Hiding Behind Trees

Undone at a Tree

One of the chief difficulties of prayer comes from having to reveal ourselves. It is nary impossible to pray without showing our true colors — and we often go to great extremes to hide our true colors. But this tendency is nothing new; it goes all the way back to Adam and Eve. 

After Adam and Eve sinned by eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they ducked behind a tree to try and hide themselves from God when he came to the garden for their prayer time. We might laugh at such a ludicrous act: “Did they really think they could hide from the Almighty God behind a tree?“ Yet we often “hide behind trees” in our own prayer lives. Our default posture in prayer is to “hide” ourselves from God and pray phony prayers to try and manipulate him. 

But if we want an authentic, catalytic, flesh-and-blood prayer life, we have to stop hiding behind trees. This statement, of course, raises a couple important questions: why should we come out of hiding, and how is it made possible for us to come out of hiding? In other words: can we trust that it is both possible and safe to reveal ourselves to God?  Does God ever reveal himself and say, “I’m here, but you don’t have to be afraid; you can stop hiding”?

The answer to those questions comes to us, surprisingly enough, at a tree. For we only discover that can stop trying to hide ourselves from God and experience authentic, rich prayer and friendship, when we come to the foot of the cross. 

Set Free at a Tree

When Adam and Eve were clothed with nothing but their own shame after they’d sinned, they opted to hide behind a tree and not be seen. They didn’t want to be exposed in the sight of their Creator. But thousands of years later, Jesus Christ, the wonderful and perfectly good Son of God through whom everything was created, came to dwell among us. And even though his own people rejected him, he did not hide himself from us — but instead was hung up on a tree for all of us to see, clothed with nothing but our own shame. 

And he did this so that all of God’s promises might come to pass, so that the sin that compelled us to hide ourselves in the first place could be forgiven, so that God himself could take our garb of shame and instead give us the robe of freedom. Jesus was hung up on a tree, so that we could stop hiding behind them. He died in our place, so that we who were estranged orphans with no royal lineage could be adopted into the royal family of God.  

As Tim Keller once noted, who could live to tell that they went and woke the king at 3 AM for a cup of water, except for the child of the king? Yet we have that kind of access, because of Jesus. We are the sons and daughters of God our King through Christ. So when we fully and clearly see Christ’s sacrifice on our behalf, prayer can come alive, and it’s one of the reasons we pray in Jesus’ name. 

In Jesus’ Name

The Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians 1:20: “For no matter how many promises God has made, they are ‘Yes’ in Christ. And so through him the ‘Amen’ is spoken by us to the glory of God.”

In other words, all the promises of God that we read in the Bible, including the promise of Jeremiah 29:12-13, “Then you will call on me and come and pray to me, and I will listen to you. You will seek me and find me when you seek me with all your heart”, are guaranteed because of Jesus’ sacrificial work on the cross. 

So when we end our prayers with, “In Jesus’ name,” it’s not just a magic tagline or the “send” button that delivers our prayers. It is a reminder that we can lay claim to God’s promise to hear our prayers only through the work of Jesus — not because of anything that we’ve done. And when we say, “amen,” we are saying, “surely,” as in, “Surely, because of Jesus, my prayer is heard. Surely, I have walked the mountain range of God’s faithfulness, I have been to the peak and seen Jesus’ sacrifice for me, and I affirm that my restoration to God and my prayer is made possible and is heard because of it.” Let that panorama fill your mind’s eye when you pray, “in Jesus’ name, amen.” 

When it comes to prayer, you do not need to hide behind a tree any longer — for the Son of God was crucified upon a tree to set you free.