Exposed

The Spirit of God desires to shine the light of truth into our lives, exposing areas that don't please God and calling upon us to take responsibility for our sins and take action to confess them, allowing
the Spirit to do His purifying work. Ephesians 5 says:
8 For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light
9 (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth),
10 finding out what is acceptable to the Lord.
11 And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them.

We can also know that the dark areas of our human heart, where sin resides and where Satan can operate, need to be exposed, the sin dealt with, and the light of truth allowed to penetrate our consciousness.  The Lord wants to get our sin out into the open so that we can, by His power according to His direction, take the necessary action to walk in the Spirit.  We can rely on God to expose our weak areas as we take responsibility.   It's not someone else's sin or what someone else has done to us - it's our sin and we can act accordingly.

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We have to be aware that our Creator God, who has made us and knows us so well, knows our hearts, and He will take action to reveal what is in our hearts - that may be through the illumination of the Holy Spirit, or through circumstances that can serve to teach us about ourselves. Hebrews 4 says:
13 And there is no creature hidden from His sight, but all things are naked and open to the eyes of Him to whom we must give account.
14 Seeing then that we have a great High Priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession.

I don't know where you were at midnight on New Year's Eve, especially since the next day would involve getting up to go to church, which may have altered your normal plans.   But, if you were watching the legendary Dick Clark's New Year's Rockin' Eve with Ryan Seacrest, which of course counted down to midnight one hour early for those of us in the Central Time zone, you would have noticed a less-than-celebratory sight - pop music superstar Mariah Carey's, uh, performance in Times Square.

As USA Today reported:

She stopped attempting to sing Emotions, paced the stage and told the audience to finish the lyrics for her. She lamented there had not been a sound check for the performance.

"I'm trying to be a good sport here," she told the crowd. "We're missing some of these vocals, but it is what it is."

Later, she stopped singing We Belong Together after another malfunction. When she lowered the microphone from her mouth, the music and vocals kept playing, making it clear she was lip-synching.

“It just doesn’t get any better,” she said, and left the stage.

And, of course, the reaction on social media was brutal.  Team Carey then blamed the technical difficulties on Dick Clark Productions, according to USA Today, which reported that DCP released its own statement in response:

"As the premier producer of live television events for nearly 50 years, we pride ourselves on our reputation and long-standing relationships with artists. To suggest that dcp (Dick Clark Productions), as producer of music shows including the American Music Awards, Billboard Music Awards, New Year’s Rockin’ Eve and Academy of Country Music Awards, would ever intentionally compromise the success of any artist is defamatory, outrageous and frankly absurd," the statement said.

"In very rare instances there are of course technical errors that can occur with live television, however, an initial investigation has indicated that dcp had no involvement in the challenges associated with Ms. Carey’s New Year’s Eve performance. We want to be clear that we have the utmost respect for Ms. Carey as an artist and acknowledge her tremendous accomplishments in the industry."

OK, well, several things come to mind here, and I think there are, yes, some spiritual applications for all of us.  Number one, there will be times we will be exposed in our own lives.  I guess you can always suspect there's some lip-synching going on in a live, televised performance, but to actually have that confirmed, well, someone might think that the authenticity is gone.  We can take a look at our own lives - are we trying to portray to others an image that doesn't quite fit with what's going on inside?   Do we fake it or go through the motions, even though we don't have a burning desire for God in our hearts?

It may very well be that we are setting ourselves up to be exposed.  And, when the Holy Spirit is doing the exposing, that can be a very good thing, because the reality of Christ is allowed to flow through our countenance and our actions.  We serve a God who wants to reveal His presence through us, and he doesn't want us pretending we are someone whom we are not.   When we're exposed, we can allow the Spirit to work through our brokenness, strengthen our dependence on God, and allow His nature to shine.

Another thing here is that we need to take responsibility for our actions and not attempt to blame others.  It is very easy when we fail, when we make mistakes, to point fingers at other people.   And, what I believe the Lord would have us do is to admit our failures, confess our sins, and depend on Him to enable us to do better.  When things don't fall into place the way we think they should, perhaps we can, in a non-condemning way, look at our contribution to the calamity and not allow bitterness to creep in, even when something may not be our fault, partially or completely.   Blaming others can lead to discord - internally and externally.