares, “I will praise the Lord, who counsels me; even at night my heart instructs me.”

In Hebrew, the word translated as " heart and mind is kilyot — kidneys.

The New Testament uses the Greek word nephros only once, but significantly. In Revelation 2:23, Jesus says to the churches:

“And all the churches will know that I am He who searches mind and heart.”

(The kidneys!)

This is reinforced in Israel’s sacrificial system. When an animal was offered, the kidneys — and the fat surrounding them — were considered the choice parts. They were the most hidden, and the most prized and precious parts.

In the church we are living in a season of exposure, where God is trying us and examining our kidneys!

Exposure is not limited to public failures, high-profile leaders, or what we might label as “big sins.” It is far more comprehensive than that. God is exposing all of us. He is searching the hidden places — not to shame us but to heal us.

One of the great misunderstandings in the church, particularly in the Western church, is our narrow definition of sin. We categorise it. We reduce it to behaviours and we reassure ourselves that as long as we are not committing certain visible acts, we are essentially fine.

But Scripture paints a much deeper picture.

The New Testament word hamartia — used 173 times from Matthew to Revelation — means to miss the mark. It gathers up the entire moral and theological tradition of sin, describing not only individual actions but an indwelling principle that alienates humanity from God. Sin is described as a reigning power (Romans 6:14), a slave-master (John 8:34; Romans 6:17), and an inward law warring within believers.

When we reduce sin to “things we do,” we miss the point entirely.

Jesus made this unmistakably clear. He did not lower the bar; He raised it. If you harbour contempt in your heart, if you dismiss another as worthless, He says you are already guilty at the level of the heart. Sin is not merely external; it is woven through the warp and weft of our being like shot silk - it is formative. It shapes us.

This is why exposure is inseparable from formation.

We are not simply in a season of exposing wrongdoing; we are in a season of being formed. Jesus is forming His bride. And formation is not about performance — it is about being.

The Western church has excelled at doing and producing and looking great on the surface. We have been far less skilled at abiding, at yielding, at allowing Christ to form us in the hidden places. Yet Scripture consistently locates transformation not in activity, but in surrender.

The wilderness — midbar in Hebrew — shares its root with dabar, “to speak.” The desert is the place of speaking. God woos and allures us into the wilderness.. it is where He addresses our heart.

Sometimes the wilderness is a long, dramatic, defining season. At other times, it is simply where we realise we have dry place - a drought within us - that there are places in our inner man that have not been touched or transformed by the Living Water of Jesus Christ.

And that's exactly what the Lord has been revealing to me over the last week or so… an inner drought, a place within me where I had partnered with lies and not yet come into being.

It was during a recent ski trip of all the times and places! Where something began to surface - a familiar internal pattern: a low-level dread, a sense of being a liability (I was the absolute worst in our group - because I was a beginner!) - you know that feeling of being on the outside. It was odd, because on the surface I actually found it all rather hilarious and didn’t mind doing my own thing (with the 3 year olds on the miniature slopes) but there was still that dread just underneath the surface and I recognised it not as something new, but as something deeply familiar. What was being exposed was not a failure of skill, but a long-standing wound of abandonment.

This was not sin in the sense of fault. It was brokenness. It was not something I chose, nor something I caused. And yet, when God named it, I was confronted with a truth that is both sobering and hopeful: what is not our fault can still become our responsibility and that even in brokenness and trauma and roundedness we can choose to partner with the sin that attaches itself to us through our wounds.

In that place, I had a choice. I could continue returning to what I know — rehearsing “I am not enough,” clothing myself in abandonment, striving to create safety through effort and control. Or I could come to the Father and allow Him to hold me — to re-attach what had never fully learned secure attachment. The Lord spoke to me so so profoundly and deeply through a bronze sculpture called The Prodigal by Charlie Mackesy. He let me know, in the deep places of my soul that I was seen, held and loved in the places of old abandonment wounds and non-being.

This is a deeply vulnerable place!

But it is also the place of The Cross where death is exchanged for LIFE!

This is the heart of exposing grace.

God is searching our kidneys — the hidden, protected, painful places - the deepest, most concealed places of the human heart— not to humiliate or condemn, but because those places matter to Him. They are the choice parts. The prized parts. The places He intends to redeem. He is not after a performing bride, but a formed one. Not a bride skilled at concealment, but one mature in truth, intimacy, and freedom.

When God exposes something in us, He is not simply identifying what is wrong; He is revealing what He intends to heal, and He is inviting us to partner with Him in healing. We can turn away and continue trusting ourselves, obeying what Scripture calls the law of sin and death. Or we can yield, surrendering to the law of life. Exposure is never an end in itself. It is an invitation and a choice.

This is why Scripture consistently locates transformation in surrender rather than effort. Formation does not occur through performance, but through yielding. The work of God happens not in our capacity to manage ourselves, but in our willingness to be searched.

Christ is forming His bride - He is bringing her out of hiding, shame and nakedness, and into truth. This bride will not be defined by outward competence, but by inward maturity - she will be a bride who has learned to live from abiding rather than striving.

And it begins when we allow ourselves to be searched — and choose to stay and to surrender.