Knitting the loincloth

This week I had the opportunity to grab dinner with my best friend who I don't get to see very often. She goes to school in Santa Barbara and neither of us are home often, but we always seem to be in similar places. She works at Hume Lake during the summer and we enjoy sharing camp stories. As we dove deeper into conversation, we discussed how we have been gearing up for the camp life. We talked about the joy last summer brought us and the nerves we had for this summer. We were talking about how we felt unprepared, like we had to be in a certain place in order to serve God the way He needed us to. When we got to this point we realized how dumb we were being. Who do I think I am that I need to get somewhere before God will use me? Why do I think I have anything to offer at all? "Heroic faith is an oxymoron unless Christ is the hero." I need to step aside and let God be the hero He has always been.
You're probably wondering what all of this has to do with the title of my post. Well today's devotional references Adam and Eve in the garden post-fall. The pride that I exercised in the above situation stems from original sin. In this, I have a tendency to "hide" things from God. In my women's group this year, our first semester focused on sin. We talked openly with one another about sins that afflicted us and how we have been relying on God to overcome them. When we studied Adam and Eve in the garden, we quickly saw the parallels of pride in our own lives. This led us to coin the phrase "knitting the loincloth." Much like Adam and Eve hiding their nakedness from God and each other, we knit our loin cloths when we reject vulnerability and embrace pride. The discipline of daily, hourly, minutely connecting with God is what heals us from this brokenness of deceptive wholeness. When we think we are full but are not relying on God, we are knitting a loincloth and putting up a wall. It's like God wants to fill us with premium gas and we are settling for diesel. He gives it to us for free but we are still concerned about the price. Craving intimacy with God is essential to receiving His gifts fully. When we see and understand all that is belongs to God and all that we are and have is a gift from Him, we move beyond abundance into the extravagant love of a Creator who desires a relationship with us.