Tuning the source: Be yourself with God

A crucial step in achieving honesty is to be yourself with God. Hiding from God is silly because he already knows everything about you. Nothing you do can hide who you really are from God.¹ He sees and knows everything about you, including and extending beyond all you know about yourself. He sees the parts of you that you can’t see,² won’t look at, or won’t truthfully acknowledge.

There is no benefit in pretending you are better than you are with God. Hiding from God doesn’t change what he sees; it only reduces what he can do to help you. You won’t escape from God’s judgment by pretending to be better than you are, but you will distance yourself from God’s goodness. Hiding from God won’t reduce God’s ability to see your badness, but it will reduce your ability to see his goodness.

You perceive, receive, and appreciate God’s goodness to the extent that you fully open ourselves to him. God can only sanctify what you expose to his light. The desire to cover our faults will always distance us from God and the miracles he could work in our lives. Only through freely admitting even the worst parts of ourselves can you draw nearer to him and be healed. Like the man with the shriveled hand and the crowd of onlookers, you must decide whether to draw nearer to God by exposing yourself to him or recoiling from him; showing how you really are or pretending to be someone else:

And when he had looked round about on them with anger, being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, he saith unto the man, Stretch forth thine hand. And he stretched it out: and his hand was restored whole as the other. (Mark 3:5)

The healed man and the stubborn onlookers responded to Jesus in opposite ways. While the man who would be healed stretched out his deformed hand toward the Lord, the observers hardened their hearts. The “hardness” of the hearts of the observers, as translated from Greek, means insensible, dulled, and covered with a callous. God already sees exactly how you really are, but you won’t view yourself the same way until and unless you cease attempting to hide from him.

Are you ashamed of what you want, what you think, what you believe, what you say, or what you do? Some laugh when discussing how Adam and Eve attempted to hide from God after their rebellion in the Garden of Eden. But how many do these same things? We all face the same tests as Adam and Eve, and very few have overcome the test of facing God in their nakedness:

His disciples said, “When will you become revealed to us and when shall we see you?” Jesus said, “When you disrobe without being ashamed and take up your garments and place them under your feet like little children and tread on them, then will you see the son of the living one, and you will not be afraid!” (Gospel of Thomas 1:37)

The problem with hiding from what makes you ashamed is that it creates within you a downward spiral of decay, both in the quality of your character and your ability to discern the process of degradation. The more ashamed you are of yourself, the less you will pay attention to and address the actions or qualities that make you ashamed, which creates greater blindness, more problems, more shame, and more hiding. Guilt from these particulars will creep into your general disposition. It is best to confront who you really are and seek to correct the things about yourself that you are ashamed of.

Are you honest with God about what you want, why you want it, and what you are willing to do to get it? Do you say you want something when you actually want something else more? Do you say you want something while being unwilling to pay what it costs? Do you say you want something for one reason, but actually want it for another? All of these lies will significantly impede what blessings God can send you. How can he help you draw nearer to what you actually want if you won’t be honest about what you actually want? How can he teach you more about what you should want if you aren’t honest about what you say you want, how badly you want it, or why you say you want it?

Don’t attempt to hide yourself from God in prayer by saying anything but what you truly think and feel. Communication with God can only change your standing with God to the extent you honestly open your heart and mind in full vulnerability. Acknowledge that he already knows everything you will say to him, all you have and have not done, why you are the way you are, and how you really feel about it all. Only those who interact with God in sincerity will find him:

...thou didst hear me because of mine afflictions and my sincerity... (Alma 33:11)

Those who pray insincerely are not praying as a means for God to make them better, but to feel better about how they already are. Both will receive what they seek.³

Don’t attempt to hide yourself from God in how you live your life, pretending to be something you’re not. Fake good is accounted by God as evil.

6 For behold, God hath said a man being evil cannot do that which is good; for if he offereth a gift, or prayeth unto God, except he shall do it with real intent it profiteth him nothing.
7 For behold, it is not counted unto him for righteousness. 8 For behold, if a man being evil giveth a gift, he doeth it grudgingly; wherefore it is counted unto him the same as if he had retained the gift; wherefore he is counted evil before God.
9 And likewise also is it counted evil unto a man, if he shall pray and not with real intent of heart; yea, and it profiteth him nothing, for God receiveth none such.
10 Wherefore, a man being evil cannot do that which is good; neither will he give a good gift. (Moroni 7)

It is much better to be sincere about who you really are in your interactions with God (even if you have little to offer) than it is to pretend to be better than you really are (even if you are pretending to be very good). This is why the Lord commended the widow’s small donation over the larger donations from the Pharisees:

43 And he called unto him his disciples, and saith unto them, Verily I say unto you, That this poor widow hath cast more in, than all they which have cast into the treasury:
44 For all they did cast in of their abundance; but she of her want did cast in all that she had, even all her living. (Mark 12)

Be honest with God. Act in acknowledgement that he knows everything about your thoughts, feelings, and actions. Rather than hide from him, go to the opposite extreme. Willingly open yourself to him.